On Not Agreeing with Heretics

When you noticed that all your ruinous attempts had been met and resisted, and when you found that all your schemes against the church of God had been laid bare to the whole people of God, you said that we were and are enemies of peace, foes of unity, adversaries even of brotherly love. If there ought to be nothing in common between the worshippers of God and the enemies of his religion, why did Moses, at the time when he saw that carnal Jewish people, whose wisdom you hold, fallen into the guilt of idolatry, after he had had certain men struck down with the sword, also wish his own station to be set apart? Hear how this is written: “And the Lord said to Moses: Say to the children of Israel: You are a stiff-necked people; see that I do not bring another plague upon you and destroy you. Now therefore lay aside the robes of your glory and your ornaments, and I will show what I am going to do to you. And the children of Israel took off their ornaments and robes from Mount Horeb. And Moses took the tabernacle and pitched it outside the camp, far from the camp, and it was called the tabernacle of testimony; and it came about that everyone who sought the Lord went out to the tabernacle of testimony outside the camp. And when Moses went out to the tabernacle, all the people stood watching, each at the door of his tent. They watched Moses going until he entered the tabernacle; and as soon as Moses had entered the tabernacle, the pillar of cloud came down and stood at the door of the tabernacle, and spoke with Moses; and all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the door of the tabernacle, and all the people stood and worshipped, each at the door of his tent. And the Lord spoke to Moses openly, openly, as a man speaks to his friend. But his minister, the young man Joshua the son of Nun, did not go out of the tabernacle.” By this deed it was shown that you who sin against God must be avoided and that we must withdraw from you. But, someone says, see: although Moses had the tabernacle in another place, he did not abandon the people but urged them to correct the ways of their errors, so that God might be favourable. Nor do those who have refused to be mixed up with your sacrilege fail in these duties; for you know that you are told that unless you correct your ways you will perish for ever.

To carry through, then, as fully as we can to proof what we had begun to set out: how often the people murmured against God and rose up against Moses, you have read that God said to Moses and Aaron: “Withdraw from the midst of this undisciplined, stubborn people, and I will destroy them.” What, then, does he want us to do, except to flee you, the undisciplined and stubborn, so that we may not perish together with you, as those did who had banded together with Korah, Dathan and Abiram? Or will you deny that you are undisciplined and stubborn? Look at your acts against the church of the Lord, and you will find how undisciplined and stubborn you are. In Deuteronomy Moses says: “You shall make no covenant with them, nor shall you have mercy on them; nor shall you give your daughters to them in marriage, nor shall you give his daughter to your son; for she will lead your son away from me, and he will serve strange gods; and the Lord will be angry with you in his wrath and will soon destroy you.” Since he commands this to be done, how can we come together with you, how can we have peace with you, who deny the only Son of God? How could we have fulfilled that wish of yours, when you see that God said through Moses about the Moabites and Ammonites: “You shall not greet them in peace all the days of your life, for ever”? How could we have been Arians and Christians at the same time, when you hear Moses say: “There shall be no adulteress among the daughters of Israel,” and when he warns in every place that every adulterer is to be brought out to the gate and put to death with stones: “and you shall remove the wicked one,” he says, “from among yourselves”? If he says that God so detests carnal adultery that he ordered all adulterers to be punished, how much more must the Lord detest your spiritual adultery; and that is why you had to be fled, and must be fled still. We Christians could not come together with apostates, when we find that the Holy Spirit said through Moses: “God will open to you his best heavenly treasure, to give you rain for your land; in season he will bless all the work of your hands; you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow; and you shall fight many nations, but they shall not conquer you. The Lord your God will make you the head and not the tail, and you shall be above and not beneath, if you hear the commandment of the Lord your God, whatever I command you today to keep and to do, and do not turn aside from any word that I command you today, to the right or to the left.” How could we have come together with the Arian false bishops of your sect, when you see that we could not have been blessed unless we had not gone after your idolatry, unless we had detested your heresy, that of the Arians, as we detest that of all heretics, unless we had judged and held you to be such as the heathen, that is, worshippers of all the demons, unless we had abhorred you as we do the Jews, who are found to be without God since they denied the only Son of God? In Joshua it says: “And when the people heard the sound of the trumpets, all the people shouted with a great shout, and all the walls of the city round about fell, and all the people went up into the city, each one in front of his adversaries, and they took the city and devoted it to destruction, and whatever was in the city, from man to woman, from youth to old man, down to the calf and the beast of burden, they killed with the edge of the sword. And Joshua said to the two young men who had spied out the land: Go into the woman's house and bring her out, and whatever is hers. And the two young men who had spied out the city went into the woman's house and brought out Rahab the harlot, and her father and mother and her brothers and whatever was hers, and all her kindred, and they brought her out outside the camp of Israel; and the city was burned with fire with all that was in it.” And further on: “Joshua kept alive Rahab the harlot and all her father's house, and she has dwelt in Israel to this day.” Since, then, you see that all who lived in the city of Jericho were punished with the edge of the sword and the whole city burned, how did you think we could come together with you, a heretic, when we perceived that you and yours deserve the ban more than they did? How could we have come together with the Arian false bishops of your sect, when you see that no one was kept alive in the city in which idolaters lived except Rahab alone, because she believed that our Lord is almighty, and that the idolatry in which the people settled in Jericho trusted had been invented by human error?

