De Non Conveniendo Cum Haereticis

I. ON NOT ASSOCIATING WITH HERETICS. When you had perceived that all your pernicious attempts were being met, and when you had discovered that all your machinations against the Church of God had been revealed to the whole people of God, you said that we were and are enemies of peace, foes of unity, and also adversaries of fraternal charity. If there ought to be nothing 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 uphold—had incurred the guilt of idolatry, after he had caused certain ones to be struck down by the sword, also wish his own station to be separated? That this is so, accept the Scripture: 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 your robes of glory and your adornment, and I will show you what I am about to do to you.’” And the children of Israel removed their adornment and robes from Mount Choreb, and Moses, taking the tabernacle, pitched it outside the camp, far from the camp, and it was called the Tabernacle of the Testimony; and it came to pass that everyone who sought the Lord went to the Tabernacle of the Testimony outside the camp. And when Moses went out from the tabernacle, all the people stood, each one watching at the door of his own tent.

they watched Moses as he went, until he entered the tabernacle; as soon as Moses had entered the tabernacle, a column of cloud descended and stood at the door of the tabernacle and spoke to Moses, and the whole people saw the column of cloud standing at the door of the tabernacle, and the entire people standing adored, each at the door of the tabernacle, and the Lord spoke to Moses openly, just as one speaks to his friend. But the minister Joshua son of Nun, the younger, did not leave the tabernacle. By this event it was shown that you, sinning against God, are to be avoided and that one must withdraw from you. But you say: behold, although Moses had the tabernacle in another place, he did not abandon the people, but urged them to correct the ways of their errors with God propitious. Nor do those who have refused to mingle with your sacrilege fail in these duties; for you know that it is said to you, unless you correct your ways, that you will perish forever.

What we had therefore begun to aim at, we can as far as possible bring to proof: whenever 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 myself." What then does He want us to do, except to flee from you, undisciplined and stubborn, lest together with you we perish, as did those who were united with Korah, Dathan, and Abiram? Or will you deny that you are undisciplined and stubborn? Look at your actions concerning the Lord's church, and you will find how undisciplined and stubborn you are. In Deuteronomy Moses says: "You shall not make a covenant with them, nor have mercy on them, nor give them your daughters in marriage, nor shall you give your son his daughter; for he will lead your son away from me and he will serve alien gods, and the Lord's anger will be kindled against you and will destroy you quickly." Since He commands these things to be done, how can we meet with you, have peace with you, with deniers of the only Son of God? How could we have fulfilled this wish of yours? When you see that God said through Moses concerning the Moabites and Ammonites: "You shall not greet them peaceably all the days of your life, forever." How could we have been both Arians and Christians together?

When you hear Moses say: "There shall be no adulteress from among the daughters of Israel," and in every place he warns that every adulterer is to be killed, brought to the gate and stoned; and he says: "You shall remove the iniquitous from among yourselves." If God so abhors carnal adultery that he has commanded all adulterers to be punished, how much more must the Lord abhor your spiritual adultery, on account of which you were and are to be fled. We Christians could not have come to an agreement with apostates, when we find that the Holy Spirit said through Moses: "God will open for you the heavenly treasure, will give you the best rain for your land, in due time will bless all the work of your hands, you will lend to many nations but will not borrow, and you will fight many nations but they will not overcome you, the Lord your God will set you at the head and not at the tail, and you will be above and not below, if you heed the commandment of your Lord God, whatever I command you today to keep and to do, and not to depart from any word which I command you today, to the right or to the left.

How could it be possible for us to come together with the pseudo-bishops of your Arian sect, when you see that we could not have been blessed, except because we did not go after your idolatry, except because we execrated your Arian heresy, just as we execrate the heresy of all heretics, except because we have judged you and hold you to be just like the pagans, that is, worshippers of all demons, except because we have abominated you just as we do the Jews, who are found to be without God, from the moment they denied the only Son of God? In Joshua son of Nun, when the people heard the sound of the trumpets, it says, the whole people shouted with a great shout, and all the walls of the city fell down around, and the whole people went up into the city, each one before his own adversaries, and they invaded the city and placed it under anathema, and everything that was in the city, from man to woman, from youth to old man, and even to the calf and to the beast of burden, they slew with the edge of the sword; and to the two young men who had spied, Joshua said: go into the house of the woman and bring out her and all that is hers.

and two young men, who had scouted the city, entered the house of the woman and brought out Rahab the harlot and her father and her mother and her brothers and whatever was hers and all her kindred, and led her forth outside the camp of Israel, and the city was burned with fire together with all that was in it, and further: Rahab the harlot and her entire father’s house did Joshua save alive, and she dwelt in Israel unto this day. When, therefore, you see that all the inhabitants in the city of Jericho were punished by the edge of the sword, the entire city burned, how did you think that we could have come together with you as a heretic, especially since we perceived that you and yours were more worthy of anathema than those had been? How could we have been able to come together with the pseudo-bishops of your Arian sect, when you see that no one was preserved for life in the city in which idolaters dwelt except only Rahab, for the reason that she believed our Lord to be all-powerful, but that the idolatry in which the people settled in Jericho trusted had been discovered by human error?

How could we have been able to convene with you, when it is written in the third book of Kings that neither are your houses to be trodden nor food to be taken with you nor water to be received from you? That these things are so, sacred scripture reveals: "And it happened," it says concerning that co-apostate of yours, the word of the man of God, and further on: "And he stretched out his hand toward the altar, saying: 'Seize him,' and the hand of the king, which he stretched out against him, became withered, and he could not draw it back to himself, and the sanctuary was broken open, and its fat was poured out from the sanctuary, according to what the man of God said in the word of the Lord. And the king answered and said to the man of God: 'Pray before the face of your Lord God, that my hand may return to me.' And the man of God prayed before the face of the Lord, and the king's hand returned to him, and it became as it was at first, and the king spoke to the man of God and said: 'Come in with me into the house and dine, and I will give you gifts.' And the man of God said to the king: 'Not even if you gave me half your house, would I enter with you, nor eat bread, nor drink water in this place, because the Lord has thus commanded me in the word, saying: "You shall not eat bread and you shall not drink water, and you shall not return by the way by which you went into it."'" How could we have been able to convene with you for the worship of God, when that man of God, who had been sent by God to rebuke King Jeroboam because through him, who was called a prophet, he had been circumscribed, such a severe punishment proceeded against him?

