De non parcendo in deum delinquentibus

IV. ON NOT SPARING THOSE WHO OFFEND AGAINST GOD. When you, Emperor, had seen yourself overcome on every side by the servants of God, you said that you had suffered and are suffering from us an insult contrary to the warnings of the holy scriptures; you say that we have been insolent toward you, whom it was fitting to honor. If any worshiper of God had spared apostates, then what you say about us would be true. Where shall we begin, so that you may now be rebuked by us, and that we may prove that all who have gone astray have been rebuked in this way by the worshipers of God? Where else but from the acts of Moses, the servant of God? We read in Exodus that Moses went up the mountain after the covenant was given to him and killed very many of them because of their guilt of idolatry. It says: "Moses stood at the gates of the camp and said: 'Who is ready for the Lord? Let him come to me.' And all the sons of Levi gathered to him, and he said to them: 'Thus says the Lord God of Israel: Let each one place his sword on his thigh and pass through and return from gate to gate through the camp, and let each one kill his brother and each one his kinsman and each one his neighbor.' And the sons of Levi did as Moses told them. And about three thousand men of the people fell on that day. And Moses said to them: 'Today you have filled the hands of the Lord, each one with a son or a brother, so that a blessing may be given among you.'

we are insulting to you as Moses was to that unrefined people; nor did they approve of what was said or done by Moses, when they had already chosen not to serve the God who had snatched them from the power of Pharaoh, but rather the calf which fire had cast for them. So too you, now not bound to God but to the idolatry of Arius, whom you are proved to have gone astray, bear it indignantly, cry out that we are contumacious, say that we have committed an unworthy crime against you, that we dared to say to the emperor of the Roman realm: "You are doing wrong, Constantius, in introducing idolatry into the church." Moses, the first of the prophets, that man most beloved of God, pursued with the sword those whose imitator you have made yourself, and am I to be branded as contumacious by you because I said that you have abandoned God and bound yourself to idolatry? Still the sacred scripture cries out that the children of Israel fornicated with the daughters of the Moabites and that, summoned by them, they ate meat sacrificed to idols and worshipped those same idols; against whom, because Phinehas the priest burned so with the zeal of devotion, especially because he slew the idolaters with a sword in the midst of the synagogue, it so pleased God that it is written that by this deed the anger of the indignant Lord was calmed and that he himself became exceedingly preeminent before the Lord: and the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: "Phinehas, son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, restrained my wrath from the children of Israel, in that he was zealous with zeal among them, and not the children of Israel in my zeal.

And behold, I will give him my covenant, a covenant of peace to him and to his seed with him into an eternal priesthood, because he was zealous for his God and interceded for the sons of Israel. And do you consider us obstinate because we speak the truth to you when you are in error? Do you think that when we displease you, we are not then pleasing to God? But I ask you, Constantius, to tell me by what authority you have wished us to abandon the way of the righteous patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs and to embrace this new way of yours which the devil instituted through Arius. Have you perhaps been warned in a dream and told not to allow us to hold to the way of Christ which Abel, Enoch, Noah, Melchizedek, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron, Joshua son of Nun, Job, the judges and the other kings—that is, David, Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, Josiah—held, which all the prophets, apostles, and martyrs held, which all who are found to have pleased God held?

If this has been said to you by the prince of demons, hear what God has decreed concerning you through the glorious prophet Moses: but if a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives a sign or a portent, and comes performing signs or portents, and says to you, saying: let us go and serve foreign gods whom you do not know, you shall not listen to the word of that prophet or dreamer, because the Lord God is testing you to see if you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall follow after the Lord your God and fear Him, and you shall keep His commandments and hear His voice, and you shall cleave to Him. And that prophet or dreamer of dreams, let him die. For they have spoken to lead you away from the Lord your God. Do you know what you are commanded to suffer? For whether you claim to have been warned by a dream or wish to set yourself up as a prophet among us, you are an enemy of God, since you wish us to abandon the apostolic faith and to adopt that which denies the only Son of God. For all those whom I have recounted, it is clear that they became so great and so renowned because they believed in the only Son of God, since he who does not believe in the Son does not have the Father either, while he who believes in the Son has both the Father and the Son.

This is the voice of the blessed John, with whom, because he makes a chorus with the holy apostles, you must certainly understand that all, just as the apostles believed, so the patriarchs and prophets had believed before, so all who are known to have been honored by the merit of faith. For you will not be able to prove to me that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob believed one way and John or all his fellow apostles believed another. For if the apostles did not believe as the patriarchs believed, why does the blessed Paul summon all to grasp the faith of Abraham? But you say: I accuse you of why you are insolent, why you have been contumelious toward the emperor; and you unfold the cause of the faith. Of the faith, indeed, so that I may prove you to be sacrilegious, so that I may prove you have deviated from the path of truth; hence I seem contumelious to you because I tell you that you have deserted the way of all worshipers of God and have seized that which those who served and are serving not God but a phantasm had held and are holding. Therefore, from him who urges me to withdraw from God concerning you, hear what God has decreed through Moses: but if your brother by father or mother, or your son, or your daughter, or the woman who is in your bosom, or a friend who is the equal of your soul, should ask you, crying out: let us go and serve alien gods whom you do not know, nor your fathers, from the gods of the nations which are near or far around you, do not wish to go with him and do not listen to him; your eye will not spare him, nor will you greet him, nor will you conceal him.

You will announce and proclaim about him. Your hands will be first upon him to kill him, and the hands of your people at the last. And you will stone him, and he will die, because he sought to stand apart from your Lord God. The command that you be killed, indeed, because you invite me to abandon God, you say in ignorance: Lucifer insults me. Or will you deny that you invited us to embrace idolatry? If you think it should be denied, the expositions of your sect of bishops, that is, of your fellow blasphemers, will convict you; the little books recited by you and given to the bishops, even Catholic ones, at Rome for this very purpose, that your blasphemy might be strengthened everywhere, will convict you. Do you not perceive what darkness of errors you have fallen into? Do you not see in what manner you may perish? When you see why Achar, one of the people, acted against divine warnings, why he stole by stealth from Jericho a certain part of the garment, of silver and gold, and how he was punished with death, consider what will be your fate, you who deny the eternal divine majesty of the only Son of God. Accept what was done concerning Achar and at last consult your own salvation, return to the church of God, from which that fugitive serpent who also turned Adam and Eve aside drove you through the Arians: and it was, he says, the Lord with Joshua, and his name was over the whole earth. The sons of Israel neglected him with negligence and defrauded him with fraud of the anathema. And the Lord was angry with the sons of Israel in wrath.

And Jesus sent men to Ai, which is joined to Bethel, saying, "Spy out Ai." And the men went up and spied out Ai. And they returned to Jesus and said to him: "Let not the whole people go up, but let two or three thousand men go up and lay waste the city. Do not lead the whole people there, for they are few." And about three thousand men went up with him, and the men of Ai fled from before the men who were in Ai. And the men of Ai killed thirty-six of their men, and they pursued them from the gate and crushed them on the slope, and the heart of the people was afraid, and it became like water. And Jesus tore his garments, and Jesus fell on his face before God until evening, he and the elders of Israel, and they put dust on their heads, and Jesus said: "I pray, Lord, why did your servant lead this people across the Jordan to deliver them to the Amorite, to destroy us? If we had remained in the land, we would have stayed by the Jordan. And what shall I say, that Israel turned its back against its enemy? And the Canaanite and all who dwell in the land will hear, and they will surround us and crush us from the land. And what will you do for your great name?" And the Lord said to Jesus: "Arise, why have you fallen on your face? The people sinned and transgressed my covenant which I made with them, and they stole from the anathema and put it in their vessels.

men go up and secretly approach Ai, and then they will rush upon the city. And they did so. And the men of Ai came out against them and fought against Israel, and the men of Israel turned their backs before the men of Ai. And Jesus fell on his face before the Lord and said: "O Lord, why have you let this people turn their backs before their enemies? The people of Israel will not be able to resist before the face of their enemies; they will turn their backs in the sight of their enemies, because they have become anathema. I will no longer be with you unless you remove the anathema from among yourselves. Arise, sanctify the people and say, 'Let them be sanctified for tomorrow.' For thus says the Lord God of Israel: 'Anathema is among you; you will not be able to resist against your enemies until you remove the anathema from among yourselves.' And gather together in the morning, all by tribes, and the tribe that is pointed out in the morning by God, bring it forth by families; the family that the Lord points out, offer it by each man; and whoever is pointed out by the Lord shall be burned with fire, along with all that is his, because he has transgressed the covenant of the Lord and committed iniquity in Israel." And Jesus rose early in the morning and offered the people by tribes, and the tribe of Judah was pointed out. And they were offered by families, and the family of Zara was pointed out. And he offered the family of Zara by households, and the household of Iambri was pointed out. And the household was brought forth by men, and Achar, son of Charmi, son of Iambri, was pointed out. And Jesus said to Achar: "Give honor today to the Lord God of Israel, and make confession, and tell me what you have done, and do not hide it from me." And Achar answered Jesus and said: "I have indeed sinned before the Lord God of Israel; I did such and such.

I saw among the spoils a fine multicolored garment and two hundred silver didrachms and one golden spoon of fifty didrachms, and I coveted it and took it, and behold these were hidden in my tent and the silver was hidden beneath them. And Joshua sent messengers, and they ran into the tent, and these things were hidden in the tent and the silver beneath them. And they took them from the tent and brought them to Joshua and to the elders of Israel and placed them before them. And they seized Achan son of Carmi and led him into the Valley of Achor, and his sons and his daughters and his oxen and his yokes and his sheep and his tent and all that was his. And all Israel was with him, and they led them to Mecachor. And Joshua said to Achan: Why have you destroyed us? May the Lord destroy you as on this day. And all Israel stoned him with stones and placed over him a great heap of stones. And the Lord ceased from the indignation of his wrath. Consider, Constantius, by what example you are about to perish, unless you provide for yourself, what punishments you are about to suffer eternally. Achan because of transgression of the commandments obtained such things; what you deserve can be understood from this, that you are an apostate. For if he, because he had something from the anathema, was punished with such destruction, how much more you! Without doubt you will be punished more severely, you who have been an apostate by denying the Son of God.

In this we are wicked before you, in this we are proud and obstinate, in this we are insolent, because we say to you: you have committed sacrilege by being a denier of the only Son of God, because we say: take thought for yourself, snatch your soul from the snares of the devil. What new thing do we bishops do, if we say to you those things which you deserve to hear? When we find that most holy Samuel, priest of God, said these things to King Saul which you are about to read: sorrows and groans will be brought upon you. Because you have made the word of the Lord of no account, the Lord will make you of no account, that you may not reign, and again: because you have made the word of the Lord of no account, God will bring you to nothing, that you may not be king over Israel, and further: the Lord will tear your kingdom from Israel out of your hand today, and will give it to your neighbor better than you. If he said these things to Saul, because he transgressed the Lord's commands, why do you think we ought not to have said with free voice that you are a sacrilegious man, who, unless you turn yourself to God, will be brought to nothing by him? If we had not exhorted you, if we did not summon you to satisfaction, you would rightly say that you are hated by us. Or when you hear us say: repent, emperor, correct your ways, so that you may find a place for mercy, I think you ought to consider that you are loved by us, you are cherished by us; and you in this execrate us, because we remain in the apostolic faith, you return evil for good.

We are not surprised if you, since you have withdrawn from the will of God and do not cease to fulfill the desire of the devil, present yourselves as evil when you ask and desire that good be done to you by God, seeing that it is ingrained in you to act wickedly, you who have made the transition from good to evil, that is, to the devil. If you persecute us who love you, desiring that all the best come to you, it is neither a great nor a new thing, since that same Samuel, prophet and priest of the Lord, was persecuted by Saul. He persecuted the one by whom he had been anointed king and whose prayers were directed to the Lord in constant supplication for the safety, of course, of that same persecutor. If you do not believe that we, priests of God, grieve for you, because you have swallowed such great darkness of errors, because you are thus sacrificing yourself, believe God speaking to Samuel concerning Saul: "How long do you mourn for Saul? Behold, I am driving him out so that he may not reign over Israel." And further: "And the word of the Lord came to Samuel, saying: 'I repent that I made Saul king, because he has turned away from me and has not upheld my words.'" And Samuel was grieved and cried out to the Lord all night and before dawn.

