De Sancto Athanasio, Liber I-II

III. ON SAINT ATHANASIUS. BOOK I. You compel us, Constantius, to condemn our absent fellow priest, the religious Athanasius; but divine law forbids us to do this. You urge with the broad authority of a king the priests of the Lord to shed blood, ignorant of the rights of justice divinely handed down to us, and you attempt to remove them from our minds. Can you truly assert that it is divinely permitted for an absent, unheard, and, what is most important, an innocent man to be condemned? For how do you suppose it is divinely permitted for the unheard to be punished, when you see that Adam and Eve, the first parents of our race, were heard before being struck by the sentence of God? And God called Adam, and said to him: “Adam, where are you?” And he said: “I heard your voice, Lord, in paradise, and I was afraid, because I am naked, and I hid myself.” And God said to him: “Who told you that you are naked, except from the tree, concerning which I had commanded you, that you should not eat from this alone, and you have eaten from it?” And Adam said: “The woman whom you gave me, she herself gave me from the tree, and I ate.” And God said to the woman: “Why have you done this?” And the woman said: “The serpent persuaded me, and I ate.” Since, therefore, you perceive that God gave this form of judging, since you have gathered from the sacred sources that God summoned from hiding and, after confession, gave sentence, what impudence of yours, both past and present, to give to the servants of God a form of judging that did not come from the law of the Lord?

nor did you fear that it might be said of you to God by us, as was said of that apostate angel: "The serpent persuaded me; the emperor Constantius led us astray; we believed him, having judged him to be a man." Could you not see that you might be struck by such a sentence of an indignant God as the serpent appears to have been struck? To whom it is said: "Because you did this, you are cursed by all the cattle and by all the beasts of the earth that are upon the earth; on your breast and belly you shall crawl, and you shall eat earth all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall watch your head, and you shall watch his heel." Could you not have incurred God's offense just as that angel incurred it? You ought to have recalled this from that one sentence of the Lord, especially since you knew that your work also had been serpentine? Or, when that serpent was made from angels, did you think that you could become a serpent from men? Not at all; but I would like you to say what difference there is between your deed and that of this apostate, renegade angel. If he by falsehood led inexperienced men astray, you also—and indeed you, not inexperienced men; if he for the sake of advantage enticed their minds to eat the fruits of the tree, you also, while claiming to do so for the sake of peace.

And when you said you had undertaken this work for the good of all Christians, yet from your deeds it can be understood that you imitated that serpent. Desiring to become a transgressor of God's commandments, you gave orders that an unheard, absent man be condemned and that the right to be heard be denied to one proclaiming he could clear himself of the charge brought against him. Abel the just is killed, and Cain, when questioned, receives his sentence; and you wish to punish the Lord's priest unheard? "It happened," it says, "that Abel was a shepherd of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the earth. And it happened that after some days Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the earth to the Lord, and Abel also offered from the firstlings of his sheep, and God looked with favor upon Abel and his gifts, but upon Cain and his sacrifices He did not look. And Cain was very saddened, and his face fell. And the Lord God said to Cain: 'Why are you sad, and why has your face fallen? Why did you not offer rightly? You have sinned; be still,' and so on. And further: 'Cain said to his brother Abel: Let us go into the field. And it happened that when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him. And God said to Cain: Where is your brother? And he said: I do not know; am I my brother's keeper? And God said: What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground.' Was it not permitted to God, before summoning and questioning Cain, to punish him?

but he did not wish it, giving us a pattern by which we should begin to judge those entrusted to us—us, I say, concerning whom the Lord says through the prophet Jeremiah to the peoples dedicated to his majesty: "And I will give you shepherds after my heart, and they will pasture you, pasturing with discipline." "Condemn him," you say, "whom you do not know to have offended." Why? Surely so that we would no longer merit being called bishops, but madmen and executioners. Do you not fear, I ask, when you command this, the voice of the Lord speaking to the most holy Noah? "Like the herbs of the field, I have given you everything. Except for the flesh and blood of the soul, you will not eat. For I will demand your blood—the blood of your souls—from the hands of all beasts; I will demand the soul of a man. Whoever sheds the blood of a man will be shed for the blood of a man, because I made man in the image of God." Do you not fear, I ask, seeing that you have stood forth as a murderer of such great servants of God, so that you still slaughter the innocent and force us to become participants in your slaughters? When it had been said to Moses by his father-in-law Jethro, why he detained the people the whole day: "The people came to me," he said, "seeking judgment from God." Therefore, if the judgment of God's priests ought to be so just that it is said to be terminated by the judgment of God, how is it that you ordered us to condemn an unheard case, when you found that Moses said: "The people came to me seeking judgment from the Lord"? If the people flock to us so that they may be judged according to the law of God, why do you say: "Condemn the innocent"?

Therefore, since this command, which has been put forward by you, does not come from the law of God, but is plainly established by the will of the devil, finally understand who you are. Lot’s wife was turned into salt; why could she not fulfill what was ordered? For us, I believe through your intervention, because you are evidently king of the Roman empire, would no evil befall us if we condemned someone burdened with false charges? Sacred Scripture in Exodus says: Moses went up the mountain of God, and God called him from the mountain, saying: “You shall say this to the house of Jacob and announce to the children of Israel: You yourselves have seen how much I did to the Egyptians, and I took you up as if on the wings of an eagle and led you to me. And now if you hear my voice with attentive ear and keep my covenant, you will be to me a people abounding above all nations. The whole earth is mine. But you will be to me a most sacred kingdom and a holy people.” How a holy people, if we are slayers of the innocent? How a kingdom most sacred to God, if we disregard his commandments? Likewise God says: You shall not commit adultery, you shall not kill, you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You, on the contrary, say: Believe me speaking falsehoods and slay the innocent. God, warning, says in Exodus: You shall not believe a vain rumor, you shall not consent to become an unjust witness with a wicked man, you shall not be with the many in evil.

You shall not join with the many to turn aside with the crowd, so that you may avoid judgment and not have mercy on the poor in his case; and further: you shall not overturn the judgment of the poor in his case; you shall withdraw from every unjust word; you shall not kill an innocent and just person; you shall not justify the impious for the sake of bribes; for bribes blind the eyes of those who see and corrupt just words. To exclude these commandments, you compel his servants to overturn his judgment, attempting even with bribes to corrupt our conscience, which is consecrated to God. If you listen, says God, and hear my voice and do all that I have told you, I will be an enemy to your enemies and I will resist those who oppose you. Now let it be for you to prove that God has commanded that the innocent be struck down, that the apostolic faith be abandoned, and that your perfidy be embraced. Why did you think it should be commanded that these things, which are opposed to the Lord’s commandments, be done? Since you also remember that in Leviticus the Lord said to Moses: Speak to the children of Israel and say to them: I am the Lord your God; according to the practices of the land of Egypt, in which you dwelt, you shall not do in it; and according to the practices of the land of the Canaanites, into which I have led you, you shall not do there, and you shall not walk in their laws. You shall do my judgments and keep my commandments and walk in them. I am the Lord your God. Keep all my commandments and all my judgments, and you shall do them; the man who does them will live in them. I am the Lord your God.

If you wish to teach that it is written in the Lord’s commandments that the just are to punish the unjust at their instigations, you can rightly observe that you have acted and are acting correctly in everything. Teach that it is written in the mandates of God that the worshippers of God, assailed by slanders, are to be put to death by us bishops, the persecutor of His house, at your instigation. Why have you been led by your Coarrians to fulfill this malice? What cause compelled you to petition the emperor for the death of a man of God by slanders? Had you not read in Leviticus that God said: Do not assail with falsehood, nor slander each one his neighbor? And further: You shall not lie nor slander your neighbor, and you shall not profane the name of the Lord your God. I am the Lord your God. You shall not harm your neighbor, and you shall fear the Lord your God. I am the Lord your God. You shall not do iniquity in judgment, you shall not accept the person of the poor nor be amazed at the person of the powerful; in justice you shall judge your neighbor. You shall not walk in deceit among your people. You shall not consent to the blood of your neighbor. I am the Lord your God. You shall not hate your brother in your heart, reproaching you shall reprove your neighbor and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord your God. Keep my law. Since you remember these things as written, do you think that we will be acceptors of your person? You asked for the death of an innocent man, and when you realized you were despised, you turned yourself to every kind of punishment to be inflicted.

God says: "Do not fear the face of the rich man, and you shall honor the face of the presbyter, and you shall fear the Lord your God. I am the Lord your God." And you, Constantius, thought that you could be feared and that Athanasius, whom God commanded to be honored, should be dishonored? Had you not read that God said: "You shall not act unjustly in judgment, in measure, in weight, and in scales; you shall weigh with a just balance"? And is it a just measure that you had decreed that he should be killed by us in his absence? If it is just that a judgment not be heard when one protests, and that an absent man be punished, then your allegations before God against us, who have disregarded the commands of your temerity, will also be just. In Deuteronomy, the glorious Moses is found to have said to the judges he gave to the people: "Hear between your brothers and judge justly between a man and his brother and in the midst of his proselyte. You shall not accept a person in judgment; against a lesser or against a greater you shall judge; you shall not take the person of a man, because judgment is of God." And do you wish, Constantius—I believe because you dwell in royal sublimity—that your person be accepted? Do you greatly desire that he, whose blood you thirst for, be slaughtered by us, the priests of the Lord? Hence, we are detestable in your eyes, because we bring forth judgment according to God’s will; hence, you thought to stretch out your executioner’s right hand to the sword, as if you could conquer with the sword those whom you see, for the sake of the Son of God, not hesitating to lose their life in the present nor fearing death.

The most holy Moses relates to the sons of Israel by command of God: "See, the Lord your God has delivered the land before your face; go up and possess it, as the Lord God of our fathers has said to us. Do not fear nor be afraid." If it was commanded to them, who bear the image of our calling, to fear no one except God, how much more does it befit those who desire not the lands of the Canaanites, Jebusites, Gergesites, and Amorites, but the heavenly kingdoms, but the perpetual love of God, to fear no one except God? For how could the vigor of your empty dignity have been able or be able to turn us from this purpose, since we have determined that no one is to be feared except God? We are not Christians from among those who said: "Because the Lord hated us, he led us out of the land of Egypt to deliver us into the hands of the Amorites and to destroy us"; but we are from among those who said and say to God: "Because of you we are slain all day long, we are counted as sheep for slaughter, but in all these things we prevail because of him who loved us." We have not feared nor do we fear your threats, we who know that nothing can resist God, lest we perish like those who hear from Moses: "Your brothers have turned your heart, saying: 'The nation is great and hard, many and mightier than you, and the cities are great and walled up to the sky, and we have seen the sons of giants there.'

We do not fear your sword, we Christians, who presume that, with you laid low—enemies of the religion of God—we shall come to the banquet of the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs. We do not dread the might of your transient kingdom, we soldiers of the divine. We are not among those sons of faithlessness who thought their enemies could do more than God, so as to fear your fragile power; for if the Jews had not believed thus—namely, that the Canaanites, Jebusites, Amorites, and other enemies could do more than God—then surely they would never have overridden the voice of Moses saying: "Do not speak to them nor fear them. The Lord your God, who goes before your face, will himself fight them along with you, according to all that he did for you in the land of Egypt, and in this desert which you see—how the Lord your God cherished you, as a man cherishes his own son, on every path you walked, until you came to this place, leading you by fire at night, showing you the way to walk in it, and by cloud by day." If after these salutary warnings the sons of Israel had not believed that those against whom they waged war could do more than God, then surely they would never have come to utter destruction. Therefore we know that God is powerful enough to snatch us from your hands as we stretch toward the heavenly kingdom promised us. We shall not be able to fear your cruelty, especially we who have chosen to be punished by you, not by God.

You said: condemn Athanasius. Whom, Constantius, were we to condemn? That man whom we see confessing the Son of God, as the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs confessed? Or you, who are a denier, as your master Arius denied, as Judas Iscariot and all the Jews denied? God says to Moses: "You shall have no other gods besides me. You shall not make for yourself a graven image nor any likeness of those things which are in the heaven above and of those which are on the earth below, and of those which are in the waters under the earth. You shall not worship them nor serve them, for I am the Lord your God, a jealous God, returning the sins of fathers upon sons to the third and fourth generation for those who hate me, and showing mercy to thousands of those who love me and of those who keep my commandments." And you, trampling upon these divine commandments, say: "Accept my idolatry, abandon God, kill my enemy, not God's enemy, Athanasius, so that you may be found among those who hate God, to whom He has promised to return it to the third and fourth generation; take care that you are not loved by God along with those for whose sake He says: 'showing mercy to thousands of those who love me and of those who keep my commandments.'" You see, most prudent emperor, that what seems good to you is evil, and what seems evil is good. Or will you deny that good is good, or deny that you understand evil things to be good and good things evil? If you deny it, answer. Is it good to condemn an innocent man, or evil?

Is it good to abandon God and go after idolatry, or is it evil? If you say it is evil, it will be said to you by us: why do you do these things? Again, Moses cries out in Deuteronomy, saying: "Keep the commandments of the Lord your God, and the testimonies and justifications. Whatever he has commanded you, and you will do what is pleasing and what is good before the Lord your God, so that it may go well for you. And you will enter and take possession by inheritance of the good land, which the Lord swore to your fathers." And you have chosen these things to be good, these things pleasing to God, so that idolatry might be strengthened to the insult of his majesty through the power of your reign, and that those who have been confessors of his worship might be slaughtered. Behold, says Moses, I have set before your sight today a blessing and a curse: a blessing, if you have heard the commandments of the Lord your God, whatever I command you today. Since, therefore, those are blessed who do not punish the innocent, those who keep the Lord's commandments who have been unwilling to condemn the unheard, how do you think yourself blessed, when through your work you prove yourself to be placed among the cursed? Or if you are not among the cursed, why do you spurn Moses as he speaks?

