Epistula catholica

Of our Father among the Saints Athanasius, the Catholic Epistle. To the brothers in each place who lay claim to faith and salvation, and to the orthodox bishops in Egypt, Syria, Cilicia, Phoenicia, and Arabia, Athanasius and the fellow bishops greet you in the Lord. All of you who perceive the impiety rising against piety through both open novelties of speech and deceitful pretenses, and through divisions, and unseemly disturbances, and blows, and wounds, and murders, ought to withdraw, as from some storm into a harbor, and save yourselves, neither mingling with the impiety of those who reject the one and true divinity of the holy Trinity, and who alienate the Son from the Father, and separate the Spirit from the Son, nor mixing in their confusions and bloodshed. For thus we also, wishing to save ourselves and those who obey us, have for some time now been refuting the manifest impiety of Arius and the pretense of those who with fabricated words lead astray the simpler ones; and we separate ourselves from all their disorder, grieving over what they do, because they cause the good name to be slandered, and wishing that the law of faith and of gentle conduct be somehow preserved among us and those with us. To this we also exhort you, both those who have already taken up this same stance, and those who have not yet risen to this zeal. Or have you not even understood that Christianity is being destroyed through such things, and that the devil, with a deceitful guise, is warring against the Church and, as it were, sinking the ship?

If you wish to write to us and communicate concerning such matters, we shall gladly receive your unanimity and concord, brothers, and the fellowship of your prayers, even though we are separated by place; making known to you that, although this corruption has already been prevalent for a long time, yet still among the majority of the peoples the good of the apostolic faith remains, and among the majority of the bishops; even though some forcibly restrain the people and with other deceptive words; and a multitude of bishops, partly through fear of those more prominent in the cities, partly through pretension to glory; and they conceal what they think, and pretend what they do not think. So that, if they were not already preoccupied by these passions, and the truth were merely spoken in few words, they would recognize that neither can God and Son of God be a creation of God, nor is the Holy Spirit numbered among creations. For we have received an epiphany of God, and not the advent of a creature; nor have we believed in the presence of a slave, and we have received a divine Spirit, through whom we are deified and become temples of God. For these things, even when spoken so briefly, are manifest to every Christian, as they preserve the precise truth proclaimed from the beginning, on which we depend, awaiting the eternal hopes. Therefore, a symbol of our faith is the consubstantial Trinity, true God, who became man from Mary. And let him who does not agree be anathema. For this is what the document of the great synod at Nicaea intends: that the Son be consubstantial with the Father.

and the Spirit is glorified together with the Father and the Son; that the true God, the Son of God, became flesh, suffered, rose again, ascended into the heavens, and will come as judge of the living and the dead; to whom is the glory unto the ages of ages. Amen.