On Not Agreeing with Heretics 9–13

How could we have come together with you, when you have read what is written in the first book of Maccabees: “Then there was gathered to them a company mighty in strength from Israel, everyone who offered himself willingly for the law. And all who were fleeing from the evils joined them and became a support to them. And they formed an army and struck down the sinners in their anger and the wicked men in their indignation; and the rest fled to the nations to save themselves. And Mattathias and his friends went round and destroyed the altars, and they circumcised by force all the uncircumcised boys they found within the borders of Israel; and they pursued the sons of pride, and the work prospered in their hands, and they recovered the law from the hands of the nations and of the kings, and they did not give the horn to the sinner.” Could we have been with you, when you see what those who are found to have feared God with their whole heart did to such men? You, a member already cut off from the body of the blessed church at the moment you became an Arian instead of a Christian, say: “Be with us.” And the Lord says in the Gospel: “If your right eye causes you to stumble, tear it out and throw it away from you; for it is better for you that one of your members perish than that your whole body be thrown into Gehenna. And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away from you; for it is better for you that one of your members perish than that your whole body go into Gehenna.” The church proclaims that it has cut off Arius and thrown him away according to the Lord's commands, and you say: “Receive the men who share my pestilence and plague”; you say: “Let yourselves perish of the same disease of which I have perished.” Sabellius was cut off from the body of the church just as your fellow abomination, that Arius, was cut off, whose word has crept into you like a cancer so powerfully that you are seen to be already wholly cancer. Nor will you be able to say that you have not caught the cancer of Arius's word, since the stench of your cancer has reached every place of your realm, and we have all resolved to avoid you, lest we too be infected by your Arian plague. So, I say, your teacher Arius was cut off and thrown away, as Sabellius was cut off and cast out, who dared to maintain that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one person, because he dared to say that the same one is to himself Father and Son and Holy Spirit; he was cut off because he did not hesitate to say that the Father himself was made flesh in the womb of the virgin and suffered. So Marcion, who would not confess that the Son of God took up man from the womb of the virgin and so was made man, threw himself out, cut off. So Paul of Samosata, the teacher of Photinus, was cut off and cast out from the body of the church, because he saw fit to say that the Son of God was only a man. So also the heretics of all sects have been cut off, as Arius was cut off, and as you were, who deserved to be cut off because you say of the only Son of God: “He was made from nothing and is not a true Son; there was when he was not.” So all you blasphemers have been cut off and cast out by the power of God from the church of his mercy, because you did not remain in it in the faith in which the patriarchs, prophets, apostles and martyrs remained. A man cut off with all your fellow blasphemers from the body of the holy church, lying in the devil's bilge, you dare to say to her: “Be such as I am, so that you may be consumed by such a disease as that by which I too have been consumed.” So you thought that we could come together with you, as though we did not remember that blessed Paul said: “We command you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to withdraw yourselves from every brother who walks disorderly and not according to the tradition which they received from us.” What reasoning could have brought it about that, abandoning the way that leads to the kingdom of heaven, we should take hold of yours, which plunges headlong to Gehenna? You thought you could deceive us by the cunning with which the serpent deceived Adam and Eve, composing in choice words and most beautiful sentiments an edict in which all the poisons of your heresy are contained. But how could you have accomplished this, when blessed Paul has armed us against your poisons and your father's, saying: “This I say, that no one may deceive you with loftiness of words”; and again: “See that no one deceives you through philosophy and empty seduction, according to the tradition of men, according to the elements of the world and not according to Christ; for in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” How could we have been seduced by those sacrilegious Arian ideas of yours, however lofty the words, when we knew that what you have is empty philosophy? How could your words be sweet, when we have seen you holding the tradition of Arius, not of the blessed apostles, to whom he whom you deny to be the true Son of God said: “Go, baptize those who believe in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”? How should we Christians have given in to you, a disciple of Arius, abandoning the apostolic tradition, when we find you saying that the Father is not a true Father but is called Father, when you say that he does not have a true Son, but one made from nothing, and when you say that the holy Spirit, the Paraclete, likewise consists from nothing; whereas we see, on the contrary, that the apostles believed in one God, the Father almighty, the true Father, true Father because he truly, not supposedly, has a Son; and in his only Son Jesus Christ, that is, in the true Son of God; and in the holy Spirit, the Paraclete, the true Spirit of God? How could anyone who believes thus have been tripped up by the devil through you, the founder of the blasphemy of Arius, when the apostolic faith confesses a perfect Trinity and professes one only Godhead of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, while the blasphemy of Arius, that is, yours, holds nothing but what has pleased your dear devil, since there is as much difference between the faith of the blessed church and your heresy as between light and darkness?