When Samuel the priest acted thus for the safety of King Saul, yet Saul afterwards persecuted Samuel, not recognizing, wretched man, that he was persecuting a prophet and priest of the Lord; so also you, not knowing what you are doing, persecute us, who desire that you please God, and you love those who drag you with them to eternal death, to perpetual offense of the Lord; you are indignant that you hear the truth, when you see that Samuel, the priest of the Lord, did not flatter the king. Or was it fitting that our predecessors should act one way, and we another? Why, when we speak the truth to you, do we seem proud to you? What have you heard from us? Surely that you are a murderer. If we lie, then we are rightly called abusive and proud by you; but if we speak the truth, we are not abusive, but those who imitate those who, by not flattering those entrusted to them, but by warning them salutarily, have merited to be most beloved of God. When the king of Israel sent to kill the prophet Elisha, if you had read least that Elisha said to those who were with him: "Have you seen that the son of that murderer sent to take my head?" You would rightly seek me as guilty of insults. The prophet, filled with the Holy Spirit, called the king of Israel the son of a murderer, that is, the son of the devil, not because he called his carnal father a murderer, but the devil, whose son he showed himself to be by his deeds, as you now reveal yourself by your deeds, and as he showed himself by daring to persecute the servants of God, to kill the prophets of his mercy.

you are doing all these things, the devil is goading your hearts. That this is so, take from the Lord speaking to the Jews in the Gospel: you are born from the devil as father and you wish to do the desires of your father; for he was a murderer from the beginning. The prophet, I say, full of the Holy Spirit, calls the king of Israel the son of a murderer, that is, of the devil, and you think we are insulting you, because we say that you are the killer of the servants of God, that you are the executioner of our bodies, that you are a man of utter injustice, a destroyer of religion, a denier of the only Son of God? What we see you doing, that we say to you; what you are, that we proclaim you to be. You call us insolent, because we say to you what you are. I would like you to say, why did the king of Israel deserve to hear such things from the Lord: because you have done good before me and you have acted according to my heart, and according to my soul, the house of Ahab, of your son, in the fourth generation will sit for you on the throne of Israel? Tell me, I say, why did he deserve to hear these things from God? Because he spared the enemies of God? Or because he persecuted them most fiercely, even with the sword, or because he killed the son of Ahab, the idolater?

or what I have written, or the Vulgate, or the idolatress with her forty sons, and Queen Jezebel, because she was killed and thrown to the dogs, and all the servants of Baal with all the priests and prophets of confusion, whom he destroyed by the edge of the sword, because he destroyed the idols—does this please God? What ought we to have done concerning you, so that you would not charge us with contumely toward you, whom we see following the ways of Ahab and Jezebel? It is not new what you are doing: acting against God, attacking his house, persecuting his bishops, those through whom he warns you to take heed for yourself, so that, while there is still a place for repentance, you may draw yourself away from evil. There were before you those similar to you in sacrilege, serving idols in this way, having abandoned the God of their fathers. In the second book of Paralipomenon, we hear that Amaziah, king of Judah, was warned by God through a prophet not to take with him to war the sons of Israel whom he had hired for a hundred thousand talents of silver, because God had abandoned Israel, since they had abandoned God and served idols. The king obeyed the words of the prophet, believed that the threat was from God—does he do this? After he subdues his adversaries, he thought that the idols of those same enemies should be taken and transferred to his own kingdom and worshipped there; and because the man of God told him that he had acted wrongly, abandoning God to worship the idols of the nations, this king fiercely persecuted the Lord's prophet.

You see that in you who have turned to apostasy there has always been one mind for persecuting those who wish you well. And it happened, says holy Scripture, after Amasias came to strike Idumaea, and brought from there the gods of Mount Seir and set them up for himself as gods and before them he worshipped and himself sacrificed to them. And the wrath of the Lord came upon Amasias, and he sent the prophet Baneas to him, and Baneas said to him: Why have you sought the gods of a people who did not free their people from your hand? And it happened, as he spoke to him, he said to him: Did I make you the king’s counselor? Beware lest you be flogged. You see, Constans, how mad you become, after it has pleased you to live serving the devil, after it has pleased you not to know the all-powerful God, after you have chosen for yourselves that you ought to establish idolatry to the insult of God. For as he said: Did I make you the king’s counselor? Beware lest you be flogged, so also you say: Did I choose you as my counselors, so that I should not act as pleases me, so that I should not hold the way that Arius held? Do you not see by what example Arius perished? How he was divinely punished?

Meanwhile, because you say we are insulting to you, see how this man of God did not spare that fellow-sacrilegious king of yours, but after it was said to him, "Be silent, lest you be flogged," he said to him: "I know that the Lord will destroy you, who did this and did not heed my counsel." In what respect do you find us insulting? Surely because we say to you: we know that unless you provide for yourself by turning to God, the Lord will condemn you to eternal punishment. This is the insult, this is all the injury—that it is said to you through God's bishops that you will perish forever unless you correct your ways. That king did not believe the man of God. What immediately befell him, holy Scripture says thus: "And at the time when Amasias departed from the Lord, they rose up against him, they rose up. And he fled from Jerusalem to Lachish, and they killed him on horses." Thus the deeds of your evils could preserve, protect, and defend you no more than they did him who said to the man of God speaking for his own salvation: "Have I appointed you counselor to the king? Be silent, lest you be flogged." It is not first done by us if we say to you, who are erring, resisting God's ordinance, laboring to establish new paths: you do wrong by not going the way by which all worshipers of God have reached the heavenly kingdoms.

You have read that King Uzziah was rebuked by the priests of the Lord for having dared to do unlawful things. And the Scripture says: He entered the temple of the Lord to place incense upon the altar. And after him entered Oeias the priest, and with him the priests of the Lord, thirty men of valor, and they rose up against King Uzziah and said to him: "It is not lawful for you, Uzziah, to burn incense to the Lord, but for the priests, the sons of Aaron, who are sanctified to burn it. Depart from the holy place, because you have withdrawn from the Lord, and this will not be to your honor from the Lord God." Do you say that the priests of the Lord were insulting to that king, or not? If they were not yet insulting, then do not consider us so either, since you hear from us the same things that he heard: "It is not lawful for you, Constantius, an Arian, to assemble with the people of God; it is not lawful for you, the author of the Arian idolatrous heresy, the denier of the only Son of God, to judge the priests of God, you sacrilegious man who pretends to be a Christian while you are the forerunner of Antichrist. It will not be good for you to remove the priests of God, the opponents of your colleague in sacrilege, from their orders." When you hear these things, you are angry with us; King Uzziah was also angry then with those priests of the Lord. But note that those devoted to God maintained the honor of their station forever, while Uzziah was immediately stained with the variety of leprosy to his everlasting disgrace. And it says: "And Uzziah was angry, and in his hand was the altar, that he might burn incense on his own altar.

and leprosy appeared on his forehead in the sight of the priests in the house of the Lord. These things are so, and do you think that you, a contumacious transgressor, do not incur offense before Him who has perpetually commanded us to represent the offices of the priesthood in His glory? What is this pride of ours, Constantius, and what arrogance? Unless it be that we see you are diseased, a pestilent Arian indeed, that we consider leprosy to be in you—that leprosy which Arius had—and that we urge you to withdraw from the people of God, just as those priests of the Lord compelled Uzziah to depart from the temple, because we thus compel you to give honor to God. For if the priests of God expelled Uzziah from the hall of God because they remembered the divine precept that lepers were forbidden to enter the temple before purification, how much more worthy are we, consider, to expel you from the Church of Christ, from the house of the Lord, because it is not lawful for a heretic to assemble with Catholics, for a madman with the sane, for one full of unclean spirits with those in whom the spirit of God dwells? What insult is this, if the priests of the Lord, kindled with that zeal which our predecessors always had, say to you what conduces to our salvation and yours? You are insolent, says Lucifer.

Hence you are insolent, because I press you to cast off the leprosy of Arius, and that through this faith—which the most blessed apostles preached and which, as you see, we hold—you have attained health for your mind and have been wholly snatched from the snares of the devil, so that you may rejoice forever, sought by God. You, who accuse us of being of immense pride, have found it written what Josiah, king of Judah, did to your fellow-sacrilegious ones, to such as you are seen to be today, how he persecuted very many of them even after death, consuming the bones of the same with fire. But it befitted that king to pursue the enemies of God with such zeal; it was unworthy of us bishops, us priests of God, to resist you who were introducing idolatry into the church. He slew your fellow-sacrilegious ones with the sword, and even pursued their remains once buried, desiring to be found a most faithful worshiper of God; we, on the contrary, ought not to have resisted you even by word—you, the friend of the enemies of God, you, the dearest of all to the apostate angels, you, who through this blasphemy of yours have become an enemy of God.

Take then, in the fourth book of Kings, what Josiah, servant of the Lord and king of Judea, achieved because of those things he did concerning your fellow polluted ones, and finally stop saying of us: they are proud and insolent. He did, it says, what is right before the sight of the Lord and walked in the way of his father David, and did not turn to the right or to the left. Likewise, further on, after he rebuilt the houses of the Lord and the priest had sent the book of the law to the king: And it came to pass, when the king heard the words of the book of the law, he tore his garments. And the king commanded the priest Hilkiah, and Achinar the son of Josaphan, and Achilia the son of Melchiah, and Shaphan the scribe, and Joash the son of the king, saying: Inquire of the Lord for me and for all Judah concerning the words of this book that has been found, because the great wrath of the Lord is kindled against us, since our fathers did not hear the words of this book according to all that was written to do. And Hilkiah the priest, and Ahikam, and Shaphan, and Joash went to Huldah the prophetess, the wife of Shallum son of Tikvah, the keeper of the wardrobe, and she dwelt in Jerusalem. And they spoke to her according to these things. And she said to them: Thus says the Lord God of Israel: To the man who sent you to me (say this): thus says the Lord: Behold, I will bring evils upon this place and upon those dwelling in it according to all the words of this book which the king of Judah read, because they forsook me and turned to foreign gods and provoked me by the works of their hands.

And my anger was kindled in this place and will not be extinguished. And to the king of Judah who sent you, that you might inquire of the Lord, you shall say this: Thus says the Lord God of Israel: My words which you heard and from which you recoiled before my face, because you heard what I spoke concerning this place and its inhabitants, to become a wilderness and a curse. And you tore your garments and wept before my sight, and I heard, said the Lord of Hosts. Because of this, I bring you to your fathers, and you are increased in peace, and your eyes will see all the evils that I bring upon this place and upon those who dwell in it. And he answered the king with a word, 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 Levites, and all the people from the smallest to the greatest. And the king read in the ears 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 set in order the covenant that was found in the house of the Lord before the Lord, to go after the Lord and observe his commandments and testimonies and precepts with his whole heart and whole soul, to establish all the words of that covenant written in that book. And all the people passed over into the covenant that the king set in order, from the book.

And the king commanded Hilkiah the high priest and the secondary priests and those who kept the Ephod, to cast out of the house of the Lord all the vessels which he had made for Baal and Ashera and the whole host of heaven. And he burned them outside Jerusalem in the fire of the Kidron brook. And he took their ashes and scattered them into the stream, and he went to Bethel. And he burned the priests whom the kings of Judah had appointed, that they might burn offerings on the high places of the cities of Judah and around Jerusalem; they burned offerings to Baal and to the sun and to the moon and to the whole host of heaven. And they carried out of the house of the Lord outside Jerusalem into the Kidron brook, and he ground the ash to dust and cast it into the tomb of the people’s children. And he brought out their sons who were in the house of the Lord, whose women were serving there as vestment-makers. And he brought in all the priests from the cities of Judah and defiled the holy places, where they burned the sacrifices of Agabah as far as Beersheba, and he tore down their high places, and further: and he defiled the Phem which was in Cepenan, because each had led his son and his daughter through the fire of Moloch. **# The kings of Judah had placed from the entrance of the house of the Lord to the shepherds, where they placed three horses, which were in Faradin, and he burned the fountain of the sun with fire in the house of the house, which the kings of Israel had built for that high place of Baal and the whole host of heaven.

And the shrines were above the upper buildings of Ahaz, which the king of Judah had made, and the shrines which Manasseh had made in the two buildings of the house of the Lord; the king tore them down and cast them out from there and threw their ashes into the brook Kidron. And the high places which had been made facing Jerusalem, which was on the right of the Mount of Olives, which King Solomon had built for the image of Astarte of the Sidonians and for the idol of Gamos and for the image of Muloch of the sons of Ammon, the king polluted. And he shattered the pillars and filled their places with the bones of men. And the shrine at Bethel, the high place which Jeroboam son of Nebat had made, in which he caused Israel to sin, and that high shrine he tore down and shattered its stones and ground them to dust, and he burned their groves. And King Josiah returned and saw the monuments which were there on the mountain, and he took the bones from the monument and burned them upon the shrine and polluted it according to the word which the man of God had spoken, when Jeroboam stood at the altar on the feast day. What do you recognize, Constantius, that was done by a king who was a worshiper of God? And we, because we strike you with words for introducing idolatry into the church, you say, "Lucifer does me an injury"? When, 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; should we not even have wounded you with a word?

Meanwhile, you see also in this place that into the city of God, into the house of the Lord and into His temple, your fellow sacrilegious kings introduced the idolatry which Josiah, that king most devoted to God, exterminated; nor do you think that you have undertaken this work against God only by attempting it? I do not want you, therefore, to say: "If I were acting wrongly, God would already have inflicted vengeance on me," but rather I beseech you to see that you are held captive by the devil, that you live under his power, just as those kings did, whose work King Josiah pursued. Why do we execrate your blasphemies, why do we resist your iniquitous conspiracies? We seem to you to be injurious. Thus also to the Jews, whose imitator you are, the most holy prophets and the most blessed apostles seemed insulting and proud. In the book of the prophet Amos: "And Amaziah the priest sent to Jeroboam king of Israel in Bethel, saying: 'Amos is holding a gathering against you in the midst of the house of Israel; the earth will not be able to bear his words, because Amos says this: Jeroboam will die by the sword, and Israel will be led captive from its land.' And Amaziah said to Amos: 'Go, depart to the land of Judah and dwell there and prophesy there. But in Bethel you will no longer add to prophesy, because it is the king's sanctification and will be the house of the kingdom.'