If, however, in one of your cities, which the Lord your God will give to you, a man or a woman is found who has done evil before the Lord your God by transgressing His covenant, and they go and serve foreign gods and worship them, or the sun or the moon or any of those in the world from the sky, and further: you shall bring forth that man or that woman, and you shall stone them with stones, and they shall die. On the testimony of two or three witnesses, they shall die; they shall not die on the testimony of one witness. And the hand of the witnesses shall be upon them first to kill them, and the hand of the whole people afterwards. And you shall remove the evil from among yourselves. If you are not, Constantius, running with the accursed, why have you not obeyed the commands of God given through Moses? Why, when he says that even an idolater should perish on the testimony of two or three witnesses, have you not even wished to grant a hearing to a man devoted to God, and have denied a hearing to him to whom you were entrusted by God, to him whom, if you resisted him defending what is just, you were ordered by the mouth of Moses to die by death? For, so that the judgments of the priest may remain inviolate, it says thus: You shall arise and go up to the place which the Lord your God has chosen for His name to be invoked there. And you shall speak to the priests, the Levites, or to the judge who has been appointed in those days, and they, after inquiring, shall announce the judgment to you, and you shall act according to every precept which they who are in that place, where the Lord your God has chosen for His name to be invoked there, announce to you, and you shall be very careful.

You will act according to everything that they have established for you. According to the law and according to whatever judgment they pronounce, you will act; you will not deviate from whatever word they announce to you; you will do whatever they have indicated to you; you will not turn to the right or to the left. And any man who acts in pride, so that he does not heed the priests standing by to perform their duties in the name of the Lord God, or any judge who is in those days, that man shall die, and you will remove evil from Israel. And all the people hearing will fear and will no longer act impiously. But you say: In this passage, how did Moses, most devoted to God, make mention of priests, and likewise of the judge? Prove that you have been made a judge over us; prove that you have been established as emperor for this purpose, to lead us by your arms to fulfill every will of your friend the devil. Since you cannot prove this—because it has been commanded to you not only not to rule over bishops, but also to obey their statutes in such a way that if you attempt to overturn their decrees, if you are caught in pride, you have been ordered to die by death—how can you say that you are able to judge bishops, to whom unless you obey, you have already, as far as God is concerned, been punished with the penalty of death? Since these things are so, you, who are profane, why do you claim for yourself this authority of God's priests over the household servants of God, when even the Jewish judges themselves at that time, when they remained in God's law, He permitted to have from His own lineage?

For if, says Moses, you should say, "I will set a prince over me," just as the other nations which are around me, you will establish and set over yourself whatever prince your Lord God chooses. You will set him from among your own brothers. You will not be able to set over yourself a foreign man, because he is not your brother. And it follows, why he did not want a foreigner to become prince: namely, lest he should draw others to his own sect. For this reason he says: "Do not lead us back into Egypt," that is, to the worship of idols, as if you, I say, have usurped for yourself this authority which God did not entrust to you. And if he were to entrust it and permit it to be among you, first of all you ought to have been a Christian, because it would be a crime for a foreigner to judge the servants of God, an enemy of the religion to judge the household of God. Then, if you had been a Christian and God had deemed you a participant to be made for ruling his people, hear what sort of man he has commanded you to be. And when he sits in his principate, he will write for him this Deuteronomy in this book before the priests and Levites, and it will be with him, and you will read to him all the days of his life, so that they may learn to fear your Lord God, to keep all these commandments and to perform these ordinances, so that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers and he may not deviate from the commandments to the right or to the left, so that he and his sons with him may be of long duration in his principate among the sons of Israel.

What do you have of this sort except everything contrary, except all things that attack the house of God? First, you are a heretic; then, a persecutor of God’s household; you have attempted and are attempting to cut Athanasius’s throat, as if you were a man who does not remember the scripture: “If a man hates his neighbor and lies in wait for him and rises up against him and strikes him with intent, and he dies and flees to one of these cities, the elders of that city shall send and take him from there and hand him over into the hands of those who seek blood, and he shall die. You shall not spare your eye over him, and you shall cleanse the blood of the innocent from them, and it shall be well for you.” And again: “One witness shall not stand in testimony against a man for every iniquity and for every sin that is committed. Every word shall stand on the mouth of two or three witnesses. But if an unjust witness stands against a man, falsely accusing him of iniquity, two men who have contradiction themselves shall stand before the Lord and before the priest and in the sight of the judge whoever he may be in those days. And the judges shall diligently inquire, and behold, the unjust witness has testified falsely, opposing his brother, and you shall do to him as he wickedly did against his brother, and you shall remove the unjust one from among yourselves. And the rest who hear will fear, and they will no longer dare to do this evil word among you.

You will not spare your eyes over him—life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot. When you see that these things are being done concerning you, that the murderer has established God, tell me, please, what else is it to say: “Condemn him whom you know to be innocent; act against God’s commands,” if not: “Tear out your hearts; take away your own senses; willingly cut your own throats; although you see that a pit is there, pretend you are blind; and hurl yourselves headlong into the eternal abyss; sink into that pit from which you see you cannot be snatched; take away your own life; take up perpetual death”? What else is it to say: “Do what God has forbidden to be done,” if not: “Be enemies of God; acquire the devil as your friend; work so that you do not attain paradise; finally, work so that you do not attain the kingdom of heaven which God promised you if you kept his commands; love the infernal regions; love the burning lake; desire to be with all those who are always paying penalties; desire to be called men of the devil”?

These are the rewards which your excellent counsels procure, these are those best things which give birth to eternal death, these are what plunge a man already near heaven into the depths. Did you still not know it was written, that you should ask us to undertake these evils? There will not be in your sack a weight and a weight, greater or lesser. There will not be in your house a measure and a measure, larger and smaller. A true and just weight shall be yours, and a true and just measure shall be yours, so that you may live many days and be well upon the earth which the Lord your God will give you as an inheritance, for every one who does these things is abominable to the Lord your God, every one who does unjust deeds. Since the sacred writings record that he who does not keep whole weights and just measures is abominable, I believe you thought we would then be most acceptable if we had unjustly pronounced judgment against him. Moses says, "Cursed is he who moves his neighbor's boundaries." We are forbidden to tear out and move boundaries from place to place, and you say, "Go forth, priests of God, the boundaries of justice." The Holy Spirit says through the mouth of Moses, "Cursed is whoever turns aside the judgment of a stranger, an orphan, and a widow," and you, making sport of our blood, have said, "Punish him whom you do not know to have done wrong." We did not wish, Constantius, to be cursed with you; we desire rather that you be found blessed with us in the holy Church.

We do not hear your voice, which provokes us to incur the offense of God, but we hear the voice of Moses, the servant of the Lord, saying: "And it shall be, if you do not hear the voice of the Lord your God, to keep and to do all his commandments, whatsoever I shall command you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and shall find you. Cursed are you in the city, cursed are you in the field, cursed are your storehouses and what remains yours, and cursed are the children of your womb and the produce of your land, the herds of your cattle and the flocks of your sheep, cursed are you in your going forth. The Lord will send you weariness and thlipsis and anxiety in everything, wherever you put your hand, whatever you do, whatever will destroy you quickly because of the wickedness of your pursuits." If evil pursuits—to bring false accusations, to persecute the worshippers of God, to introduce the idolatry of God into the church, to cut down with military force those believing in the only Son of God—are not such, then these curses will be able not to seize you and those running with you.

You have summoned us to slaughter the priest of God, to kill him, through whom God has decreed that you should hear his precepts. And Moses wrote the words of this law in a book, and gave it to the priests and Levites who carry the ark of the Lord’s covenant, and to the elders of Israel. And Moses commanded them on that day, saying: “After seven years, at the time of the year of remission, on the feast of Tabernacles, when all Israel assembles to appear before the Lord your God in the place he has chosen, you shall read this law in the hearing of Israel, in the presence of the men and women and children and proselyte who may be in your cities, so that they may hear and learn to fear the Lord your God and hear to do all the words of this law. And their children, who do not know, hearing, shall learn the Lord your God all the days they live upon the earth.” You persecute him, through whom the Lord has commanded you to hear; while he is still among the living, your co-heretic George acts as his successor, although, even if Athanasius had already been released from the body, it would not have been lawful for you to send one, but it was and is in the hand of God whom he had deigned to appoint as bishop over his people through his servants, that is, the catholic bishops.

For it could not be fulfilled by the power of the Holy Spirit for governing God's people unless it were he whom God had chosen and upon whom hands had been imposed by catholic bishops, just as after the death of Moses we find his successor Joshua son of Nun filled with the Holy Spirit; holy Scripture says: "And Joshua son of Nun was filled with the spirit of understanding; for Moses had laid his hand upon him. And the children of Israel heard him and did according to what the Lord commanded Moses." You see that you have gone against God's ordinance, acting contrary to God's will, and have cut your own throat with the blade of your sword, since it was not lawful for anyone to be ordained unless Athanasius had died, and after Athanasius's death a catholic ought to have been ordained by catholic bishops. Holy Scripture speaks, saying that God said to Joshua son of Nun: "My servant Moses is dead. Now therefore arise, cross the Jordan, you and all this people, into the land which I will give to them. Every place which you enter with the step of your feet, I will give it to you, as I said to Moses. The desert and the region before Lebanon as far as the great river Euphrates and as far as the great sea, as far as the setting of the sun, shall be the boundaries of your territory. No man shall stand before you all the days of your life, and as I was with Moses, so I shall be with you, and I shall not abandon you nor despise you." Can God be with his enemy George? Can he be propitious to one whom he has not ordained, whom he has not chosen?

Such is George, as Arius was, and as are Valens and Ursacius, or Adoxius of Germaniciana, to whom you sent me; for thorns can only produce thorns. That this is so, you can gather from the acts of George himself, reading the testimonies of the Alexandrians; and although it pleases you that he is a wicked blasphemer—for he would not otherwise be so beloved by you, unless he were wicked—nevertheless, I have brought these things forward so that you may discern your own extraordinary work. Since, therefore, you recognize that God is not with George, but perceive that He is with Athanasius, whom He appointed as bishop for His people, you will at last be able to understand that you have attempted to destroy God's ordinance, that you have persecuted God in Athanasius. For you hear God saying to the successor of Moses: "As I was with Moses, so I will be with you, and I will not abandon you nor forsake you." Behold, in another place: "Grow strong and act manfully to guard and to do as my servant Moses commanded you. And you shall not deviate to the right or to the left, so that you may understand in all things that you do. And the book of this law shall not depart from your mouth, and you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may keep and do all that is written. Then I will direct your ways, and then you will understand. Behold, I have commanded you: grow strong and act manfully; there is nothing to dread nor fear, for the Lord your God is with you in every place.

Now it remains for you—whether you or George—to prove that what you do comes from God’s commands. For you hear him promise that he will be a god with the successor of Moses, just as he was with Moses, if only he keeps what is written in the book of the Law. Therefore, if you do not find that you should act thus in Scripture, it will be for your fairness finally to recognize that God is not with you Arians. But that one dwells in you who also dwelt in Cain. What cause, Constantius, drove you to such acts, that the power of your reign led you to such great arrogance that you decreed the death of him whom God chose for himself in priestly honor? Had you not found it written in the first book of Kings? “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, nor the powerful man boast in his power, nor the rich man boast in his riches; but let him who boasts boast in this: to know and understand God and to do judgment and justice in the midst of the earth.” Why did you pass over this, you who at all times ought to have done just judgment, and forced even us to do injustice with you? You had decreed that a catholic be deposed by us, and a heretic be confirmed; but when would men of sound mind have done this? For if Eli the priest, because he set unworthy sons in priestly honor, suffered what he did from the Lord, what would we deserve to hear and suffer if we, condemning a catholic bishop and indeed unheard, allowed George the Arian to become bishop of the Alexandrians?

And he came, says the man of God, and said: Thus says the Lord: I have manifestly shown myself to the house of your father among all the tribes of Israel for the priesthood, that they might ascend to my sacrifice and burn incense and take up the Ephod. And I gave in the house of your father all the grains of the sons of Israel for food. And why did you look upon my incense and my sacrifice with a wicked eye, and honor your sons more than me, so that you blessed them from the beginning in all the sacrifices of Israel before me? Because of this, thus says the Lord of Israel: I said, your house and the house of your father will pass before me into eternity, and now it is not. Thus says the Lord: By no means to me, it will not be so from me, since those who honor me, I will honor them, and whoever scorns me will be brought to nothing. And behold, the days are coming, and I will destroy your seed and the seed of your father, and you will have no elder in my house for all days, and I will destroy a man from your sanctuary, so that his eyes will fail, and his soul will flow away. And every multitude that remains from your house will fall by the sword of men. And this is the sign for you, that it will come upon these two sons of yours, Hophni and Phinehas: in one day both will die by the sword of men. If he received this rebuke from God for his sons, what rebuke would we deserve to receive for you, Constantius? I believe it would have been said to us: You have honored Constantius more than me, just as it was said to him, that he honored his sons more than God.

About what, you ask? Because if we had done what you commanded, we would have been found to have spurned the Lord, since George is as the sons of Eli were, a son of pestilence, whom you had judged should be placed by us in the stead of the man of God Athanasius. Then, since God says: "He who honors me will be honored, and he who spurns me will be brought to nothing," if we were to listen to your sacrilegious voice, uttered against his divine commands, would we have honored God? Or would we, judging you to be nothing, strive only to obey his sacred statutes? Meanwhile, rejoice, because you are dishonoring God. For you hear him saying that all who spurn him will come to nothing. Or will you deny that you have dishonored God by removing the priests from the congregations whom he ordained? Or will you deny that you have dishonored the Lord, when, contrary to his decrees, you compelled his priests to condemn an absent man unheard? Therefore, have you not dishonored God, when you abolished the apostolic and evangelical tradition and established that idolatry, which Arius built up in his heart at the devil's prompting, should be held by all worshipers of God?