And it went away, says the scripture after this of that man of God, by another road and did not return by the road by which he had come to Bethel, and his sons came and told him all the works which the man of God had done that day in Bethel and the words which he had spoken to the king, and they turned away the face of their father, and their father spoke to them saying: by which road did he go? And his sons showed the road by which the man of God who had come from Judah had gone, and he said to his sons: saddle the donkey for me; and they saddled it, 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, because the Lord commanded me thus in a word saying: you shall not eat bread there and you shall not drink water there and you shall not return from there by the road by which you went. And he said to him: and I am a prophet just as you are, and an angel spoke to me in the word of the Lord saying: bring him back to you into your house and let him eat bread and drink water.

And he lied to him and led him back, and he ate bread in his house and drank water, and it happened while they were sitting at table that the word of the Lord came to the false prophet who had led him back, and he said to the man of God who had come from Judah: Thus says the Lord, because you have scorned the word of the Lord and did not keep the commandment which the Lord your God commanded you, and you returned and ate bread and drank water in this place, concerning 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 happened, after he ate bread and drank water, they saddled a donkey for him and he returned and went away, and a lion met him on the road and killed him, and his body lay cast out on the road, and the donkey stood by him and the lion stood by his body, and the men of that city came and spoke in the city where the elder prophet lived, and when those who had led him back from the road heard, he said: This is the man of God who scorned the word of the Lord; and he went and found his body cast out on the road. And the donkey and the lion stood over his body, and the lion did not eat that body nor did it attack the donkey.

If that was revealed to him, why would he have eaten bread and drunk water in a profane place among alien men? What would have been revealed to us, if we had joined in friendship with you, whom we know to be a heretic, whom we know to be a denier of the only Son of God, as you desired; if we had poured forth prayer with you Arians; if, finally, we had allowed ourselves, we who are priests of the Lord, to celebrate everything with your Arian pseudo-bishops? Meanwhile, that you were sent to ensnare us, just as that false prophet was sent to that man of God, you must, by retracing your actions, recognize as most bitter. For just as he, being a false prophet, said he was a prophet in order to deceive an innocent man, so also you, since you are not a Christian but are an Arian, pretended to be a Christian in order to entrap us. Then, since the Church of the Lord has always had peace and has cast out you heretics of all sects, you said: "I wish peace to be established in my reign," desiring to violate the Lord's peace in us, wishing to divide the people of God, procuring for your heresy, to which you desire us all to make a transition; thus you lied that you were a man of God, when you said you were making this peace for the sake of our salvation, just as that false prophet who said: "Return with me, for I too am a prophet of the Lord, and an angel told me.

Thus, I say, you lied when you claimed that you could please God by undertaking this, since you labored to join individual Catholic bishops to the communion of the Arians. How could Christians have fellowship with you and your fellow Arians, when you see that God said this to King Jehoshaphat: why did he accept the idolater Ahab into friendship, why did he go to war with the enemy of the Lord? For after that Ahab, your fellow sacrilegist, had been struck with a fatal blow in war according to the word of God, and Jehoshaphat, because he had cried out to God with his whole heart, had been restored to his house, the Holy Scripture speaks of Jehu son of Hanani, who was a seer, having gone out before his face and said these things: "If you helped that sinner and are a friend of those who hate the Lord, wrath from the face of the Lord is upon you for this; but good words are found with you, because you removed the groves from the land and prepared your heart to seek the Lord." If these things are said to him, what would be said to us, if we had preferred to be friends with you, a heretic and 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, you who do the same things that Ahab did? Since you assail the religion of God just as he assailed it, you persecute his house just as he persecuted it.

How could we have fellowship with you and yours, when that king devoted to God, Jehoshaphat, because he had been joined in friendship with Ahaziah king of Israel, was rebuked by God through the prophet? And it says: Jehoshaphat king of Judah joined in friendship with Ahaziah king of Israel; he himself began to act wickedly and brought him into communion with himself to make ships, with which he would go to Tarshish. And he made ships at Ezion-geber, and Eliezer son of Dodavahu from Mareshah prophesied against Jehoshaphat, saying: Because you had communion with Ahaziah, the Lord has broken your work, and your ships have been wrecked and could not go to Tarshish. If such things are said to him by the Lord because he had as a partner in shipbuilding a king of the way of perdition, what could be said to us, if we, priests of God, had you as a friend, you the destroyer of his house, you the persecutor of the catholic faith? If the Lord broke his work because he was joined to a wicked man, truly we ourselves would, I believe, have been scattered by lightning, had we joined ourselves to you, a blasphemer. How could we, who are servants of God, while you are servants of the devil, come together into one, when God has willed that there be as great 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 are always magnifying his mercy, and those apostates whom you will see tormented in eternity with you, unless you snatch yourself away from them? How, I say, could we?