How could we have come together with you, when it is written in the third book of Kingdoms that your houses are not to be set foot in, nor meals taken with you, nor water accepted from you? Holy Scripture shows that this is so. “And it came about,” it says of that fellow apostate of yours, “the word of the man of God,” and further on: “And he stretched out his hand towards the altar, saying, ‘Seize him’; and the king's hand, which he stretched out against him, dried up, and he could not draw it back to himself; and the altar was broken, and its fat poured out from the altar, according to what the man of God had said by the word of the Lord. And the king answered and said to the man of God: ‘Entreat the face of the Lord your God, that my hand may be restored to me.’ And the man of God entreated the face of the Lord, and the king's hand was restored to him and became as it was before. And the king spoke to the man of God and said: ‘Come into the house with me and dine, and I will give you gifts.’ And the man of God said to the king: ‘Even if you gave me half your house, I will not go in with you, nor eat bread, nor drink water in this place; for so the Lord commanded me by his word, saying: You shall not eat bread and you shall not drink water, and you shall not return by the way you went.’” How could we have come together with you to worship God, when such heavy punishment fell upon this man of God, who had been sent by God to rebuke King Jeroboam, because he had been deceived by the one who was called a prophet? “And he went away,” Scripture says after this about that man of God, “by another way, and did not return by the way he had come to Bethel. And his sons came and told him all the works that the man of God had done that day in Bethel, and the words he had spoken to the king, and they turned their father's face. And their father spoke to them, saying: ‘Which way did he go?’ And his sons showed him the way by which the man of God who had come from Judah had gone. And he said to his sons: ‘Saddle the ass for me’; and they saddled it for him, and he mounted it and went after the man of God, and found him sitting under an oak tree, and said to him: ‘Are you the man of God who came from Judah?’ And he said: ‘I am.’ And he said to him: ‘Come with me and eat bread.’ And he said: ‘I cannot return with you, nor eat bread, nor drink water in this place; for so the Lord commanded me by his word, saying: You shall not eat bread there and you shall not drink water there, and you shall not return from there by the way you went.’ And he said to him: ‘I too am a prophet as you are, and an angel spoke to me by the word of the Lord, saying: Bring him back with you into your house, and let him eat bread and drink water.’ And he lied to him, and brought him back, and he ate bread in his house and drank water. And it came about, as they sat at table, that the word of the Lord came to the false prophet who had brought him back, and he said to the man of God who had come from Judah: ‘Thus says the Lord: Because you have provoked the word of the Lord and have not kept the commandment which the Lord your God commanded you, and have come back and eaten bread and drunk water in this place, of which he spoke to you, saying, You shall not eat bread nor drink water, therefore your body shall not enter the tomb of your fathers.’ And it came about, after he had eaten bread and drunk water, that they saddled the ass for him, and he turned and went away; and a lion met him on the road and killed him, and his body lay thrown in the road, and the ass stood beside it, and the lion stood beside his body. And men of that city came and spoke in the city where the old prophet lived; and when those who had brought him back from the road heard, he said: ‘This is the man of God who provoked the word of the Lord’; and he went and found his body thrown in the road, and the ass and the lion standing over the body; and the lion had not eaten his body nor sprung upon the ass.” If this was rendered to him because he had eaten bread and taken a drink of water in a profane place among foreign men, what would have been rendered to us, if we had formed friendship, as you desired, with you, whom we know to be a heretic, whom we know to deny the only Son of God; if we had poured out prayer with you Arians; if, in short, we had allowed ourselves, priests of the Lord, to celebrate with your Arian false bishops all that we celebrate? Meanwhile, going back over your acts, you must recognize them as most bitter: that you were sent in to deceive us as that false prophet was to the man of God. For as he, though a false prophet, said he was a prophet in order to ensnare an innocent man, so you too, though you are not a Christian but an Arian, have pretended to be a Christian in order to entangle us. Then, although the church of the Lord has always had peace and has cast you out, and the heretics of every sect, you said, “I want peace to be established in my empire,” wishing to violate in us the Lord's peace, desiring to divide the people of God, working for your heresy, to which you long to make us all go over. So you lied that you were a man of God when you said you were making this peace for the sake of our salvation, as did that false prophet who said, “Come back with me, for I too am a prophet of the Lord, and an angel spoke to me.” So, I say, you lied when you said that you had undertaken to do this in order to please God, since you were labouring to join the catholic bishops one by one to the communion of the Arians.