And Amos answered and said to Amasiah: I was not a prophet, nor am I the son of a prophet, but I was a herdsman plucking sycamore figs, 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 the house of Jacob shall not be gathered. Because of this, the Lord God says this: your wife will prostitute herself in the city, and your sons and your daughters will fall by the sword, your land will be measured by the rope, and you will die in an unclean land, and Israel will be led captive from its land. When you see these things done by him who wished to announce truth and correction to his erring people, why do you call us insolent, why do you call us contumelious, because we speak the truth to you who are erring, 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 matters are we found proud before you? Except in this, that we execrate your sacrileges and shun your commands like swords and poisons. This was not done by us first; all those who have already pleased God, holding this faith which we preach, did this; no one among his servants feared to undergo death for God, no one thought of the kinds of torments inflicted by you tyrants, but kept his precepts before his eyes.

Thus the glorious Tobias is found to be preeminent before the Lord, because he did not fear the edict of his own king, but only the all-powerful God. That this is so, believe Tobias himself, who says: When Sennacherim, the king, came fleeing from Judaea because of the defense which the Lord made from them, on account of his blasphemies which he blasphemed, and in his anger he killed many of the sons of Israel; but I would wrap up their bodies and bury 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 remained to me except my wife Anna and my son Tobias. And it happened after forty-five days that the king's own sons killed him, and Arcedonossar his son reigned in his place. And when I had come into my house, and my wife Anna and my son Tobias had been restored to me, on the feast of Pentecost, our holy day, which is sacred from the weeks, a good meal was prepared for me, and I lay down to dine, and a table was set before me, and I saw very many dishes, and I said to my son Tobias: Go and bring whichever poor man you find from among our brothers who are captives in Nineveh, who nevertheless have God in mind with their whole heart; bring him, and let him eat this meal together with me; behold, I am waiting for you, son, until you come. And Tobias went out to seek some poor captive from among our brothers, and returned and said to me: Father. And I said: What is it, son?

and he said to me: Behold, one of our nation has been killed, cast out with a noose around him. And I went out, leaving my meal, before I had tasted any of it, and I took him from the street, keeping him in a place with me until the sun set, so that I might bury him. And returning, I washed and ate my meal with mourning, and I remembered the word of the prophet Amos, which he spoke in Bethel, saying: Your feast days 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 neighbors mocked me, saying: How does this man not fear? For he has already been sought out for this matter, that he might be killed, and he fled, and now he begins to bury the dead again. Therefore, when you see that the servants of God have not always feared your cruelty, O tyrants, nor can they now fear it, but have pondered and do ponder the commands of the Lord, how do you deign to judge us as insolent? Surely because, by God's doing, we trample your power like mud. This is not done by our own strength, but by the mercy of Him whom you deign to execrate in us. God says to the prophet Ezekiel: Son of man, I send 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 the house is embittered, and they will know that you are a prophet among them.

And you, son of man, do not fear them nor tremble at their face, for they will rage and rush upon you all around, and you dwell in the midst of scorpions; do not fear their words nor tremble at their face, for the house is embittered. And you will speak my words to them, if by chance they hear or are terrified, for the house is embittered. We seem contumacious to you, just as that prophet, dedicated to God alone, seemed to those whose darkness you follow; surely from this, Ezekiel the prophet among the Jews, your fellow apostates, seemed contumacious, and from this, proud to the kings of Israel, because he fulfilled the Lord’s commands, speaking to them what God had commanded him to speak. Rightly you call us proud, us through whom God wished all his commands to be brought to the knowledge of the believing peoples. Rightly, I say, you designate us insolent bishops of God, if we say to you those things which God wished 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 saying: And you, son of man, do not fear them nor tremble at their face, for they will rage and rush upon you all around, and you dwell in the midst of scorpions. Do not fear their words, do not tremble at their face, for the house is embittered.

No, I say, we cannot fear the threats of your empire, because your scorpion-like forces are of no strength against us, whom you see sheltered by the power of God, whose defender and protector you perceive God to be. Therefore we will not cease to thrust the Lord's precepts upon you, preserving our fears for Him alone, who says: "Son of man, go into the house of Israel and speak my words to them, for you are not sent to a people of lofty speech, nor to Israel, nor to many peoples of another voice or another tongue, nor to those who are weighty in tongue, whose speech you would not hear. And if I had sent you to such as those, they might perhaps have heard your words; but the house of Israel will not want to hear you, because they do not want to hear me, because the whole house of Israel is contentious and hard of heart. And behold, I have made your face powerful against their faces, and I will strengthen your constancy against their contentiousness, and you will always be firmer than rock. Do not fear them nor be terrified by their face, for the house is bitter." Who among us could fear you, whom you see fortified and strengthened by the power of God to blunt your obstinacy, standing with fixed step immovable against your rage, as sturdy rocks are wont to stand against a swollen sea? Hence you judge us your enemies, because we press you to become a servant of God instead of a scorpion.

Now indeed you cannot doubt that you are one of the scorpions, of those of whom you heard the prophet say from the Lord: "And you, son of man, do not fear nor tremble before them, for they will rage and swarm around you, and you dwell in the midst of scorpions." Hence we are insulting to you, because you see yourself called a scorpion by us. If God had not said you were a scorpion, you would rightly call me abusive; but now by your own deeds you show yourself to be a scorpion, and you cry out in vain that you suffer insult from us. God says you are a scorpion, and you are angry with me for calling you by that name? What insult is this, if it is said to you: "Unless you turn to God, you will always be, as you now are, one of the scorpions, one of the most vast enemies of God"? Run through the rest of the prophet Ezekiel, and dare to call me insolent, proud, insulting, contumacious: and this is the word of the Lord to me, saying: "Son of man, behold, I have made you a watchman of the house of Israel, and you will hear a word from my mouth and you will threaten them from me in what I say to the wicked: 'You will die by death.' And you did not distinguish for him nor did you speak, so as to distinguish for the wicked to turn away from his ways, that he might live; that wicked man will die in his injustice, and I will seek his blood from your hand. And if you have distinguished for the wicked and he has not turned away from his wickedness and his way, that wicked man will die in his injustice, and you will free your soul.

and in that wherein the just man opposes his own justices and commits a transgression, I will set a torment upon his face; he himself will die, because you did not distinguish for him. And he will die in his sins, because his justice is not held in memory, and I will demand his blood from your hand. But if you distinguish for the just man that he not abandon, and he himself does not abandon, that just man, living, will live, because you distinguished for him, and you will save your own soul. What, Constantius, do you say to these things? Shall it be for the priests of God to be silent and to conceal his divine commandments, or is it fitting to lay open to you all the precepts of the Lord? Shall we convey the whole will of God to those entrusted to us, or shall we defraud ourselves of it, to our own destruction? For the Lord says he will demand your blood from me; nay more, if you do not obey God, whose divine warnings we press upon you, you will die in your own accursed crime, and the salvation of your soul will no longer be demanded of us, because indeed we were not terrified by your threats, but feared only him who commanded that no one else be feared, since indeed we assembled in the name of the Lord God to snatch you from your impious paths. Lest I seem to do you, the emperor, an insult, what ought I to have done at the time when I judge you were born to turn us, the servants of God, from the way of truth? For when Nebuchadnezzar sent Holofernes, the prince of his might, and besieged Jerusalem, what does Judith pray of God? Surely, that he destroy the enemies of Israel.

Did he not say: Guard those who rise up against your house? Lord God of my father Symeon, who gave the sword for the vengeance of the foreigners who violated the womb of the virgin for defilement and bared the thigh for consummation and polluted the matrix for reproach. For you said: It will not be so, and you did it. For that reason you gave their princes to slaughter and their couch, which took the beloved, to blood, and you struck servants over the mighty, over their thrones. And you gave their women to plunder and their daughters to captivity and all the plunder to division among the beloved sons, who concealed your zeal and abhorred the defilement of your race and invoked you for your help. My God will hear me, a widow. For you did the former things to them and those later and now and those that will come. For all your ways are prepared, your creation in providence. For behold, the Assyrians were filled with their strength and exalted in horse and rider, and gloried in the arm of the foot-soldiers, they trusted in shields and drawn bow and slings, and they did not know that you are the Lord who crushes wars. Lord is your name. Cast down their forces, Eternal One, crush their fullness with your strength and lead their stubbornness into your wrath. For they thought to frustrate your holy things, to defile the tabernacle of your rest of your honorable name, to seize with iron the horn of your altar.

Look upon the pinnacle of them, place in my hand, a widow, the strength which I have devised, and strike their mouth with the lips of my persuasion against the prince and the prince over his servant, shatter his substance in the hand of a widow. For your strength is not in a multitude, nor is your power or your gift in the mighty, but you are the God of the humble, the helper of the weak, the supporter of the infirm, the savior of the despairing. Also, God of my father and God of the inheritance of Israel, Lord ruler of the heavens and the earth, creator of the waters, king of all creation, hear my supplication, give cunning and persuasion into the wound and into the bruise of those who have devised harsh things against the covenant and your holy house and the heights of Zion and the house of the detention of your sons. Cause that over every nation and every tribe, all may know that you are the God of all power and might, and that there is no other defender of the race of Israel besides you.

What will your prudent mind deign to think of these things? Can you possibly say, after this supplication poured out to God against the enemies of religion, that we are striving against you in the wrong order, because we say to you: either correct your wicked ways and do not take pleasure in the power of your rule, or know that you will come to nothing? What else do we, the servants of God, the priests of his divine majesty, do today, except what those did whose imitators we desire to be found? For I think it is worthy 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 powerful enough to snatch us from the hands of his enemies, that you, the enemy of God's house, are not to be feared, that you should realize you are nothing, because, of course, our God and Lord, who is all-powerful, will reduce to nothing all your impious attempts instituted against his house. What injury is done to you here by us? What insult is inflicted upon the Roman emperor by the priests of the living God, if you are asked either to have eternal life, or it is said to you that, because you have taken up arms against the house of God, unless you correct yourself, you will perish in immense destruction? For what reason do we set forth the destruction of all the enemies of God's house for you?

except that, either terrified by fear of God, you change yourself, or, when you have made yourself punished forever, we may triumph securely on every side, because your blood cannot be demanded of us by God, and because we have seen the destruction of the enemies of his church. Persevere, then, in this your injustice, and you will find what follows for you from such merits. "Lucifer is puffed up with pride," you say, "because he tells you the truth." What did you bid me do at that time when you, the forerunner of Antichrist, took up arms against the house of God to kill us? At the time when you stood forth as the denier of the only Son of God? Was I to be silent and allow you, a wolf, to come to lay waste the flock of God? Or do you think it was fitting that we, as shepherds, should go to meet you with dry throats, ready to devour us and those entrusted to us? Was it not enough of a great deed that this woman, desiring to please God, Judith, should kill the enemy with her own hand, and that we, appointed shepherds, should not have resisted you even with a word on behalf of the Lord? The Lord says in the Gospel: "The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep; he who is a hireling and not a shepherd, whose sheep are not his own, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees; and the wolf seizes them and scatters them, because he is a hireling and the sheep are no concern of his." What, then, were we to do, so that we might not seem to have been insolent toward you?

we have known you to be a wolf, we have seen you stretch out your hands against the Lord's sheep, we have observed you at one time attempting to tear apart all those who invoke the Lord's name. Was it fitting for us to show ourselves not as shepherds, but as hirelings? To blessed Peter it is said: feed my lambs, and again: feed my little sheep; and when the wolf comes, do you think that those who are found to be successors of blessed Peter should act the part of hirelings? Those whom long ago he had 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 might turn you into prey for the devil. You say we act wrongly because we resist your sacrilege, protected by the power of God. Let us see what also at the time when your fellow-tyrant Antiochus was a persecutor of our religion, what those did who remembered that no one is to be feared except God. But first you must know what he, to whom you are similar, wrote; for thus you will be able to understand that those servants of God, in whose company we desire to be found, resisted the sacrilege of Antiochus, just as we also, with God's favor, resist you. Holy Scripture speaks, saying in the first book of Maccabees: and the king wrote to his whole kingdom, that the entire people should be one and each one should abandon his own laws. And all the nations received the word of the king, and many from Israel consented together with them and profaned the sabbath.

And the king sent books into the hand of the messengers to Jerusalem and the cities of Judea, that they might follow the laws of a foreign land and forbid the burnt offerings and sacrifice and libation of sanctification, profane the sabbaths and feast days and pollute the sanctification, and set up shrines and idols and sacrifice swine and common cattle, and leave their sons uncircumcised, and pollute their souls in every uncleanness and abomination, so that they would forget the law and change the ordinances; and whoever did not act according to the king's word would die. According to all these words he sent writings to his entire kingdom and appointed overseers over the people. And he commanded the cities of Judea to sacrifice city by city. And many of the people gathered to them, everyone abandoning the law, and they did evil in the land, and further: and they built an abomination of desolation upon the altar and in the cities of Judea round about they constructed altars and in the doorways of houses and in the streets they burned. And they found the books of the law and burned them, torn apart, with fire, and whoever was found with a book of the covenant and if anyone consented to the law, the king's decree put him to death. In their might they acted against Israel against those who were found every month in the cities; and on the twenty-fourth day of the month they sacrificed upon the altar which was upon the altar. And they killed the women who had circumcised their children, according to the command.

they hung infants from their necks and in their houses, and those who had circumcised them. And many in Israel prevailed and were confirmed in this, that they would not eat common food, and they chose to die rather than be polluted by meats and profane the holy covenant. And a great wrath came upon Israel exceedingly in those days. And Matathias, son of John Simeon, a priest of the sons of Joarib from Jerusalem, arose, and he had five sons, and further: and they saw the blasphemies that were being committed in Judah and in Israel, and he said: Woe is me, why have I come to see the destruction of the holy city, and they sat there, when the sanctification was given into the hand of enemies, into the hand of foreigners? And further: all its ornament has been taken away, from free it has become a slave. Behold, our holy place and our beauty and our glory is laid waste, and the Gentiles have polluted it. Why is life still for us? And Matathias and his sons tore their garments, and covered themselves with sackcloth and mourned greatly. And those who were from the king came and compelled apostasy in the city of Modiin, that they might sacrifice. And many in Israel went over to them. And Matathias and his sons gathered together. And those who had been sent by the king answered and said to Matathias: You are a prince and a noble and great in this city, and strengthened by sons and brothers.

