On Saint Athanasius (two books)

Contents

Reading pages: 1.1–1.8 · 1.9–1.14 · 1.15–1.22 · 1.23–1.30 · 1.31–1.37 · 1.38–2.1 · 2.2–2.7 · 2.8–2.15 · 2.16–2.22 · 2.23–2.31 · 2.32–2.34

1. 1.1Lucifer opens his defence of Athanasius by arguing that God himself heard Adam and Eve before sentencing them, so the emperor's demand to condemn Athanasius unheard is the serpent's work.
2. 1.2From God's questioning of Cain, the law given to Noah against shedding blood, and Moses' judging by God's law, Lucifer argues that bishops may not condemn Athanasius unheard.
3. 1.3From Lot's wife, God's covenant at Sinai, the commandments against killing and false witness, and the laws on just judgment, Lucifer argues that the bishops cannot condemn an innocent man at the emperor's command.
4. 1.4From the laws of Leviticus and Deuteronomy against slander and partiality in judgment, Lucifer argues that the bishops may not favour the emperor's person, and declares that they fear no one but God.
5. 1.5Contrasting the faithless Israelites who feared the Canaanites with the martyrs of Romans 8, Lucifer declares that the bishops do not fear the emperor's sword.
6. 1.6Lucifer argues that the emperor, by demanding Athanasius's condemnation and promoting heresy, breaks the first commandment and the law requiring two or three witnesses, and defies the judgment of the priests.
7. 1.7Lucifer denies that the emperor has any authority to judge bishops, citing the law of the king in Deuteronomy and the laws on murder and false witnesses.
8. 1.8Citing the laws of Deuteronomy on just weights, boundary stones and judgment of the weak, and its curses on disobedience, Lucifer warns the emperor that his unjust demand brings a curse.
9. 1.9Lucifer argues that bishops are chosen by God and ordained by catholic bishops, as Joshua succeeded Moses by the laying on of hands, so the emperor's intrusion of George into Athanasius's see is an attack on God's ordination.
10. 1.10Citing the prophecy against Eli for honouring his unworthy sons above God, Lucifer argues that bishops who deposed Athanasius for George would have honoured the emperor above God.
11. 1.11Lucifer recounts God's judgment on Eli's house and the capture of the ark, warning that the emperor's power over the church proves nothing, as the Philistines' victory proved nothing.
12. 1.12Lucifer compares the emperor to the Philistines who captured the ark and boasted of their gods, until God struck them and forced them to send it back.
13. 1.13Lucifer likens the emperor's persecution of Athanasius to Saul's persecution of Samuel, David, Jonathan and the priests of Nob, the deeds of a king from whom God's Spirit had departed.
14. 1.14Lucifer compares the emperor to Saul, who slaughtered the priests of Nob, and contrasts David, who spared Saul in the cave and left vengeance to God.
15. 1.15Lucifer continues with Saul's confession to David at Engedi and David's sparing of Saul a second time in his camp, showing how the persecutor raged when out of his right mind.
16. 1.16Lucifer contrasts David's just rule with the emperor's injustice and compares Constantius to Ahab, who called Elijah the troubler of Israel.
17. 1.17Lucifer quotes in full the contest between Elijah and the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel and the coming of the rain.
18. 1.18Lucifer says that, like Ahab after Carmel, the emperor hardens against God despite signs, is spared only to fill up his measure, and has brought false witnesses against Athanasius as Jezebel did against Naboth.
19. 1.19Lucifer applies Elijah's judgment on Ahab and Jezebel for Naboth's murder to the emperor's treatment of Athanasius, piling up invective and quoting Christ's warning that killers of the disciples will think they serve God.
20. 1.20Contrasting Elijah's ascension with Ahab's torment, and recalling how Jeroboam expelled the Levites, Lucifer says the emperor's expulsion of bishops shows he is without God.
21. 1.21Lucifer contrasts Jehoshaphat's charge to his judges to judge without partiality in the fear of the Lord with the emperor's order to condemn Athanasius unheard.
22. 1.22Lucifer sets Jehoshaphat, who sent priests through Judah to teach God's law, against the emperor, who sends his orders through the empire to overturn it.
23. 1.23Lucifer applies a series of psalms on the wicked who lie in wait for the innocent and the poor to the emperor's pursuit of Athanasius.
24. 1.24Lucifer applies Psalms 36 and 37 on the downfall of the proud and wicked who plot against the righteous to the emperor, warning that he will vanish like smoke.
25. 1.25Lucifer compares the Arians to the deaf asps of Psalm 58 and applies the warnings of Proverbs 1 against those who conspire to shed innocent blood to the emperor.
26. 1.26Lucifer strings together sayings of Proverbs against devising evil, unjust weights, and partiality in judgment, applying them to the emperor's demand, and urges him to repent.
27. 1.27Lucifer tells the emperor how to obtain pardon: stop persecuting, confess the faith of Nicaea and the apostles; and he says the bishops laugh at his lion-like threats.
28. 1.28From Proverbs on justice above sacrifice and the duty to rescue those led to death, Lucifer calls the emperor a pestilence that infects souls with heresy.