How could Christians have come together with you and your fellow Arians, when you see that God said this to King Jehoshaphat, because he had taken the idolater Ahab into friendship and had gone out to war with an enemy of the Lord? For after that Ahab, your fellow in sacrilege, had been struck in battle with a deadly wound according to the word of God, and Jehoshaphat, because he had cried to God with all his heart, had been restored to his house, holy Scripture says that Jehu the son of Hanani, who was a seer, went out before him and said this: “If you help that sinner and are a friend of those who hate the Lord, for this there is wrath upon you from the face of the Lord; yet good words have been found in you, because you have taken away the groves from the land and have prepared your heart to seek the Lord.” If these things are said to him, what would be said to us, if we had chosen to be friends with you, a heretic and an adversary of God? Or will you dare to say, “I am not an enemy of God, as Ahab king of Israel was”? How are you not an enemy, when you do the same things that Ahab did? For you attack the religion of God as he attacked it, you persecute his house as he persecuted it. How could we have come together with you and yours, when this king devoted to God was rebuked by God through a prophet because he had joined in friendship with Ahaziah king of Israel? “And Jehoshaphat king of Judah,” it says, “joined in friendship with Ahaziah king of Israel; he began to act wickedly, and he made him his partner in building ships to go to Tarshish. And he made the ships in Ezion-geber. And Eliezer the son of Dodavah of Mareshah prophesied against Jehoshaphat, saying: Because you have made partnership with Ahaziah, the Lord has shattered your work, and your ships have been broken and will not be able to go to Tarshish.” If those things are said to him by the Lord because he had as partner in building ships a king of the way of perdition, what could be said to us, if we priests of God held you as a friend, you, the destroyer of his house, you, the persecutor of the catholic faith? If he shattered that man's work because he had been joined to a wicked man, we, I believe, would already have been scattered by a thunderbolt for having joined ourselves to you, a blasphemer. How could we, who are servants of God, while you are servants of the devil, have come together into one, when God has willed that there be such a separation between us and you as between light and darkness, between life and death, between sweet and bitter, as between the holy angels of God, who ever magnify his mercy, and those apostates whom you will see tormented for ever with you, unless you snatch yourself away from them? How, I say, could we servants of God have been together with you, servants of the Antichrist, when it was said by God to King Amaziah in the second book of Chronicles: “The army of Israel shall not go with you, for God is not with Israel, with all the sons of Ephraim; for if you think to prevail with these, the Lord will turn you to flight before your enemies, for strength is from the Lord”? How would we resist the devil, if in so great a crime of yours we ran with you, with the enemies of God, with men found without knowledge of God, with men who do not have God, in whom we know there is a troop of demons? For you cannot deny the only Son of God without demons, since none makes you blaspheme except those who have blinded your hearts, so that the truth cannot be grasped by you.

Could we possibly have stayed on your side and consented to your most shameful designs, when the Holy Spirit says through the glorious David that none are blessed except those who have withdrawn from you who deny the only Son of God, and that only those will remain blessed who have not mingled with your serpentine thoughts? “Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, and has not stood in the way of sinners, and has not sat in the seat of pestilence.” How could there be one meeting place for you and us, when you hear David say also in the sixth psalm: “Depart from me, you who work iniquity”? Whether you Arians do not work iniquity, judge for yourself, you who are the chief in the sacrilege of the Arians, who persecute us with horrible animosity because we say we are Christians. Know, then, that we did right in withdrawing from you, who are hateful to God. For how would it have been fitting for us to remain in your assembly, stained with every crime, and not to flee you, plagues and pestilence that you are? For he says in the person of our people in the twenty-fifth psalm: “For your mercy is before my eyes, and I have taken pleasure in your truth. I have not sat in the council of vanity, and I will not go in with those who do wicked things; I have hated the church of evildoers, and I will not sit with the ungodly.” If your council is not one of vanity, refute me. Is it not a vain council, in which there is no counsel except that the Son of God be denied, that it be maintained that God the Father is not a true Father, that it be asserted that the Holy Spirit the Paraclete is not the true Spirit of God, that the apostolic and evangelical tradition be destroyed, that the tradition of Arius be confirmed? A council in which nothing else is confirmed except what can win great joy for all heretics and heathen and Jews: all who curse the religion of God rejoice to see you, the emperor, carrying out what they long for, to see that you have become a denier of the only Son of God and a persecutor of his servants. This is the council which you are accustomed to gather with all the strength of your empire, so that every authority of the holy Scriptures may be dissolved by the authority of your empire, so that all truth may be buried, so that the lies of your detestable invention may seem true. These are your designs in that excellent council gathered by your power. That is why you hate us, because we curse your council of evildoers; that is why we are in exile; that is why we are killed in prison; that is why the sight of others is forbidden to us alone; that is why we are shut up in darkness and kept under heavy guard. For this reason no human being is admitted to visit us: because we refused to have any partnership in your crimes with you ungodly men of sacrilege, you concerning whom a prayer was addressed to God in our person, that we might not perish together while living with you, but be separated from your wicked council, from your unjust conspiracy. For he says in the twenty-seventh psalm: “Hear, O Lord, the voice of my supplication, when I pray to you, when I lift up my hands to your holy temple. Do not drag my soul away with the sinners, and do not destroy me with those who work iniquity, with those who speak peace with their neighbour while evil is in their hearts. Give them according to their works and according to the wickedness of their pursuits; repay them according to the work of their hands; render them their reward.” That is why we are hated by you, Constantius: because we would not have said of us the things that are said by the mouth of the prophet of you and yours because of your wicked work, things that are said of the Jews, whose imitator you have become. Are you not the emperor Constantius, who pretended that you were making peace, when your evil thoughts were only that the Son of God should be denied, that the apostolic and evangelical faith should be destroyed and your Arian heresy built up, that all who would not agree with you should be deported, proscribed, tortured in various ways, and at last killed? And therefore the Holy Spirit, marking out you and yours and striking you at the same time, says in the person of our people: “Do not destroy me with those who work iniquity, with those who speak peace with their neighbour while evil is in their heart.” To us you said, “I want peace to be made,” and the adversary of our religion, abiding in your heart, was planning through you to make us idolaters. Therefore you will truly receive according to your work, according to the wickedness of your pursuits, unless you look out for yourself. We have avoided and are avoiding your counsel, which was and is formed against God, whose designs the Holy Spirit already saw when he said by the mouth of David in the thirty-second psalm: “The Lord has scattered the counsels of the nations; he rejects the thoughts of the peoples and rejects the counsels of princes.” God rejects your counsels brought against his church; for he cannot hate his people, his inheritance, and love you, sons of pestilence, you persecutors of his servants.