Since these things are so, it will now be for your prudence to assess what it is expedient for you to do: whether, correcting your errors here, having obtained pardon for such great crimes, you choose to be found among the household of God, or, reduced to nothing, as the Lord promises to those who despise him, you begin to suffer forever the punishments which those suffer whose paths you have chosen to follow. And so that you may fully see what perils await you, because you are dishonoring the divinity, hear also what is said to Samuel concerning the sons of Eli: And the Lord said to Samuel: Behold, I am fulfilling my words in Israel, and whoever hears them, both his ears will ring, on that day when I bring upon Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house and complete what I foretold to him, because I take vengeance on his house forever on account of the iniquities of his sons, which I know, because despising the Lord, his sons spoke evil, and he did not warn them nor chastise them. And now I have sworn concerning the house of Eli, that iniquity in the house of Eli shall never be propitiated by incense or by sacrifices. If these things are promised to Eli on account of the sin of his sons, what is promised to you on account of your sacrilege? If those things are promised to them forever, what is promised to you who commit such great crimes? If God said that the sons of Eli spoke evil of him, how much more does he say of you, who have taken up the blasphemy of Arius to attack, of course, the faith which the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and all the martyrs have held?

We ask you in the midst of these things to repent of your deeds, considering at least what happened to the sons of Heli when they dishonored God. Heli, says Scripture, was very old, and his sons had gone away, and their way was evil before the Lord. And it happened in those days, and the aliens gathered for battle against Israel, and further: and the battle turned, and the man of Israel fell before the aliens, and four thousand men were wounded in the line on the field. And the people came into the camp, and the elders of Israel said: Why has the Lord made us fail today before the aliens? Let us therefore take the ark of the Lord our God from Selon, and let it go out into our midst, and it will free us from the hands of our enemies. And the people sent to Selon, and they took up from there the ark of the Lord, where the Cherubim sat. And both sons of Heli went with the ark of God, Ofni and Finees, and further: they fought against them, and the man of Israel failed from the sight of the aliens, and each one fled to his tent. And a very great slaughter occurred, and thirty thousand men of Israel fell. And the ark of God was captured, and both sons of Heli died, and further: and a man hastening approached Heli and said: I am one who came from the camp fleeing from the battle today. And Heli said: What word has happened, my son?

And the man answered and said: "An Israelite fled from the face of the foreigners, and a great plague was inflicted upon the people, and both your sons are dead, and the ark of God has been captured." And it happened that when he heard that the ark of God had been captured, he fell backward from his seat near the gate, and his back was broken, and he died, because he was an old and heavy man, and he had judged Israel for twenty years. If these evils came upon Heli the priest and judge of the Israelites in a single day, because he had not chastised his sons as was fitting, what do you see coming to you, the destroyer of the religion of God? I have deemed it fitting to prove this to you in this place. For you will not deny that you have said that it comes from the will of God that we, his servants, are subjected to you, our persecutors: "Unless our faith—that is, this faith which is called Arian by Lucifer—had been catholic, I would never have received power over all the peoples." If this is so, could it be that the faith of those Philistines who captured the ark of God was better than that of the worshipers of God?

You say that your faith, which we know to be heretical, has accomplished this for you; but also Maxentius, Nero, and all those persecutors of the house of God said that it was done by the power of their gods, that we Christians should come under their dominion. Run through what happened to those who rejoiced that they had captured the ark of God, who said that by the power of their gods they had conquered the Israelites, and you will find yourself one of those who persecuted the house of God. And the foreigners took the ark of God from Ebenezer, and brought it to Ashdod. And the foreigners took up the ark, and brought it into the house of Dagon, and placed it beside Dagon. And in the morning the men of Ashdod kept watch, and entered the house of Dagon and saw. And behold, Dagon had fallen on his face before the ark of God. And they lifted up Dagon and set him in his place. And the hand of the Lord was heavy upon the men of Ashdod and tormented them. And it struck them in their houses, in Ashdod and the regions of the manuscript. And it happened that, when they had kept watch before dawn, Dagon had fallen on his face before the ark of the Lord’s covenant, and the head of Dagon and both footprints of his hand had been carried off a hundred parts, and both joints of his hand had fallen on the threshold. And further: and the hand of the Lord was heavy upon Ashdod, and it brought forth mice upon them, and a great confusion of death occurred in the city.

And the men of Ashdod saw that it was so, and they said, "The ark of the Lord God of Israel will not remain with us, for his hand is heavy upon us and upon our god Dagon." And they send and summon the lords of the Philistines to themselves and say, "What shall we do with the ark of the God of Israel?" And the Gittites said, "Let the ark of the God of Israel pass into Gath." And it happened that after the ark of God was moved, the hand of the Lord was in the city, and there was a very great disturbance. And it struck the men of the city from the least to the greatest, and mice swarmed forth for them in their seats, and the Gittites made for themselves seats of skins, and they sent the ark of God to Ashkelon. And it happened that when the ark of the God of Israel entered Ashkelon, the Ashkelonites cried out, saying, "Why have you sent the ark of the God of Israel to us, to deliver us and our people to death?" And they send and summon the lords of the Philistines and said, "Send back the ark of the God of Israel, and let it be brought back to its place, and it will not give death to us and our people, because a grievous confusion has been wrought in the whole city, very grievous, when the ark of God entered there." And those who lived and did not die were struck in their seats, and the cry of the cities rose up to heaven. You see, Constantius, how our God allows his religion to appear humiliated by you aliens, and indeed humiliated to such an extent, until even you persecutors of the true religion see that there is no other god besides our God.

But to return to the case of Athanasius, did you not know what is written in the first book of Kings: that Samuel judged the people of Israel in all sanctifications, so that you might think it right that an innocent man be condemned through the Lord's priests? You have read that Samuel judged the people of God in every sanctification; and because we are unwilling to depart from this just way of judging, we suffer persecution from you. It is nothing new, since Saul persecuted the righteous Samuel for speaking the truth to him, and indeed persecuted him through whom he had been anointed king, through whom the Lord had raised him to such great glory. Saul persecuted the Lord's prophet and priest because he was not in his right mind; otherwise, how could a sane man persecute one whom he knew to be a minister of God, full of the Spirit of God? He persecuted him whose groaning for the salvation of the persecutor he continually ignored. The scripture in the first book of Kings says that the Lord spoke to Samuel: "How long will you mourn for Saul? Behold, I am casting him out, so that he may not reign over Israel. Fill your horn with oil and come; I will send you to the house of Jesse in Bethlehem, for I have seen among the sons of Jesse one who is king for me." And Samuel said: "How shall I go, lest Saul hear of it and kill me?" He sought to destroy the one whom he had long remembered in many ways to be a man of God.

A man of God does not cease to beg for mercy for his persecutor; the son of that plague seeks to take away his life. For Saul was so persistent a persecutor of Samuel, the priest of the Lord, that he said to the Lord, who said to him, "Come, I will send you": "And how shall I go? Saul will hear and kill me." You see, Constantius, that by departing from God you are considered not men, but beasts, but wild animals and brigands. Or is it not the case that in this unjust persecution of Athanasius you are to be compared to Saul? Since you so desire to slay the innocent Athanasius, just as he desired to kill not only Samuel but also David—for Saul threatened to kill those with whom he knew God to be. And the Scripture says: "Saul saw that the Lord was with David, and all Israel loved him. And Saul added more to his fear of David. And Saul spoke to his son Jonathan and to all his servants, to kill David." Answer, most shameless emperor, whether one who has the spirit of God can do these things. At what time did Saul begin to do these things? Surely at the time when he was cursed and rejected through Samuel; for at that same time it is written that God departed from him, but was with David. By these things it is proven that you Arians are without the spirit of God, since you persecute Athanasius, a man full of the Holy Spirit. And it says: "And David was wise in all his ways, and the Lord was with him, and all Israel and Judah loved David.

Therefore, so that you may recognize that you are doing the same things around Athanasius that Saul did around David, take this text: and Jonathan, the son of Saul, greatly loved David, and Jonathan informed David, saying: Saul seeks to kill you, and further: and Jonathan spoke to his father, saying: Do not sin, O king, against your servant David, because he has not sinned against you, and his deeds are very good. And he put his life in his own hands and killed the foreigner, and the Lord brought salvation to Israel, and all Israel saw and rejoiced. And why do you sin against innocent blood and seek to kill David without cause? And Saul heard the voice of his son Jonathan, and Saul swore, saying: As the Lord lives, if David dies, and further: and war was waged again, and David prevailed and fought the foreigners and struck them with a great plague, and they fled from the face of David. And an evil spirit came upon Saul, and he himself was sleeping in his house, and a spear was in his hand, and behold, he was playing music with his hands. And Saul sought to strike David with the spear and struck, and David turned aside from the face of Saul. And he struck the spear into the wall, and David fled and was saved. And it happened that night, and Saul sent messengers to David's house to guard him, so that in the morning he might kill him. And David fled and was saved.

And he came to Samuel in Ramathaim, and reported to him all that Saul had done, and further: and Saul became very angry with Jonathan, and further: and he said: send these, take the young man, for he is a son of death. And Jonathan answered his father: why should he die? what has he done? And Saul lifted his spear against Jonathan, to kill him. Whom would Saul spare, when he spoke the truth to him, if he did not even spare his own son? Thus you pass over God's commandments and set up your own. Finally, we are not surprised if, because it is said: the absent cannot be condemned, you persecute the priests of the Lord, when we see that Saul persecuted those who were serving God in this way. Scripture speaks, saying: and the king said: you will die the death, Abimelech, you and all your father's house, and further: and the king said to the runners and those standing by him: bring and kill the priests of the Lord, because their hands are with David, because they knew that David was fleeing and did not reveal it to me. And the king's servants were unwilling to lay their hands upon the priests of the Lord.

What do you say, most just king? If those boys of the king are reported to have been unwilling to obey the king’s command, if they are shown to have despised Saul’s precepts, lest they act against God’s mandates, was it fitting for us bishops, trampling the Lord’s precepts, to fulfill your commands, you sacrilegious murderer? For this reason, then, do you deign to persecute us, because we do not place your mandates before the Lord’s commands? Saul also did these things, which sacred Scripture proves to be so, saying: And Saul said to Doeg: Turn yourself to meet the priests of the Lord. And Doeg the Syrian turned, and he himself killed the priests of the Lord, and on that day he slew three hundred and five men and all those bearing the Ephod; in the city of Noriban, the city of the priests, he slew with the sword’s edge from man to nursing infant. In a similar manner you have now attempted and are attempting to tear apart the bodies of those whom you see, mindful of God’s precepts, resisting your command. Therefore we cannot wonder if you persecute us, when we see that Saul, because they did not hand over the Lord’s servant David into his hands, not only lost three hundred and five priests, but also the entire city. Saul persecuted David, who, when he was in his power, nevertheless often spared him. And it happened, says Scripture, when Saul had returned from the foreigners, and they reported to him, saying: Behold, David is in the desert of Asotus. And he took with him three thousand chosen men from all Israel, and went to seek David and his men before the face of the deer hunt.

And he came to the flocks of sheep which were by the road, and there was a cave there, and Saul entered to relieve himself, and David and his men were sitting in the inner part of the cave. And David’s men said to him: Behold this day of which the Lord said: I will give your enemy into your hands, and you shall do to him what is pleasing in your eyes. And David arose, and secretly cut off the fringe of Saul’s cloak. And it happened after this that David’s heart smote him because he had cut off the fringe of the cloak. And David said to his men: May it not befall me from the Lord, if I do this thing to my lord, the Lord’s anointed, to lay my hand upon him, because he is the Lord’s anointed. And David persuaded his men with words and did not permit them to rise up and kill Saul. And Saul arose and went down to the road, and David went out after Saul, saying: My lord king. And Saul looked back, and David prostrated himself face down on the ground and worshipped him, and David said to Saul: Why do you listen to the words of the people saying: Behold David seeks your life? And behold, on this day your eyes have seen how the Lord delivered you today into my hands in the cave, and I did not wish to kill you, and I spared you, and I said: I will not lay my hand upon my lord, because he is the Lord’s anointed.

who took the hem of your cloak in my hand, and I cut off a piece of your cloak, and I did not kill you—know and see today that there is no malice or injustice in my hand, and I have not sinned against you, and you seek to take my life. Let the Lord judge between me and you, and He will avenge me against you, but my hand will not be against you. As the old proverb says, from the wicked will come wickedness. But my hand will not be against you—whom do you pursue? A dead dog and a single flea? Let the Lord be judge and avenger between me and you. Let the Lord see and judge my case and justify me from your hand. Such is the custom of the worshipers of God: to reserve everything for God, knowing that it is a great thing to be avenged by Him. Meanwhile, as I said above, see Saul, when he is of sound mind, what he says, but when he becomes incapable, how he thirsts for the blood of David, a just and innocent man. And it happened, it says, when David had finished speaking these words to Saul, Saul said: Is this your voice, son David? And Saul cried out and wept. And he said to David: You are more just than I, because you have returned good to me, while I have repaid evil to you. And you have declared to me today the good you have done for me, just as the Lord confined me in your hands, and you did not kill me. And as one finds his friend and sends him forth on a good path. And may the Lord repay you with good for what you have done for me today.

And now, behold, I know that you will reign, reigning, and the kingdom of Israel will be established in your hand; and now swear to me by the Lord, whether you will not eradicate my seed after me and whether you will not blot out the name from my father’s house. And David swore to Saul. After this, surely Saul ought already to have changed, but still he neither ceases to pursue nor fails to spare David. And Saul arose, Scripture says, and went down into a dark desert, and with him three thousand chosen men from Israel to seek David; and further: and David sent scouts and learned that Saul had come to Siceleg. And David arose secretly and went to the place where Saul and Abner, son of Ner, the commander of his army, were sleeping. And Saul was sleeping on splendid coverlets, and the people were around him. And David said to Amalek the Gittite and to Abishai, son of Zeruiah, brother of Joab, saying: Who will enter the camp with me to Saul? And Abishai said to David: I will go with you. And David and Abishai entered among the people by night, and behold, Saul was sleeping on precious coverlets, and a splendid spear was fixed at his head, and Abner was sleeping near him. And Abishai said to David: Today the Lord has delivered your enemy into your hands, and now I will kill him with the spear, driving it once into the ground, and I will not repeat it. And David said to Abishai: Do not touch him, for who will lay his hand on the Lord’s anointed and be innocent?