Now come first and do the king’s command, as all the nations and the men of Judah and those who are left in Israel have done, and you and your sons will be friends of the king, and you and your sons will glory in silver and gold and many gifts. Mattathias answered and said with a loud voice: If all the nations that are in the king’s house obey him, so that each one departs from the office of his fathers, and they have chosen his commands, yet I and my sons will go in the testament of our fathers. The Lord be propitious to us; we will not abandon the law and the justifications. We will not hear the word of the king; we will not turn aside from the office of our service to the right or to the left. When he ceased speaking these words, a Jewish man came forward in the sight of all to sacrifice in Modein according to the king’s command. And Mattathias saw and was hidden, and his loins trembled, and he brought forth anger according to judgment. And running to the altar, he killed him. And he killed the king’s man who compelled sacrifice at that time, and he destroyed the altar. And he was zealous for the law, as Phinehas did to Zambri the son of Salu. And Mattathias cried out in the city with a loud voice, saying: Every zealot who establishes the testament, come out after me. And he and his sons fled into the mountain and left behind whatever they had in the city.

What such thing have you seen done by me, that you deign to say: Lucifer has insulted me? He killed the king’s minister with a sword, and also him whom he had seen from his own people tempering the king’s edict rather than God’s; I, because I resist you and yours with a word and say: I do not abandon the apostolic and evangelical faith, I believe as our fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob believed, for that reason I am before you guilty of insults. If you had been in the hands of that Mattathias, zealous for God, or in the hand of Phinehas, to whom God bears witness in Numbers through Moses, and you tried to live in the manner of foreigners, without doubt they would have killed you with a sword; they would have been your killers with a sword. I, because I wound with a word that soul of yours drenched with Christian blood, am judged guilty of insults by you. Why, emperor, do you not avenge yourself on me? Why do you not deign to defend your insults, to avenge yourself on a beggarly man? Why do you not act sufficiently? Not because you are unwilling, but because power has not yet been given to you by Him, trusting in whom I speak these free words to you, which indeed seem perverse to me according to your nefarious deeds. When you see that we have renounced you and all the riches of your kingdom, and your father also, and you perceive that we have promised never to withdraw from the faith, know that we marvel greatly that, although you are accustomed to devour with the edge of the sword those who displease you, you nevertheless spare us. I believe it is out of piety, and we can think that of your leniency.

Indeed, from your excessive benevolence I could gather that you have killed no one. You say: he is proud. Why do I seem proud to you? Surely because you hear from me that you are doing those things which the enemies of the religion of God have always done. It is my duty to thrust these things upon you as a heretic. Or are you not a heretic? But if you are a heretic, why do you accuse me of being injurious to you, when I do that which God has not wished me to do against you? The most holy prophet Jeremiah speaks, saying that God said to him: "And you, gird your loins and arise and say everything that I have commanded you, and fear not their face, nor tremble in their sight." Since these things are so, and the necessity of the office imposed upon us by God urges us, that we say to you as you act whatever God has ordered us to say to you, it remains that either you obey the commands of God, summoned by me, a servant and priest of His own clemency, or you prove from the sacred scriptures, perhaps because you are king, that it is not permitted for me to summon you in the name of the Lord so that you may correct yourself. If you cannot prove it forbidden to me, but rather begin to find it commanded to me, that I should rebuke and reprove and exhort and entreat and admonish and provoke you to please God, why do you say that I am doing you an injury? For to such an extent has God given power to us, His bishops, over you entrusted to us, for rebuking and teaching, that He said: "Fear not their face, nor tremble in their sight.

Behold, I have set you today as a fortified city and as a strong bronze wall against all the kings of Judah and their princes and the people of the land. And they will fight against you, and they will not be able to prevail against you, because I am with you, to deliver you, says the Lord. What are these things that Jeremiah was saying to the kings of Judah and their princes and the peoples of the land? Surely these: that they had abandoned the Lord and sacrificed to alien gods. These things you also have done and are doing: you have abandoned the apostolic and evangelical faith, you have embraced the Arian heresy, and you compel all the servants of God to become idolaters. Because you dare to do these things, you call proud those who desire to consult for your salvation. God says to Jeremiah: And you, gird your loins and arise, and speak all things that I say to you. Do not fear their face nor tremble in their sight. And you, Emperor Constantius, are indignant that we say to you, who are in error: return to the salutary way, abandon the error invented by Arius at the instigation of the devil.

God commands that He alone is to be feared, and He has instructed that no one besides Him is to be dreaded; and have you established things to fulfill that remove the fear of the Lord and make you to be feared? God says to Jeremiah: "Behold, I have set you today as a fortified city and as a strong bronze wall against all the kings of Judah and their princes and the people of the land. And they will fight against you, and they will not be able to prevail against you, because I am with you, to deliver you," says the Lord; and do you think that you can be feared by any of the servants of God? Why do you call me arrogant and proud? Why do you call me insulting? Surely because I have found you, by your works, to be one of those of whom the blessed John says: "You have heard that Antichrist has come; but now there are many Antichrists." Thus you designate us as guilty of injuries, as though we were the first to resist your idolatry from being introduced into the church of God. You have read in the first book of Maccabees: "And each man said to his neighbor: 'If we all do as our brothers have done and do not fight against the Antichrist nations for our soul and our justifications, now they will quickly destroy us from the earth.' And they thought on that day, saying: 'Every man, whoever comes to us for battle on the Sabbath day, we will fight against him, and we will not all die, as our brothers died in hiding.' Then a strong assembly in strength from Israel gathered to them, every volunteer in the law and all who fled from evils to them, and they became a support for them.

and they struck down the strong and they struck down sinners in their wrath and wicked men in their indignation. And the rest fled to the nations, to free 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 hand, and they recovered the law from the hands of the Gentiles and kings, and they did not yield a horn to the sinner. What does your mind, poisoned by the venom of Arius, deign to think? What will your heart, lacerated by the serpent’s bites, be able to devise against this defense of ours? Was it for us to be at rest, while they acted with that one, when your blasphemies were uttered to the people to wound the flock divinely entrusted to us? And, it says, 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 hand, and they recovered the law from the hands of the Gentiles and kings, and they did not yield a horn to the sinner. Since those who acted thus became most beloved of God, was it fitting for us, by flattering you and running with you in your crime, to become most hateful to God, as you are? If we seem injurious to you because we could not accept your idolatry, name one, I ask, who among the worshipers of God has spared the adversaries of His religion.

In the second book of Esdras, when some were objecting that the house and temple and city in Jerusalem should not be restored for the Lord, he says: "The heavens themselves have prospered us, and we, his servants, will arise and build; but for you there is no portion nor mention in Jerusalem." And further on, the adversaries say: "Will they sacrifice or will they eat in their own place? Will not a fox go up and demolish the walls of their stones?" And this his servant Esdras says to God: "Hear us, our God, because we have become contemptible, and turn their insults back upon their own heads, and give them over to be a mockery and in a land of captivity; and do not cover their iniquity, and let their sins not be erased from your face." What such thing have we spoken concerning you? There is a witness whom Esdras prayed to, and whom I also pray to, and whom his whole blessed church established throughout the world prays to, that these are our vows concerning you: that you correct your errors and be one of us. Observe, meanwhile, how the men of God neither feared adversaries nor ceased to pour forth prayer against the enemies of God's house. So that, evidently, the forces of the adversaries of God's religion might be brought to nothing. For thus also the most holy Moses says in the canticle of Exodus to God: "Let fear and trembling at the greatness of your arm fall upon them; let them become as stones until your people pass by, until your people pass by, O Lord, whom you have acquired.

They made such words to God concerning those entrusted to them, and we say this to you: either turn to God, or another will be certain that God will reduce all your empty pride to nothing. We seem to you insolent. Behold further what Matathias, that most holy man devoted to God, did after such illustrious deeds, and what he said to his sons at the end of his life, and see whether we priests act against you in the proper order of God. Holy Scripture speaks, saying: The days of Matathias' death drew near, and he said to his sons: Now pride and chastisement and the time of overthrow and the wrath of indignation have grown strong. Now, sons, be zealous for the law and give your lives to the testament of our fathers, and remember the works of our fathers which they did in their times, and you will receive great glory and an eternal name. Was not Abraham found faithful in temptation, and was it counted to him as righteousness? Joseph in his time of distress kept the commandment, and became lord of Egypt. Phinehas our father, in his zeal, received the covenant of the eternal priesthood. Joshua, while fulfilling the word, became a leader in Israel. Caleb, while bearing witness in the assembly, received an inheritance. David, in his mercy, obtained the throne of the kingdom for ages. Elijah, while zealous for the zeal of the law, was taken up to heaven. Ananias, Azarias, and Misael, believing, were freed from the flame. Daniel, in his simplicity, was freed from the lions' mouth.

and so think from generation to generation, because all who hope in him will not be weakened. and do not fear the words of a sinful man, because his glory is in dung and worms. today he is exalted, tomorrow he will not be found, because he has turned to his earth and his thought will perish. sons, be strengthened and prevail in the law, because in it you will be glorious. and behold your brother Symeon, I know that he is a man of counsel; listen to him, he will be a father to you. and let Judas Maccabaeus, strong in might from his youth, be your chief of the army, and he will fight the war. and you will bring to yourselves all the doers of the law and avenge the vengeance of your people, render retribution to the nations and attend to the precept of the law. when, therefore, you see that such precepts were given to sons and that they were commanded to do what he himself also did, when he teaches that patriarchs, prophets, and all the just pleased God in this way, what, you dark one, were you wanting us to do, lest we seem contumacious to you? would we have yielded, living men, to you a dead man, servants of God to a satellite of the devil, when you see this Mattathias speaking to his sons? and so think from generation to generation, because all who hope in him will not be weakened. and do not fear the words of a sinful man, because his glory is in dung and worms. today he is exalted, and tomorrow he will not be found, because he has turned to his earth and his thought will perish.

Lest we seem offensive to you, should we spare you who destroy the house of God, you who today are and tomorrow will be in worms and dung, and thereby draw down this offense before God, so that we might deserve to be reduced to nothing with you? Learn after this what even the sons of that most religious Matathias did, whether they feared the hand of your executioner, whether they had his army before their eyes and not our Lord, whom we believe to be all-powerful, as we believe, and who, trusting in him, raised themselves with all their strength against the enemy. And Judas, who was called Maccabaeus, his son, rose up in his place. And all his brothers and all who had joined his father helped him; and Israel fought the battle with joy. And he spread the glory of his people and put on a breastplate like a giant, and girded on his war gear, and set up battles, protecting the camp with the sword. And he became like a lion in his deeds, and like a lion's cub roaring in the hunt. And he pursued the wicked, and searching them out, he burned those who disturbed his people. And the wicked were driven away for fear of him, and all the workers of iniquity were troubled, and salvation was made prosperous in his hand. And he exasperated many kings and delighted Jacob in his deeds, and his memory is in blessing even unto ages. And he went through the cities of Judah and destroyed all the impious from it, and turned away wrath from Israel.

and was named to the ends of the earth, and gathered the perishing. Those men, kindled with such zeal, made enemies against the house of God; we ought not to have risen against you. Would we have been called insolent? But you would rightly call me insolent if I had not rightly despised your sacrilegious edict. Look, indeed, at what the leaders of the Jews commanded the apostles, and what the blessed chorus of the apostles did in opposition, and you will find that we are not insolent, but that we desire to have consulted your interest as well. Now Peter and John were going up into the temple at the ninth hour of prayer. And a certain man, lame from his mother’s womb, was being carried, whom they daily placed at the gate of the temple called the Beautiful Gate, so that he might beg alms from those entering the temple. When he saw Peter and John entering the temple, he begged for alms. But Peter, fixing his gaze on him along with John, said: Look at us. And he looked back at them, hoping to receive something from them. But Peter said to him: I have no silver or gold, but what I have I give to you: in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, rise and walk. And taking hold of his right hand, he raised him up, and immediately his feet and soles were strengthened, and leaping up he stood and walked, and entered the temple with them, walking and leaping, praising God.

And all the people saw him walking and praising God, and they recognized that he was the one who used to sit for alms at the Beautiful Gate of the temple, and they were filled with fear and wonder at what had happened to him. And further: While they were speaking these words to the people, the priests and the high priest of the temple and the Sadducees rose up, grieved that they were teaching the people and proclaiming in the laws the resurrection of the dead, and they laid hands on them and put them in custody. And further: Seeing the constancy of Peter and John and discovering that they were unlearned and illiterate men, they marveled, also recognizing that they had been with Jesus, and seeing the man who had been healed standing with them, they could contradict nothing. But when they had ordered them to withdraw outside the council, they conferred among themselves, saying: What shall we do with these men? For since the sign has become known through them to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, it is manifest, and we cannot deny it. But lest these words become further known among the people, let us threaten them that they speak no more in this name before any men. And when all had agreed, summoning them, they commanded them not to speak at all nor to teach in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John answered and said: If it is just before God to listen to you rather than to God, judge; for we cannot but speak what we have seen and heard.