How could we, servants of God, have been with you, servants of Antichrist? When it was said to King Amaziah by God in the second book of the Subrelicti: "The army of Israel will not go with you, because God is not with Israel, all the sons of Ephrem, because if you think you will prevail in these things, the Lord will turn you in flight before your enemies, because strength is from the Lord." In what way would we resist against the devil, if we were to run with you in such great wickedness of yours, with the enemies of God, with men found without knowledge of God, with those who do not have God, into whom we know the swarm of demons to be? For you cannot be deniers of the only Son of God without demons, since those who have blinded your hearts do not make you blaspheme except so that truth cannot be grasped by you. Could we have remained in your party, consented to your most shameful meditations, when through glorious David the Holy Spirit says that only those are blessed who have withdrawn themselves from you, deniers of the only Son of God, that only those who have not mixed themselves with your serpentine thoughts will remain blessed? "Blessed is he who has not gone into the counsel of the impious and has not stood in the way of sinners and has not sat in the chair of pestilence." How would there be a meeting-place of one location for you and us? When you also hear David saying in the sixth psalm: "Depart from me, you who work iniquity.

If you Arians do not work iniquity, judge yourself, O prince, in the sacrilege of the Arians, who, although we call ourselves Christians, persecute us with horrible animosity. Therefore, know rightly that we have done well by withdrawing from you, who are hateful to God. For how would it have been fitting for us to remain in your assembly, infected with every crime, and not to flee from you as plagues and pestilences? As it is said from 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 enter with those who do iniquitous things; I have hated the church of the malignant, and I will not sit with the impious." If your council is not one of vanity, convince me. It is not a vain council in which there is no counsel except to deny the Son of God, to defend that God the Father is not the true Father, to assert that the Holy Spirit the Paraclete is not the true Spirit of God, to destroy the apostolic and evangelical tradition, and to establish the tradition of Arius. In which council nothing else is established except what can bring great joy to all heretics, pagans, and Jews; all the despisers of the religion of God rejoice that they see you, the emperor, carrying out the work of their desire, that they perceive you to have become the denier of the only Son of God and the persecutor of his servants.

This is the council which you have been accustomed to assemble with all the forces of your empire, for this purpose above all: that every authority of the sacred scriptures might be dissolved by the authority of your empire, that all truth might be buried, that the lies of your detestable fabrication might be able to appear true. These are the fruits of your meditation in that illustrious council assembled by your power. For this reason you hate us, because we abhor your council of evildoers; for this reason we are in exile; for this reason we are killed in prison; for this reason the sight of us alone is forbidden; for this reason we are confined in darkness, guarded by a vast watch. For this cause no man is admitted to visit us, because we have refused to have any fellowship with you impious sacrilegious men in your crimes, with you to whom from our person a supplication has been directed to God, that we might not perish living together with you, but that we might be separated from your nefarious council, from your iniquitous conspiracy. For it is said 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 draw my soul together with sinners, and do not destroy me with those who work iniquity, with those who speak peace with their neighbor, but are evil in their hearts.

Give to them according to their works and according to the wickedness of their pursuits, according to the work of their hands assign to them, render their reward to them themselves. Therefore we are hated by you, Constantius, because we have been unwilling that these things be said of us which are said by the mouth of the prophet concerning you and yours on account of your evil labor, which are said concerning the Jews, whose imitator you have become. Are you not the emperor Constantius, who pretended to make peace, as your evil designs were, except that the Son of God might be denied, except that the apostolic and evangelical faith might be destroyed, while your Arian heresy might be built up, except that all not acquiescing to you might be deported, proscribed, variously tortured, and finally killed? And for that reason the Holy Spirit, designating and at the same time striking you and yours, says from the person of our people: with those working iniquity do not destroy me, with those who speak peace with their neighbor, but evil is in their heart. You said to us: I wish peace to be made, and in your heart, remaining an adversary of our religion, you plotted to make us idolaters through you; whence you will truly receive according to your work, according to the wickedness of your pursuits, unless you have provided for yourself.

We have avoided and are avoiding your counsel, which was and is made against God; whose meditations the Holy Spirit, already then foreseeing, spoke through the mouth of David in the thirty-second psalm: The Lord has scattered the counsels of the nations. For he rejects the thoughts of the peoples and rejects the counsels of the princes. But God rejects your counsels brought forth 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 bishops of my sect, the Arians, and be united; and the Spirit of God says through Solomon in Proverbs: Do not follow the ways of the impious, do not pursue nor emulate the path of the wicked; in whatever place they have set up an army, do not go there. But turn away from it and change; for they do not sleep unless they have done evil; sleep has been taken from them, and they do not sleep. For they are fed on the foods of impiety, and are drunk with the wine of iniquity. For the ways of the just will shine like light, they proceed and illuminate, until the day corrects. But the ways of the impious are dark; they do not know how they stumble. How could we have fellowship with you Arians, with spiritual adulterers?

We who keep the scripture: Do not entangle yourself with a deceitful woman; honey drips from the lips of a harlot, which for a time greases your throat, but in the end you will find it more bitter than gall and sharper than a sword sharp on both sides; but the foolish feet lead those who use her, together with death, down to the underworld. But do you say that these things were said on account of carnal adulteries? If you maintain that these things were said on account of carnal adulteries, how much more are you to be fled, spiritual adulterers, lest through your Arian heresy, a spiritual harlot, these things which are said come upon us? For it seems sweet to some that they join in friendship with you, the king, by accepting your heresy, but they will feel it more bitter than gall, when they begin to be tormented with you forever in perpetual gehenna, those who have chosen to be with you will then say: Woe to us who preferred the emperor Constantius to God. How could we have associated with you? When Solomon further says: Cast out pestilence from the council, and contention will go out with it, and: Do not imitate evil men nor desire to be with them; for their heart meditates falsehood, and their lips speak sorrows, and: Do not join the impious to the pasture of the just, nor be seduced by the fullness of the belly. For the just man falls seven times and rises again, but the impious will be weakened in their evils.

