On Not Sparing Those Who Sin against God 7–12

Hear, then, in the fourth book of Kingdoms what Josiah, servant of the Lord and king of Judah, obtained for what he did concerning those who shared your uncleanness, and at last stop saying of us, “They are proud and insulting.” “He did,” it says, “what is right in the sight of the Lord and walked in the way of his father David, and did not turn aside to the right or to the left.” Likewise below, after he had rebuilt the house of the Lord and the priest had sent the book of the law to the king: “And it came about, when the king heard the words of the book of the law, that he tore his clothes. And the king commanded Hilkiah the priest and Ahikam the son of Shaphan and Achbor the son of Micaiah and Shaphan the scribe and Asaiah the king's servant, saying: Inquire of the Lord for me and for all Judah concerning the words of this book that has been found, for great is the wrath of the Lord kindled against us, because our fathers did not listen to the words of this book, to do according to all that is written. And Hilkiah the priest and Ahikam and Shaphan and Asaiah went to Huldah the prophetess, the wife of Shallum the son of Tikvah, keeper of the wardrobe, and she lived in Jerusalem. And they spoke to her accordingly. And she said to them: Thus says the Lord God of Israel: Say to the man who sent you to me: Thus says the Lord: Behold, I will bring evils upon this place and upon those who dwell in it, according to all the words of the book which the king of Judah has read, because they have forsaken me and attended to strange gods and provoked me by the works of their hands. And my wrath is kindled in this place and will not be quenched. And to the king of Judah, who sent you to inquire of the Lord, you shall say this: Thus says the Lord God of Israel: As for the words that you have heard, and you revered my face, because you heard what I spoke against this place and its inhabitants, that it should become a desert and a curse, and you tore your clothes and wept before me, I too have heard, says the Lord of hosts. Therefore I will gather you to your fathers, and you will be gathered in peace, and your eyes shall not see all the evils that I am bringing on this place and on those who dwell in it. And they brought back word to the king. And King Josiah sent and gathered to himself all the elders of Judah in Jerusalem. And the king went up to the Lord, and all the men of Judah and the priests and the Levites and all the people, from the least to the greatest. And the king read in the hearing of the people all the words of the book of the covenant which was found in the house of the Lord. And the king stood by the pillar and made a covenant before the Lord, to walk after the Lord and to keep his commandments and testimonies and statutes with all his heart and all his soul, to establish all the words of this covenant written in this book. And all the people entered into the covenant that the king made from the book. And the king commanded Hilkiah the high priest and the priests of the second rank and the keepers of the ephod to throw out of the house of the Lord all the vessels made for Baal and Asherah and all the host of heaven. And he burned them outside Jerusalem in the burning-place of the brook Kidron, and took their ashes and scattered them in the brook and went to Bethel. And he burned the priests whom the kings of Judah had appointed to burn incense on the high places of the cities of Judah and around Jerusalem; they burned incense to Baal and to the sun and the moon and all the host of heaven. And they carried it out of the house of the Lord, outside Jerusalem, to the brook Kidron, and he ground the ash fine and threw it on the tomb of the common people. And he pulled out their sons who were in the house of the Lord, where the women wove robes. And he brought in all the priests from the cities of Judah and defiled the holy places where the priests burned incense, from Geba to Beersheba, and pulled down their high places.” And below: “And he defiled Topheth, which was in the valley of the son of Hinnom, because they made each his son and his daughter pass through the fire of Molech. … which the kings of Judah had placed for the sun at the entrance of the house of the Lord … the horses … and he burned the chariot of the sun with fire … in the house which the kings of Israel built for that high place of Baal and all the host of heaven. And the altars that were on the roof of the upper chamber of Ahaz, which the king of Judah had made, and the altars that Manasseh made in the two courts of the house of the Lord, the king pulled down and removed from there, and threw their ashes into the brook Kidron. And the high places that they had made before Jerusalem, which were on the right of the mount of corruption, which Solomon the king built for Astarte, the image of the Sidonians, and for Chemosh the idol and Milcom the image of the children of Ammon, the king defiled. And he broke the pillars in pieces and filled their places with human bones. And the altar at Bethel, the high place which Jeroboam the son of Nebat made, by which he made Israel sin, that altar and high place he pulled down, and broke its stones in pieces and ground them to dust, and burned their groves. And King Josiah turned back and saw the tombs that were there on the mountain, and took the bones from the tomb and burned them on the altar and defiled it, according to the word which the man of God spoke when Jeroboam stood at the altar on the feast day.” What do you learn, Constantius, was done by a king who worshipped God? And because we strike you with a word, as you bring idolatry into the church, do you say, “Lucifer insults me”? Whereas, if you had been a man of that time, you could have been put to death by the sword, or, if you had already died, even your bones, as those of a sacrilegious man, would have been brought to nothing by fire. He strikes those guilty of such a crime with the sword; and was it not fitting for us to wound you even with a word? You see meanwhile, in this passage too, that those kings, your fellows in sacrilege, brought into the city of God, into the house of the Lord and into his temple, the idolatry that this Josiah, a king most devoted to God, exterminated. Do not suppose you are the only one to have undertaken this work against God. So I do not want you to say, “If I were doing wrong, God would already have taken vengeance on me,” but rather I beg you to see that you are held captive by the devil and live in his power, like those kings whose work King Josiah pursued.