You said: “Make peace with the Arian bishops of my sect, and be at one.” And the Spirit of God says through Solomon in Proverbs: “Do not, do not follow the ways of the ungodly, nor envy the way of the wicked; in whatever place they have set their camp, do not come upon it. Turn aside from it and pass by; for they will not sleep unless they have done evil; their sleep has been taken from them, and they do not sleep. For they feed on the food of ungodliness and are drunk with the wine of iniquity. But the ways of the righteous shine like light; they go forward and give light until the day sets right. But the ways of the ungodly are dark; they do not know how they stumble.” How could we have had fellowship with you Arians, with spiritual adulterers? For we keep in mind what is written: “Do not give heed to a deceitful woman; for honey drips from the lips of a harlot woman, which for a time fattens your throat, but in the end you will find it more bitter than gall and sharper than a two-edged sword; and the feet of folly lead those who use her down with death to the underworld.” But what do you say? That this was said about adulteries of the flesh? If you insist that it was said about adulteries of the flesh, how much more must you, spiritual adulterers, be fled, lest what is said here come upon us through your spiritual harlot, the Arian heresy? For it seems sweet to some to be joined in friendship with you, the king, by accepting your heresy; but they will find it more bitter than gall when those who chose to be with you begin to feel themselves tormented with you for ever in everlasting Gehenna, and then they will say: “Woe to us, who put the emperor Constantius before God.” How could it have been possible for us and you to come together, when Solomon says still further on: “Cast pestilence out of the council, and strife will go out with it”; and: “Do not imitate evil men nor desire to be with them; for their heart devises falsehood, and their lips speak sorrows”; and: “Do not bring the ungodly near the pastures of the righteous, and do not be led astray by the fullness of the belly. For a righteous man falls seven times and rises again, but the ungodly will be weakened in evils.”

How can we be with the proud and the transgressors, with you who have chosen to be found with Judas Iscariot rather than with the most blessed prophets, apostles and martyrs? For I hear in the hundredth psalm: “I walked in the innocence of my heart in the midst of your house. I did not set before my eyes any evil thing; I hated those who commit transgressions; a perverse heart did not cleave to me; I did not know the wicked who turned aside from me. Whoever secretly slandered his neighbours, him I pursued; with the proud eye and the insatiable heart, with such a one I did not eat.” And in the hundred and eighteenth psalm: “I have held the wicked in hatred, and have loved your law.” Since you are wicked, being deniers of the only Son of God, and since you must be hated by us because, leaving the way of truth, you have taken hold of every error, because, leaving the light, you have chosen to go into the outer darkness, how could we have been dear to you, the abominable head, the destroyer of the house of God, the kindling of all who work iniquity? How could we have been your intimate friends, as Valens, Ursacius, Epictetus, Saturninus and the rest are? Of their number, even though they have seen into what pit they have fallen, they would surely choose to perish with you, provided they may enjoy with you the empty splendour of your reign. How could we have been with you, we who loathe the things they have chosen to enjoy with you, men who strive to obtain those things that will abide for ever? On what point do we and you not agree? Surely because we refused to accept your heresy, surely because we Christians refused to be made Arians. And who but one out of his mind, as you Arians are, would abandon the house of God and go to the tomb of the devil?