With the proud and the prevaricators, with those who would rather be found with Judas Iscariot than with the most blessed prophets, apostles, and martyrs, how can we be? When 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 an evil thing; I hated those who commit prevarications; a perverse heart did not cleave to me; I did not acknowledge the malignant who turn away from me; I pursued the one who secretly slanders his neighbors; with a proud eye and an insatiable heart, I did not eat with this one," and in the hundred and eighteenth psalm: "I held the iniquitous in hatred and I loved your law." Since you are iniquitous, indeed deniers of the only Son of God, since you ought to be hated by us, because you have abandoned the way of truth and have seized upon all errors, because you have abandoned the light and have chosen to go into the outer darkness, how could we have been most dear to you, O nefarious head, O destroyer of the house of God, O tinder of all who work iniquity? How could we have been intimate friends, as are Valens, Ursacius, Epictetus, Saturninus, and the rest? From which number, even if they have seen into what pit they have fallen, they would nevertheless choose to perish with you, provided they enjoy with you the empty splendor of your kingdom. How could we have been with you, we who hold in abomination those things which they have chosen to enjoy with you, men who strive to attain those things which are to endure forever?

On what matter, then, does it not agree between us and you? Surely because we have been unwilling to accept your heresy, surely because we have been unwilling, as Christians, to become Arians. For who is there, except one who is, as you are Arians, out of his mind, who would abandon the house of God and go to the devil's monument? For this reason, moreover, we suffer hatred at your hands, because we have been afraid and are afraid, lest those things had been said about us which are said about 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 did your fathers find in me of contumacy, that they withdrew far from me and went after vain things, and were frustrated and did not say: Where is the God who freed us from the land of Egypt, who led us, providing guidance in the desert, in an uncultivated and unknown land, and in a land without water and without fruit, in a land where no man traveled nor did a son of man dwell there, and brought you into Carmel, that you might eat its fruit and its goods, and you entered and defiled the land, and you put my inheritance to destruction; the priests did not say: Where is the Lord, and the elders of my law did not know me, and the shepherds acted impiously against me, and the prophets prophesied in Baal, and they went after useless things?" We have been unwilling to hear these reproaches, and therefore we have said that we must flee from you and yours.

For it was not possible for the household servants of God to associate with you, aliens, since we see that it was said by God to that carnal people, your fellow-perfidious one: "Turn your foot from the rough path and your throat from thirst." And what he said: "I will take strength, because he loved outsiders and went after them." Therefore, after you outsiders, after you foreigners, we not only did not wish to go, but we also pronounced anathema upon you, sons of pestilence and darkness, lest if we had withdrawn from the apostolic and evangelical faith and abandoned the way which the most blessed Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Abel, Enoch, Noah, and all the prophets, apostles, and martyrs held, these things would also have been said by God about us, which were said about your fellow-blasphemers the Jews: "Just as a thief is confounded when he is caught, so the sons of Israel themselves and their kings and their princes and their priests and their prophets will be confounded." We did not wish to be among you, lest that reproach of the divine voice also accuse us along with the Jews and with you heretics: "Why do you speak to me? All of you have acted impiously, and all of you have sinned against me," says the Lord.

How could we have fellowship with you, when you have read what is written in the first book of Maccabees: "Then a strong assembly in arms from Israel gathered to them, every volunteer in the law. And all who were fleeing from evils were added to them and became a support for them. And they set up a force, and struck down sinners in their anger and wicked men in their wrath. And the rest fled to the nations to save themselves, and Mattathias and his friends went around and destroyed the altars and circumcised the uncircumcised boys whomsoever they found within the borders of Israel by force, and they pursued the sons of pride, and the work prospered in their hands, and they recovered the law from the hands of the gentiles and kings, and they did not give a horn to the sinner"? Could we have been with you, when you see what those who are found to have feared God did with all their heart to them? You say, a member already then cut off from the body of the blessed church, when you became an Arian from a Christian: "Be with yourselves." And the Lord says in the Gospel: "But if your right eye scandalizes you, pluck it out and cast it from you; for it is better for you that one part of your members perish than that your whole body be cast into gehenna. And if your right hand scandalizes you, cut it off and cast it from you; for it is better for you that one part of your members perish than that your whole body go into gehenna.

The church proclaims that Arius has been cut off and cast out according to the Lord’s precepts, and you say: receive your fellow plague-bearers and pestilences; you say: allow yourselves to perish by the same disease by which I have perished. Sabellius is cut off from the body of the church just as your detestable Arius is cut off, whose speech has crept into you so strongly like a cancer that you are now seen to be entirely cancer; nor can you say that you have not been cancered by Arius’s speech, since the stench of your cankering has reached every place of your realm and we have all decided to shun you, lest we too be cancered by your Arian plague. Thus, I say, your master Arius is cut and cast out, just as Sabellius is cut and rejected, who dared to defend that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one person, because he dared to say that he himself is both Father and Son and Holy Spirit; he was cut off because he did not hesitate to say that the Father himself was incarnate in the womb of the virgin and suffered. Thus Marcion cut himself off and cast himself out, who refused to confess that the Son of God assumed a human being from the womb of the virgin and through this became man. Thus Paul of Samosata, the teacher of Photinus, was cut off and cast out from the body of the church, because he deigned to say that the Son of God is merely a man.

And so the heretics of all sects have been cut off, as Arius was cut off, and as you, because you say of the only Son of God: he was made from nothing and is not the true Son, there was a time when he was not, have deserved to be cut off. Therefore you are all cut off, blasphemers, and rejected by the power of God from His Church of mercy, because you did not remain in that faith in which the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs remained. A man cut off, together with all your fellow blasphemers, from the body of the holy Church, lying in the bilge of the devil, you dare to say to her: be such as I am, so that you may be afflicted with the same disease by which I myself have been consumed. Thus you thought we could have fellowship with you, as if we did not remember that the blessed Paul said: But we command you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw yourselves from every brother who walks unsteadily and not according to the tradition which they received from us. What reason could have brought it about that, abandoning the way which leads to the kingdoms of heaven, we should take up your way which hurls one into Gehenna? You thought you could ensnare us with the subtlety with which the serpent ensnared Adam and Eve, writing an edict with exquisite words and most beautiful sentiments, in which all the poisons of your heresy are contained. But how could you have accomplished this?