29. 1.29Lucifer charges the emperor with going back on his sworn letters restoring Athanasius in 346, rejects his excuses (his father's sentence, Constans' pressure, fear of war), and compares him to a dog returning to its vomit.
30. 1.30Lucifer charges the emperor with fickleness over Eudoxius and with hating Athanasius for his faith, and applies Psalms 78, 82, 97 and 101 to show that one who loves the Lord hates evil and that the persecutor stands outside the church.
31. 1.31Lucifer sets the psalms' blessings on those who keep justice against the emperor's demands and, from Wisdom 1–2, calls him an imitator of the devil through whose envy death entered the world.
32. 1.32Lucifer contrasts, in the words of Wisdom 3–6, the blessed end of the righteous whom the emperor persecutes with the remorse and judgment awaiting him among the unjust kings.
33. 1.33From Wisdom on keeping God's law Lucifer argues that the Arians, denying the Son, serve the Antichrist, and expounds Philippians 2: the Son, equal to the Father, took a perfect man from the virgin without change in his divinity.
34. 1.34Lucifer says the emperor imprisons and exiles bishops to stop them preaching, warns from Wisdom and the Psalms that persecutors of God's church persecute God himself, and compares him to Pharaoh.
35. 1.35Lucifer explains that the bishops refused to condemn Athanasius because they trust God, not princes, and applies to the emperor the prophets' rebukes of unjust rulers in Ecclesiastes, Hosea, Amos, Micah and Habakkuk.
36. 1.36Lucifer applies to the emperor the woes of Habakkuk on the proud man insatiable as death and on those who build with blood, and Zephaniah's threats against unjust rulers and judges.
37. 1.37Citing Zechariah's commands to judge justly and love peace and truth, Lucifer tells the emperor that no command of God authorizes condemning the innocent, and that the bishops could not have done so and kept the Lord's peace.
38. 1.38From Malachi and Tobit, Lucifer argues that the emperor's commands strip away the fear of God, and that bishops who yielded to him have joined those who say serving God is vain.
39. 1.39Lucifer applies Isaiah's rebukes of Judah, whose hands were full of blood and who burned the Lord's vineyard and plundered the poor, to the emperor's confiscations and tortures of the faithful.
40. 1.40Lucifer sets out the church's faith (the Father unbegotten, the Son begotten of the true Father and alone incarnate, one Godhead of the Trinity) and compares the emperor's taunt that God cannot rescue the Nicene bishops to Rabshakeh's taunt against Hezekiah.
41. 1.41Comparing Athanasius to Job and his accusers to Job's friends, Lucifer urges the emperor to seek prayer and baptism through Athanasius, and argues that Job, Abraham, Daniel and the three young men were justified by the same faith in Father, Son and Spirit that the church holds.
42. 1.42From Isaiah 56–58 Lucifer argues that the emperor's fasting and almsgiving cannot please God while he exiles, starves, imprisons and dispossesses the faithful to force them into the Arian faith.
43. 1.43Lucifer says the emperor keeps only the command not to despise his own kin, by favouring his fellow Arians, and that Isaiah's promises of light and answered prayer belong only to those who repent and return to the church.
44. 1.44Closing the first book, Lucifer promises the emperor God's light if he returns to the church, and denies that alms given from the confiscated goods of the faithful can please God.
45. 2.1Opening the second book, Lucifer quotes Romans 8 on the good that persecution brings the faithful and Jeremiah's threats against those who shed innocent blood, and calls on the emperor to repent and anathematize the Arian formulas.
46. 2.2Quoting Jeremiah on glorying only in knowing the Lord, and Christ's words on the devil as a liar and murderer, Lucifer calls the emperor a liar for his charges against Athanasius and a murderer of the faithful.
47. 2.3Lucifer accuses the emperor of laying waste the Lord's pasture by removing orthodox shepherds and silencing others, likens him to Herod slaughtering the innocents, and calls him to repent with John the Baptist's warning.
48. 2.4From the Sermon on the Mount (the beatitudes, anger, reconciliation, love of enemies, judging others, the speck and the beam), Lucifer shows that the bishops could not condemn Athanasius and remain Christians.
49. 2.5Lucifer calls the emperor a wolf in sheep's clothing, known by his bad fruits, and the fool who built on sand, citing Matthew 7 and the law of Exodus 21 on harm to a pregnant woman.
50. 2.6Lucifer mocks the emperor's claim to wisdom, applying to him Paul's lists of the works of the flesh and of those given over to a reprobate mind, and Romans 12 on repaying no one evil for evil.
51. 2.7Lucifer charges the emperor with lying to the Holy Spirit like Ananias and Sapphira, and compares the Arians' threats to the elders who tried to force Susanna and then bore false witness against her.
52. 2.8Lucifer points to the exile of Dionysius of Milan and the intrusion of Auxentius as proof that the emperor persecutes the orthodox for refusing to become Arians, and quotes Susanna's trial as a parallel to the false charges against Athanasius.