I said rightly, meanwhile, that you are separated from us as darkness is separated from light, because you are sons of darkness; and that is why you have vomited darkness from your viperous hearts. You hoped to turn us aside from the way of truth, as though we did not know that the Holy Spirit had warned beforehand through blessed Paul, saying: “Let no one convict you, wishing it in lowliness of mind and the worship of angels, who seems to walk without cause, puffed up by the mind of his flesh and not holding the head, from which the whole body, supplied through its joints and bonds, grows to the increase of faith.” How should we follow you, who walk without cause, fed by the mouth of the serpent Arius, puffed up by the mind of your flesh, made an apostate, when the apostle's command compelled us to avoid you? You said that you desired to join the false bishops of your sect to us for the sake of peace; but how could we have done this, so as to listen not to God but to you, his enemy? We are not senseless as you are, so as to deny God the Son of God, as the Jews deny him, the partners of your blindness and the leaders of your unbelief, showing whose reprobation as an example blessed Paul says to the Hebrews: “And Moses indeed was faithful in all his house as a servant, speaking in testimony; but Christ as a Son over his house, which house we are, if we hold fast the freedom and the exultation of hope. Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says: Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, as in the provocation, on the day of testing in the desert, where your fathers tested me by trial, and saw my works for forty years. Therefore that nation was hateful to me, and I said: They always go astray in heart. But they did not know my ways; as I swore in my wrath: They shall not enter my rest. See, brothers, lest perhaps there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God; but comfort one another daily, while it is called today, lest any of you be hardened in the error of sin. For we have become partakers of Christ, if indeed we hold the beginning of our substance firm to the end. While it is said, Today, if you hear my voice, do not harden your hearts as in the provocation. For some, having heard this, did not believe; but not all who came out of Egypt through Moses. And with whom was he displeased for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose corpses lay in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, except to the stubborn? And we see that they could not enter because of unbelief. Let us fear, then, lest, the command being forsaken, some of you be seen unable to enter into his rest. For it was announced to us as well as to them; and the word they heard did not profit them, not being blended with the faith of the hearers. For we who have believed shall enter into his rest, as he said: As I swore in my wrath, They shall not enter my rest, although the works were made from the foundation of the world. For he has said somewhere of the seventh day: And so God rested on the seventh day from all his works. And in this place again: They shall not enter my rest. Since, therefore, it remains for the rest to enter into it, and those to whom it was first preached did not enter because of stubbornness, again he fixed another day, today, saying in David after so long a time, as was said before: Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. For if Jesus had given them rest, he would not have spoken of another day. Therefore a rest remains on a later day for the people of God. For whoever has entered into his rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from his.” Who is so foolish that, having read this and received it from the blessed apostle, he would try to abandon the apostolic faith and take up heresy? Who will dare to deny him whom he sees able to grant eternal rest to those who believe in him, and choose to believe in one with whom he will begin to be punished for ever? Who is such a man but you, the emperor Constantius, who have abandoned the camp of the Lord and gone over to the house of the devil? We have not chosen to burn, as you have chosen with your lover the devil, but we hasten to enter into everlasting rest. How could we have been caught by your cunning and turned from the way of truth, when the apostle further urges us to lay hold of eternal rest, saying: “Let us hasten, therefore, to enter into that rest, lest anyone fall by the same example of stubbornness. For the word of God is living and strong and sharper than any sword, and piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and a searcher of the mind and the thoughts of the heart; and there is no creature that is not manifest before him, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.” Since this is so, how could any of us have gone over to you, who remain in the faithlessness of the Jews? What reasoning could join us Christians to you Arians, when we saw that you are imitators of that nation in all faithlessness? How could those who flee to the house of God emerge from it, when the most blessed Peter spoke thus in the Acts of the Apostles: “Repent, and let each of you be baptized in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For this promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, whomever the Lord your God calls.” And with many other words he testified and exhorted them, saying: “Rescue yourselves from this crooked generation.” Nor will you be able to say that you Arians are not a crooked generation, as the Jews were and are, when you see that the scribes, the Pharisees and the rulers of the Jews were then called a crooked generation because they denied the Son of God and persecuted all who believed in his divine majesty. You will not be able to say, I say, that you and all the Arians are not a crooked and perverse generation, since you do the same things they did. If they denied the only Son of God, so do you; if they persecuted the servants of his eternal mercy, you persecute them too. What, then, ought we to have done, except withdraw from you men of sacrilege according to the command of blessed Peter? For how could we have come together with you, when the Lord said in the Gospel: “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy”?