Because we curse your blasphemies, because we resist your wicked conspiracies, we seem to you to be doing you wrong. So too to the Jews, whose imitator you are, the most holy prophets and most blessed apostles seemed insulting and proud. In the book of the prophet Amos: “And Amaziah the priest in Bethel,” it says, “sent to Jeroboam king of Israel, saying: Amos is making a conspiracy against you in the midst of the house of Israel; the land will not be able to bear his words, for this is what Amos says: Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel shall be led captive from its land. And Amaziah said to Amos: Go, get away into the land of Judah and stay there, and there you will prophesy. But in Bethel you shall not prophesy any more, for it is the king's sanctuary and will be the house of the kingdom. And Amos answered and said to Amaziah: I was not a prophet, nor am I the son of a prophet, but I was a goatherd gathering sycamore fruit, and the Lord took me from the sheep and said to me: Go, prophesy to my people Israel. And now hear the word of the Lord. You say: You shall not prophesy in Israel, and there shall be no gathering in the house of Jacob. Therefore thus says the Lord God: Your wife shall be a harlot in the city, and your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword, your land shall be measured with a line, and you shall die in an unclean land, and Israel shall be led captive from its land.” Since you see that these things were done by him who wished truth and rebuke to be announced to his erring people, why do you call us insolent, why insulting, because we tell you in your error what is true, because we do not listen to your voice saying, “Do not believe as the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs believed, but believe as Arius handed down”? In what things are we found proud in your eyes, except in this, that we curse your sacrileges and avoid your commands like swords and poisons? We are not the first to do this; all those who have already pleased God, holding this faith which we preach, did the same. None of his servants feared to undergo death for God; none of his household thought about the kinds of torment that are inflicted by you tyrants, but kept his commands before his eyes. Thus glorious Tobit is found to have become eminent before the Lord, because he did not fear the edict of a king as utterly lost as you, but only God almighty. Believe that this is so from Tobit himself, who says: “When King Sennacherib came fleeing from Judaea, because of the defence which the Lord made against them, because of his blasphemies which he had blasphemed, and in his anger he killed many of the children of Israel, I wrapped their bodies and buried them. And it was reported to the king that I was burying them, and he sought to kill me. But I fled, and all my property was plundered, and nothing was left me but my wife Anna and Tobias my son. And it happened after forty-five days that his sons killed that king, and Esarhaddon his son reigned in his place there. And when I had come into my house, and my wife Anna and my son Tobias had been restored to me, at Pentecost, our feast, which is the holy feast of weeks, a good dinner was prepared for me, and I reclined to dine, and the table was set for me, and I saw a great many dishes, and I said to Tobias my son: Go and bring whatever poor man you find of our brothers who are captives in Nineveh, who yet have God in mind with all their heart; bring him, and let him eat this dinner together with me; see, I am waiting for you, son, until you come. And Tobias went out to look for some poor captive of our brothers, and came back and said to me: Father. And I said: What is it, son? And he said to me: Look, one of our nation has been killed, strangled with a noose, and thrown out. And I went out, leaving my dinner before I tasted any of it, and I took him up from the street into a room by me until the sun set, so that I might bury him. And I returned and washed and ate my dinner in mourning, and I remembered the saying of the prophet Amos which he spoke at Bethel, saying: Your feasts shall be turned into mourning and all your songs into lamentation; and I wept. And after the sun set, I went and dug and buried him. And all my neighbours mocked me, saying: How is it this man is not afraid? For he has already been sought on this account to be put to death, and he fled, and again he has begun to bury the dead.”