since the blessed Paul has armed us against your poison and that of your father, saying: “Therefore I say this, so that no one may deceive you by the sublimity 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, because in him dwells the whole fullness of divinity bodily.” How could we have been seduced by those sacrilegious Arian opinions of yours, however sublime in words, when we have recognized that you hold an empty philosophy? Whence could your speeches be sweet, when we have seen that you hold the tradition of Arius, not of the blessed apostles? To whom did He whom you deny to be the true Son of God say: “Go, baptize those believing in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”? How could we, Christians, deserting the apostolic tradition, acquiesce to you, a disciple of Arius, when we find you saying that the Father is not the true Father, but is called Father, when you say that He does not have a true Son, but that He was made from nothing, and when you say that the Holy Spirit Paraclete likewise consists of nothing, while on the contrary we see that the apostles believed in one God the Father Almighty, the true Father, for that reason the true Father because He truly, not putatively, has a Son, and in His only Son Jesus Christ, that is, in the true Son of God, and in the Holy Spirit Paraclete, in the true Spirit of God?

How could anyone among those who believe as such be undermined by the devil through you, Arius, the founder of blasphemy, when the apostolic faith both confesses a perfect Trinity and acknowledges the single divinity of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and Arius’s—that is, your—blasphemy holds only what has pleased your fleshly devil, since there is as much difference between the faith of the blessed Church and your heresy as between light and darkness? Rightly, meanwhile, have I called you so separated from us as darkness is separated from light, because you are sons of darkness, whence you have also spewed darkness from your viperous hearts. You hoped to turn us aside from the path of truth, as if we did not know that the Holy Spirit had forewarned us through the blessed Paul, saying: “Let no one convince you, wishing in humility of sense and in the religion of angels, which seems to walk without cause, inflated with the sense of his own flesh and not holding the head from which every body, through connection and conjunction, is produced and grows into an increase of faith.” How could we follow you, walking without cause, a bird of the serpent’s mouth Arius, inflated with the sense of your own flesh, having become an apostate, when the apostle’s command compelled us to avoid you? You said that you, desiring to be joined for the sake of peace, had been pseudo-bishops of your sect to us; but how could we have done that, so as to listen not to God, but to you, his enemy?

We are not like you, senseless ones, to deny that God the Son is God, as the Jews deny—those Jews who are partners in your blindness and leaders of your unbelief, whose example of reprobation the blessed Paul points out when he says to the Hebrews: "And Moses indeed is faithful in his whole house as a servant speaking in testimony, but Christ as a son in his house"—which house we are, if we hold to the liberality and exultation of hope, on account of which the Holy Spirit says: "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, as in the provocation according to the day of temptation in the desert, where your fathers tempted me in the test; and they saw my works for forty years. Therefore the people are hateful to me, and I said: They always err in heart. But these did not know my ways, as I swore in my anger: If they will enter into my rest." See, brothers, lest by chance there be in any of you a malignant heart of unbelief, departing from the living God, but console yourselves daily, until "today" is called, so that no one among you is hardened in the error of sin. For we have been made partakers of Christ, if indeed we hold the beginning of substance firm to the end. When 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 went out of Egypt through Moses. But who were those hateful to him for forty years?

Are they not those who sinned, whose corpses lay in the wilderness? And to whom did He swear that they would not enter into His rest, except to the obstinate? And we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief. Let us therefore fear, lest by chance, having abandoned the commandment, some of you should seem unable to enter into His rest. For it was announced to us, just as to them, and the word of hearing did not profit them, not tempered by the faith of the hearers. For we who have believed will enter into His rest, as He said: as I swore in my anger: if they will enter into my rest, and when the works from the beginning of the world were done. Yet He said somewhere concerning the seventh day: thus God rested on the seventh day from all His works. And in this again: if they will enter into my rest. Therefore, because it remains for the rest to enter into it, and those to whom it was previously preached did not enter because of obstinacy. Again, He fixed another day today in David, saying after so much 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. Therefore, on the next day the rest remains for the people of God. For he who entered into His rest also rested from his works, just as God from His. Who is so foolish, that when he has read these things, when he has received them from the blessed apostle, he would, abandoning the apostolic faith, attempt to embrace heresy?

Who will dare to deny Him, whom they see able to grant eternal rest to those believing in Him, and would choose to believe in Him with whom they begin to be punished eternally? Who is such a one but you, Constantius the emperor, who abandoned the Lord’s camp and crossed over to the devil’s house? We have not chosen to burn, as you have chosen with your lover the devil, but we hasten to enter into perpetual rest. How could we have been caught by your cunning and turned from the path of truth? When the apostle still exhorts us to seize hold of eternal rest, saying: Let us therefore hasten to enter into that rest, lest anyone fall in the same example of obstinacy. For the word of God is living, and strong, and sharper than any sword, and penetrating even to the division of soul and spirit, of limbs and marrow, and is the scrutineer of the mind and of the heart’s thought, and there is no creation that does not obey it; but all things are naked and open before the eyes of Him to whom we must give account. Since these things are so, how could any of us have crossed over to you, who remain in the perfidy of the Jews? What reasoning could join us Christians to you Arians, when we saw that you are imitators of that race of all perfidy? From which, how could those fleeing to the house of God emerge?

emperor, who, when the most blessed Peter spoke in the Acts of the Apostles, said: "Do penance, and let each one of you be baptized in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For this promise is for you and your children and all who are far off, whomsoever your Lord God calls." And with many other words he testified and exhorted them, saying: "Deliver yourselves from this perverse generation." Nor can you say that you are not Arians, a perverse generation, just as the Jews were and are, when you see that the scribes, Pharisees, and princes of the Jews were called a perverse generation for this reason, that they both denied the Son of God and persecuted all who believed in his divine majesty. You cannot, I say, say that you and all Arians are not a perverse and depraved generation, when you do these same things which they did. If they denied the only Son of God, so do you; if they persecuted the servants of his eternal mercy, you also persecute them. What then ought we to have done, except, according to the precept of the blessed Peter, to withdraw from you sacrilegious men? For how could we have fellowship with you, when the Lord said in the Gospel: "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy"?