53. 2.9Lucifer compares the bishops' refusal to condemn Athanasius unheard with Daniel's rescue of Susanna, and argues that those who deny the Father a true Son will not spare his servant.
54. 2.10Lucifer asks why Athanasius was not heard face to face and tried by proper witnesses, and quotes Daniel's cross-examination and conviction of Susanna's accusers.
55. 2.11Lucifer applies Daniel's sentence on Susanna's accusers to the emperor, sets out the Nicene faith (homoousion) against his Arianism, and recalls that as papal legate he had already called him the forerunner of the Antichrist.
56. 2.12Lucifer likens the emperor, who honours martyrs' shrines while killing Christians, to those who built the prophets' tombs, and warns him that he stands outside the narrow door.
57. 2.13Lucifer rejects the emperor's appeal to Paul's judgment of the incestuous Corinthian made in absence, since Paul acted on faithful witnesses and with the church assembled, and recalls that the legates offered to go and hear Athanasius in Alexandria.
58. 2.14Lucifer compares the emperor to Herod Agrippa, who killed James and imprisoned Peter and died eaten by worms, and applies 1 John on keeping God's commandments and on hatred of one's brother.
59. 2.15From 1 John 3 Lucifer argues that whoever hates and kills his brother is of the devil like Cain, and casts the emperor as Cain and Athanasius as Abel.
60. 2.16Lucifer urges the emperor to love himself in Athanasius, and strings together the commands of 1 John to love one's brother and lay down one's life for him, against the command to kill him.
61. 2.17Lucifer applies Christ's parables of the tares and the warnings against causing little ones to stumble to the emperor, whom he calls cut off from the church like a stream from its spring.
62. 2.18Lucifer argues that the emperor ignored Christ's procedure for correcting a brother, that heretics cannot be witnesses against a catholic bishop, and recalls that the murder charge against Athanasius had already failed at Serdica.
63. 2.19Lucifer tells the emperor that even if Athanasius had wronged him he was bound to forgive, quoting the parable of the unforgiving servant, and places him among the wicked tenants who killed the servants and the son.
64. 2.20Lucifer argues that if the Son were a creature the prophets would have died for a creature, places the emperor among the killers of the prophets, and applies the parable of the wedding feast and the guest without a wedding garment.
65. 2.21Lucifer applies Christ's woes on the scribes and Pharisees (straining gnats and swallowing camels, whitewashed tombs, brood of vipers who kill the prophets) to an emperor who gives alms while torturing and killing Christians.
66. 2.22Lucifer holds the emperor responsible for the armed attack on the church of Alexandria under Syrianus, applies Christ's prophecy of persecution, and notes that clergy who turned Arian are now favoured.
67. 2.23Lucifer argues that even ignorance of the true faith could not excuse the emperor's use of the sword against the innocent, and applies John 3 on those who love darkness and fear the light, and 2 Corinthians 5 on the judgment seat of Christ.
68. 2.24Lucifer compares the plot against Athanasius to the Jews' conspiracy to ambush Paul, and contrasts the emperor with the pagan governor Festus, who insisted on hearing Paul and his accusers together.
69. 2.25From John 7–10 Lucifer argues that the law forbids judging a man unheard, and that the emperor and George, rejected by the flock of Alexandria, are the thieves and robbers who did not enter by the door.
70. 2.26From Christ's farewell discourse (John 14–15) Lucifer argues that only those who keep his commandments are loved by the Father and indwelt by the Spirit, so the bishops could not obey the emperor's order.
71. 2.27From Paul's qualifications for a bishop in Titus 1–2 (blameless, not violent, able to refute error), Lucifer argues that the emperor's order would make bishops murderers, while admitting with Job and 1 John that he himself is a sinner.
72. 2.28From Titus 2, Ephesians 5 and Philippians 3, Lucifer argues that a bishop who obeyed the emperor would lose the pattern of good works and the blessed hope, and that the emperor lives under the power of darkness among the enemies of the cross.
73. 2.29Lucifer contrasts Paul, who did such things only before his conversion, with the emperor's court bishops who sold the apostolic faith for his table, and cites Ephesians 4 on the ministries Christ gave to build up his body.
74. 2.30Lucifer charges that the emperor removed the orthodox shepherds whom Christ gave the church (Ephesians 4) so as to lay waste the flock, and that bishops who condemned Athanasius out of fear committed a threefold crime.
75. 2.31From Ephesians 4 on putting off the old man and speaking the truth, Lucifer argues that the emperor walks like the Gentiles in blindness of heart and lied to the church like the serpent to Adam and Eve.
76. 2.32Lucifer compares the emperor's persuasion of the bishops to the serpent's temptation of Eve, and explains that he calls him a serpent as Christ and John the Baptist called the persecutors of the prophets a brood of vipers.
77. 2.33Lucifer urges the emperor to repent as the Ninevites and their king did at Jonah's preaching, and so obtain God's mercy.
78. 2.34Lucifer ends by holding up Paul, once a persecutor who acted in ignorance and found mercy, and promises the emperor a place among the saints if he confesses the Son's eternity and the one Godhead of Father, Son and Spirit.