And they, threatening them, let them go, not yet indicating how they would punish them on account of the people. For all were honoring God in the deed. The man in whom the sign of healing had occurred was more than forty years old. When they were dismissed, they came to their own people and reported all that the chief priests and elders had said to them. And when they heard this, with one mind they raised their voice to the Lord and said: “Lord, you are God who made heaven and earth and the sea and all that is in them, who through the Holy Spirit and the mouth of our father David, your servant, said: ‘Why did the nations roar and the peoples meditate on vain things? The kings of the earth stood by and the princes gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ.’ For truly they have gathered in this city against your holy son Jesus, whom you anointed—Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the nations and the peoples of Israel, to do what your hand and counsel had preordained. And now, Lord, look upon their threats and give to your servants the power to speak your word with all confidence, while you stretch forth your hands to perform healings, signs, and wonders through the name of your holy son Jesus.” And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the word of God with all confidence.

If you have already gathered all the reasons why we have put these things forward, if you have thoroughly absorbed the entire desire of our instruction, will you dare to say further that we are insolent? Especially since you see that the blessed apostles neither showed restraint toward the leaders of the Jews nor yielded to their threats, but rather always fearlessly brought to completion the task entrusted to them; and likewise that the people of God were not only not terrified by the threats of the unbelievers, but were even entreated that God might deign to grant to his apostles the confidence of speech and the steadfastness to defend the truth. Therefore, if this was done by the blessed apostles and by the peoples devoted to God, and they were called neither obstinate nor insolent by God for having resisted his enemies, how are we called by you proud, insolent, and stubborn, who, although sinners, nevertheless hold the holy faith of the apostles and of those peoples who believed in the only Son of God? Are we proud because, like the apostles, we hold your apostate voice, your sacrilegious terrors, as nothing, as soldiers of Christ, because we proclaim the Son of God as the true Son of God, just as the most blessed apostles proclaimed? Thus we seem to you insolent, petulant, and proud, just as the most holy apostles seemed to the Jews, to whom, if they were alive today, you could say these things that you deign to say to us.

We find, indeed, that it was always commanded to them by the mouth of your blasphemous scribes, Pharisees, princes, and the high priest of the Jews, that they should not teach nor preach the only Son of God; yet hear what they did, from what is still written, lest perhaps your heart, fattened with darkness, might at last be led to see the truth: through the hands of the apostles many signs and wonders were wrought among the people. And they were all of one mind in the Portico of Solomon, but no one else dared to approach them, yet the people magnified them. And the multitude of men and women believing in the Lord increased all the more, so that they cast out the sick into the streets and placed them on little beds and pallets, so that when Peter came, even his shadow might overshadow some of them. And they were freed from their infirmity. Moreover, a multitude from the neighboring cities of Jerusalem flocked together, carrying the sick and those who were vexed by unclean spirits, and all were healed. But the high priest and all who were with him, filled with envy, belonging to the sect of the Sadducees, laid hands on the apostles and put them in custody. However, an angel of the Lord opened the doors of the prison and led them out, saying: "Go, and standing in the temple, speak to the people all the words of this life." When they heard this, therefore, they entered the temple at dawn and taught.

But when the high priest and those who were with him arrived, they called together the council and the whole assembly of the sons of Israel and sent men to the prison to bring them forth. The attendants came, however, and did not find them; they went to the prison and, returning, reported, saying: "We found the prison indeed closed with all diligence and the guards standing at the door; but when we had opened it, we found no one inside." When the princes and the high priest heard these words, they were perplexed as to what that might be. Then someone arriving reported to them, saying: "Behold, those whom you placed in custody are standing in the temple teaching the people." Then the prince went with the attendants and brought them, not by force; for they feared the people, lest they be praised. When they had brought them, they set them before the council. And the priest questioned them, saying: "We forbade you by proclamation not to teach in this name, and behold you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and wish to bring upon us the blood of that man." Peter and the apostles answered, saying: "Ought one to obey God or men? If, therefore, God is to be obeyed and not men, why do you call us contumacious, why do you call us injurious, when you see that we obey the precepts of God?" Hearing these things, they raged, says Scripture, and plotted to kill them.

Thus you also detain us in prisons, threaten to kill us, because you are possessed by the same spirit by which the Jews were seized and are still seized. If you are not seized by that unclean spirit, why do you forbid us to confess and preach the only Son of God? The angel of God, bringing the apostles out of the prison of the Jews, your fellow desperadoes, said: "Go, teach in the temple the words of this life." And you, removing priests from the church of God to be thrown into prison, thought to prevent us from preaching the word of life. Meanwhile, I ask you to answer: what is between you and your fellow tribesman, whom the people of Sirmium call Photinus in reverse order? What is the difference, what distinguishes you, you are asked to distinguish. Behold, if at that time the princes, the high priest, and the whole council of the Jews had said to the apostles: "Do you wish to bring upon us the blood of that man?" — even Photinus professes the Son of God to be merely a man, says that he did not exist before the blessed Mary. This also is your profession: that he is indeed before all things, that is, before the heavens, earth, sea, and all that is in them, the Son of God, but that he was constituted from nothing, but that he is a creature. What difference do you think there is between you and Paul of Samosata or that disciple of his, your fellow tribesman, except that you say "before all things," while he says "after all things"? Otherwise, you share one mind of cruelty and unbelief, so that you would say that God does not have a true Son. On the contrary, see how the holy church believes.

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of visible and invisible things, and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, born of the Father, that is, from the substance of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one substance with the Father, which the Greeks call *homoousion*, through whom all things were made, whether those which are in heaven or those which are on earth, who for us men and for our salvation descended, was incarnate, was made man, suffered, rose on the third day, ascended into heaven, about to come to judge the living and the dead; we believe also in the Holy Spirit. You see that this is the apostolic and evangelical faith, which always maintains that the Son reigned and reigns with the Father, which confesses both that the divine Trinity is perfect and that it has one substance. Moreover, what was there between the Church and you heretics or Jews, if the blessed Church did not believe thus? What holy faith? So that you might know what the Church of the Lord punishes in you, it has said and says concerning you: "But those who say: 'There was a time when he was not' and 'before he was born he was not,' and that he was made from non-existent things or from another substance, saying that the Son of God is changeable and convertible, these the Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematizes.

Because of this holy faith, the apostles were shut up in prison, they received chains, they were tormented with beatings at every hour, lest they reveal the truth to the world, and yet they refused to stop preaching until they were even put to death; and you say that we are men of the greatest obstinacy, because, evidently, we hold to the way of the apostles, because we tell you that you have become a wanderer from the truth, what the blessed John the Baptist did to Herod. Now Herod the tetrarch, when he was rebuked by him on account of Herodias, his brother’s wife, and for all the evil deeds that Herod had done, added this to everything else and shut up John in prison. For what reason did Herod shut up John? Certainly because his deeds were being denounced; so also with you, since you act as a son of God, because we say to you: do not carry on as you do, do not be a murderer, do not persecute the church of the Lord, do not reject the apostolic faith and approve the heretical one instead, do not introduce idolatry into the church. We think that we say these things especially for your own salvation; if you are unwilling to restrain yourself, without doubt you will be seeking eternal death for yourself, just as Herod also sought it. For he could not harm John, whether by casting him into prison or by killing him, since you see that John is a friend of God, but Herod is an enemy of God.

seeking to harm us, who desire to grant you eternal safety, you persecute us in every way; but the forces of your authority will not be able to harm the servants of the only Son of God, because you are found to be one of those whom he subjected to us believers, saying: Behold, I have given you power to tread upon serpents and scorpions and upon every power of the enemy; and nothing will harm you. You who say, because I speak the truth to you, that I am proud, what do you wish me to be found? That servant who received one talent and hid it and presented only that same one to his master, because he did not multiply it through usury as his fellow servants presented to their master, deserved to lose even that talent and to hear: Wicked and lazy servant, or that one who presented the received amount multiplied tenfold and to whom it was said: Well done, good and faithful servant, because you were faithful in a small matter, and I will place you over many; enter into the joy of your master? But how will I be able to hear that, if out of fear of you I do what pleases you? Look in the Gospel at what the Lord wanted us to do, and stop calling us arrogant: There was a certain rich man; he went to a faraway region to receive a kingdom and return. And he called ten servants and gave them ten talents and said to them: Trade while I come. But the citizens hated him and sent an embassy after him, saying: We do not want this man to rule over us.

And it came to pass, when he had returned after receiving the kingdom, he ordered the servants to whom he had given money to be called, so that he might know how much each had traded. The first came, saying: "Lord, your talent has acquired ten talents." And he said to him: "Well done, good servant, because you were faithful in a small matter, you will have authority over ten cities." And another came, saying: "Lord, your mina has made five talents." He said to him as well: "You, be over five cities." And another came, saying: "Behold, your talent which I kept stored in a cloth, because I feared you, that you are a harsh man; you take what you did not place and reap what you did not sow." And the lord said to him: "From your own mouth I judge you, unfaithful servant; you knew that I am a harsh man and take what I did not place and reap what I did not sow, and why did you not put my money out for trade, so that I, upon coming, would have exacted it with interest? And to those standing by: 'Give, take the talent from him and give it to him who has ten talents.' I say to you, moreover: to every possessor it will be given, but from him who does not possess, even what he has will be taken away. Nevertheless, my enemies, those who did not wish me to rule over them, bring them here and kill them before me.

Surely, if you do not change yourself, you will be one of those who were ordered to be killed. Hence I seem proud to you, because I desire that you not be killed, because I am one who, in that quantity entrusted to me, which I wish to be multiplied, also wish you to be found. Because we wage this struggle with you in such a way, we seem to you enemies, we who, retaining the precept of the blessed apostle, incessantly pour forth prayers for your safety. I therefore beseech, first of all, that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all men, for kings, and for all who are in high station, so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life with piety and gravity. For this is good and acceptable before our saving God, who desires that all men who are to be saved come to the knowledge of the truth. We seem to you enemies, we who desire that you attain the knowledge of the truth; you call me insulting because I say what is conducive to your safety and mine. But this assertion of yours, which maintains that I do you injury, shows you to be imprudent. For if you had been prudent, first you would never have been found a sacrilegious man; then, corrected by the authority of the sacred scriptures, you would have already shown yourself a temperate man. But now, because you are imprudent, when the bishop says to you: "Emperor, provide for your safety; for you are burdened with the heavy loads of your crimes," you say: "You insult me.

I call to witness before God, the apostle says to Timothy, and before Christ Jesus and the chosen angels, that you keep these things without reproach, doing nothing in another direction, but preserving equity. And you call him insulting who, having caught you in such great crimes, now rebukes you for why you committed them, now entreats you to snatch yourself from evils while there is opportunity and to be such a one as God does not punish among those whom he designates as wicked and faithless, saying: I have begotten sons and exalted them, but they themselves have spurned me. Hence I seem proud to you, because I desire that you be found among those whom the only Son of God invites to his kingdom, saying: Come, blessed of my father, receive the kingdom that has been prepared for you from the beginning of the world. You think you suffer insult because things are said to you that are true; the glorious apostle commands to the contrary, saying: Rebuke those who sin before all, so that the rest may have fear. Whom ought I to heed? You, who say: Let me destroy the religion of God, let me turn his servants to Antichrist, let me establish all in this sacrilege of mine, or the blessed apostle, who commands me to rebuke you sinning before all? But if you think I ought to have spared you because you are emperor, in this you are found imprudent. For you hear the apostle saying: Rebuke those who sin before all, so that the rest may have fear; and you say: You ought, you say, to have spared me especially, because I was king of the Roman Empire.

And where was I omitting that testimony? I call to witness before God and Christ Jesus and the chosen angels, that you keep these things without discrimination, doing nothing by declining to another side? From this, certainly, I seem to you to be insolent, because I have not placed your commands before the commands of God. In the Acts of the Apostles, I read that the blessed apostles were seized by those whose partner you are not only in unbelief but also in cruelty, and that a command was given to them not to teach in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. But let us together examine that very part of sacred Scripture, whether the apostles moderated the commands of God’s only Son for the sake of enemies, or whether they most zealously carried through what they had undertaken to fulfill. “Summoning,” it says, “the apostles, having beaten them, they dismissed them, commanding that they speak in the name of Jesus to no one.” Therefore they went rejoicing from the sight of the council, because they were deemed worthy to suffer insult for the name. But every day in the temple and at home they did not cease, teaching and evangelizing our Lord Jesus Christ.

When the holy scripture relates that the blessed apostles did these things, while you invite hearts to deny the Son of God and do enough to establish your heresy, shall we be silent before the rulers of the churches of God, lest we be found to have stood insolently against you, blasphemer, murderer, destroyer of the religion of God? The holy scripture speaks that the apostles feared neither the blows nor the threats of the sons of pestilence, but always taught; was it fitting that we be broken by the vigor of your fleeting kingdom, by which you could fulfill all your wicked designs? We are considered obstinate by you because true things are said to you by us. Thus also your fellow-blasphemers judged the most blessed Stephen, because he said to them: "With hard neck and uncircumcised heart and ears, you have always resisted the Holy Spirit, as your fathers and you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who announced the coming of the Just One, of whom you have now been betrayers and murderers, you who received the law in the ordinance of angels and did not keep it." When the Jews heard these things, were they justly or unjustly moved against the most holy martyr Stephen? If unjustly, then certainly see that you are unjustly moved against those who wish you well.