How could we have been in one [body]? When the blessed apostle, writing to the Corinthians, said: "I hear that fornication is heard of among you, and such fornication as is not even among the Gentiles, so that someone has his father's wife, and you are puffed up and have not rather mourned, so that he who did this deed might be removed from your midst." If, therefore, the apostle ordered that one who performed a deed of this kind be removed from the midst, lest, evidently, through association with him the whole church be corrupted, how much more fitting was it that we flee from you blasphemers? If he says that he delivered that man to Satan, how much more ought you to know that you were already delivered when you began to deny the Son of God? For my part, though absent in body but present in spirit, I have already judged, as if present, that one who has acted thus in the name of the Lord Jesus, with you assembled and with my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus, I deliver such a man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that the spirit may be saved on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. Your fine boast: you do not know that a little leaven corrupts the whole lump. Purge the old leaven, so that you may be a new dough, as you are unleavened. Since this is the apostle's rebuke, could Christians be joined to servants of Antichrist? For how would one not have been corrupted by the poisons of your great blasphemy, since, whether in hypocrisy or in truth, whoever communicates with you is in immense peril?

Because of your heresy, after I had written to you, how could we have been able to adhere again? Since the voice of the apostle says: I wrote to you in the letter not to mix with fornicators—not, of course, with the fornicators of this world, or with the avaricious, or with the plunderers, or with the idolaters; otherwise you ought to have departed from this world. But now I wrote to you not to associate, if any brother is called a fornicator, or an avaricious man, or a worshiper of idols, or a slanderer, or a drunkard, or a plunderer, with such a one not even to take food. If we are commanded not to take food with you, had you believed that Catholics could convene with heretics to celebrate all the solemnities? With you, the erring ones, with you, led by the devil’s poison into every drunkenness, could we, the worshipers of God, have been? How could that have happened, that we should stand alive among the dead? Since it would be more fitting that you, the sons of our adversary, be seen gathered together in one place, and we, the soldiers of Christ, in another, so that you could, without any doubt, be called by all who love God the members and the body of a harlot; by which name we also could be called, if we delivered ourselves over to you. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Therefore, shall I take away the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? Far be it. Or do you not know that he who joins himself to a harlot is one body? For they will be, it says, two in one flesh. But he who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit; flee fornication. What kind of fornication do you think we ought to flee?

For he who wishes to seek another woman besides his wife is called a fornicator; likewise, he who has served idols is called a fornicator, since indeed, abandoning God, he has worshipped idols; similarly, he who is a heretic is called a fornicator. Consider which of these you judge to be the graver crime: to become a heretic, to serve idols, or to commit adultery according to the flesh. Therefore, since both Gentiles and you heretics are called idolaters, and each part necessarily bears idolatry, yet because from carnal fornication—as cannot be said—you will understand how much vaster those two crimes are, behold with what evils you have cut your own throat. The most holy apostle still cries out, saying: "Every sin that a man commits is outside the body; but he who fornicates sins in his own body," and: "You are not your own; for you have been bought with a price. Glorify and bear the Lord in your body." How will you be able to bear God, Constantius, in your body, when, by rejecting the apostolic faith and embracing the heretical one, you have declared yourself not to be of Him, of whom our fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and also all the prophets, apostles, and martyrs declared themselves? Then, if he who fornicates is sinning in his own body, how much more so are you, who accomplish the work of the serpent not only through the flesh, but also 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?

with the sacrilegious, lest we too, made part of the harlot’s body, should not deserve to be servants of the Lord, but rather, like you, servants of the devil, we judged that we had to withdraw from you. Woe to you, who were unwilling to be joined to the Lord, but were willing to be joined to the devil. But also, when he says: “Do not be led astray; for evil conversations corrupt good morals,” what does he bid me do but flee your assembly, stained with sacrilege, lest while I cling to you, I too perish with you? How could we have been in your evil council? For we find that the blessed apostle said to Timothy: “Lay hands on no one hastily, nor share in the sins of others. Keep yourself chaste.” But how would we have been chaste, who, by clinging to you, would have been broken apart by your most narrow [spirits]—that is, by your unclean spirits from the chastity of the faith? How would we not have shared in the sins of others, since if we had judged that we should remain with you, we would have become what you are, that is, members of the harlot? How could we have been Christians with you heretics?

Since we also knew that the apostle wrote to Timothy that we should separate ourselves from you heretics: "Teach and exhort these things; if anyone teaches otherwise and does not acquiesce in the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and in the doctrine that is according to piety, he is puffed up, knowing nothing, but sick over questions and wordy quarrels from which are born envy, contentions, blasphemies, suspicions, evil conflicts of men whose minds are corrupted and who are destitute of the truth." Therefore from you, not believing as the people of God believe, from you, not teaching as the apostles of Christ, the only son of God, taught, from you not acquiescing in the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ, we wished to live separated; from you, the assailant of the doctrine that is according to piety; from you, puffed up against us through our enemy; from you, knowing nothing true but sick over questions; from you, through whose nefarious efforts wordy quarrels, deadly contentions, and malignant conflicts are found to have been born especially in our days, through you, evidently, a man of corrupted mind, an interpolator of the truth. We judged that we must withdraw from you and from your fellow vipers according to the apostle's precept. For he says below: "Of men whose minds are corrupted and who are destitute of the truth, who think piety is a profit, depart from such." How, then, could we have been with you?

