Against Constantius

Contents

Reading pages: 1–24 · 25–27

1. 1Hilary declares that the time for silence is over and calls the church to confess Christ even to martyrdom.
2. 2Hilary recounts his break with Saturninus, Ursacius, and Valens, his exile after Béziers, and his long restraint.
3. 3Hilary insists he speaks now not from personal grievance but for Christ's cause.
4. 4Hilary wishes he had faced an open persecutor like Nero or Decius, whose enmity would have been plain.
5. 5Constantius is a worse persecutor because he destroys the faith by favors rather than by force.
6. 6Hilary defends his bold language by the examples of John the Baptist and the Maccabean martyrs.
7. 7Hilary charges Constantius with persecuting the church more cunningly than Nero, Decius, and Maximian, especially at Ariminum.
8. 8The martyrs' relics work wonders, but Constantius's flattering persecution leaves neither the excuse of torture nor the crown of martyrdom.
9. 9Constantius bears Christ's name but denies the Father's witness to the Son, making Father and Son mere titles.
10. 10Constantius's gifts to the church are sheep's clothing over a wolf.
11. 11Hilary lists Constantius's violence: against Alexandria and Athanasius, Paulinus of Trier, Milan, Liberius of Rome, and Toulouse.
12. 12Hilary reports as an eyewitness the parties at the council of Seleucia (359): homoiousians, anomoeans, and the Nicene Egyptians.
13. 13Hilary reports the blasphemous sermon of the bishop of Antioch read at Seleucia.
14. 14An anomoean explains to Hilary that the Son is "like the Father" by will but "unlike God" in nature.
15. 15The condemned anomoeans won over Constantius, who forced the Eastern envoys to sign and installed heretical bishops.
16. 16Constantius bans unscriptural words only when they guard the faith, while admitting new ones that serve heresy.
17. 17Constantius proclaims an unscriptural "likeness" to suppress the scriptural equality of the Son with God (John 5).
18. 18John 10:30–38 teaches the Son's equality with the Father, which "likeness" is meant to suppress.
19. 19Philippians 2 teaches that the Son in the form of God is equal to God, as he is truly man in the form of a servant.
20. 20Scripture calls man like God (Gen 1:26), but "our image" shows equality between Father and Son, not mere likeness.
21. 21Scripture calls the Son God's image and equal but never "like"; likeness is used of man and of Christ's sinless flesh.
22. 22Hilary accepts "like" only after "equal" and "one"; Constantius uses "like" to deny the Son's birth, nature, and equality.
23. 23Hilary traces Constantius's shifting creeds from Antioch (341) through Serdica, Sirmium, and Ancyra, each later abandoned.
24. 24Even if the later creeds were sound, constant revision shows bad will and abolishes the one faith.
25. 25Constantius forced bishops to condemn homoousion, homoiousion, and even "substance", reversing their own earlier judgments.
26. 26Constantius forcibly recovered the African bishops' written condemnation of Ursacius and Valens, but cannot erase it before God.
27. 27Constantius's condemnations reach even the dead fathers of Nicaea and his own father Constantine; an appendix of excerpts follows.