How could we have been at one? For the blessed apostle, writing to the Corinthians, said: “It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and such sexual immorality as is not even among the Gentiles, that someone has his father's wife. And you are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he who has done this deed might be removed from your midst.” If, then, the apostle ordered one who did such a deed to be removed from the midst, so that the whole church might not be corrupted through fellowship with him, how much more fitting was it that we should flee you blasphemers? If he relates that he handed that man over to Satan, how much more ought you to know that you were already handed over at the moment you began to deny the Son of God? “For I, as absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged, as if present, him who has done such a thing: in the name of the Lord Jesus, when you and my spirit are gathered together, with the power of our Lord Jesus, to hand such a man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that the spirit may be saved in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven corrupts the whole lump? Purge out the old leaven, so that you may be a new lump, as you are unleavened.” Since this is the apostle's rebuke, could Christians have been joined to the servants of the Antichrist? For how would anyone not have been corrupted by the poisons of so great a blasphemy of yours, since whoever communicates with you, whether in pretence or in earnest, is in enormous danger? When I have written, because of your heresy, to keep away from you, how could we have clung to you again? For the voice of the apostle says: “I wrote to you in the letter not to mix with the sexually immoral; not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy, or robbers, or idolaters, since then you would have had to go out of this world. But now I have written to you not to mix with anyone who is called a brother if he is sexually immoral or greedy or an idolater or a reviler or a drunkard or a robber; with such a one not even to eat.” If we are ordered not even to eat with you, did you believe that catholics could come together with heretics to celebrate all the solemn rites? Could we worshippers of God have been with you wanderers, with you who have been led into every drunkenness by the devil's poison? How could it have come about that we, the living, should stand among the dead? It was more fitting that you, sons of our adversary, should be seen gathered into one, and we, soldiers of Christ, into one against you, so that you might without any doubt be called by all who love God the members and body of a harlot, a name by which we too might be called, if we handed ourselves over to you. “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? Far from it. Or do you not know that he who joins himself to a harlot is one body? For the two, he says, shall be in one flesh. But he who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit. Flee sexual immorality.” What kind of sexual immorality do you think we must flee? One who chooses to seek another besides his wife is called sexually immoral; likewise one who has served idols is said to have committed sexual immorality, because, abandoning God, he has worshipped idols; similarly one who is a heretic is called sexually immoral. Learn which of these is the graver crime: to become a heretic, to serve idols, or to commit adultery according to the flesh. Since, then, whether you are called Gentile idolaters or heretic idolaters, both parties must be committing idolatry; and since you will understand that those two crimes are vaster than carnal sexual immorality, to a degree that cannot be told, see with what evils you have cut your own throat. The most holy apostle cries out further, saying: “Every sin that a man commits is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body”; and: “You are not your own; for you were bought with a price. Glorify and carry the Lord in your body.” How will you be able to carry God in your body, Constantius, when by rejecting the apostolic faith and taking up the heretical one you have declared that you are not his, whose our fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob declared themselves to be, and all the prophets, apostles and martyrs as well? Then, if the sexually immoral man sins against his own body, how much more you, who accomplish that work of the serpent not through the flesh alone but through the soul itself? “Do you not know that he who joins himself to a harlot is one body, but he who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit?” Lest we too, made part of the body of the harlot with men of sacrilege, should no longer deserve to be the Lord's servants but become, like you, servants of the devil, we judged that we had to withdraw from you. Woe to you, who would not be joined to the Lord but chose to be joined to the devil. And when he says, “Do not be led astray; evil conversations corrupt good morals,” what does he order me to do except to flee your assembly, stained with sacrilege, lest, while I cling to you, I too perish with you?