So since you see that the servants of God have never feared the cruelty of you tyrants and cannot fear it now, but have thought, and think, about the commands of the Lord, how do you see fit to judge us insolent? Plainly because, by God's doing, we trample your power like mud. Our own strength does not do this; the mercy of him whom you see fit to curse in us grants it. God says to the prophet Ezekiel: “Son of man, I am sending you to the house of Israel, because they and their fathers have embittered me up to this day. And you shall say to them: Thus says the Lord, whether they hear or tremble, for it is an embittering house; and they shall know that you are a prophet in their midst. And you, son of man, do not fear them and do not tremble before them, for they will rage and run together against you all around, and you dwell in the midst of scorpions. Do not fear their words and do not tremble before their face, for it is an embittering house. And you shall speak my words to them, if perhaps they will hear or be afraid, for it is an embittering house.” We seem defiant to you, as this prophet, dedicated to God alone, seemed to those whose darkness you follow. It was certainly for this that Ezekiel the prophet seemed defiant to the Jews, your fellow apostates, and proud to the kings of Israel: because he fulfilled the Lord's commands and spoke to them what God had commanded him to speak. You rightly call us proud, us through whom he has willed all his commands to be brought to the knowledge of the believing peoples. Rightly, I say, do you mark us, the bishops of God, as insolent, if we say to you what God has willed to be said to you. You hate those who love you, you persecute those who wish you well; but we cannot fear the gnashing of your butchery. For you hear the Lord say: “And you, son of man, do not fear them and do not tremble before them, for they will rage and run together against you all around, and you dwell in the midst of scorpions. Do not fear their words, do not tremble before them, for it is an embittering house.” We cannot, I say, fear the threats of your rule, because your scorpion-strength is nothing against us, whom you see covered by God's power, whose defender and protector you notice God to be. We will not stop, then, pressing the Lord's commands upon you, reserving our fear for him alone, who says: “Son of man, go in to the house of Israel and speak my words to them, for you are not sent to a people of deep speech, to Israel, nor to many peoples of another voice or another tongue, nor heavy of tongue, whose speech you will not understand. And if I had sent you to such, they perhaps would have listened to your words; but the house of Israel will not listen to you, because they will not listen to me, for the whole house of Israel is contentious and hard of heart. And behold, I have made your face strong against their faces, and I will strengthen your constancy against their contention, and you shall be ever firmer than rock. Do not fear them, nor be afraid before their face, for it is an embittering house.” Which of us could fear you, when you see us made solid and firm by the power of God to beat back your defiance, standing immovable with planted foot against your rage, as rocks strong in their mass are wont to stand against the swelling sea? You judge us your enemies because we urge you to become, from a scorpion, a servant of God. For you cannot now doubt that you are one of the scorpions, one of those spoken of, about whom you have heard what was said by the Lord to the prophet: “And you, son of man, do not fear, nor tremble before them, for they will rage and run together against you all around, and you dwell in the midst of scorpions.” This is why we are offensive to you: because you see yourself called a scorpion by us. If God had not said that you are a scorpion, you would rightly call me insulting; but now you show by your deeds that you are a scorpion, and you cry in vain that you suffer insult from us. God says you are a scorpion, and are you angry with me for calling you by that name? What insult is this, if you are told: “Unless you turn to God, you will always be, as you now are, one of the scorpions, one of the most monstrous enemies of God”?