We suffer under your hatred, then, because we were and are afraid lest the things be said of us that were said of those deserters, that is, the Jews, whom Jeremiah accuses, saying: “Hear the word of the Lord, house of Jacob and all the house of Israel. Thus says the Lord: What stubbornness did your fathers find in me, that they withdrew far from me and went after empty things, and were frustrated, and did not say: Where is God, who freed us from the land of Egypt, who led us out, giving us guidance in the desert, in an untilled and unknown land, in a land without water and without fruit, in a land through which no man passed nor any son of man dwelt there? And he brought you into Carmel, to eat its fruit and its good things; and you entered and defiled the land and made my inheritance a desolation. The priests did not say, Where is the Lord? and the elders of my law did not know me, and the shepherds acted ungodly against me, and the prophets prophesied by Baal and went after useless things.” We did not want to hear these reproaches; that is why we said that you and yours must be fled. For the members of God's household could not come together with you foreigners, when we see that God said to that carnal people, your partner in faithlessness: “Turn your foot from the rough road and your throat from thirst. But she said: I will take courage, for she loved strangers and went after them.” Not only did we refuse to go after you strangers, after you foreigners, but we pronounced you anathema, sons of pestilence and of darkness; lest, if we withdrew from the apostolic and evangelical faith and abandoned the way which the most blessed Abraham, Isaac and Jacob held, and Abel, Enoch, Noah and all the prophets, apostles and martyrs, God should say of us too what was said of your fellow blasphemers the Jews: “As a thief is put to shame when he is caught, so the children of Israel will be put to shame, they and their kings and their princes and their priests and prophets.” We did not want to be among you, lest that rebuke of the divine voice should also convict us together with the Jews and with you heretics: “Why do you speak to me? You have all acted ungodly, and you have all sinned against me, says the Lord.”

How could we have come together with you, when you have read what is written in the first book of Maccabees: “Then there was gathered to them a company mighty in strength from Israel, everyone who offered himself willingly for the law. And all who were fleeing from the evils joined them and became a support to them. And they formed an army and struck down the sinners in their anger and the wicked men in their indignation; and the rest fled to the nations to save themselves. And Mattathias and his friends went round and destroyed the altars, and they circumcised by force all the uncircumcised boys they found within the borders of Israel; and they pursued the sons of pride, and the work prospered in their hands, and they recovered the law from the hands of the nations and of the kings, and they did not give the horn to the sinner.” Could we have been with you, when you see what those who are found to have feared God with their whole heart did to such men? You, a member already cut off from the body of the blessed church at the moment you became an Arian instead of a Christian, say: “Be with us.” And the Lord says in the Gospel: “If your right eye causes you to stumble, tear it out and throw it away from you; for it is better for you that one of your members perish than that your whole body be thrown into Gehenna. And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away from you; for it is better for you that one of your members perish than that your whole body go into Gehenna.” The church proclaims that it has cut off Arius and thrown him away according to the Lord's commands, and you say: “Receive the men who share my pestilence and plague”; you say: “Let yourselves perish of the same disease of which I have perished.” Sabellius was cut off from the body of the church just as your fellow abomination, that Arius, was cut off, whose word has crept into you like a cancer so powerfully that you are seen to be already wholly cancer. Nor will you be able to say that you have not caught the cancer of Arius's word, since the stench of your cancer has reached every place of your realm, and we have all resolved to avoid you, lest we too be infected by your Arian plague. So, I say, your teacher Arius was cut off and thrown away, as Sabellius was cut off and cast out, who dared to maintain that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one person, because he dared to say that the same one is to himself Father and Son and Holy Spirit; he was cut off because he did not hesitate to say that the Father himself was made flesh in the womb of the virgin and suffered. So Marcion, who would not confess that the Son of God took up man from the womb of the virgin and so was made man, threw himself out, cut off. So Paul of Samosata, the teacher of Photinus, was cut off and cast out from the body of the church, because he saw fit to say that the Son of God was only a man. So also the heretics of all sects have been cut off, as Arius was cut off, and as you were, who deserved to be cut off because you say of the only Son of God: “He was made from nothing and is not a true Son; there was when he was not.” So all you blasphemers have been cut off and cast out by the power of God from the church of his mercy, because you did not remain in it in the faith in which the patriarchs, prophets, apostles and martyrs remained. A man cut off with all your fellow blasphemers from the body of the holy church, lying in the devil's bilge, you dare to say to her: “Be such as I am, so that you may be consumed by such a disease as that by which I too have been consumed.” So you thought that we could come together with you, as though we did not remember that blessed Paul said: “We command you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to withdraw yourselves from every brother who walks disorderly and not according to the tradition which they received from us.” What reasoning could have brought it about that, abandoning the way that leads to the kingdom of heaven, we should take hold of yours, which plunges headlong to Gehenna? You thought you could deceive us by the cunning with which the serpent deceived Adam and Eve, composing in choice words and most beautiful sentiments an edict in which all the poisons of your heresy are contained. But how could you have accomplished this, when blessed Paul has armed us against your poisons and your father's, saying: “This I say, that no one may deceive you with loftiness of words”; and again: “See that no one deceives you through philosophy and empty seduction, according to the tradition of men, according to the elements of the world and not according to Christ; for in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” How could we have been seduced by those sacrilegious Arian ideas of yours, however lofty the words, when we knew that what you have is empty philosophy? How could your words be sweet, when we have seen you holding the tradition of Arius, not of the blessed apostles, to whom he whom you deny to be the true Son of God said: “Go, baptize those who believe in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”? How should we Christians have given in to you, a disciple of Arius, abandoning the apostolic tradition, when we find you saying that the Father is not a true Father but is called Father, when you say that he does not have a true Son, but one made from nothing, and when you say that the holy Spirit, the Paraclete, likewise consists from nothing; whereas we see, on the contrary, that the apostles believed in one God, the Father almighty, the true Father, true Father because he truly, not supposedly, has a Son; and in his only Son Jesus Christ, that is, in the true Son of God; and in the holy Spirit, the Paraclete, the true Spirit of God? How could anyone who believes thus have been tripped up by the devil through you, the founder of the blasphemy of Arius, when the apostolic faith confesses a perfect Trinity and professes one only Godhead of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, while the blasphemy of Arius, that is, yours, holds nothing but what has pleased your dear devil, since there is as much difference between the faith of the blessed church and your heresy as between light and darkness?

