Epistola 04 Athanasii et Aegyptorum Episcoporum ad Liberum Papam

Letter of Athanasius and the Egyptian Bishops to Pope Liberius. (Conc. t. ii, col. 763.) On the Oppressions of the Arians. To the most blessed and honorable lord, the holy father Pope Liberius, Athanasius and the bishops of Egypt, gathered together synodically at Alexandria. The rights of your most blessed paternity are manifest before God, since by apostolic preachings and teachings, indeed, and by the cultivation of the true faith, the whole earth has been filled. Yet through the instruction of the divine scriptures, with your exhortatory admonition guiding, the orthodox Church of Christ is built up, founded on apostolic institution and most firmly strengthened by the faithful Fathers; to which Church all the most blessed apostles, endowed with an equal share of honor and power, converting the multitudes of peoples, piously and holily led them from darkness to light, from lapse to true faith, from death to life, those foreknown by the grace of divine predestination, through salutary precepts and warnings. Following the merits of these holy apostles, your honorable fraternity, and more perfectly fulfilling their examples, adorns the Church of God with probity of morals and sanctity of deeds, and, thriving in sacred faith and Christian morals, it ceaselessly works and accomplishes through pontifical studies what it commands to be done pleasing to God, preserving the mandates of the divine law; for not the hearers of the law are just before God, as the Apostle relates, but the doers of the law will be justified (Rom. ii).

For we, desiring to meditate upon these things, and to proclaim what we have received from the preaching of your holy apostolic see and of its successors, and what we have learned was confirmed in the Nicene Synod, and wishing to repel the blasphemies of the Arians and of other heretics, are daily persecuted by them, and are handed over to condemnation, and are destined for death. For this reason we beseech that we be aided by your exhortations, both through yourselves and through your apocrisiarii; lest, while they increase and we diminish, the true faith be destroyed, and their heresy grow beyond our faith: for we fear that, after iniquity has abounded, the charity of many will grow cold (Matt. 24). For this matter, much reward and praise for your sacred teaching is stored up both before God and before all the faithful, if these things are cut short by your authority. For we have inserted below our faith, which we have received from the holy Fathers, and which we hold and teach, so that if anyone should report to you, whether by accusing, murmuring, or detracting, or should commit to writing, that we believe or teach otherwise, you may recognize through this that we indeed believe and teach thus.

We believe, indeed, in one Father almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, born of the Father, only-begotten, that is, from the substance of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, homoousion, that is, of the same substance as the Father, through whom all things were made, heavenly and earthly. Who for us men and for our salvation descended from the heavens, and was incarnate, and was made man, suffered, and rose again on the third day; ascended into heaven, to come from there to judge the living and the dead. And in the Holy Spirit. But those who say: There was a time when he was not, and before he was born he was not, and that he was made from non-existing things, or from another substance or essence, or that the Son of God is trepton, that is, convertible and changeable, these the catholic and apostolic church anathematizes. This venerable faith three hundred and eighteen Fathers acknowledged and embraced, and with harmony and unanimity they set it forth in writing.

But now, since against these things, as you know, such things arise as ought not to, come, and let us, most beloved brothers (St. Martin, Council 4, Lateran Council), descend with God to the visitation, that is, the examination of their words, and let us confound, through the most true approval there, their tongues, raised up against the knowledge of the only-begotten Son of God, and speaking iniquity into the height of his humanity. Let us break their bonds with the spiritual sword, which is the word of God, and cast their yoke from us (Ps. ii), by overthrowing their profane sense. For then the Lord himself will also mock them and deride them, and then he will speak to them in his wrath, and in his fury he will confound them (Ibid.), according to the blessed Jeremiah, saying: These false prophets prophesy in my name. For I did not send them, and I did not command them, nor did I speak to them. They prophesy to you a lying vision and divination, and fraud, and the seduction of their own heart. Therefore, this says the Lord concerning the prophets who prophesy a lie in my name: They will be cast out in the streets of Jerusalem, and the trampling of all who piously confess me, and there will be no one to bury them (Jer. xiv). For no one can hide himself by certain deceitful subterfuges, just as the ancient transgressor of the precept, Adam, could not with fig leaves, who through his own tongue is shamelessly exposed.

For a strong man, his tongue is a snare; and he is caught by his own words and by the work of his hands; but the recompense of his lips will be given to him, and the reproach of impiety. I will accuse you, he says, and set you before your own face. You wrongly thought that I was like you. Therefore, as the Lord says to Gideon, let us bring them down to the water of true discretion, and test them there by a regular examination, falling headlong into the same (Gen. 3; Prov. 6; Ps. 49; Judith 7), after the display of their perverse understanding, whether they are wise in their own eyes, ignorant of the knowledge of the divine word; for those who say they are wise have become fools, and have changed the glory (Rom. 1) of the Catholic Church by their own novelty and will, or through those things which have been done unlawfully in its defense, introducing heretical turbulence, appropriately retaining for ourselves what was well said to Jesus, son of Sirach: Fight for the truth unto death, and the Lord God will fight for you. (Ecclus. 4.) For this reason, the universal Church was entrusted to you by Christ Jesus, so that you might labor for all and not neglect to bring aid to everyone: because while a strong beloved guards his own altar, all things which he possesses are at peace. (Luke 2).

Therefore, with such great necessity pressing, suppress with your highest authority the hostile ones, relieve the oppressed, so that, with the Lord's help, without grave difficulty, we may deservedly and gladly sacrifice unharmed at all times. And the subscription: May the eternal Divinity preserve you for many years, most holy Father of Fathers. Amen. (Justin II, to John V, pope.)