And David said: As the Lord lives, unless the Lord strikes him down or unless his hour comes and he dies, or he goes down into battle and is laid low, it is not for me to lay my hand upon the Lord’s anointed. And now take the spear that is at his head and the flask of water, and let us withdraw. And David took the spear and the flask of water from his head, and they departed. And there was no one who saw nor who knew, and there was no one who kept watch; for all were sleeping, because the fear of the Lord had fallen upon them. And David crossed over and stood on the top of a mountain far off, and there was a great distance between them. And David besought the people and Abner and spoke, saying: Do you not answer, Abner? And Abner answered and said: Who are you that calls me? What is it? And David said to Abner: Are you not a man, and who is like you in Israel? Why do you not guard your lord the king? For one of the people entered to destroy your lord the king. This is not good that you have done. As the Lord lives, you are sons of death, who have not guarded your lord the king, the Lord’s anointed. And now see, here is the king’s spear and the flask of water that was at his head. And King Saul recognized David’s voice and said: Is this your voice, son David? Your servant, my lord king. And David added: Why does my lord pursue his servant? For what wrong have I done, and what evil is in me?

And now let my lord the king hear the words of his servant: if the Lord God strikes you down into my sorrow and into a sacrificial victim; but if the sons of men, cursed are they in the sight of the Lord, because they have cast me out today, not being confirmed in the covenant of the Lord, saying: Go, serve alien gods. And now my blood shall not fall upon the earth before the sight of the Lord, because the king of Israel has gone out to seek a single flea, as the owl pursues in the mountains. And Saul said: I have sinned; return, son of David, for I will no longer do evil against you, because my soul is accepted before your eyes on this day, in which I have acted foolishly and have been greatly ignorant of many things. And David answered, saying: Behold the king’s spear; let one of the servants come and take it. And may the Lord restore to each his justice and his faith, as he delivered you today into my hands, and I did not wish to lay my hand upon the Lord’s anointed. Behold, just as your soul exalted itself on this day before my eyes, so may my soul be exalted in the sight of the Lord, and may he snatch me away and deliver me from all tribulations. And Saul said to David: Blessed are you, son, and you will be able to do and to accomplish.

I have inserted these things so that you might finally be able to infer that you are unjustly persecuting either Athanasius or us, that you are being goaded to the slaughter of your own salvation, that you are contracting for yourself the perils of death before the divinity, just as Saul contracted for himself through those things which he did. If these things are not so, say why you persecute us; surely not because we do not shed innocent blood. Whom do you wish us to imitate, you or David? For concerning David I find it written: and David reigned in Israel, and was doing judgment and justice among all his people; but we see you to be an unjust judge, a killer of the worshippers of God. Why do you persecute us? Surely because we have not wished, as you are, to become apostates, because we have not wished to deny the only son of God. David speaks of the perfect Trinity and narrates the one divinity of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit; and you are found to be an apostate. Whom, I ask, shall I follow, you or David? That worshipper of the Lord, lover of mercy, or you, sacrilegious executioner? O man of what wisdom, you persecute Athanasius? I would wonder that you do these things, if King Ahab had not likewise persecuted Elijah and the other prophets of the Lord; I would wonder that you persecute a man of God, if I did not see you to be Ahab in all things. Finally, such things are said to you by us as were said to him by the servants of God: do not worship Baal, do not serve idols, but God; serve the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, serve the God of Israel.

If you recall that Elijah and the other prophets of the Lord spoke such things to Ahab, the apostate king, note that similar things are being said to you by those to whom the Lord has given the authority to teach. Do not, Constantius, fight alongside the Arians against the house of God, do not introduce the idolatry of Arius into the Church, do not deny the only Son of God, cease persecuting the apostolic and evangelical faith. Because we say these things, we seem to you to be enemies. Thus were those who spoke the truth to a king considered enemies. Let us finally run through what things arose, what things were done between Elijah, the prophet of the Lord, and Ahab, your fellow apostate, and you will find that you are today Ahab. "The Lord lives," says Elijah, "before whom I stand, if in these years there will be dew and rain, except by the word of my mouth." When this was indeed fulfilled, the senseless man ought to have recognized that truly God alone was powerful, that there was nothing except that God whom Elijah served. What does Ahab do? He sees that for three years and more there has been no rain, and he is all the more devoted to idols, all the more desirous of killing Elijah. The prophet of God hears from the sacrilegious mouth of Ahab: "Are you the one who overturns Israel?" Thus you also say to Athanasius or to us, that we are the ones turning the people of God, when you are the one summoning Christians to embrace your heresy. But you hear from us what that Ahab, the worshiper of idolatry, heard from the glorious Elijah: "We do not overturn the house of God, but you and your father's house overturn it.

Nor will you deny that you think of nothing except making all of us your fellow apostates. But, as I had begun to speak about the deeds of Elijah and Ahab: and Elijah said, "I am not turning Israel away, but you and your father's house are turning it away, while you abandon our Lord God and go after Baal. And now, send and gather to me all Israel on Mount Asotus, and the four hundred fifty prophets of confusion, and the four hundred prophets of the groves, who eat and drink at Jezebel's table." And King Ahab sent to all Israel and gathered all the prophets on Mount Carmel. And Asotus approached all of them and said to them, "How long will you limp in your understanding? If the Lord God exists, go after him. But if Baal exists, go after him." And the people did not answer him a word. And Asotus said to the people, "I alone, one of the prophets of the Lord, have prevailed, and these prophets of Baal, four hundred fifty men, and the prophets of the groves, four hundred; therefore, let two oxen be given to us, and let them choose one for themselves and dismember it, and place it upon wood, and not set fire under it; and I will do the same with the other ox, and I will not set fire under it. And call upon the names of your gods, and I will call upon the name of my God, and whichever god hears us in the fire will be the god." And all the people answered and said, "It is a good word that Elijah has spoken.

And Elijah said to the prophets of confusion: "Choose for yourselves one calf and do the earlier things, since you are many, and cry out in the name of your gods, and do not place fire under it." And they took the calf and did so, and they invoked the name of Baal from morning until evening, and they said: "Hear us, Baal, hear us." And there was no voice nor answer for them. And Elijah the Tishbite added, saying: "Invoke with a loud voice together, lest perhaps he be busy or asleep, and he will be roused." And they called upon him with a loud voice, and they cut themselves according to their custom with swords and razors to the point of shedding blood upon themselves, and they prophesied until midday passed. And it happened that when the time came to kindle the sacrifice, Elijah the Tishbite spoke to the prophets, saying: "Withdraw now, and I will make the burnt offerings." And they withdrew and went away. And Elijah said to the people: "Come near to me." And all the people came near to him, and Elijah took twelve stones according to the number of the tribes of Israel, as the Lord had spoken to him, saying: "Israel will be your name.

And he built stones and restored the altar of the Lord, which had been demolished, and made a trench that would hold two measures of seed around the altar, and he packed kindling on the altar he had made, and he cut up the sacrifice and placed it on the kindling and heaped it on the altar, and he said: "Take for me four jars of water and pour them over the sacrifice and over the kindling." And he said: "Bring again." And they brought again. And he said: "Repeat a third time." And they repeated a third time, and water flowed around the sanctuary, and they filled the trench with water. And Elijah cried out to heaven and said: "Lord God of Abraham and Isaac and Israel, hear me, O Lord, hear me today in fire, while all this people stand here, for you are the Lord God of Asotus and I am your servant, and for your sake I have done these works, and you have turned the heart of this people back." And fire fell from the Lord from heaven, and it consumed the sacrifices and the kindling and the water that was in heaven, and the stones and the earth. The fire licked up. And all the people fell on their faces and said: "Truly the Lord God is God." And Elijah said to the people: "Seize the prophets of Baal, let none of them be safe." And they seized them, and Elijah led them to the torrent Gison and killed them there, and he said to Ahab: "Eat and drink, for the sound of the feet of rain is here." And Ahab went up to eat and drink.

And Elijah went up to Carmel, and he bowed down to the ground and placed his face between his knees, and said to his servant: go up and look toward the sea. And the servant looked, and the servant said: there is nothing. Turn around seven times. And it happened on the seventh time, and behold, a small cloud like a man’s footprint bringing water from the sea. And Elijah said to him: go up and say to Ahab: harness your chariot and go up, lest the rain overtake you. And it happened on this side and that, and the sky grew dark with clouds and winds, and a great rain fell. And Ahab wept and went into Israel, and the hand of the Lord was upon Elijah. Do you recognize in what perversity you remain today, in which Ahab also remained? For from so many signs and wonders displayed, he does not deign to rejoice with the people, but grieves that Elijah dared to kill the priests and prophets of the idols, nor after such things does he deign to turn himself to God, but rather still persecutes his worshiper. He sees that God is in Elijah, and yet seeks his life. He beholds that the prophets of Baal and of the groves were worshippers of demons, and loves them, even dead, more than him whom he had perceived by so many means to be a household friend of God. So too do you deign to love those whom you see are men of the Arian heresy sect, and persecute the worshippers of God most bitterly.

I have set before you a few of the many deeds between Ahab and Elijah, so that you may recognize that we, from the time you abandon God, are not easily turned back to him by signs or wonders, but rather, persisting in your errors like savage beasts, you rage against the necks of the worshipers of God. We beseech you, Constantius, do not still deign to linger in these your evils, but rather emerge from the whirlwinds of the devil, lest those evils seize you which seized Ahab and Jezebel. Nor should you call yourself fortunate in this, that you are powerful to persecute the men of God, when you see that Ahab and Jezebel could have been destroyed at Elijah’s request, and yet they were preserved, so that both the patience of Elijah, the man of God, might be more fully blessed, and the measure of their impiety might be filled, as if Elijah could not have asked God that the persecutors of his religion, the worshipers of idols, burn. He asked that fire be given from heaven to consume the sacrifices; it came down at once. He asked for rain, which had been withheld for three years and six months, and it was given at once. Many other signs were performed; and could the enemies of God not be destroyed at Elijah’s request, when even those honored fifty men were consumed by descending fire at Elijah’s word? You see that today you could be destroyed by lightning or any means, because you persecute Athanasius or us, but you are preserved for this: that either you may convert, or the full measure of your iniquity may be filled. King Ahab persecuted Elijah, as you now persecute Athanasius.

Indeed Jezebel said to the Lord's prophet, after she had learned through Elijah that those miracles had been performed and the prophets of confusion and the priests of the religions had been killed: "May the gods do this to me and may they add this to me, if I do not at this hour tomorrow place your soul as the soul of one of them." But what does Elijah hear from God after a fast of forty days and nights? Indeed, that he should anoint kings through whom Ahab and his allies would be destroyed. With Elijah is the mercy of God; Elijah knows that he is loved by God; on the other hand, Ahab, the persecutor of Elijah, is so wretched that he was always under the power of the devil. Thus you ordered Athanasius to be justly punished, just as Jezebel punished Naboth the Jezreelite; thus you produced true witnesses against Athanasius, just as those produced to whom Jezebel had written, saying: "Fast a fast, and let Naboth sit among the first people, and place two men, sons of iniquity, against him, and let them testify against him, saying: 'You have cursed the Lord and the king,' and bring him forth, and let him be stoned and die.

Such are the works now of you Arians. You accuse us, you heap many charges upon us, and you do not need false witnesses; for you yourselves are false witnesses in everything. Thus you, sons of perdition, Arians, attempt to kill Athanasius, just as Jezebel attempted to kill Naboth, as if you could escape the hand of the one who sees all. You know that God avenged the blood of Naboth, that he sought the death of his murderers from their hands; and do you think that God will not seek the blood of his priest Athanasius from your hands? And the Lord said to Elijah the Tishbite: "Arise and go down to meet Ahab, king of Israel, who is in Samaria, because he has gone down into the vineyard of Naboth to take possession of it. And you shall say to him: Thus says the Lord: Because you killed Naboth and took possession of his vineyard, for this reason thus says the Lord: In the place where dogs and swine licked the blood of Naboth, there dogs will lick your blood, and harlots will wash in your blood." And Ahab said to Elijah: "Have you found me, my enemy?" And Elijah said: "I have found you, because you planned to do evil before the face of the Lord, to provoke him. Thus says the Lord: Behold, I bring evils upon you, and I will kindle fire after you, and I will destroy you, Ahab, who urinates against the wall, and the contemptible, and the rest in Israel. And I will make your house like the house of Jeroboam son of Nebat, like the house of Saba son of Acia, for all the provocations with which you provoked and gave sin in Israel.

And the Lord said to Jezebel: "The dogs will devour her before the wall of Jezebel, and the birds of the city will devour your dead in the city." What do you say to this, Constantius? Do you think your sins are less than those of Ahab and Jezebel? They persecuted the priests of God, they killed the servants of God, they abolished the worship of God and established idolatry, they turned the people away from God. And you have done and are doing all these things. Thus you call us your enemies, just as Ahab called Elijah, who, when he heard the indignation of the Lord from the mouth of the prophet, said: "Has the enemy of King Ahab sent me?" Surely because you would say: "Do not serve idols, but worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel." And because it is said to you: "Do not be a heretic, but be a Christian," you call us enemies. Why are these things, which were urged through Elijah to King Ahab, urged upon you who are handing over idolatry? Ahab would certainly have loved Elijah if the prophet had judged that his idols should be served and that God should be abandoned. And you yourself cannot deny the same thing, for if we had chosen to be what you are, you would have loved us with singular affection.

by which things you are understood to be a son of pestilence, a fountain of evil-doers, a tinderbox of all evils, a headlong gulf of wickedness, a bilge of all blasphemies, a kindling of heretics, a root of bitterness, a tree destined for fire, indeed bearing deadly fruits, an enemy of God, a foe of the Church, a falsifier of truth, a promoter of depravity, a lover of injustice, having become an adversary of justice turned into darkness and indeed inextricable darkness, and having become more truly a temple of all demons, by whose prompting you have perpetrated and do perpetrate all these evils, like Ahab. But you will not be able to remain unpunished for long, unless you turn to God, when you see what Ahab and Jezebel received. For if Ahab perished, as was promised to him by the mouth of Elijah, if dogs devour Jezebel, will you be unpunished for such great crimes? You who not only do not grieve that you have killed those devoted to God, but even still boast, thinking that you have done well. Nor is it surprising, since your horse, the forerunner of future events, the denier, said in the Gospel: "The hour will come, and everyone who kills you will think he is doing a service to God; but they do this because they know neither the Father nor His only Son.