:since also at the close of this epistle he exhorts that you must be fled, you who have fallen away from the faith: "Timothy, guard the deposit, shunning profane novelties of words and oppositions of falsely named knowledge, which some promising have fallen away from the faith concerning." We ought to have shunned you uttering profane novelties of words, since we knew that you had brought forth that sacrilegious utterance at the instigation of the devil—that utterance, I say, by which you expressed the poisons of your dogma, saying: "There was a time when he was not, and he was made from nothing, and the power of the Father and the Son is not one." These things the Holy Spirit did not utter through you, but that unclean diabolical spirit. How therefore could we, according to the apostle's command, guard the deposit, if we had remained with you in your accursed council, since we have proposed to hold the apostolic faith until the end of death—that faith, namely, which we retain written at Nicaea against your blasphemy and against the execrable efforts of all your heretics?

How could we Christians have been present in your council of Arians, we who have heard in the book of Maccabees that our fellow servants, our predecessors, were separated from those who, according to the edict of your fellow tyrant Antiochus, had supplicated the idols? But Judas Maccabeus, who was the tenth and had withdrawn into the desert, and there lived a life among the wild beasts in the mountains with his men, staying there feeding on hay, lest they be partakers of defilement. You recognize from this one testimony that we had to withdraw from you, lest we too be partakers of defilement. How could we join with you? Since the Lord also says to the apostles: "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees." And to make clear to us that the leaven was the unsound doctrine, which evidently either the Pharisees or Sadducees then, or you heretics now of all sects, put forth, the scripture continues, saying: Then they were thinking among themselves, saying, "We have no bread." While they were thinking, Jesus said: "What are you thinking among yourselves, you of little faith, because 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 had not spoken of leaven, but that they should beware of the doctrine of the Pharisees.

Again, when the Apostle deigns to instruct, writing to the Corinthians, that we must withdraw from you heretics and from all aliens, how had your heart, inconstant and changeable in all things, but in this malice of your own salvation fixed with immense strength, presumed that we could have peace with you or with your followers? "Do not join with unbelievers; for what partnership has justice with iniquity? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? Or what agreement has Christ with Belial? Or what part has the faithful with the faithless? Or what concord has the temple of God with idols?" For you are the temple of the living God; for it is written: "For I shall dwell in them and walk among them, and I shall be their God, and they shall be my people." Therefore, "Depart from among them and separate yourselves," says the Lord, "and do not touch the unclean, and I will receive you and be a father to you, and you will be sons and daughters to me," says the almighty Lord. How, when your precepts seem to have arisen against these promises of the Lord, could we, the faithful, have remained with you, the faithless? Running on the path of light, could we stand with men making their journey on a path filled with all the darkness of errors?

For who is so foolish that, upon hearing God say: "I will dwell in them, and I will walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people; therefore, come out from among them and separate yourselves," says the Lord, "and do not touch anything unclean, and I will receive you and will be a father to you, and you will be to me sons and daughters," says the almighty Lord—who, we say, is so foolish as to be unwilling for God to dwell in him, who is unwilling to be considered received by God among those whom He has deigned to call sons, so as not to flee from you, made unclean through your heresy? It did not seem right to us that we should have been together with you in one place, since it is not right for men to dwell with serpents. Or will you deny that the deniers of the only Son of God are called serpents in the sacred scriptures? If you cannot deny it, recognize that we have acted rightly in fleeing from you serpents. You have read the Apostle saying to Timothy: "Avoid profane novelties of words; for they greatly advance impiety, and their speech creeps like a cancer." Did you think with yourself that men whose speech is like a cancer could be God's men? Likewise, the blessed John commands that you be shunned, saying: "I rejoiced greatly that I found among your children those walking in the truth as we received the commandment from the Father. I beg you, lady, not as writing a new commandment to you, but that which we have had from the beginning, that we love one another; and this is charity, that we walk according to his commandments.

This is the commandment as you have heard from the beginning, that you walk in it, because many deceivers have gone forth in the world who do not confess that Jesus Christ came in the flesh; these are deceivers and antichrists. Watch out for them, lest you lose what you have labored for, but so that you may receive the full reward. Everyone who withdraws and does not remain in the teaching of Christ does not have God; but whoever remains 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 your house and do not even say to him; for whoever says "hail" to him communicates with his evil works. How could it have been possible that we, along with you and yours, would be soldiers of God together with soldiers of the antichrist, since the Holy Spirit has not even permitted us to greet you, giving these precepts through the blessed apostle? But perhaps you will dare to say: Do I deny that the Son of God came in the flesh, so that I am counted among the antichrists? Not indeed do you, Emperor Constantius, deny that the Son of God came in the flesh, but you say that he whom we confess came in the flesh is a creature, you say that he was made from nothing, affirming that he is not the true Son of God. We, on the contrary, who hold to 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 divinity.

That this is so, the Lord manifests in his holy Gospels, saying: "He who has seen me has seen also 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, although there are two persons, Father and Son, and yet He says: "I and the Father are one," and: "He who has seen me has seen also the Father," and: "I am in the Father and the Father in me," we intended nothing else to be understood by this except that the eternity of the Father and the Son is one, the glory is one, the power is one, and the magnitude is one. For this reason also the Apostle says in this second epistle: "Everyone who departs and does not remain in the doctrine of Christ does not have God; but he who remains in His doctrine has both the Father and the Son," so that, by gathering from the doctrine of the holy Gospels that the divinity of God the Father and of His only Son is one, we might believe that he who believes thus has God; but he who has departed from this doctrine—that is, "I and the Father are one"—(since, of course, it is plural, it shows both two persons and the one power of these two persons, that is, of the Father and the Son)—therefore the Apostle says: "He who departs and does not remain in the doctrine of Christ does not have God; but he who remains in His doctrine has both the Father and the Son," so that we might believe the Son saying of God: "I and the Father are one," that indeed the divinity of the Father and the Son is one.