Run through the rest of the prophet Ezekiel, and then dare to call me insolent, proud, insulting, defiant: “And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Son of man, behold, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel, and you shall hear a word from my mouth and warn them from me, in that I say to the wicked man: You shall surely die. And if you did not warn him nor speak to warn the wicked man to turn from his ways so that he may live, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, and his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the wicked man and he does not turn from his wickedness and his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, and you will deliver your soul. And when a righteous man turns from his righteousness and commits sin, and I lay a stumbling-block before him, he shall die, because you did not warn him. And he shall die in his sins, because his righteous deeds shall not be remembered, and his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the righteous man not to forsake it, and he does not forsake it, that righteous man shall surely live, because you warned him, and you will save your soul.” What do you say to this, Constantius? Must the priests of God keep silent and hide his divine commands, or is it right to lay open to you all the Lord's precepts? Shall we carry the whole will of God to those entrusted to us, or shall we defraud ourselves of it, to our own slaughter? For the Lord says that he will require your blood from me. Indeed, if you do not obey God, whose divine warnings we press upon you, you will die a wicked man in your wickedness, and the salvation of your soul will no longer be required of us, since we were not terrified by your threats but feared only him who commanded that no one be feared besides himself, since we came together in the name of the Lord God so that you might snatch yourself from your abominable paths. In order not to seem to insult you as emperor, what should I have done at the time when I show you were born to turn us, the servants of God, from the way of truth? When Nebuchadnezzar had sent Holofernes, the commander of his army, and he was besieging Jerusalem, what does Judith pray God for? Surely that he would destroy the enemies of Israel. Did she not say, “Guard against those who rise up against your house”? “O Lord God of my father Simeon, who gave a sword to take vengeance on the foreigners who violated the womb of a virgin to defile her, and uncovered the thigh to her shame, and polluted the womb to her reproach; for you said: It shall not be so, and they did it. Therefore you gave their rulers to slaughter, and their bed, which received the beloved, to blood, and you struck down slaves together with the mighty, the mighty upon their thrones. And you gave their wives as spoil and their daughters into captivity, and all the spoil to be divided among your beloved sons, who were zealous with your zeal and abhorred the defilement of their blood and called on you for help. My God, hear me, a widow. For you did the things before them and those after, and what is now and what is to come. For all your ways are prepared, and your creation is in your providence. For behold, the Assyrians are filled with their strength; they are exalted in horse and rider; they glory in the arm of their foot soldiers; they trust in shield and drawn bow and sling, and they do not know that you are the Lord who crushes wars; the Lord is your name. Cast down their strength, Eternal One; crush their abundance by your power, and bring down their stubbornness in your wrath. For they have planned to bring your holy things to nothing, to defile the tabernacle of your rest, of your glorious name, to cut off with iron the horn of your altar. Look upon their pride; give into my hand, the hand of a widow, the strength I have planned, and strike them by the deceit of my lips, the ruler with the servant and the servant with his ruler; shatter their substance by the hand of a widow. For your power is not in numbers, nor your might and your gift in the strong; but you are the God of the lowly, the help of the weak, the upholder of the feeble, the saviour of the despairing. Yes, God of my father and God of the inheritance of Israel, Lord, ruler of heaven and earth, creator of the waters, king of all creation, hear my prayer; give craft and persuasion for the wound and the bruise of those who have planned hard things against your covenant and your holy house and the summits of Zion and the house of your sons' possession. Act upon every nation and every tribe, that they may know that you are God of all power and strength, and that there is no other protector of the race of Israel but you.”

What will your prudent mind deign to think of this? After this prayer poured out to God against the enemies of religion, will you be able to say that we strive against you improperly because we tell you: either correct your crooked ways and do not please yourself in the power of your rule, or know that you will come to nothing? What else are we, the servants of God, priests of his divine greatness, doing today but what those did whose imitators we long to be found? For I think it right not to abandon the peoples entrusted to us in this great persecution brought on by you, but to exhort them: that he whose we are is able to snatch us from the hands of his enemies; that you, the enemy of God's house, are not to be feared; that it must be noted that you are nothing, since our God and Lord, who can do all things, will bring to nothing all your impious attempts set up against his house. What wrong is done to you here by us? What insult is inflicted on the Roman emperor by the bishops of the living God, if you are asked to have eternal life, or if you are told that, since you have taken up arms against the house of God, you will perish in great destruction unless you correct yourself? For why do we set before you the destruction of all the enemies of God's house? Only so that either, terrified by the fear of God, you may change, or, when you have brought eternal punishment on yourself, we may triumph in safety on every side, both because your blood cannot be required of us by God and because we shall have seen the destruction of the adversaries of his church. Persevere, then, in this injustice of yours, and you will find what follows you for such deserts. “Lucifer is puffed up with pride,” you say, “because he tells you the truth.” What were you bidding me do at this time, when you, the forerunner of Antichrist, raised arms against the house of God to kill us? At the time when you came forward as the denier of the only Son of God? Was I to keep silent and let you, a wolf, come to lay waste God's flock? Or do you think it would have been right for us shepherds to come to meet you, ready with dry jaws to devour us and those entrusted to us? It was a mighty enough deed that this woman, Judith, longing to please God, killed the enemy with her own hand; and should we, appointed shepherds by the Lord, not have resisted you even with a word? The Lord says in the Gospel: “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep; the hireling, who is not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees; and the wolf seizes them and scatters them, because he is a hireling and has no concern for the sheep.” What, then, were we to do, so as not to seem to have been insulting to you? We recognized you as a wolf; we saw that you stretched out your hands against the Lord's sheep; we saw that you tried at one time to tear to pieces all who call on the name of the Lord. Was it right for us to show ourselves not shepherds but hirelings? He says to blessed Peter, “Feed my lambs,” and again, “Feed my little sheep”; and do you, coming as a wolf, want those who are found to be the successors of blessed Peter to play the part of hirelings? Those whom he had long ago promised to his people through Jeremiah, saying: “And I will give you shepherds after my heart, and they will feed you, feeding with discipline”; and he did not say, “I will give you the emperor Constantius, who can turn you into the devil's prey.” Say that we do wrong because, protected by the power of God, we resist your sacrilege.