Knowing that you live without knowledge of God, you persecute Athanasius, who speaks the truth to you and loves God with his whole heart. Thus also Ahab persecuted Elijah. But see the outcome of Elijah and of his enemy Ahab. Behold Elijah, translated to enjoy the eternal friendships of God, and now Ahab is tormented in the outer darkness. Elijah rejoices in the friendship of God, and Ahab pays perpetual penalties. Without doubt, Athanasius will be at the banquet where Elijah is; and you will be in that place of torments where Ahab is detained, unless you take thought for yourself—you, who are found to be an imitator of Ahab in all things. Is this wisdom, that you would choose the eternal misery of King Ahab rather than enjoy the perpetual happiness that Elijah attained? Scripture speaks of his translation in the fourth book of Kings, saying: "And as they went and were speaking, behold, a fiery chariot and fiery horses, and it separated between the two. And Elijah went up in the whirlwind as if into heaven. And Elisha saw, and he cried out and said: 'Father, father, charioteer of Israel.' And he saw him no more." Your deed as a heretic will not seem new to us, if you persecute the priests of the Lord, since in the second book of Chronicles we find that Jeroboam and his sons did these things.

Sacred Scripture says: "Judah, Benjamin, and the Levites and priests who were in all Israel gathered from all the borders, because the Levites abandoned their tents and their possessions and went to Rehoboam, since Jeroboam and his sons drove them away, so that they would not serve the Lord." And there he set up priests of the high places and of the idols and demons and calves which Jeroboam made. And he cast them out from the sons of Israel and from the tribes of Israel, who had given their heart to seek the Lord God of Israel. Therefore it should not be a matter for wonder, if you persecute us or those divinely entrusted to us, if you drive us out of what is entrusted to us, if finally you place in our positions enemies of God, those who along with you have abandoned God, when you see that you are fulfilling these things which Jeroboam did. For what else is it to say: "Condemn the faith written at Nicaea and accept mine," except this which Jeroboam said: "Abandon God and serve my idols"? What man are you who says: "Condemn an absent, unheard, innocent man"? Certainly you, who had already denied the apostolic and evangelical faith, you who had destroyed the tradition of the blessed apostles, as far as it depends on you and yours. Hence finally it came about that you arrived at such madness, because you were like Jeroboam, without God. For if you had God, if you remembered yourself to be his worshiper, you would never indeed say: "Condemn an innocent man, strike an unheard, absent fellow priest of yours.

And so that you may see that you are without God, whence you also order such things to be done, take the king with whom his god was according to his merits, take also his supplication to the Lord’s priests whom he urged to judge a just judgment for the people of God, and also observe the actions of the judges instituted by you against the church and of his ministers; and you will be able to judge whether the unclean spirits that were with Jeroboam are not with you. And it says in the second book of Paralipomenon: “Jehoshaphat dwelt in Jeroboam, and he turned and went out among the people from Beer-sheba to Mount Ephraim, and he converted them to the Lord God of their fathers. And he appointed judges in all the fortified cities of Judah and in each city. He said to the judges: ‘See what you will do for yourselves; for you will not judge for man, but for the Lord, and He is with you in the word. And now let the fear of the Lord be upon you, and keep and do this; for there is no iniquity with our Lord God, no partiality, and no acceptance of bribes.’ And indeed in Jerusalem, Jehoshaphat appointed from the Levites and priests and princes of Israel for the judgment of the Lord and to judge those dwelling in Jerusalem. And he commanded over them, saying: ‘Thus you will do in the fear of the Lord, with a perfect heart; and every judgment that is received by you from your brothers who dwell in their cities, between blood and blood, between the law, in the commandments and justifications, and according to the judgments.’

and you will distinguish for them, and they will not sin against the Lord, and there will be no wrath upon you and your brothers. Do thus, and you will not sin. Behold, Amarias the priest is prince over you in every word of the Lord, and Iabadias son of Zmabel, who is prince of the house of Judah in every word of the king, and the scribes and Levites in your sight. Be strengthened and act, and the Lord will be with you for good. Did he say to the Lord’s priests or to the princes of his kingdom or to the other judges: condemn the just man, persecute the innocent, convict, kill all who believe in God? Did he say: love what God does not love, hate justice, cherish injustice, as you say? Or can you deny that you said: condemn Athanasius absent and unheard? Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah devoted to God, speaks according to the Lord’s law to be judged, and you, a king turned to apostasy, say: condemn the unheard.

Meanwhile, Constantius, suppose that Jehoshaphat the king were alive today, and that both of you were speaking to us—he indeed saying this: "See what you will do; for you will not judge a man, but the Lord, and He is with you in the word. And now let the fear of the Lord be upon you, so that you keep and do this; for there is no iniquity nor favoritism with our Lord God." You, on the other hand, would say that the unheard-of man must be condemned, and that one whom you yourself know to be innocent. Whom could we, the bishops of God, have obeyed—we whom He promised to His people through the mouth of Jeremiah, saying: "And I will give you shepherds after my heart, and they will pasture you, pasturing with discipline"? Whom, I ask, would we obey—you, or Jehoshaphat, a man dedicated to God, who would compel us to do what we remembered God had commanded? If, therefore, you recognize that he fulfilled the Lord's commands, while you stood forth not only as a destroyer of God's commandments but also as a deserter of Him Himself, it remains for you to see which of you was the man of God, which one did the will of His mercy. We have read this written about him: "And the Lord was with Jehoshaphat, because he walked in the first ways of his father, and did not seek idols, but the Lord God of his father, and walked in His commandments, and not like the works of Israel. And the Lord directed his kingdom, and all Judah gave gifts to Jehoshaphat, and he had great wealth and glory.

and his heart was exalted in the ways of the Lord, and he also cut down the groves from Judah. And in the third year of his reign he sent his generals and the sons of virtue, and further: and with them Elimasat and Loram the priests, and they taught Judah, and with them the book of the law of the Lord, and they went through the cities of Judah and taught the people. And the fear of the Lord came upon the kingdoms of the earth and around Judah, and they did not make war on Jehoshaphat. And from the foreigners they brought to Jehoshaphat gifts and silver and presents, and the Arabs brought to him seven thousand seven hundred rams of sheep, and Jehoshaphat went about magnified unto the heights. What such thing do you do? Surely you sent throughout your entire kingdom, so that we all might spurn the commands of God and take up your command, which would attempt to assail the command of the Lord. Jehoshaphat sent the princes of the virtue of his kingdom, he sent his counselors, he sent Levites and priests of the Lord, beseeching that all in his kingdom might be worshipers of the Lord, that all might with one mind offer themselves as servants only to God; he also sends the book of the sacred law handed down through glorious Moses, so that they might do nothing other than what God had commanded to be done. You are found not only to have assailed the law of the Lord, which commands that the innocent and the just not be killed, but also to have abandoned God himself, since you do not hold the apostolic faith, but the perfidy of Arius.

He turned the wandering people from idols to God; you tried to make the people consecrated to God apostates, which is what you are, that is, a sacrilegious man. You have persecuted and you persecute Athanasius, thirsting for his blood. But see what the Holy Spirit says in the ninth psalm, in which you seem to me to be specifically described: he said in his heart: I will not be moved from age to age without evil. Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness and deceit, under whose tongue are labor and grief. He lies in ambush with the rich in secret places, to kill the innocent. His eyes look upon the poor man. He lies in wait in hiding like a lion in his den. He lies in wait to seize the poor man, to seize the poor man, until he brings him into his company. In his snare he has humiliated him, he has bent down and will fall, while he rules over the poor. He said in his heart: God has forgotten, he has turned his face away, so that he does not see until the end. Or if you persist in this wickedness, will it not be fitting to say of you: he has turned his face away, so that he does not see until the end? So great are your crimes, Constantius, that when it is said in the tenth psalm from the person of our people: I trust in the Lord, how will you say to my soul, migrate to the mountain like a sparrow? For behold, sinners have bent the bow, they have prepared their arrows in the quiver, to shoot in the dark at those upright of heart, you seem to me to be described together with the partners in your crimes.

We know, therefore, that you are the antichrists of our time, the Arians. Or if you are not one who deserves to be counted among the antichrists, consider, you denier of the only Son of God. The Holy Spirit says through the prophet: The Lord is in His holy temple, the Lord is in heaven, His seat. His eyes look upon the poor, and His eyelids question the sons of men. The Lord questions the just and the impious; but he who loves iniquity hates his own soul. And you have decreed that he should be punished, whom you have not even known to be guilty, except only in this, that he resisted your blasphemy, and for that he has become in your eyes guilty of death. Hear the Spirit of God saying: He who loves iniquity hates his own soul, and you compel him to love iniquity rather than justice. If it is not unjust to condemn an unheard man, with you heretics accusing, prove the Catholic innocent. For I, as long as I find it written: It will rain snares upon sinners, fire and sulphur and a whirlwind are part of their cup, because the Lord is just and loved justice, His face saw equity, I know that you and all who act with you in this matter are among them. Surely fire and sulphur and a whirlwind will come upon you, unless you are converted to God, because it is the portion of your cup, you deniers of the only Son of God, you persecutors of those devoted to His divine majesty, who, knowing that God is just and loves justice, and loves equity, have judged it right to condemn an innocent man, to persecute the Lord’s most faithful priest.

Love the Lord, says the Holy Spirit in Psalm 30, all his saints, because the Lord seeks truth and will abundantly repay those who practice pride. And you drove us to kill an innocent man, to possess pride along with you. For you could not deny that you are proud, since you laid deadly hands on the worshippers of God and attempted to destroy the evangelical faith and establish the heretical one. Had you not read in Psalm 32: The Lord loves mercy and judgment, and the mercy of the Lord fills the earth, so that you ordered an absent man to be condemned? Recognize through these deeds of yours how thoughtless you are and how much an enemy of your own salvation, you who, though you remember it is written: Who is the man who wants life and loves to see good days? Restrain your tongue from evil, and your lips from speaking deceit, and turn away from evil and do good, yet you do not find rest while doing those things which God has forbidden you to do. This is to be unwilling to see good days, this is to be unwilling to live, this is to seek death for oneself. Since, therefore, you are such a one, who runs to drink in eternal death, you seem to me to be prefigured also in Psalm 35. The unjust man said, so that he may sin against himself, there is no fear of God before his eyes. Because he acted deceitfully in his sight, so that his iniquity and hatred may be found. The words of his mouth are iniquity and deceit; he was unwilling to understand, so that he might act rightly.

He meditated on iniquity in his bed, he attends every evil path, but he did not hate malice. Consider what you are, most just emperor, on whose account even those things that were said against Judas Iscariot and the Jewish people are felt to have been spoken. How could we, Constantius, condemn an innocent man at the counsel of your pride? When we knew it was written in David: Show your mercy to those who know you, and your justice to those who are upright of heart. Let not the foot of pride come to me, and let not the hand of a sinner move me. There all who work iniquity have fallen, they have been cast out and cannot stand. What do you say? Is the mercy and justice of God such that the absent and unheard are condemned, and indeed innocent men, whom it is not lawful to punish even when present? But why is it surprising if you ordered these things done, a man ignorant of God? Why is it surprising, if, ignorant of his mercy and justice, you commanded perverse, iniquitous, unjust things to be done? Could not the word of the psalmist saying: There all who work iniquity have fallen, they have been cast out and could not stand, remove you from such a great crime? Nor that in Psalm 36: Cease from anger and abandon fury; do not strive to be malicious, for those who are malicious will be exterminated?

Therefore, reading these things, because you have judged that the statutes of the Lord should be considered as nothing, I therefore judge you to be that one of whom it is said, "The sinner watches the just man and gnashes his teeth at him; but the Lord will mock him, because he sees that his day will come." We count you among those of whom I perceive it is said: "Sinners have drawn their sword, they have bent their bow, to cast down the helpless and the poor and to slaughter the upright in heart. May their sword enter their own hearts, and their bow be broken. A little that is just is better than the riches of many sinners, for the arms of sinners will be shattered." You are placed among those enemies of the Lord whom the Spirit of God describes further below: "The enemies of the Lord, as soon as they are honored and exalted, will vanish like smoke." Consider at last, with all your sublimity, that unless you correct yourself, you will perish like smoke, indeed as an enemy of God. I see further that it is written about you, that unless you are converted and repent, you will come to nothing: "I saw the impious man exceedingly exalted and raised above the cedars of Lebanon. And I passed by, and behold, he was not. And I sought him, and his place was not found." You are, I say, that one, Constantius, of whom I also see these words spoken: "The sinner beholds the just man and seeks to kill him; but the Lord will not abandon him into his hands.