Thus it is established that you, who do not hold as the Lord handed down to the apostles and the apostles to the bishops, do not have God, because the apostle, wishing to manifest the unique divinity of both the Father and the Son, said: "He who departs from his teaching does not have God; but he who remains in his teaching has both the Father and the Son." You, I say, established as being without God, having neither the Son nor the Father, we know that you have most rightly fled, since it would not have been worthy for those having God to dwell with the enemies of divine majesty. But learn how hateful you are to God, that we were not even permitted to say "Hail" to you. How could we Christians have been with you Arians? Since the apostle Paul says: "Avoid foolish questions and genealogies and contentions and legal disputes; for they are useless and vain. After one correction, avoid a heretical man, knowing that he is perverse and sins, being condemned by himself." We could not assemble with heretics condemned by themselves, lest that voice strike us as it strikes the Galatians in blessed Paul: "You were running well; who hindered you from obeying the truth?" Knowing you to be enemies of the only Son of God, we fled your nefarious counsels, tempering ourselves by the voice of the apostle who says: "Consent to no one; your persuasion is from God who calls you. Do you not know that a little leaven corrupts the whole mass?

We did not wish to receive you, worms of Arius, into fellowship with us, servants of Christ, lest we be consumed by that poison of the devil by which you are consumed. We did not wish to go with you, that is, with men who still appear to be outside the knowledge of God, who are still established under the power of the devil. We did not wish, the living, to be joined with the dead, because you are acknowledged to be such as we ourselves were before we believed in the only Son of God. That these things are so, the apostle manifests writing to the Ephesians: "And you, when you were dead in your faults and your sins, in which you once walked according to the prince of the power of this air, the spirit which now works in the sons of unbelief, in which we also all once lived in the lust of our flesh, doing the wills of the flesh and of our counsels; and we were natural sons of wrath, as also the rest." Since you are still such as we were before we believed, as the most holy apostle relates, you were certainly to be avoided, men in whom and through whom the princes of the power, the spirits of this air, work all their desire; you were to be fled, sons of unbelief, sons naturally of wrath, lest by clinging to you we be reduced to what we formerly were. We did not wish to be with you, because you had not yet obtained the mercy of God which we have already attained.

We did not wish to have fellowship with you, who were led by the counsel of the flesh, just as that most blessed Paul was led before he believed, whom we recall saying: let no one seduce you with empty words; because of this the wrath of God came upon the sons of faithlessness. Do not, therefore, become partakers of them. For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord; walk as sons of light; for the fruit of light is in all goodness and justice and truth, proving what is acceptable to God, and do not communicate with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather rebuke them. We did not wish, because we have received these commandments, to tarry with you, led by your empty words, lest the wrath come upon us, just as it also came and will come upon you, upon you and yours, upon you sons of faithlessness. We did not wish to become partakers of darkness, since, already believing in the only Son of God and desiring to obey the commands of His majesty, we have escaped from that darkness and have become light in the Lord; hence we did not obey your dark commands, because it would have been criminal for sons of light to do your dark work, since the fruit of light is to walk in justice and truth and in all goodness.

You say we act unjustly because we are unwilling to accept your heresy, because eternal friendships were not fixed with you and yours. Hear what Moses did with foreigners at the time when God deigned to command him, so that, sending a certain number of Israelites, he destroyed by the edge of the sword the five kings of Midian and Moab; who, when sent to battle, after all the males were killed, because they spared the female sex that met them, Moses rebuked the sons of Israel, why they had not also destroyed the female sex, and he orders them to be killed in his presence, affirming that they could entice the minds of the people to worship idols. If, therefore, we also execrate your heresy as Moses did idolatry, if we indeed wish to destroy the heresies of all you who err with the sword of God, just as Moses did those enslaved to idols, if we flee you as adversaries of the religion of God, as he fled the worshippers of idols, consider that we act rightly in withdrawing ourselves from you. For how could we have fellowship with you, when he said to the Philippians: see the dogs, see the evil workers? You are dogs, evil workers; which servant of God would not flee you, 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 the end of our life?

Judas, servant of Jesus Christ, brother of James, to those beloved in God the Father and preserved in Jesus Christ, who are called. May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you. Dearest ones, making every effort in writing to you concerning our common salvation, I beseech that you labor for the fellowship once handed down. For certain men have crept in, long ago prescribed for this judgment, impious ones, who transfer the grace of God to unchastity and who deny our ruler and lord Jesus Christ. It was unlawful for you to meet with blasphemers, deniers, while the examples of those who have transgressed the Lord’s commands, set before us, urge our hearts to remain in that faith in which he himself is seen to have remained. Therefore I wish to admonish you, saying, knowing all things, that God saved his people from the land of Egypt; but the unbelievers he destroyed, and also the angels who did not keep their order but abandoned their dwelling, he kept in chains for the judgment of the great God, under the darkness of the holy angels. Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them, in like manner, when they had committed adultery and followed the flesh, were set forth as an example of ash, suffering the punishment of eternal fire. Likewise, therefore, these dreamers defile the flesh and spurn dominion.

And further: Woe to them, because they have gone the way of Cain and have been poured out for hire into the seduction of Baal and have perished in the contradiction of Korah. These are the stains in your loves, ruling themselves without fear, clouds without water to be carried about by every wind, autumnal trees without fruit, dead, torn up from the roots, fierce waves of the sea, foaming out their own filth, seducing gales, for whom a time of darkness has been preserved forever. And further: But you, brothers, remember the aforesaid words from the apostles of Jesus Christ, because they used to say: In the last days there will be mockers, going according to their own impious wills. These are separatists, animal men having no spirit. Since you have been seen to be in all these evils, Constantius, your friendships, which labor to destroy, have been avoided by us, lest evidently we should have been hurled with you into those places of torments, into which it tells that all those whose path you hold have been cast headlong.