I said rightly, meanwhile, that you are separated from us as darkness is separated from light, because you are sons of darkness; and that is why you have vomited darkness from your viperous hearts. You hoped to turn us aside from the way of truth, as though we did not know that the Holy Spirit had warned beforehand through blessed Paul, saying: “Let no one convict you, wishing it in lowliness of mind and the worship of angels, who seems to walk without cause, puffed up by the mind of his flesh and not holding the head, from which the whole body, supplied through its joints and bonds, grows to the increase of faith.” How should we follow you, who walk without cause, fed by the mouth of the serpent Arius, puffed up by the mind of your flesh, made an apostate, when the apostle's command compelled us to avoid you? You said that you desired to join the false bishops of your sect to us for the sake of peace; but how could we have done this, so as to listen not to God but to you, his enemy? We are not senseless as you are, so as to deny God the Son of God, as the Jews deny him, the partners of your blindness and the leaders of your unbelief, showing whose reprobation as an example blessed Paul says to the Hebrews: “And Moses indeed was faithful in all his house as a servant, speaking in testimony; but Christ as a Son over his house, which house we are, if we hold fast the freedom and the exultation of hope. Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says: Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, as in the provocation, on the day of testing in the desert, where your fathers tested me by trial, and saw my works for forty years. Therefore that nation was hateful to me, and I said: They always go astray in heart. But they did not know my ways; as I swore in my wrath: They shall not enter my rest. See, brothers, lest perhaps there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God; but comfort one another daily, while it is called today, lest any of you be hardened in the error of sin. For we have become partakers of Christ, if indeed we hold the beginning of our substance firm to the end. While it is said, Today, if you hear my voice, do not harden your hearts as in the provocation. For some, having heard this, did not believe; but not all who came out of Egypt through Moses. And with whom was he displeased for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose corpses lay in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, except to the stubborn? And we see that they could not enter because of unbelief. Let us fear, then, lest, the command being forsaken, some of you be seen unable to enter into his rest. For it was announced to us as well as to them; and the word they heard did not profit them, not being blended with the faith of the hearers. For we who have believed shall enter into his rest, as he said: As I swore in my wrath, They shall not enter my rest, although the works were made from the foundation of the world. For he has said somewhere of the seventh day: And so God rested on the seventh day from all his works. And in this place again: They shall not enter my rest. Since, therefore, it remains for the rest to enter into it, and those to whom it was first preached did not enter because of stubbornness, again he fixed another day, today, saying in David after so long a time, as was said before: Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. For if Jesus had given them rest, he would not have spoken of another day. Therefore a rest remains on a later day for the people of God. For whoever has entered into his rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from his.” Who is so foolish that, having read this and received it from the blessed apostle, he would try to abandon the apostolic faith and take up heresy? Who will dare to deny him whom he sees able to grant eternal rest to those who believe in him, and choose to believe in one with whom he will begin to be punished for ever? Who is such a man but you, the emperor Constantius, who have abandoned the camp of the Lord and gone over to the house of the devil? We have not chosen to burn, as you have chosen with your lover the devil, but we hasten to enter into everlasting rest. How could we have been caught by your cunning and turned from the way of truth, when the apostle further urges us to lay hold of eternal rest, saying: “Let us hasten, therefore, to enter into that rest, lest anyone fall by the same example of stubbornness. For the word of God is living and strong and sharper than any sword, and piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and a searcher of the mind and the thoughts of the heart; and there is no creature that is not manifest before him, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.” Since this is so, how could any of us have gone over to you, who remain in the faithlessness of the Jews? What reasoning could join us Christians to you Arians, when we saw that you are imitators of that nation in all faithlessness? How could those who flee to the house of God emerge from it, when the most blessed Peter spoke thus in the Acts of the Apostles: “Repent, and let each of you be baptized in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For this promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, whomever the Lord your God calls.” And with many other words he testified and exhorted them, saying: “Rescue yourselves from this crooked generation.” Nor will you be able to say that you Arians are not a crooked generation, as the Jews were and are, when you see that the scribes, the Pharisees and the rulers of the Jews were then called a crooked generation because they denied the Son of God and persecuted all who believed in his divine majesty. You will not be able to say, I say, that you and all the Arians are not a crooked and perverse generation, since you do the same things they did. If they denied the only Son of God, so do you; if they persecuted the servants of his eternal mercy, you persecute them too. What, then, ought we to have done, except withdraw from you men of sacrilege according to the command of blessed Peter? For how could we have come together with you, when the Lord said in the Gospel: “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy”?