Notice that you stand in that part against the church of God, in which the Jews then stood and now stand, that you are so stiff-necked, so uncircumcised in heart and ears; hence it is that, just as they, hearing the truth, could not endure it but rushed to the murder of the worshiper of God, so you also rush to our murder, who speak to you plainly and openly. But when they had heard this, says the divine scripture, they raged in their hearts and gnashed their teeth at him, and further: shouting with a loud voice, they stopped their ears and made a united attack on him, and having cast him out of the city, they stoned him. Thus you, raging in heart and gnashing your teeth, are against us for no other reason than that we call you a persecutor of the house of God, a destroyer of the religion of God, a shedder of the blood of Christ’s servants, a sacrilegious man, and rightly so, indeed a blasphemous heretic, one who attacks the apostolic and evangelical faith. We do nothing hateful to God if, acting with you in this way as I contend, we say what we understand you to be. For we find that such men as you are acted thus against the glorious ones. But while they were serving, says the scripture, and fasting, the Holy Spirit said to the Lord: Separate for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them. Then, fasting and praying, they laid hands on them and sent them forth.

And indeed, having been dismissed by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia and from there sailed to Cyprus. And when they had come to Salamis, they preached the word of the Lord in the synagogues of the Jews. They had John as their attendant, and when they had traversed the whole island as far as Paphos, they found a certain man, a false prophet, a Jew, whose name was Barjesus, which is interpreted as "Ready," who was with the proconsul Sergius Paulus, a prudent man; and when he had summoned Barnabas and Saul, he sought to hear the word of God. But Elymas the magician (for thus his name is said to be interpreted) was opposing them, who sought to turn the proconsul away from the faith. But Saul, who is Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, fixing his gaze upon him, said: "O you, full of all deceit and falsehood, son of the devil, enemy of all justice, you do not cease to pervert the straight ways of the Lord. And now behold the hand of the Lord against you, and you will be blind, not seeing the sun, until a time." And immediately darkness and shadows fell upon him, and he went about seeking someone to lead him by the hand. Seeing what had happened, the proconsul believed, marveling and being astonished at the teaching of the Lord. We believe this is supported by testimony. You will not say: "Lucifer does me an injury against the emperor.

What is it to me what you are, since I will say these things which that man heard from the apostle, who was recognized to have been a false prophet? For I hold you, Emperor Constantius, to be just what the glorious Paul and Barnabas held the Jew Bar-Jesus to be. For you are found to be just as opposed to the name of the Lord as he was; you resist the truth just as he resisted; you do not want men to believe in the only Son of God, but in yourself and that Jewish false prophet, except that you are driven by the same adverse spirit as he was driven. For when you hear that the proconsul was a prudent man, desiring to be instructed by the blessed apostles so that he might grasp the way of truth, and that he whose imitator you are resisted the apostles, lest they lead the proconsul to believe in the Son of God, it is clear that you are just what that Jewish false prophet was. Likewise, when Holy Scripture says that Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, spoke that invective, you ought to understand that that Jewish false prophet was full of an unclean spirit. Therefore, just as he, driven by an adverse spirit, contradicted, so also, since you are found to resist by the prompting of the adversary, you ought to judge yourself to be none other than the Jewish false prophet Bar-Jesus.

Therefore, since you understand yourself to be another Barjesus the Jewish false prophet, whenever it is spoken by your sacrilegious mouth: "God has no true Son," do not take it amiss if we say to you those things which were said by the apostle to your predecessor, the Jewish false prophet: full of all deceit and treachery, son of the devil, enemy of all justice, who do not cease to pervert the straight ways of the Lord. If you are moved as to why these things are said to you which were said to him, whose path of death you are following, you will show yourself to be very foolish, wishing to be what that Jewish false prophet son was, yet not wanting those names and titles to be applied to you by which he was also called. Again I both exhort and entreat, as I also warn, that you may wish to take thought for yourself, lest eternal punishment seize you. For if he deserved to be blinded because he attempted to resist, consider what evils, both in this life and forever, can be presented to you, a murderer, a sacrilegious man, a destroyer of God's religion. Receive still these things which can form you that we are not insulting, but truthful. The seven most glorious brothers resisted Antiochus, just as now we have resisted you.

You have read what the fourth one replied to your fellow pest, who deign to shout that I am insulting because I say to you that unless you have turned to God, you are to perish forever; indeed he says: it is better for men given over to death to hope for resurrection again by God from the dead; for you there will be no resurrection to life. If from us, you tyrant, you hear that you will not receive resurrection to life, if you have remained in this unbelief, that you will rise not to rest but to eternal punishment, what insult is that? Likewise the fifth, when he had been brought forward and tormented, the scripture speaks that he said to the king: you have power among men, since you are corruptible, you do what you wish; but do not think our race has been abandoned by God. Endure patiently and see, how his great power will torture you and your seed. What does it seem to you, because with such constancy the servant of God inveighed against your fellow tyrant? Surely you will not judge the worshiper of God to have been insulting, the worshiper of the devil? Will you deny that he, speaking the truth, was proud, nor ought you to judge me insolent, because I say to you that we are not abandoned by God, for whose sake I endure these things, and that you, on the contrary, unless you have been corrected, with your corruptible glory will come to nothing.

See also what the sixth one said, and you will find that we resist you, turbulent as a storm, with the same wedge with which they resisted: do not wander in vain; for we suffer these things on our own account, sinning against our God, and they were done as a worthy admonition; but do not think you will go unpunished, when you have attempted to fight against God. My letters, of modest ability, and books, though described in rustic speech, prove that I have often said that our sins indeed caused us to fall into your hands, forerunner of Antichrist, yet you fight against God, and therefore, unless you look out for yourself, you will indeed, like that Antiochus, be in eternal punishment, while the Lord will be propitiated to us. You are grieved that we reveal to you what has been entrusted to us, and who you are, and that the shadow of Antichrist, worthy of you, is to be trampled by all soldiers of Christ. Who, you ask, could trample me? Those whom, because they confess themselves Christians, you keep shut up in prisons, deprive of patrimony, make exiles, torture, kill. Hence you think us insolent, because we beseech all entrusted to us to trample the head of the devil, to reduce your sacrilegious efforts to nothing by the power of their passions inflicted for Christ, the only Son of God.

May that most glorious mother of these seven sons be troublesome to you, because she deigned to entice her own sons to overcome your fellow builder Antiochus, saying: I do not know how you appeared in my womb, nor did I give you spirit and life, nor did I myself put together the limbs of each one; but indeed the creator of the world, who formed the birth of man and who examines the origin of all things, will give back to you spirit with mercy and life, just as now you yourselves despise yourselves for the sake of his laws. The religious mother did not cease to say these things to her sons, loving her sons bravely, until she had noticed that all were killed. We, on the other hand, whom the mouth of the prophet had foretold would be future shepherds for his flock, saying: and I will give you shepherds according to my heart, and they will pasture you, pasturing with discipline, ought it to have been fitting for us to be silent, lest we be seen as insolent to you, a rabid wolf coming to slaughter the sheep of God? That woman inflamed the hearts of her sons with love of God to such an extent that by their death she had taken possession of the victory of the sword; and you judged it fitting for us to say to the soldiers of Christ: do not take up arms against Constantius, the satellite of the devil, do not resist the temple of all demons; but rather do whatever he has ordered to be done. What is this contumacy of ours, if we strive to fulfill the office delegated to us by God, if finally we are found to be imitators of that woman?

You wish to please the devil, whose work you are found to celebrate; you do not at all wish to be most acceptable to God by conducting yourself contrary to these things. If it still moves you, why you are called that by us, hear also from that seventh son of this woman, how he cried out against Antiochus: But Antiochus, thinking himself scorned and despising the voice of the woman who rebuked him, since he was still quite young, did not only exhort with words, but also affirmed with an oath that he would make him rich and blessed, would transfer him from his ancestral home, keep him as a guest, and entrust him with necessities. But when the young man paid no attention to these things, he called the mother and urged her to work for the young man's salvation. And when he had exhorted her much, he undertook to persuade the son. So, leaning toward him, she mocked the cruel tyrant and said in her native tongue: "Son, have pity on me, who carried you in my womb for ten months and gave you milk for three years and nourished you and brought you to this age. I ask, my son, look up at the sky and the earth and, having inspected all things that are in them, understand that God made them from nothing and the human race likewise, so that you do not fear this executioner, but, having become worthy of your brothers, you may undergo death, so that in that mercy he may receive you with your brothers." When she had said these things, the young man said: "Whom do you support? I do not obey the king's command, but I obey the precept of the law which was given to us through Moses; you, however, who have become the inventor of all malice against the Hebrews, will not escape the hand of God.

For if our Lord was somewhat angry with us living ones on account of rebuke and correction, yet He will again be reconciled to His own; and you, O wicked and most shameful of all men, do not vainly puff yourself up with empty hopes against His servants; for you have not yet escaped the judgment of the all-powerful, all-seeing God, for our brothers, having now endured a brief pain under the testament of God, have fallen back into eternal life; but you, by the judgment of God, will pay the penalties of pride. I, however, like my brothers, give up both soul and body for the laws of our fathers, calling upon God to become propitious to our people sooner and for you, with tortures and beatings, to confess that He alone is God. But upon me and my brothers, let the almighty wrath, which has been justly brought upon our entire race, be established. What, Constantius, have you heard from us more than what has been said by this faithful servant of God? If he said to the satellites of Antiochus: "Whom do you support? I do not obey the command of the king, but I obey the command of the law which was given to us through Moses"; and we say to yours: "What is it that you think we can be made to do at the will of Constantius, the forerunner of Antichrist? As we are Christians, we will always be.

If it was said to that Antiochus: "You, however, who have become the inventor of all malice against the Hebrew, will not escape the hand of God," we also say to you and bid you take it, that because no one more powerful than you has ever been a persecutor of the sacred law of God, you will not escape the hand of God. If Antiochus hears that the Lord was then angry with His own for the sake of rebuke and that He would again be reconciled to His servants, you also hear us saying these things. If it was said to that king: "And you, O wicked and most shameful of all men, do not vainly puff yourself up, inflated with empty hope against His servants; for you have not yet escaped the judgment of the all-powerful, all-seeing God," you also hear these things from us, that you are the wickedest and most shameful of all men, who for this reason conduct yourself so as to make us your co-apostates, but yet you are vainly puffed up, inflated with empty hope by the devil's prompting against us, the servants of God, because you can neither fulfill your evil endeavors nor escape the judgment of the all-seeing and all-powerful God. You hear from us, just as Antiochus hears through that illustrious young man, that our brothers, having suffered little under the testament of God, have fallen back into eternal life, but you will pay the just penalties for your pride by the judgment of God.

You hear from us that we are prepared to be killed by you, the executioner, for God, just as you have already killed our brothers, and that we are ready to surrender our souls and bodies for Jesus Christ, the true and only Son of God; moreover, we trust in his unfailing mercy, that he will sooner rescue his entire flock from you, the rapacious wolf, from you, the rabid dog; as for you, unless you look to yourself, you will always be heading into torments. Why should I say more to you, either through Scripture or in person? I want you to refute it, you tyrant of our time. If I have called you an executioner, not only that most righteous young man but also his mother said it to your fellow Antiochus; if I have called you the inventor of all malice, if I have said that you will not escape the hand of God, if I have called you a criminal and the most shameful of all men, because you will not escape the judgment of the all-powerful, all-seeing God, but will pay just penalties in God’s judgment—all these things had already been said by that religious young man to your colleague Antiochus. You cry out that I am insulting you, because you see that names worthy of your deeds have been imposed on you, those very names which our predecessors, worshipers of the living God, already imposed on your fellow tyrants. The blessed apostle Peter says: “Be sober, keep watch; your adversary the devil prowls like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour; resist him, firm in faith, knowing that these same sufferings will be endured by your brotherhood throughout this whole age.

If you think I am insolent because I hear that the things you do are evil—in what do I find myself resisting the devil according to the apostle’s precept? For behold, this dragon, by his wine, leading you into every drunkenness, has cast it into the whole flock of God, so that, using your royal support, you may make all men drunk as you yourself are, that is, insane, senseless, and mad. Do you not see that you, from the vine of Sodom, from the vineyard of Gomorrah, are made so drunk that you have fornicated, just as the Jews have fornicated? In what, I ask, shall we resist the devil, if we do not go to meet you, through whom he has armed himself to devour us? If it has not been said to you by the sober to the drunk, by the healthy to the sick, by the whole to the wounded, by the seeing to the blind, by the standing to the fallen, by the pious to the impious, by the sheep of God to the rapacious wolf, by the most kind and those who love mercy to the cruel executioner, the savage murderer, by those who glorify God to the blasphemer, by the worshipers of God to the sacrilegious, by Christians to the heretical Haman—if it has not been said to you by us: “Depart, minister of our adversary, give honor to God”? In what shall we resist the devil, if we have spared the net of his will in you, if your drunkenness—that is, your madness—has not been declared to all, if finally, by the fact that you rage against us, you have not been made manifest to the whole world, so that from what you do, you cannot be felt to be a servant of Christ, but plainly a slave of that one who is like a lion roaring against us?