The prophet, filled with the Holy Spirit, says: Do not vie among the malicious, nor follow those who do iniquity, for they will wither quickly like hay and fall like the herbs of the field. But is it said by you, Constantius, destroyer of the religion of God: Do you imitate me? For who would imitate you except one who wishes to wither with you like the herbs of the field? Who except one who wishes to be destroyed by the indignation of God, if indeed it is truly said: You speak of justice, judge justly, sons of men, and do you rise up to slay the innocent? Therefore, it cannot be doubted that you are among those to whom the Holy Spirit says: For you work iniquities in your heart, your hands contrive iniquity on the earth. Sinners are alienated from the womb, they have strayed from the belly, they have spoken falsehoods. Wrath is in them according to the likeness of a serpent, like a deaf asp that blocks its ears, which does not hear the voice of the enchanters, which is enchanted by a wise man. God has ground their teeth in their own mouth, the Lord will break the molars of lions. They will come to nothing and will flow away like water, he has bent his bow until they are weakened. They will be carried off like melted wax, they have fallen upon them, they have not seen the sun. You hear that you and yours will come to nothing, as those have already come to nothing whose imitator you have chosen to be. You see that you, persecutors of the servants of God, deniers of the only Son of God, are compared to serpents and asps; and do you not yet fear to betake yourself to the house of God?

You, who are shown to be like those asps, do not shape yourself to trample the devil's head, so that you might be found worthy to reign among those whose glory John recounts: He came into his own, and his own did not receive him; but as many as received him, he gave them the power to become sons of God, who believe in his name. Is it not written in the fifty-eighth psalm: God of Israel, attend to visiting all nations, do not have mercy on all who work iniquity, so that you would order a sentence to be given against an absent man? Nor had you known to admonish and rebuke the Holy Spirit alike through these words: How long do you rush upon man? You kill everyone? Fear of the Lord, says Solomon, is the beginning of wisdom; but the impious despise wisdom and discipline. Hence you despise discipline and wisdom, because you are without fear of God; hence you are described as impious in the sacred writings, impious indeed because not only have you yourself abandoned God, but you also so hostilely persecute those who worship him. Woe to you, because you are found to be with those of whom I read in Proverbs: Son, do not let impious men seduce you, nor wish, if they ask you, saying: Come, share blood with us, and let us hide an unjustly slain just man in the earth, and let us swallow him alive, like the underworld. What had delighted you, Constantius, imitator of the Jews and Arians, that, hearing those impious voices of theirs, you followed them to shed the blood of the servants of God?

Why did you not listen to the counsels of Solomon speaking to you? Do not go on the ways with them, do not turn your foot aside to their paths. For nets are not unjustly spread for birds. For those who are participants in homicide store up evils for themselves; these are the ways of all who accomplish iniquity; by their own impiety they take away their own soul, and again: as long as the innocent hold to justice, they will not be ashamed; but the foolish, while they are eager for insult, having become impious, hate understanding, and have been subjected to reproaches. You, Constantius, have sought these reproaches for yourself, you have condemned yourself, who, despising the precepts of God, have chosen to cling to the accursed disciples of the Jews, the Arians, with whom you still worthily hear this: For since I called, and you did not obey, and I extended words, and you did not pay attention. But you rendered my counsels void, and you did not heed my reproaches. Therefore I too will laugh at your destruction; I will rejoice against you, when a sudden tumult comes upon you, and a destruction like a storm, when destruction comes upon you. For it will be that you will call upon me, but I will not hear. The wicked will seek me and will not find me. For they have hated wisdom, and have not taken up the word of the Lord, nor have they wished to attend to my counsels; they have spurned my reproaches. Therefore they will eat the fruits of their way and will satiate their souls with their own impiety. For because they were deceiving the little ones, they are killed.

We certainly deserved to be put to death with you, and indeed by God, if we had persecuted a man of God along with you. But how could we have done that? We who knew the scripture: "Do not contrive evil against your friend, against a resident and a confidant. Do not wage hostilities against a man without cause, lest evil be wrought for you." Or was it not without cause, if, as the insane fury of your fellow heretics commanded through you, we had passed a sentence of death against an innocent man? Woe to you, because I see what is said about you, our persecutor: "An insolent eye, a wicked tongue, hands that shed the blood of a just man, and a heart devising evil thoughts, and feet hastening to do evil." You have read: "Son, honor the Lord, and you will prevail; besides him, fear no other"; and yet you wished to be feared yourself, but God to be despised. For how else could we have been found fearing only God, if, yielding to your threats, we were to condemn an absent man unheard, and indeed one whom we knew to be just? Solomon says: "A deceitful balance is an abomination before the Lord, but an equal weight is acceptable to him." You, on the contrary, do not hesitate to command: "Condemn the man by an unjust judgment," considering this right which is perverse. Still Solomon says of you and those like you: "The ways of the foolish are straight in their own eyes, but the wise man heeds counsel." "Condemn Athanasius," you say, and indeed where you could not prevail by the skill of your detestable subtlety, you began with the forces of your imperial power.

Therefore, take this as written about you: "The evil man does evil with insult," and again, that you have already hanged yourself with this noose by clinging to the Arians, just as Judas Iscariot did to the Jews. "The law is a fountain of life for the wise, but the fool will die by the noose." It is also said of you: "A bold king will thus fall into evils." You have certainly fallen into these evils because you have left yourself no wisdom, denying the only Son of God, but have turned yourself entirely into folly, which has caused you to slaughter those dear to God. It is written: "The wise man, by fearing, will turn away from evil, but the fool mingles, trusting in the unjust." Had you not read the scripture: "He who insults the poor provokes the one who made him," so that you would drag us to be killed with you, though innocent? For if God is angry with one who offers insult, how much more with one who has killed His priest! Did you still not retain the scripture: "The beginning of a good way is to do just things; and these are more acceptable to the Lord than sacrificing victims," as you would compel us to do unjust things? But also in another place: "He who calls the just unjust, and the unjust just, is abominable to God." We would undoubtedly be abominable if we pronounced you just and judged Athanasius, a man acceptable to God, unjust. "To admire," it says, "the person of the impious is not good, nor is it holy to turn aside the just in judgment.

You say the opposite, you who seem described in the person of the impious man: condemn the innocent, imitating my person; and although you have compelled us to do these things, which could cause us to seek an angry God, nevertheless we exhort you, the enemy of our safety, to become pious from impious, safe from sick, alive from dead, religious from sacrilegious. "Go," you say, "how will I be able to attain this? By what means?" Cease persecuting the house of God, cease proscribing, deporting, killing its servants, confess yourself a Christian, execrate with us the crowd of Arians sought out by the devil's device, believe as we believe, who are bishops from the succession of the blessed apostles, confess the only Son of God, as they confessed and we confess; and you will obtain pardon for such great crimes. For you have read in Solomon: "Death and life are in the hands of the tongue," and in blessed Paul: "With the heart one believes for righteousness, but with the mouth confession is made for salvation." You have remembered it written: "A false witness will not go unpunished, and he who accuses unjustly will not escape"; and yet you dared to deny Athanasius. For we had no cause with the colleagues of your sect, the Arians, since the power of God had already long ago bound them together with Arius at Nicaea, at the time when the faith was written down not only against your blasphemy but also against all heresies.

No, I say, there was no dispute between us and those false bishops, enemies of God, your teachers, such that we would again have to contend against those whom God once drove from his people. And so now the matter is with you, because you set yourself up as the author, since Athanasius was guilty—whom, because we were unwilling to punish him unheard, you, a man who knew yourself to be a false witness, like a savage beast and a wild animal, began to want to punish us along with Athanasius, as if by your gnashings you could overcome the strength of the servants of God. For although Solomon says: "The threats of a king are like the roarings of a lion," yet your leonine roarings will not be able to have power against us. Why? Because you are the forerunner of Antichrist, and we are soldiers of Christ. Why? Because you, a persecutor of his religion, cannot overcome men of God. Likewise in another place: "There is no difference," he says, "between the threats of a king and the anger of a lion." What is this to the servants of God, who have determined that no one except God is to be feared, who remember that our souls are placed in the hand of God? Your fellow Arians can fear your roarings, because they are without knowledge of God, because they are least clothed in the armor of God. But the household servants of God laugh at your lion-like roarings. Why? Because, recognizing you as a wild beast, whose roarings you are described as having, we laugh at you, seeing you as a rabid beast set in the form of a man, rather than it being necessary for us to fear you. But if you are not a beast lurking under the image of a man, say so.

You have read in Solomon: "Mercy and truth are the king's protection, and the just surround his throne." When the malignant throng of Arians has surrounded you, and we see you as the punisher of mercy, the despiser of truth, what else shall we judge you to be but a wild beast and a monster? You are roused against us, like a roaring lion, because we love mercy and truth, because we have not punished an innocent and just man, and you think you are not a savage beast and a most cruel monster? But what will drove you to perpetrate these things, I simply cannot see, that you, who had been a catholic bishop of all justice, a priest of the Lord, should have persecuted Athanasius to such a ruin. Did you not remember the scripture: "To do justice and to be truthful pleases God more than the blood of sacrifices"? Athanasius displeases you because he guards the tradition of the blessed apostles, because he professes himself a Christian, because he refuses to be your fellow apostate. No wonder, since we hold it written: "The holy man, however, is unclean in the eyes of the wicked." To you evil ones, he who pleases God is displeasing, especially to you, rash and proud man, who are understood to be rash and proud because you have stretched forth your hand against God's ordinance, because you thought the apostolic tradition should be destroyed, because you judged that the bishops, under whose care you ought to have acted, should be reduced to your authority.

Therefore, understand what you are, hearing through Solomon that the name for you is proud: "The rash and proud man shall be called a pestilence." Although you are a pestilent man, you will not be able to afflict us with your disease, because divine clemency provides us protection. Finally, you, a pestilent man, have tried to make us your fellow pestilents; but He to whose service we live has not allowed your temptations to reach upright hearts; for Scripture suggests: "Free those who are led to death and redeem those who are being killed; do not spare." But if you say: "I do not know this man," know that the Lord knows the hearts of all. And He who fashioned the spirit for all of them knows all things, He who renders to each according to his works. When you say to these things: "Condemn the worshiper of God, abandon the apostolic faith, embrace my perfidy," you certainly reveal yourself to be a pestilent man. God wishes us to help those placed in pressures and distresses; and you urge those whom it is fitting to benefit to do evil, and indeed by applying those things which you think can cause fear. Consider now whether that disease which is called pestilence is not in you. It is a disease effective for this, that you can make not only bodies but also souls diseased, namely of those who wish to hear you saying: "Condemn the Lord's bishop, repudiate the faith which the Church has always held, and embrace my faith which Arius handed down." "To blush," says holy Scripture, "at a person in judgment is not good.

and whoever says that the impious man is just shall be cursed among the peoples and hateful to the nations. For those who argue will hope for better things, but upon them will come the best blessing. And you thought that we could be ashamed of your person and condemn him whom you yourself know to be innocent, whom you consider guilty only in this, that he refused to deny that he is a Christian. Meanwhile, because we rebuke you for holding to the path of death, because we reproach you, you see what reward is promised to us: "Open your mouth," says the prophet, "with the word of God and judge all with integrity; open your mouth and judge justly." And you say: "Condemn the innocent." I indeed hold to the sacred scriptures: "Do not be proud before the king," but if you had wished to remain within the bounds of your authority and I had been proud against you, truly I would have condemned myself as a transgressor of the law. But now, because we speak the truth to you, a murderer and a sacrilegious man, we will not deserve to be punished as proud men, but rather we will be rewarded with heavenly rewards, because we did not spare you when you were in error. It is written: "A whip for a horse and a goad for an ass, but a rod for a foolish people." You deniers of the only Son of God rightly we call foolish, whom we see involved in such great sacrilege. For when I see it written that just as a dog that returns to its vomit becomes hateful, so a fool turned by his own malice to his sin, I judge that it is said especially about you. "Why?" you ask.

because you swore in your letters to the Alexandrians that you would do nothing evil to Athanasius thereafter, and now you seek to kill him. But you say: my father had sent him into exile, and it was fitting for me to obey my father’s decrees. Suppose, as you wish, that Athanasius is a heretic; if he was rightly sent into exile, why did you allow him, contrary to your father’s decrees, to receive the dignity which your father had judged to have been taken from him? But you say: it happened through the intervention of my brother Constans. But you could have met Constans, saying: our father, whom he approved as a heretic, unless he corrects himself, I cannot receive into the parts of my kingdom. But you say: I feared that wars might have arisen between us. Therefore, because Sapor, the king of the Persians, now wages war against you, if he says to you: accept my religions, and I will be at peace with you, must you, with all dwelling in your empire, make a transition to the religions of demons? For Sapor sacrifices to demons. You see, therefore, that you have not acted as a servant of God by receiving him and restoring him to his place whom you remembered had been deported on account of the cause of the faith, first because you judged God powerless, as if He could not protect you when you were protecting the truth and resisting heretics, and then because you wished Constans to be more propitious to you than God.

You certainly remember that King Constans had become a heretic by favoring Athanasius, whom you already held to be a sacrilegious man; you ought not only to have refrained from placing your kingdom before God, but not even your own soul. For you yourself are a witness to your own conscience: because he was sent into exile for the faith which the Church has always held and still holds, because he refused to condemn it, namely because he refused to be an Arian. For that reason Athanasius was hated by your father, and this does not escape you, since you too deign to persecute him for the same cause for which your father persecuted him. Let him finally say he is not a Christian, let him confess he is an Arian, and he will be in your eyes the wisest, the greatest. So you have been fittingly compared to a dog that returns to its vomit; for you were considered a Christian and not an Arian, from the time you restored Athanasius with such letters to the churches entrusted to you by divine command. But now, since you are proven to be an Arian and, desiring to find a place for your heresy, you persecute a just man because he fights against it with all his might, you are rightly compared to a dog returning to its vomit.

Likewise in that notable deed of yours you are rightly compared to a dog that returns to its vomit, for you accepted that it was not catholic truth that Auxentius of Germanicia held, and you gave letters against him to the Antiochenes, and afterwards you began to defend this same Auxentius as a teacher of truth, claiming his heresy as catholic faith. Why, Constantius, are you so fickle? Why in a matter of faith are you bent like a reed driven by winds, hither and thither? What wonder, if you were so ready to condemn Athanasius and even to invite all God's priests, since you did not hesitate to act so greatly in matters of religion through your own rashness? You boiled over to shed the blood of an innocent man, most pious king, as if you did not remember the scripture: the throne of a king who judges the poor in truth will rise again in testimony; but you thought yourself supreme if you went against the divine scriptures, if you did all that they forbid. You hate Athanasius because he is a Christian, because he was unwilling to be a disciple of Arius, as you say; you pursue him with the utmost hatred; but the Holy Spirit long ago showed through the mouth of Solomon what you would be toward him, saying: a just man is an abomination to an unjust man.