How could we have been at one? For the blessed apostle, writing to the Corinthians, said: “It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and such sexual immorality as is not even among the Gentiles, that someone has his father's wife. And you are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he who has done this deed might be removed from your midst.” If, then, the apostle ordered one who did such a deed to be removed from the midst, so that the whole church might not be corrupted through fellowship with him, how much more fitting was it that we should flee you blasphemers? If he relates that he handed that man over to Satan, how much more ought you to know that you were already handed over at the moment you began to deny the Son of God? “For I, as absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged, as if present, him who has done such a thing: in the name of the Lord Jesus, when you and my spirit are gathered together, with the power of our Lord Jesus, to hand such a man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that the spirit may be saved in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven corrupts the whole lump? Purge out the old leaven, so that you may be a new lump, as you are unleavened.” Since this is the apostle's rebuke, could Christians have been joined to the servants of the Antichrist? For how would anyone not have been corrupted by the poisons of so great a blasphemy of yours, since whoever communicates with you, whether in pretence or in earnest, is in enormous danger? When I have written, because of your heresy, to keep away from you, how could we have clung to you again? For the voice of the apostle says: “I wrote to you in the letter not to mix with the sexually immoral; not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy, or robbers, or idolaters, since then you would have had to go out of this world. But now I have written to you not to mix with anyone who is called a brother if he is sexually immoral or greedy or an idolater or a reviler or a drunkard or a robber; with such a one not even to eat.” If we are ordered not even to eat with you, did you believe that catholics could come together with heretics to celebrate all the solemn rites? Could we worshippers of God have been with you wanderers, with you who have been led into every drunkenness by the devil's poison? How could it have come about that we, the living, should stand among the dead? It was more fitting that you, sons of our adversary, should be seen gathered into one, and we, soldiers of Christ, into one against you, so that you might without any doubt be called by all who love God the members and body of a harlot, a name by which we too might be called, if we handed ourselves over to you. “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? Far from it. Or do you not know that he who joins himself to a harlot is one body? For the two, he says, shall be in one flesh. But he who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit. Flee sexual immorality.” What kind of sexual immorality do you think we must flee? One who chooses to seek another besides his wife is called sexually immoral; likewise one who has served idols is said to have committed sexual immorality, because, abandoning God, he has worshipped idols; similarly one who is a heretic is called sexually immoral. Learn which of these is the graver crime: to become a heretic, to serve idols, or to commit adultery according to the flesh. Since, then, whether you are called Gentile idolaters or heretic idolaters, both parties must be committing idolatry; and since you will understand that those two crimes are vaster than carnal sexual immorality, to a degree that cannot be told, see with what evils you have cut your own throat. The most holy apostle cries out further, saying: “Every sin that a man commits is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body”; and: “You are not your own; for you were bought with a price. Glorify and carry the Lord in your body.” How will you be able to carry God in your body, Constantius, when by rejecting the apostolic faith and taking up the heretical one you have declared that you are not his, whose our fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob declared themselves to be, and all the prophets, apostles and martyrs as well? Then, if the sexually immoral man sins against his own body, how much more you, who accomplish that work of the serpent not through the flesh alone but through the soul itself? “Do you not know that he who joins himself to a harlot is one body, but he who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit?” Lest we too, made part of the body of the harlot with men of sacrilege, should no longer deserve to be the Lord's servants but become, like you, servants of the devil, we judged that we had to withdraw from you. Woe to you, who would not be joined to the Lord but chose to be joined to the devil. And when he says, “Do not be led astray; evil conversations corrupt good morals,” what does he order me to do except to flee your assembly, stained with sacrilege, lest, while I cling to you, I too perish with you?