Hence we seem to you to be insolent, because we say that you have been made drunk by that wine from which even those were led into every madness of drunkenness—those to whom or on whose account it is said: “Have not his stained sons sinned? A depraved and perverse nation, have you repaid the Lord thus? So a foolish and unwise people?” And further: “Jacob drank wine and ate and was sated, and the beloved kicked; he became fat and grew thick, he was distended and abandoned the God who made him, and he withdrew from God his savior. They provoked me with foreign things, with their abominations they stirred me up, and they sacrificed to demons and not to God, to gods whom they did not know; new ones have come at present whom their fathers did not know. You abandoned the God who begot you and forgot the God who nourishes you.” Thus your faithlessness, which you preach, proves that you, like the Jews, have abandoned God and followed idolatry.

But now I have judged that you alone should be led to this point, so that you might see that we are not—because I will tell you what you are—insolent, petulant, and proud, but truthful, and fearing no one except God. The most blessed apostle John says: “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits whether they are from God, since many false prophets have gone out.” You seem to me clearly to be one of these false prophets, since by denying the only Son of God you declare that you have nothing but the spirit of Antichrist in your sacrilegious mouth. Hence it comes about that you cannot even hear us speaking about the divine eternity of the only Son of God, since that spirit which dwells in you, the spirit of Antichrist, cannot endure and does not wish to be driven out of you, but desires to remain in you until it sees you snatched away to those places in which it itself will be forever; for it grieves that you, its most faithful delight, you who comply with all its desires, are being torn from it. “Beloved,” he says, “do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits whether they are from God, since many false prophets have gone out into the world. From this understand the spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ came in the flesh is from God. And every spirit that destroys Jesus is not from God, and this is what is of Antichrist.” And further on: “These are from the world; therefore they speak of the world and the world hears them; but we are from God.

who knows God hears us; but whoever is not from God does not hear us. From this we discern the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. It is clear, Constantius, that you bear the spirit of antichrist, that you are driven by the spirit of error. For just as those who said that the only Son of God was not taken from the womb of the blessed Virgin, who did not believe him incarnate, made man, are proved to have the spirit of error and are called antichrists, so also you Arians, when you deny that the only Son of God was truly born of the Father, that is, from the substance of the Father, when you spurn him as the true Son and refuse to believe that he always reigned with the Father, that the Son was never without the Father nor the Father without the Son, when you deny that the Father and his only Son have one divinity, of what spirit do you manifest yourselves to be full except that of antichrist? For one who has the spirit of God cannot say of the only Son of God: “There was a time when he was not” and “He was made from nothing,” since he believes that he reigned with the Father without beginning and will reign without end. Therefore, when you say that he is not the true Son of God, when finally you attempt to destroy that he is ὁμοούσιον καὶ [ἀϊδίως?], which the Greeks say, but we Romans say of one substance with the Father, you certainly declare yourselves to be among those false prophets and among the antichrists.

You should not judge me insulting because I say you are driven by an unclean spirit, because I call you the forerunner of antichrist; for your mouth reveals you to be this, for one having the spirit of God cannot assert such things as you Arians or all your co-heretics of various sects maintain. You deny that God has a true son, you say he is adoptive, and you do not judge that you are understood, for that you are one of those antichrists, by the mouth of John declaring. You have been revealed, I say, to be led by an adverse spirit. Hence it is, finally, that we have not believed you when you say concerning the Son: he was made from nothing. For we have known that these things could not be said except by the spirit of a false prophet, except by the forerunner of antichrist, except by a satellite and slave of demons.

We could not have believed you saying these things, since the Holy Spirit spoke through the prophets concerning the only Son of God, that he is the true Son of God, that he is eternal and coeternal with the Father, that the Son never was without the Father nor the Father without the Son, and the blessed apostles reported the same things, inasmuch as the Holy Spirit Paraclete, who was in the prophets, also remained in the apostles; this Holy Spirit Paraclete, because he is in the Church of God and you are placed outside the Church of God, since he does not abide in you, you are certainly proved to have the spirit of antichrist; which unclean spirit, lest you see what we set forth, overshadows your heretical hearts with the darkness of the blindness of error, so that you cannot escape from his snares. You judge us insulting because we declare you to be what we see you are. Behold, even when I find in the Gospel according to Matthew that the Lord said: "Behold, I send you, as sheep among wolves," you seem to me to be one of those wolves, and indeed the one upon whom the rage of all wolves roaring against the flock of God is heaped. For who that denies the only Son of God does not rejoice, does not boast, when he sees your flock of Christ so ravaged? I also take you as one of those unbelievers, one of those faithless to whom it is said: "Offspring of vipers, how can you speak what is good, since you are evil?" For each one speaks from his mouth out of the abundance of his heart.

A good man sends forth good things from a good treasure, and a bad man brings forth bad things from a bad treasure. If the things you say are good, Constantius, you can have a good treasure. I am insolent, because I will say to you that darkness dwells in your heart; from your most shadowy senses, as you are, you dare to bring forth unclean and shadowy things. Behold also that which was said to blessed Peter by the Lord; if you hear it, you will without doubt call me insulting. Most holy Matthew says: "While he was still speaking, behold, Judas, one of the twelve, and with him a great crowd with swords and clubs, sent by the chief priests and the elders of the people; and the one who had betrayed him gave them a sign, saying: 'Whomever I have kissed, that is he; seize him.' And immediately approaching Jesus, he said: 'Hail, Rabbi.' And he kissed him. Then Jesus said: 'Why have you come, friend?' Then they approached and laid hands on Jesus and seized him. And behold, one of those who were with Jesus, stretching out his hand, drew his sword and struck the servant of the chief priest and cut off his ear. Then Jesus said to him: 'Put your sword back in its place; for all who take up the sword will perish by the sword.'" You must call me insulting when you hear that, if you use the sword, you will perish by the sword. Or have you not used the sword?

If you have killed no Christians with the sword, if you have persecuted none to the point of death, why then, when you confess that the only Son of God was a true Son, why, when you hold to the apostolic and evangelical faith, why, when you have refused to be an Arian, can you not perish by the sword? For you hear it said to blessed Peter, and indeed by God the only Son: "Every one who uses the sword shall perish by the sword." I am insolent, because I have said to you: It is not lawful for Christians to kill, because it is fitting for Christians to suffer injury, not to inflict it; you ought, for Christ's sake, to kill those who cry out that they are Christians, not Christians. These are the commands the Lord gave us; if they are kept, then we shall persevere as Christians. But you, since you deign to pursue his servants with the sword, we can certainly no longer call you a Christian, but plainly a brigand or a gladiator. Meanwhile, since we have recounted how your table-companion Judas Iscariot betrayed the Lord, let us thoroughly examine at this point the causes of his sacrilege and of yours, and you will find that you and Judas Iscariot are one. He betrayed the Lord to the Jews, because he did not believe, except as your fellow-countryman of Sirmium, who was and is unworthily called Photinus, now believes. You have betrayed him, and indeed to the whole world, so that all may deny his divinity. Which of you is greater in crime? I think it is you.

For everyone who has sinned against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but whoever has blasphemed against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, neither here nor in the future. You have come forth as a traitor of His divinity, which all could deny. For as far as it lies with you, you have betrayed Him, concerning whom you have both given written books and set up preachers of your well-intentioned vow in every place. So that all could deny that He is the true Son of God, you caused the apostolic and evangelical faith, described at Nicaea against you heretics, to be judged heretical, and you caused your blasphemy to be called catholic. And yet that Judas, who had betrayed Him, seeing that he had worked for the destruction of his own salvation, led by repentance returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying: "I have sinned, because I have betrayed innocent blood." But they said: "What is that to us? You see to it." And having thrown down the silver pieces in the temple, he withdrew and went away and hanged himself. He, though for a single moment he repented and gave back the price he had received; what of you, who, when confronted with the fact that you are committing a sin, have not only not repented of it by His servants, but have even grown more in contumacy?

What of you, who give all the resources of your kingdom so that you may strengthen your sacrilege, who have corrupted not a few by the immense reward of your wealth, whom you could not otherwise corrupt from the truth, who have so enriched a certain number of the needy that they can be equaled to your companions in the magnitude of their riches? Judas, after he perceived his crime, ended his life by a noose; you, who deserve to be punished by a greater penalty for the magnitude of your evil deed, what will you do when you have learned, though late, that you have done evil, when your eyes, now scarcely able to see, poisoned by heretical venom, begin to see? And yet, if you are willing to believe, what you do out of ignorance must be forgiven you, just as you see it was forgiven the blessed apostle Paul; but if not, you will be like Judas descending into the infernal night, then saying to those who have now compelled you to do these things, that is, to your Co-arians: I have sinned with you, denying the only Son of God; I have sinned by granting you authority to deny his eternal mercy. Then, when you begin to recognize that we rightly confess one eternity of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, when you begin to see that there is one magnitude and one power in the Father and in his only Son and in the Holy Spirit the Paraclete, where then will be those who drove you to commit this sacrilege, so that you say to them: I repent, because I have run with you, enemies of God, because I have been with you persecuting the house of God?

They will be with you without doubt in Gehenna. Where then will be the riches of your kingdom, which avail you not for salvation, but serve for your eternal destruction? We indeed desire that God, to you the enemy of your own salvation, may deign to reveal the truth, and that you may emerge from such great perils. Moreover, how much more eminent you are in wickedness than Judas Iscariot is not a matter of great effort to assess, since you have summoned the whole world to deny his divinity, whereas Judas handed over the Lord only to those who had not yet believed in him; you, on the contrary, have deigned to provoke even those who already believed to deny his deity. Judas used force against no one that they might perish with him; you, on the other hand, fight with a military hand against us whom you know to believe, just as the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs believed. So how great the distance between you and Judas is not a matter of great labor to discern. You call me abusive, because I desire that neither I nor those entrusted to me be wounded by your pestilential teaching, because I tell you that you are full of disease and therefore you are to be avoided by the servants of God, lest we ourselves, already made diseased, perish together from this one plague of yours. "Would that you bore a little of my folly," says the apostle to the Corinthians, "but also bear with me. For, emulating you, I emulate God. For I have determined to present you, as a pure virgin to one husband, to Christ. But I fear that, just as the serpent seduced Eve by his cunning, your minds may be corrupted from the chastity which is in Christ Jesus.

Therefore I seem to you to be insulting, because I am fearful lest through your blasphemy you corrupt the chastity which we have in Christ Jesus, because we are afraid lest, just as your dearest serpent seduced Eve with his cunning, you seduce us from God and make us guilty of death. You call me contumacious, because I say that you are a deceitful worker, a pseudo-Christian. These things were not first uttered against you by me. For you hear the blessed apostle designating you a deceitful worker, a pseudo-apostle: for pseudo-apostles of that kind are deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ. Nor is it surprising, for Satan himself transforms himself as an angel of light; it is no great thing if his ministers are transformed, as are the ministers of righteousness, whose end is according to their own operation. Hence I seem to you to be proud, because I say that I recognize you from your deeds as being among those whom the Holy Spirit through the apostle has foreshadowed as such to come. If you are not a deceitful worker, refute me; for I know that you pretend to be a Christian, when you are an Arian, wishing to make all of us slaves of whose satellite you are. If you are not a deceitful worker, prove it; for we see that in some matters you feign piety, while you exercise all your impiety against us Christians. If you are not a deceitful worker, how is it that, feigning peace, you had attempted to establish yourself for the destruction of the whole Church of God, for the dissolution of the peace handed down to her through the only Son of God?

Nor can I have the peace of the Lord from that moment when I would have done what you command against the Lord’s precept, from that moment when I would have begun to deny the only Son of God himself, as you deny him. Have you not been transformed into the apostles of Christ, you who, as if all care of the Church truly pertained to you, are so anxious, namely that no Catholic bishop should preside over a church anywhere, that no one should be left who can profess himself a Christian? You remove Catholic bishops, you ordain heretics, you write dreadful threats, lest a sedition arise. Indeed, anyone who is ignorant thinks you, when he sees you doing these things, to be a Christian; we, on the contrary, taught by the blessed apostle, know that Satan has transformed himself, like an angel of light, who carries on all these things against the holy Church through you. We cannot wonder, if we see you as his minister, if you, transformed as a minister of justice, are a minister of injustice. We exhort you: would that you turn yourself to that by which you can be believed to be a servant of God, by which you can be judged and understood to be a Christian. How often it is said by us to you, that you could not have become a denier of the only Son of God, unless you were full of the adverse spirit. You are accustomed to say that we do you an injury, and although I have already proved this in very many places, that you come against the family of God with your hearts goaded by unclean spirits, still take up in the Acts of the Apostles what happened.

Now it happened that, as we were going to prayer, a certain girl possessed by a spirit of Python met us, who by divining brought much profit to her masters. She followed Paul and us and cried out, saying: “These are servants of the Most High God, who preach to us the way of salvation.” And she did this for many days; when Paul was grieved at this, turning to the spirit he said: “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to depart from her.” And it departed that same hour. But her masters, seeing that the source of their profit had departed, seized Paul and Silas and dragged them to the forum before the magistrates, and presented them, saying: “These men are disturbing our city, being Jews, and they preach a sect which it is not lawful for us to receive or practice, since we are Romans.” And the whole crowd rose up against them, and the magistrates, having stripped off their tunics, ordered them to be beaten with rods. And after they had inflicted many blows upon them, they cast them into prison, commanding the jailer to guard them carefully. When he had received such an order, he placed them in the inner prison and confined their feet in the stocks. About midnight, while Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, the other prisoners heard them. Suddenly a great earthquake occurred, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken, and the doors were opened and all the chains were loosed.