Do not, Constantius, still linger in these evils; do not abuse God's patience. Recall what is written in Psalm 77: "The Lord awoke as if from sleep, like a strong man drunk with wine, and he struck all his enemies from behind; he gave them everlasting disgrace." In Psalm 81, the Holy Spirit says: "How long will you judge iniquity and take the face of sinners? Judge the orphan and the needy; justify the humble and the poor. Rescue the poor and the needy; free them from the hand of the sinner." You say, "Kill with me," you demand, the man consecrated to God, desiring us to be counted with you among those of whom it is said: "They did not know nor understand; they walk in darkness." God commands that we not render an unjust judgment, that we not, out of reverence for your sinful face, allow you to punish the one you unjustly persecute. God has commanded that the humble be justified by us, that the poor and needy be rescued and freed from your hand, the executioner's hand. And you say: "Condemn the one whom God wished to be rescued from my hand, the sinner's hand." No wonder; for you could not go against your own abominable decrees. The Holy Spirit says in Psalm 96: "You who love the Lord, hate evil," and your own precepts show that you say: "Love what is evil." For if it seems evil to God to condemn an innocent man, to give a sentence against an absent and indeed just man, what else is it that you force us to do but what God hates?

If, therefore, we do what God hates, we will certainly not be among those to whom it is said: "You who love the Lord, hate evil." Surely you do not hate evil for this reason, because you do not love the Lord; but we are unwilling to do what God hates because we love Him. You do these things because you are not a servant of Him whose fear and love compel us to hate evil. For you are not found in the Lord's church as a persecutor of His church, so that you might think the prophet spoke to you in the Psalm: "You who love the Lord, hate evil," when also in the hundredth [Psalm] he says: "He who acts arrogantly does not dwell in the midst of my house; he who speaks iniquities has not stood upright in the sight of my eyes." Therefore, it is not said to you who are placed outside, but to us: "You who love the Lord, hate evil." Finally, we hate the evil which you love for this reason, because you are not in the church of God. For how can you claim to be in the church of God, O man, who not only persecute the church but also deny the one who founded the church? Or are you not proud, and can you dwell in the house of the Lord as long as you remain in this arrogance? For who can rightly be called proud, if you can be judged humble, you who say: "Condemn the innocent contrary to divine commands, trample upon the precepts of God, keep mine"?

But perhaps you do not speak iniquitous words, and you can be found among Christians—you, the denier of the Father, the denier of His only Son, the denier of the Holy Spirit the Paraclete, the founder of the Arian heresy, the destroyer of the apostolic faith; you do not speak iniquitous words with your poisoned lips, you utter nothing iniquitous with that sacrilegious mouth. Were you unaware that in Psalm 102 the Holy Spirit said of the Lord: "The Lord, showing mercy and judgment to all who suffer injustice," so that you unjustly ordered judgment to be given? Whose commands is it fitting for us, the priests of the Lord, to obey? Yours, not yet snatched from unclean spirits, or those of the prophet through whom the Holy Spirit warns that every part of injustice is to be avoided by us, the worshippers of the true divinity? Had you not read, Constantius, the words spoken to you kings by God: "Do not touch my anointed ones, and do not do evil to my prophets," so that you dared to stretch out your hands against the house of God? David, full of the Holy Spirit, says in Psalm 105: "Blessed are those who guard judgment and do justice at all times"; and you say, "Do injustice with me." You persecute Athanasius, the impious persecutes the pious, the heretic persecutes the Christian; but I ask you, tell me, which of you can be acceptable to God? You, the denier of the eternal majesty of the only Son of God, the builder and institutor of a false religion—or Athanasius? You have read in Psalm 118: "Blessed are those who walk immaculate in the way, according to the law of the Lord.

Blessed are those who scrutinize his testimonies, who seek him out with their whole heart; and tell me, which of you seeks God, which of you faithfully renders service to his majesty? Then, you who persecute Athanasius, why does he profess himself a Christian, or does he wish you, his persecutor, to be snatched from the snares of the devil? Then, are you the destroyer of the catholic faith, or is he the preacher of the apostolic faith? If you are serving God, how is it that the Holy Spirit says below: "For those who work iniquity have not walked in his ways"? You heretics, therefore, are workers of iniquity, since you are not found in the ways of the Lord, you manifest by your works that you are on the path of the devil. Have you read: "Do not seek death in the error of your life, nor acquire perdition in the works of your hands, for God did not make death nor does he rejoice in the perdition of the living"? Or have you not? If you have read it, why did you command us to seek death for ourselves? If you have not read it, recognize what you have urged us to do, you who have chosen to be among those whose crimes the Holy Spirit describes through the mouth of Solomon, saying: "They hoped for no reward of justice, nor did they judge the honor of holy souls, for God created man indestructible and made him in the image of his own likeness. But through the envy of the devil, death entered into the world. Therefore, those who are of his party imitate him.

You see that you are an imitator of the devil, that you are placed in his portion; you recognize that you are procuring death for yourself, you who were unwilling to remain in the image of God, as you were made by God, but have betaken yourself to him through whose envy death entered the world. On the other hand, receive how great a happiness Athanasius desires to attain, whence he is unwilling to be what you are, an Arian apostate; receive how great a blessedness even those have attained, whom you have deigned to kill because they called themselves Christians: but the souls of the just are in the hand of God, and torment will not touch them. They seemed to the eyes of the foolish to die, and the malice of their end was judged to be far from the path of righteousness. They went into destruction, but they are at peace. For if they suffered torments before men, their hope is full of immortality, and having been troubled for a short time, they will be well provided for in many things, because God tested them and found them worthy of himself. He tested them like gold in a furnace, he accepted them like a burnt offering. And in time there will be regard for them, they will shine, like sparks running through a reed-bed. They will judge nations and rule over peoples, and their Lord will reign forever. You desire to kill Athanasius, thinking that if you slaughter him, you can give him eternal evil, ignorant of the scripture: the just man, dead, condemns the living impious, and youth more quickly completed surpasses the long life of the unjust.

They will see the end of the wise man and will not understand what they have learned about him and why the Lord has fortified him. They will see and will despise, but the Lord will mock them. And after this they will fall, without honor and in the contumely of death forever, since he will burst them, puffed up without a voice, and will shake them from their foundations, and they will be abandoned to the very last, and they will be in grief, and their memory will perish. They will come to a knowledge of their sins, fearful, and their iniquities will lead them from the opposite side. You see among whom your portion is placed, you see with what sort you have made yourself stand against the house of God; but you will see Athanasius among those of whom accept what is written below: Then the just will stand in great constancy against those who have distressed them and taken away their labors. Seeing, they will be troubled with horrible fear and will marvel at the suddenness of unexpected salvation. They will say among themselves, repenting and groaning through anguish of spirit: These are those whom we once held in ridicule and as a likeness of reproach. We, senseless, considered their life madness and their end without honor. How have they been counted among the sons of God, and their lot is among the saints?

then you will say these things, unless you have taken thought for yourself, when you see yourself plunged into Tartarus; then you will say those things which holy Scripture says its speakers, the persecutors of Christ's soldiers, will say: "Therefore we have strayed from the path of truth, and the light of justice did not shine for us, and the sun did not rise for us; we have grown weary on the path of iniquity and perdition, and we have walked difficult deserts, but we have been ignorant of the Lord's way. What good did pride do us, or what did riches with exultation bring us? All those things have passed away like a shadow and like a messenger running by." You, who are set against Athanasius, will see among those whose glory the Holy Spirit recounts, saying: "But the just will live forever, and their reward is with the Lord, and their thought is with the Most High. Therefore they will receive the kingdom of glory and a diadem from the hand of the Lord, because His right hand will protect them and His arm will defend them." You, on the other hand, if you persist in this obstinacy of mind, if you decide to end this fragile life among the Arians, you will be among those to whom the Holy Spirit likewise speaks through the mouth of the prophet: "Hear, then, O kings, and understand; learn, O judges of the ends of the earth, lend your ears.

you who hold the multitude and please yourselves in the crowds of nations; because power has been given to you by the Lord and strength from the Most High, who will examine your works and scrutinize your thoughts, since when you were ministers of the kingdom, you did not judge rightly nor keep the law nor walk according to the will of God. Horribly and quickly it will appear to you, because the harshest judgment will be made upon those who are in charge. For mercy is granted to the lowly, but the powerful suffer torments powerfully. The Lord will not pass over anyone’s person nor will he stand in awe of anyone’s greatness, because he himself made both the small and the great, and he has equal care for all, but for the stronger a stronger torment awaits. Therefore to you, O evil tyrants, are my words, so that you may learn wisdom and not fall away. Then, if you have not yet heard us, Constantius, you will see what you now refuse to see because of your unbelief; you will see then, when you have been placed among your fellow tyrants in those places of torment, not only that you loved unjust judgments, but also that you wished to destroy the house of God, that you were a denier of the Son of God, that you decreed that the faith be preached differently through your threatening power than the prophets and apostles preached. Nor will you be able to say: I am not among those whom the Holy Spirit describes through Solomon, when you hear it said: To you, therefore, O evil tyrants, are my words.

Therefore, you will not be able to deny that you are the chief of all your fellow tyrants, if only you look deeply into your own work. "The custody," says the prophet, "of the laws is the confirmation of incorruption, and incorruption will make you near to God." To this you say, "Corrupt the law of God, as you have corrupted yourselves, our persecutors." Who is so senseless as to wish to be corrupted by you and perish forever? Who would not wish, by remaining in integrity, to become near to God? Why have you either done this yourself, or dared to compel us to do it? Have you not read what Solomon said in the Book of Wisdom to God: "God of our fathers and Lord of mercies, who made all things by your word, and by wisdom established man, that he might rule over the creation made by you, that he might order the world in justice and equity and, with uprightness of mind, judge judgment"? And again: "You taught your people through other works, that one must be just and humane, and you made your sons of good hope"? Have you not, I say, found these things written, that you would dare to summon us to such inhumanity? How shall we be sons of good hope? How shall we show ourselves before God as just and humane servants of his, when transgressors of the law are called neither just nor sons of God?

Therefore, recognize from what good you have been unwilling to draw us to death, and indeed eternal death, since everyone who ceases to be among those whom God has called into adoption as sons loses life and possesses perpetual death. Since you are Arians—inhuman, impious, cruel murderers—how can you be called Christians? But also, since you deny Christ, the only Son of God, and confess that you have believed in the Antichrist, how or by what means can you prove yourselves servants of Christ, when you have manifested by your own profession that you are servants of the Antichrist? For the Antichrist, in whom Arius believed, truly existed; when our Savior, the Lord and God, the only Son of God, was not against him, he is not a creature, as you, Constantius, wish, but is the Lord of creation; he is eternal, inestimable, just as he is whose Son he is; indeed, he put on a perfect man in the last days from the womb of a virgin, but even when he had taken on man, he is such—immutable, incorruptible, ineffable, and inconvertible—as he is whose Son he is; the taking on of man could not change him into something other than what he always was, since he is in the form of God his Father, since the Son is equal to the Father, as the most blessed Apostle reports; he who was in the form of God did not consider it robbery to be equal to God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.

For He did not say, "He emptied Himself," taking the form of a servant, that the only Son of God could become something other than what He is—incorruptible, ineffable, immutable—since He always remains in that state of eternal magnitude, in which His Father also abides. But we certainly understand what "He emptied Himself" means: that is, although the Son is similar and equal to the Father, He nevertheless willed to become man for our salvation. Since, therefore, you have accepted the Antichrist in place of Christ—for he truly was that one—how could he not have been? With what face do you still resist Christians, except with that face which unchaste women use toward chaste ones? You dared to attempt to wish to rule over the people of God, to wish to subject the Church of God to your dominion, the divine majesty of that One who fears only your futile command; and this you did because you are unaware that it is written about you tyrants: "Because of this, undisciplined souls have gone astray; for while the wicked are persuaded that they can rule over the nation of the saints, bound by chains of darkness and shackled by long night, shut in under roofs, fugitives." You see now that you are among those persecutors of the people of God, about whom you have read that all are bound together by one chain of darkness, and again: "Worthy indeed to lack light and to suffer the prison of darkness are those who keep your sons confined, through whom the incorrupt light of the law of life was beginning to be given to all.

Will you deny that you hold the bishops of God in prisons? And why are you detaining them? So that we may not preach the truth to the people of God, surely? Why do you keep us in prison? Why do you send us into exile? Unless it is because you fear that we might reveal you, through the sacred scriptures, to be rapacious Arian wolves, rabid dogs, and antichrists of our time. For the sacred scriptures prove from your actions that you are not servants of God, but plainly sons of the devil. For if you were not one of those whom the sacred scriptures proclaim will be such, when you found written in the 131st Psalm: "Arise, Lord, into your rest, you and the ark of your sanctification, let your priests clothe themselves in justice," why did you wish an absent man to be condemned by us? Certainly, so that we might lose the justice with which the Lord had clothed us. For since it says: "Let your priests clothe themselves in justice," and you were pressing us to do injustice, what else would we be, if we had done what your malevolence had determined, except your fellow criminals, except fountains of all iniquity? That is, those who, setting aside the office of justice, would take up that of injustice in order to please you. You persecute the house of God, Constantius, not knowing that you persecute God Himself in His house; for the house of God is the Church, in which the Lord dwells, as it is written in the same Psalm: "The Lord chose Zion, He pre-elected it as a dwelling for Himself. This is my rest for ever and ever, here I will dwell, because I have pre-elected it.