How could we have been in your malignant council? For we find that the blessed apostle said to Timothy: “Do not lay hands hastily on anyone, nor share in the sins of others. Keep yourself chaste.” But how would we have been chaste, if by clinging to you we had been torn away, like you, from the chastity of the faith by those dearest friends of yours, that is, the unclean spirits? How would we not have shared in the sins of others, when, if we had decided to remain with you, we would have become what you are, that is, members of a harlot? How could we Christians have been with you heretics, when we knew that the apostle also wrote to Timothy that we should withdraw ourselves from you heretics: “Teach and exhort these things. If anyone teaches otherwise and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and with the teaching that accords with godliness, he is puffed up, knowing nothing, but is sick about questions and quarrels of words, from which arise envy, strife, blasphemies, suspicions, the wicked conflicts of men corrupt in mind and destitute of the truth.” From you, then, who do not believe as the people of God believe, from you who do not teach as the apostles of Christ, the only Son of God, taught, from you who do not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ, we have chosen to live separated: from you, the assailant of the teaching that accords with godliness; from you, puffed up against us by our enemy; from you, who know nothing true but are sick about questions; from you, through whose abominable efforts quarrels of words, deadly strife and malignant conflicts are found to have arisen especially in our days; from you, that is, a man corrupt in mind, a falsifier of the truth. We judged that we must withdraw from you and from your fellow vipers according to the apostle's command. For he says further on: “of men corrupt in mind and destitute of the truth, who think that godliness is a means of gain; withdraw from such.” How could we have been with you, when even in the close of this letter he urges that you must be fled, you who have fallen from the faith: “O Timothy, guard the deposit, avoiding the profane novelties of words and the oppositions of knowledge falsely so called, which some, professing it, have fallen away concerning the faith”? We had to avoid you, who utter profane novelties of words, since we knew that you had uttered that sacrilegious word at the prompting of the devil, that word, I say, by which you have expressed the poisons of your doctrine, saying: “There was when he was not,” and “He was made from nothing,” and “The power of the Father and of the Son is not one.” The Holy Spirit did not utter these things through you, but that unclean devilish spirit. How, then, could we have guarded the deposit according to the apostle's command, if we had remained with you in that accursed council of yours, when we have resolved to hold the apostolic faith until our death, the faith, namely, which we keep as written at Nicaea against your blasphemy and against the execrable efforts of all your heretics?

How could we Christians have been in your council of Arians, we who have heard in the book of Maccabees that our predecessors and fellow servants separated themselves from those who had made supplication to idols according to the edict of your fellow tyrant Antiochus: “But Judas Maccabeus, who was one of ten, had withdrawn into the desert and there lived with his companions in the mountains among the wild beasts; they stayed there feeding on grass, so as not to share in the defilement.” You recognize from this one testimony that we had to withdraw from you, so that we too might not share in the defilement. How should we be joined to you, when the Lord also says to the apostles: “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees”? And to show us that the leaven was unsound teaching, which either the Pharisees or Sadducees put forward then or you heretics of all sects put forward now, the Scripture follows, saying: “Then they reasoned among themselves, saying, ‘It is because we have no bread.’ While they were reasoning, Jesus said: ‘Why do you reason among yourselves, you of little faith, that you have no bread? Do you not yet understand, nor remember the five loaves and the five thousand men, and how many baskets you took up, nor the seven loaves and the seven thousand men, and how many hampers you took up? Why do you not understand that I did not speak of bread when I said, Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees?’ Then they understood that he did not tell them to beware of the leaven, but of the teaching of the Pharisees.” Likewise, since the apostle, writing to the Corinthians, deigns to instruct us that we must withdraw from you heretics and from all foreigners, how did your heart, changeable and fickle in all things, but in this malice fixed with enormous firmness to the ruin of its own salvation, presume that we could have peace with you or with yours? “Do not bear the yoke with unbelievers; for what partnership has righteousness with iniquity? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? And what agreement has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? And what accord has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God; for it is written: I will dwell in them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore come out from their midst and be separate, says the Lord, and touch nothing unclean; and I will receive you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord almighty.” Since your precepts are seen to have arisen against these promises of the Lord, how could we, the faithful, have stayed with you, the unfaithful? Running on the way of light, could we have stood with you, men making your journey on a way full of the darkness of every error? For who is so foolish that, having heard God say, “I will dwell in them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore come out from their midst and be separate, says the Lord, and touch nothing unclean; and I will receive you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord almighty,” who, we said, is so foolish as not to want God to dwell in him, as not to want to be reckoned received by God among those whom he has deigned to call sons, that he would not flee you, who have been made unclean by your heresy? It did not seem right to us that we should be at one with you, since it is not right for men to dwell with serpents either. Or will you deny that those who deny the only Son of God are called serpents in the holy Scriptures? If you cannot deny it, observe that we did right to flee you serpents. You have read the apostle saying to Timothy: “Avoid profane novelties of words; for they will advance much in ungodliness, and their word creeps like a cancer.” Did you think that men of God could be with you, whose word is like a cancer? Likewise, since blessed John commands that you must be fled, saying: “I rejoiced greatly that I found some of your children walking in the truth, as we received commandment from the Father. I ask you, lady, not as writing you a new commandment, but the one we have had from the beginning, that we love one another. And this is love, that we walk according to his commandments. This is the commandment, as you have heard from the beginning, that you walk in it. For many deceivers have gone out into the world, who do not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh; these are deceivers and antichrists. Look to them, so that you do not lose what you have worked for, but receive a full reward. 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. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into the house and do not say ‘greeting’ to him; for he who says ‘greeting’ to him shares in his evil works.” How could it have come about that we, soldiers of God, should be with you and yours, soldiers of the Antichrist, since the Holy Spirit, giving these commands through the blessed apostle, has not even allowed you to be greeted?

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.