The prison guard was roused from sleep, and when he saw the doors of the prison open, he drew his sword to kill himself, thinking the prisoners had fled. But Paul cried out with a loud voice, saying: “Do no harm to yourself; for they are all here.” Hearing this, the prison guard asked for a light, entered, and trembling fell at the feet of Paul and Silas. And when he had led them outside, he said: “Lords, what must I do to be saved?” And they said: “Believe in God Jesus, and you and your household will be saved.” And they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. And taking them at that very hour of the night, he washed their wounds, and he himself was baptized along with all his household. And leading them into his house, he set a table, and he feasted with his entire household, believing in the Lord. Therefore, just as that spirit of Python, upon hearing the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, was soon driven out of his house and stirred up the entire populace of the city against the preachers of the majesty of the only Son of God, so also that impure spirit has stirred up you and yours against us, his servants. And do not doubt that you are driven by the same spirits by which those who rose up against Paul and Silas were driven, when you see yourself made a persecutor of the religion of God, while that crowd was one that had not yet believed in the only Son of God, and was such for no other reason than that they were without the spirit of God, as you also are proved to be.

You cannot have the Holy Spirit unless you believe in the only Son of God, as the action of the keeper of that prison shows. For although he was certainly one of that resisting people, yet after he believed that he was now ruled by the same Holy Spirit by whom Paul and Silas were ruled, he embraced no other course than that of those on whose account he had seen the doors of the prison spontaneously opened. So you, who are now driven by a different spirit, unless you believe in the only Son of God, as we also believe, can have in you only the spirit of our adversary. For that keeper said to the glorious Paul and Silas: “Lords, what must I do to be saved?” And they said: “Believe in our Lord Jesus, and you and your household will be saved.” It is therefore evident that you are not saved, because you have not yet believed in the Lord Jesus. For you cannot claim to have believed in him, since you are persecuting him. Or do you think that you are not persecuting him in us? If you are not persecuting him in us, how is it that he says to Saul: “Why do you persecute me? I am Jesus whom you persecute.” It is hard for you to kick against the goad. What was Saul doing, that he heard this from the Lord? Surely the same things that you are doing; for he denied the only Son of God just as you are denying him.

For Paul was not at that time a persecutor, and later one who began to suffer persecution, because he persecuted Christians for believing as you believe—that there was a time when he was not, that he was made from nothing, and that he is a true son—but rather because they dared to confess the only Son of God, because Christians asserted that they believed that the eternity of the Father and the Son is one, that the divinity is one, that the power in the Father and the Son is one. These things Paul abhorred, thinking the Christians were in error; but when he was enlightened by the one whom he denied, when he learned from the books of Moses and from all the volumes of the prophets, he immediately began to defend those things which he had attacked, namely those things which those whom he persecuted had defended before he believed. Moreover, who was so senseless, as you Arians are, or as Photinus of Sirmium is, who is truly called the Dark One, as to believe in a creature, in one who was when he was not, in one who was created from nothing? Therefore it is evident that all of you who do not believe as the glorious Church believes are led by an adverse spirit, from which adverse spirit you will not be able to be freed unless you believe that he is the true Son of God.

You say that the bishops are insulting me. Why do we seem insulting to you? Surely because we say: why do you pretend to be a Christian? For you appear to be an Arian, you appear to be an enemy of the religion of God. Hence we seem to you and yours to be injurious. But consider what the most blessed apostle spoke, that we bishops might act against you wolves: 'You know from the first day I entered Asia, how I was with you all the time, serving the Lord in all humility and tears and temptations which befell me from the plots of the Jews, how I withheld nothing from those things which were useful, how I would renounce you and teach publicly and through houses, testifying to Jews and Greeks about repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus. And now, behold, bound in spirit I go to Jerusalem, ignorant of what will befall me there, except that the Holy Spirit protests to me through every city, saying: that bonds and tribulations await me in Jerusalem. But I consider my own soul as nothing dear to me, compared to completing my course and the ministry of the word which I received from the Lord, to testify to Jews and Greeks the gospel of the grace of God. And now I know that you all, among whom I have walked preaching the kingdom of the Lord Jesus, will no longer see my face. For this reason I testify to you today that I am clean of the blood of all, and I have not omitted preaching the whole will of God.'

Attend to yourselves and to the whole flock, over which the Holy Spirit placed you as bishops to rule the church of the Lord, which He acquired with His own blood. I know that after my departure heavy wolves will enter among you, not sparing the flock; from among yourselves men will arise and speak perverse things, to draw disciples after them. For this reason, watch, keeping in memory that for three years, night and day, I did not cease with tears to admonish each one of you. When you see that these are the commands of the apostle, what do you bid me to do, that I may not seem insulting to you? Surely you bid me to be silent and to allow that you alone, as one of those designated heavy wolves, may in any way attack the flock of God. We see that you are the wolves which the Holy Spirit, through the chosen vessel the apostle, deigned to point out beforehand, having attempted to seize the whole flock of God; and we, the bishops whom the Holy Spirit has appointed to rule the church of God, as the blessed apostle says, ought we to spare you, a wolf? Ought we to revere the diadem of your reign, your earring and even your armlets? Ought we to honor the insignia which you consider your garments, and despise the creator and ruler of all things? Who is more imprudent than you, that you say: I suffer injury from Lucifer, an emperor from a needy man? Not even deigning to say "from a bishop," because you have been recognized as a wolf and have deserved rejection. With such a thing did you think to burden me with envy, that you assert that a servant of God was insulting to you, an emperor.

If you think us insulting, hear what the blessed Paul replied to the chief of the priests who forbade him to preach the only Son of God. The Scripture says, Paul, directing his attention to the council, said: "Men, brothers, I have lived with a good conscience before God up to this day." But the chief of the priests, Ananias, ordered those standing around him to strike Paul's mouth. Then Paul said to him: "God will begin to strike you, you whitewashed wall. And you sit to judge me according to the law, and contrary to the law you order me to be struck." Therefore, if the sacred law cannot judge the blessed Paul to be abusive because he said this to an unjust judge, neither can you justly call me proud for speaking the truth to you and saying what you are. You designate me guilty of insults, but I ask you to tell me to whom you can complain about me. If to God, how can you complain to Him whom you are ignoring? How, when you are a stranger to His house? But if you complain to yourself, what will you do, a man who can harm the servants of God in no respect? If you torture, we are all the more cared for; if you torment, we are all the more restored; if you kill, we live all the more.

Why would I dare to call you the forerunner of Antichrist, you say I am insulting. If your own deeds do not show you to be such, consider with great care the book of the most holy prophet Daniel, and you will find yourself to be one of those previously shown persecutors of the religion of God. In the first year of Balthasar, king of the Chaldeans, Daniel saw a dream, and a vision appeared to him in his bedchamber, and he wrote down his dream: I, Daniel, was watching; and behold, the four winds of heaven were rushing upon the great sea, and four beasts came up from the sea, each surpassing the other in size. The first was like a lioness, and it had wings. And it rose from the ground and stood upon human feet, and a human heart was given to it. And behold, another beast like a bear, and it stood on one side. And it had three ribs in its mouth, between its teeth. And it said to him: "Arise and eat much flesh." After this beast I saw, and behold, another beast like a leopard, and it had four wings of a bird upon it and four heads of a beast, and power was given to it. After this I saw, and behold, a fourth beast, horrible, wondrous, and exceedingly strong; its iron teeth devoured and crushed, and it trampled the rest under its feet. And this beast was greater than the other beasts that had been seen before, and it had ten horns. And I looked at its horns, and behold, another smaller horn grew up among them, and the three horns that were before it were torn away from its face.

and behold, the eye of a man on this horn and a mouth speaking great things. I watched until thrones were set, and the Ancient of Days sat down. His clothing was white as snow and the hair of his head like clean wool, and his throne was a flame of fire, its wheels burning fire. A river of fire shone before him; thousands upon thousands attended him, and ten thousands of ten thousands stood before him. He sat in judgment, and the books were opened. Then I saw, from the voice of the great words that horn spoke, until the beast perished and died, and its body was given to be burned. And the kingdom of the remaining beasts was transferred, and a length of life was given to them until a time. I saw in a vision of the night, and behold, with the clouds of heaven, like a son of man coming, he came up to the Ancient of Days. He anticipated and was offered to him, and kingdom, honor, and dominion were given to him, and all peoples of every tongue serve him, and his power is a perpetual power that will never pass away, and his dominion and kingdom will be corrupted. My spirit shuddered within my frame, and I, Daniel, and the distress of my head troubled me. And I approached one of those standing by and sought the truth from him concerning all these things. And he told me the truth and explained the interpretation of the words to me: these four great beasts are four kingdoms that will arise on earth and will receive the kingdom of the most high holy God and will hold it until the age.

and I diligently inquired about the fourth beast, which was exceedingly horrible beyond the other beasts. Its teeth were of iron and its claws of bronze; it devoured, crushed, and trampled the rest under its feet. And concerning its tenth horn, which was on its head, and the other horn that grew up and struck off the first three horns, whose eyes and mouth spoke great things, and whose appearance was greater than the others. I watched, and that horn made war with the saints and prevailed against them, until the Ancient of Days came, and judgment was given to the saints of the Most High God, and he anticipated the time, and the saints obtained the kingdom. And he said: the fourth beast will be the fourth kingdom on earth, which will surpass all kingdoms and will devour the whole earth and trample and crush it. Its ten horns: ten kings will arise, and after them another will arise who will surpass in evil all who were before him, and he will humble three and will speak words against the Most High God and will cause the saints of the Most High God to grow old and will devise to change times and law, and it will be given into his hand for a time of times and half a time. And judgment will sit and the kingdom will be transferred, so that he may destroy and ruin until the end, and the kingdom and power and greatness of kings are given to the saints of the Most High God. And his kingdom is everlasting, and all will serve and obey him.

I should indeed have inserted only that part which declares through your actions what beast you resemble; but so that you might know that you will be in that gehenna into which the glorious Daniel reports that beast was cast, unless you correct yourself, and how those whom you persecute will reign forever, placed in the kingdom of the Lord—which you could perceive—I have attached all these things. Likewise, I judged that the entire Revelation should be applied to this, so that you might satisfy yourself, even by reading, that you tyrants, persecutors of the religion of God, have been called beasts; for I am eager to clear myself before your conscience, infected with the poisons of the Arian dogma, before you—not a religious man but a destroyer of religion—and not to be, as you claim, insulting, because I call you a wild beast or a monstrous brute, when you see that you are so called, with names applied to you according to your deeds. Moreover, that you bear the likeness of that fourth beast, that you desire to fulfill what that beast was predicted to fulfill, is manifest. It is written of the Antichrist, to whom you are similar or are judged to be he himself: "He will speak words against the Most High Lord and will treat the saints of the Most High God with contempt, and will devise to change times and the law, and it will be given into his hand." These things you have already done and are doing. For when you say, "The Son of God is not true God, but was made from nothing," you speak words against God.

For we Christians, since we defend the one divinity of the Father and His only Son, and you attack this defense of ours, asserting about the Son that there was a time when He was not and that He was made from nothing, you certainly prove yourself either to be the Antichrist or at least his forerunner. For you cannot be understood to be anything else but either the forerunner of the Antichrist or the Antichrist himself, you who dare to call the apostolic and evangelical faith heretical and attempt to claim your blasphemy as the Catholic faith. You feel that you suffer an injury because you are called a beast by us; you are found to devise a change of faith, that is, that we should not believe as the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs believed, but you establish that we must believe as your lost companion Arius did. And you say that you are not rightly called a beast, when, because you were about to do these things, the most holy prophet declared you to be a beast? You are no less, Constantius, in your disbelief than the Antichrist; for you do not cease devouring the servants of God with iron teeth. Why say more? The Antichrist will do nothing other than deny the only Son of God; this is what your mind, fattened with stupidity and utterly filthy, does.

But however much you rage, your times will pass, will pass, and those times will come in which you will see yourself—unless you have taken thought for yourself—placed in that fiery river; you will then see those whom you now persecute fiercely, because they are unwilling to perish with you, not in that place of torments where you will be, but with the holy angels, always offering thanks and praises to God, while you are in that flaming liquid. Do not be surprised that the glorious Daniel has designated you a beast, when even the blessed Paul said of your gatherings to the Cretans: "Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy bellies," and further: "Therefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in faith, not heeding Jewish fables and the commands of men who turn away from the truth." Hence we bishops are injurious to you because we rebuke and reproach you for having dared to turn yourself away from the truth, for having wished, after abandoning God's commands, to cling to the blasphemies and commands of men, and finally for having taken up idolatry after abandoning God. Hence I seem to you to be your enemy, because I wish you to walk according to the apostle's precept and not according to the commands of Arius and the Jews. Against these most just allegations of ours, seeing yourself overcome by the truth, you are accustomed to say: "Sacred scriptures command that I must be subject to kings and to all those dwelling in high office." And do you dare to thrust such great and many things at me, Lucifer?