Since these things are so, see that you punish yourself when you punish any of ours, that you persecute your own salvation when you resist God, not us, against whom you hear God saying that He deigns to rest. You, therefore, who attempt to violate the temples of the Lord, unless you convert, you will perish in the same manner as those of whom David says in Psalm 135: "Who smote Egypt with their firstborn, because His mercy is for ever, and led Israel out from among them, because His mercy is for ever; who divided the Red Sea into a division, because His mercy is for ever, and led Israel through the midst of it, because His mercy is for ever, and shook off Pharaoh and his army into the Red Sea." For what reason do I find these things written, unless to believe that, when you tried to oppress me, my God could have, if you had not converted, destroyed you as He did Pharaoh, and would have snatched me from your hands as He did those from the power of Pharaoh? For this reason, indeed, He says to each of the virtues: "because His mercy is for ever," to reveal to me that the Lord's mercy remains with me always, who serve only Him, but cannot be with you, because evidently you are His enemy, as Pharaoh was.

We did not wish to condemn an absent man, we did not wish to pronounce sentence according to your desire against one whom we know to be innocent and whom we know to be a preacher of the Catholic faith. Why? Because we Christians have placed our hope in God, not in you and your transitory kingdom. We did not wish to please ourselves with the glory of your kingdom, we who expect to obtain glory from Him in whom alone we must trust and hope, as David teaches, saying in Psalm 145: "Do not put your trust in princes and in the sons of men, in whom there is no salvation. His spirit will go out and will return to his earth. On that day all their thoughts will perish. Blessed is he whose God is Jacob his helper, and whose hope is in the Lord his God, who made heaven and earth, the sea and all things that are in them. He who keeps truth forever does justice to those who suffer injury." We did not wish unjustly to persecute with you one full of the fruits of justice, lest, when you had begun to obtain vengeance, it should have been obtained also against us; we did not do what you unjustly commanded us to fulfill, lest we should come with you to that place which is described in Ecclesiasticus: "And God will seek out him who suffers persecution," and further: "I saw under the sun a place of judgment, there the impious, and a place of the just, there the pious.

We did not wish to join ourselves to heretics, we did not wish to give our hands with you to attack the house of God, we did not wish to take up idolatry with you to the insult of God, we did not wish to be mixed up in your sacrilege, lest we too should deserve to hear with you those things which the priests, the people, and the king of Israel heard through the mouth of the prophet Hosea, who, all having abandoned God, had turned to idolatry: "Hear these things, O priests, and attend, O house of Israel, and look, O house of the king; the judgment is against you, because you have become like a snare for ambush and like nets spread out for the fowler's bird-catching." You certainly knew it was written in the prophet Amos, when you gave the lesson of condemning an innocent man as an example: "He who made judgment in the high place, and placed justice on the earth." Violator of God's justice, did you perhaps not know that the prophet Micah said of the Jewish princes? "They did not lift their hands to God, and they coveted fields and plundered orphans and his house, the man and his inheritance. Because of this, the Lord says this: 'Behold, I know evils upon the people, from which you will not lift your necks.'" But for you, when you deign to proscribe, to deport, to send to prison, to torture, and finally to kill the worshippers of God, will no evil be presented to you?

We did not wish to be mixed up in your nefarious deeds, lest with you we should hear, condemned to eternal punishment, these words spoken by God through Micah: "Hear, therefore, these things, you leaders of the house of Jacob and the remnant of the house of Israel, who abhor judgment and pervert all that is right, who have built Sion and Jerusalem with blood and iniquities. Its judges judged for bribes, and its priests answered for a fee, and its prophets divined for money, and they rested in the assembly, saying: 'The Lord is among us, and evil will not come upon us.'" Had you not yet read in this most holy prophet, that you ordered a man consecrated to God to be condemned? "In what shall I grasp the Lord, shall I take up my high God? If I grasp him in holocausts or in yearling calves, or if the Lord will accept thousands of rams or ten thousand fat goats? Or shall I give the firstborn of my impiety, the fruit of my womb, for the sins of my soul? It must be declared to you, O man, what is good. Or what else has the Lord sought from you but that you do judgment and justice and love mercy and be ready to go with your Lord God?" Nor had you found written in Habakkuk: "The impious man has oppressed the just man by his power," so that you would have wickedly undertaken that work which could make you impious before God? Likewise, had you not found placed below: "Why do you look upon the contemptuous? Will you be silent because the impious man devours the just man?

And for that reason, we, seeing that you, impious one, had attempted to devour a just man, not only have not kept silent about your evil deeds, but we will not keep silent. For you are no different from the one of whom it is said: a self-pleasing and contemptuous man, a proud man will accomplish nothing, who has dilated his soul like hell. It cannot be said that it is not fitting to be said of you, if you deign to recall with me the crimes of your misdeeds and if you are not slow to review your slaughters. For who else in our days can be found, self-pleasing, contemptuous, proud, accomplishing nothing, who has dilated his soul like hell, and who could be considered to be like insatiable death, except you? But see that nothing you can accomplish can be said to you by God. For although you are a despiser of God's precepts, although you have so dilated your soul to persecute his religion, even to the point of slaughtering God's worshippers, so that throughout the whole realm you do not deign to cease from vexing the Lord's flock, nevertheless all your hostility accomplishes nothing. For all whom you persecute always are and will be servants of God. You, however, unless you provide for yourself, will perish forever, self-pleasing, contemptuous, proud, who are dilating your soul like hell to devour and swallow us up alike, because we resist you acting evilly, having become like insatiable death, driven by furies to our destruction. So wicked are you, Constantius, that when I find the prophet saying: O you who found a bad foundation.

in his own house, so that he might place his nest on high, you, to me and to the inheritance of Antichrist, which you favor, are present before my eyes, as I recognize your sacrilegious efforts. For it cannot be doubted that you have attempted and are attempting, so that throughout your entire kingdom your heresy might be established, and the catholic faith destroyed. But also, when I hear the prophet dedicated to God saying: "Woe to those who build a city in bloodshed and prepare a city in iniquities," you seem to me to be the one who is building a den of thieves through the shedding of blood, through the slaughter of the servants of God. Or will you deny that your wicked council of Arians is a den of thieves? If you are not thieves, how are you found to be killing those dedicated to God? "Woe to those who build cities in blood" — most prudent emperor, have you not seen that woe could be upon you, because you thought your heresy was to be rebuilt through the shedding of the blood of God's men? The Holy Spirit says through the prophet Zephaniah: "Seek the Lord, and all the humble of the earth, work judgment and seek justice, and answer, so that you may be covered on the day of the Lord's wrath"; you say: "Condemn the innocent, be with me, sacrilegious murderers." Are these not the things you command us to do? Did you or did you not order the condemnation of the Lord's priest? Did you order the Arian perfidy to be held, and the faith written at Nicaea to be rejected? If you cannot deny that you commanded these things to be fulfilled, see that you have wished to make us both murderers and sacrilegious.

God says: “And it shall be on that day: I will search Jerusalem with a lamp, I will defend against the rams who are despisers, that they not keep the commandments”; and you demand that your own and those of your fellow-blasphemers be kept rather. How could we have unjustly condemned the Lord’s priest, full of the fruits of righteousness, when we see what kind of threat arose against the leaders of the Jews or against all their accomplices, who are known to have done these things which you do? O what a splendid and redeemed city was she, a dove. She did not hear the voice, she did not perceive discipline, she did not trust in the Lord and did not approach her God. Her princes roar like lions, her judges like wolves of Arabia, they will not be left in the morning. Her prophets are spiritual men, despisers, her priests defile themselves and act impiously. But the Lord is just in her midst and will not act unjustly. Since these things are so, and it is by no means permitted to us to pronounce an unjust judgment, it remains either that you make yourself one of his seed and learn to pronounce judgment, or, if you always wish to be among the adversaries of God, pronounce your unjust judgment alone, cease to force us to do what you see is divinely forbidden. Cease now to accuse Athanasius or us, for that we destroy the house of God, when you find in Zechariah that you and your fellow-tyrants are described, for that you would be persecutors of God’s inheritance, you whom he says have usurped power beyond measure.

For indeed, recounting your cruelty, the Lord says: “I have been zealous for Jerusalem and Zion with great zeal. And I am greatly angry with the nations that set themselves above you, because I was angry at the least. But they have set themselves in evil.” Do you, lover of darkness, hater of light, dare to say: “Condemn the innocent,” when God deigns to command us through Zechariah, saying: “Judge a just judgment, and do piety and mercy, each one to his brother. And do not harm the widow, the orphan, the proselyte, and the poor by power, and let each one not recall the malice of his brother in his heart.” Since these are the heavenly commandments, by what authority did you say: “Tear apart your fellow servant”? If you say that you have put forth this authority by the commands of God, you will not be able to prove it, because indeed it cannot be found in the sacred scriptures that there is a command of God that the innocent be condemned. Since, therefore, you have done what the law of God forbids, it is clear that you have put forth this authority from the will of that one who is the enemy of God, to whom you are necessarily compared to those of whom it is said through the prophet: “And they dissuaded, that they not observe, and they gave their back to folly and set their ears and their heart as unpersuadable, that they not obey; they weighed down, that they not obey my law,” and further on: “They did not hearken; if they cry out, I will not hearken to them,” says the almighty Lord.

of souls, rest entirely; these are the words you should carry out: each of you speak truth to your neighbor, and judge a peaceful and just judgment in your gates, and each of you do not think of your neighbor’s malice in your hearts, and do not love false swearing, for the Lord Almighty says he hates all these things. Why do you force me to do what the Lord Almighty says he holds in hatred? But the Lord, instructing about fasting, says: love peace and truth. How could we have been lovers of peace and truth, if we were to punish an innocent man, weighed down by false accusations through you and your followers, as if he were guilty? Or what peace would there have been, when by doing this we could have been cast out even from the Lord’s peace? For the Lord’s peace, when he says: I leave you my peace, I give you my peace, would not be left by him in us, since we ourselves had unjustly taken it from another. Who does not know that when discipline departs, grace also departs? In Malachi, God says: a son honors his father and a servant his master. And if I am the father, where is my honor? says the Lord Almighty.

What fear and honor, then, were we to show to God, if we had done what you ordered to be done? For those commands of yours strive to remove both fear and honor of God from those who proclaim his mercy. But further on, specifically revealing your work, he says: You provoke God with your words, and you said: In what have we provoked him? In this, that you say: Everyone who does evil, it is good before God, and he will bless them. And where is the God of justice? The prophet says: Where is the God of justice, against those who say: He who does evil, it is good before God, and he will bless them; and you give commands to shed the blood of the righteous and still say you are a servant of God, when you are a destroyer of his law. Is it just to condemn an absent person, and indeed an innocent one, or is it unjust? If it is not just, why do you force us to do that thing for which we deserve to be punished by God? Tobias says: All the days of your life, son, keep God in mind and do not wish to sin or to transgress his commandments. Do justice all the days of your life and do not walk the path of iniquity, because when you act according to truth, your works will be regarded, and so will those of all who do justice. Tell me, Constantius, does he who kills the innocent do justice? He who sheds the blood of the servants of God? If he does not do justice, but rather iniquity, it remains that you see yourself as a lover of iniquity and a fabricator of every iniquitous work.

For indeed, when sacred law exhorts us to do justice at all times, and you compel us to do injustice, what else would you have me consider you but a lover and perpetrator of injustice? "All the days of your life," it says, "keep God in mind," while you abandon him by clinging to the Arians. For we who hold the apostolic faith do not abandon him. How do you not transgress his precepts, you who kill his servants consecrated to his name and majesty, while you compel them to abandon him and become your fellow serpents and co-apostates? We are hated by you because we speak the truth to you, because we want you to live with us forever; but you love those who have crossed over to you, those who, though they first contradicted you, later preferred to serve your nefarious machinations rather than obey God's commands. You rejoice that you have led them, by your cunning, into embracing your heresy, because you have them subject to you in all things—those whom you had long before seen holding you as nothing, whom you saw trampling upon the truth of your royal authority. But we do not want you to think this is a new occurrence. Rather, it has often been done thus by faithless and thoughtless men, by those whom the prescient of future events, through the most holy mouth of the prophet Malachi, foretold: "You have weighed down your counsels against me," says the almighty Lord, "and you said: 'In what matter have we detracted from you?' Because you said: 'Vain is everyone who serves God.'

And what more, that we have kept his commandments and walked, praying before the face of the Lord Almighty? And now we exalt strangers, and all who do iniquity are renewed, and they have resisted God and been saved. These things have been spoken against by those who fear God, each one to his neighbor. And the Lord has taken heed and heard and written a book of remembrance before himself for those who fear the Lord and revere his name. And it will be mine, says the Lord Almighty, on the day when I take possession; and I will choose them, as a man chooses his son who serves him well. And when you have turned, you will see how great is the difference between the just and the unjust, between one who serves God and one who does not. For behold, the day of the Lord is coming, burning like an oven, and it will burn them, and all strangers and all who commit crimes will be like vine clippings, and the day of the Lord that is coming will set them ablaze, says the Lord Almighty, and not a root nor a vine will be left of them.

Hearing God say these things, I think you even rejoice in this, that you deign to remain in your evil ways, since you are about to receive from Him the same punishment as the transgressors, as those who abandon God. Woe to you, murderer and sacrilegious one, for unless you repent of your deeds, you will be, as you now are, among those whom the mouth of Isaiah rebukes, saying: "Woe, sinful nation, a people full of crimes, evil seed, lawless children; you have abandoned the Lord and provoked the Holy One of Israel." You will always be one of those who, because of the wickedness of their pursuits, are compared to the princes of Sodom and the peoples of Gomorrah, when it is said: "Hear the word of the Lord, princes of Sodom; heed the law of God, people of Gomorrah." You will be with them unless you correct yourself, those of whom you have read written: "If you multiply your prayers, I will not hear you; for your hands are full of blood." Woe to you, Constantius, who have incurred such great offense against God that you could not see what you should have avoided.