Let us see also what those did, who remembered that no one but God is to be feared, at the time when Antiochus, your fellow tyrant, arose as persecutor of our religion. But first you must learn what he, whom you resemble, wrote; for so you will be able to understand that those servants of God, whose sharers we long to be found, resisted Antiochus's sacrilege, as we too, God being gracious, resist you. Holy Scripture speaks, saying in the first book of Maccabees: “And the king wrote to all his kingdom that the whole people should be one, and that each should give up his own laws. And all the nations accepted the king's word, and many from Israel agreed with them and profaned the sabbath. And the king sent letters by the hand of messengers to Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, that they should follow the laws foreign to the land, and forbid burnt offerings and sacrifice and drink offering in the sanctuary, profane the sabbaths and feast days, and pollute the sanctuary, and set up shrines and idols, and sacrifice swine's flesh and common beasts, and leave their sons uncircumcised, and defile their souls with every uncleanness and abomination, so that they should forget the law and change the ordinances; and whoever did not act according to the king's word should die. According to all these words he sent writings to his whole kingdom and appointed overseers over the people. And he commanded the cities of Judah to sacrifice city by city. And many of the people gathered to them, everyone who forsook the law, and they did evil in the land.” And below: “And they built the abomination of desolation on the altar, and in the cities of Judah round about they built altars, and they burned incense at the doors of the houses and in the streets. And the books of the law which they found they tore in pieces and burned with fire, and anyone with whom a book of the covenant was found, and anyone who consented to the law, the king's decree put to death. By their power they did this to Israel, to those who were found, month by month, in the cities; and on the twenty-fourth of the month they sacrificed on the altar that was upon the altar of burnt offering. And the women who had circumcised their children they put to death according to the decree. They hung the infants from their necks, and in their houses, and those who had circumcised them. And many in Israel stood firm and were strengthened among them not to eat common things, and they chose to die so as not to be defiled with foods and not to profane the holy covenant. And very great wrath came upon Israel in those days. And Mattathias the son of John, son of Simeon, a priest of the sons of Joarib, arose from Jerusalem, and he had five sons.” And below: “And they saw the blasphemies that were being committed in Judah and in Israel, and he said: Woe is me, why was I born to see the ruin of the holy city, and to sit there when the sanctuary was given into the hand of enemies, into the hand of foreigners?” And below: “All her adornment has been taken away; from free she has become a slave. Behold, our holy things and our beauty and our glory are laid waste, and the nations have profaned them. Why should we live any longer? And Mattathias and his sons tore their clothes and covered themselves with sackcloth and mourned greatly. And the king's officers who were enforcing the apostasy came to the city of Modein to make them sacrifice. And many of Israel came to them. And Mattathias and his sons gathered together. And those who had been sent by the king answered and spoke to Mattathias, saying: You are a leader, honoured and great in this city, and strengthened by sons and brothers. Now come first and do the king's command, as all the nations have done, and the men of Judah, and those who are left in Israel; and you and your sons will be friends of the king, and you and your sons will be honoured with silver and gold and many gifts. Mattathias answered and said with a loud voice: Even if all the nations in the king's dominion obey him, so that each departs from the service of his fathers and they have chosen to follow his commands, yet I and my sons will walk in the covenant of our fathers. May the Lord be gracious to us! We will not forsake the law and the ordinances. We will not listen to the king's word; we will not turn aside from the service of our worship to the right or to the left. When he had finished speaking these words, a Jew came forward in the sight of all to sacrifice in Modein according to the king's command. And Mattathias saw it and was filled with zeal, and his loins trembled, and he showed his anger according to judgment; and running to the altar he killed him. And at that time he killed the king's man who was compelling them to sacrifice, and he pulled down the altar. And he was zealous for the law, as Phinehas did to Zimri the son of Salu. And Mattathias cried out in the city with a loud voice, saying: Let everyone who is zealous for the law and upholds the covenant come out after me. And he and his sons fled to the hills and left all that they had in the city.”