How could we have been in your malignant council? For we find that the blessed apostle said to Timothy: “Do not lay hands hastily on anyone, nor share in the sins of others. Keep yourself chaste.” But how would we have been chaste, if by clinging to you we had been torn away, like you, from the chastity of the faith by those dearest friends of yours, that is, the unclean spirits? How would we not have shared in the sins of others, when, if we had decided to remain with you, we would have become what you are, that is, members of a harlot? How could we Christians have been with you heretics, when we knew that the apostle also wrote to Timothy that we should withdraw ourselves from you heretics: “Teach and exhort these things. If anyone teaches otherwise and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and with the teaching that accords with godliness, he is puffed up, knowing nothing, but is sick about questions and quarrels of words, from which arise envy, strife, blasphemies, suspicions, the wicked conflicts of men corrupt in mind and destitute of the truth.” From you, then, who do not believe as the people of God believe, from you who do not teach as the apostles of Christ, the only Son of God, taught, from you who do not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ, we have chosen to live separated: from you, the assailant of the teaching that accords with godliness; from you, puffed up against us by our enemy; from you, who know nothing true but are sick about questions; from you, through whose abominable efforts quarrels of words, deadly strife and malignant conflicts are found to have arisen especially in our days; from you, that is, a man corrupt in mind, a falsifier of the truth. We judged that we must withdraw from you and from your fellow vipers according to the apostle's command. For he says further on: “of men corrupt in mind and destitute of the truth, who think that godliness is a means of gain; withdraw from such.” How could we have been with you, when even in the close of this letter he urges that you must be fled, you who have fallen from the faith: “O Timothy, guard the deposit, avoiding the profane novelties of words and the oppositions of knowledge falsely so called, which some, professing it, have fallen away concerning the faith”? We had to avoid you, who utter profane novelties of words, since we knew that you had uttered that sacrilegious word at the prompting of the devil, that word, I say, by which you have expressed the poisons of your doctrine, saying: “There was when he was not,” and “He was made from nothing,” and “The power of the Father and of the Son is not one.” The Holy Spirit did not utter these things through you, but that unclean devilish spirit. How, then, could we have guarded the deposit according to the apostle's command, if we had remained with you in that accursed council of yours, when we have resolved to hold the apostolic faith until our death, the faith, namely, which we keep as written at Nicaea against your blasphemy and against the execrable efforts of all your heretics?

How could we Christians have been in your council of Arians, we who have heard in the book of Maccabees that our predecessors and fellow servants separated themselves from those who had made supplication to idols according to the edict of your fellow tyrant Antiochus: “But Judas Maccabeus, who was one of ten, had withdrawn into the desert and there lived with his companions in the mountains among the wild beasts; they stayed there feeding on grass, so as not to share in the defilement.” You recognize from this one testimony that we had to withdraw from you, so that we too might not share in the defilement. How should we be joined to you, when the Lord also says to the apostles: “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees”? And to show us that the leaven was unsound teaching, which either the Pharisees or Sadducees put forward then or you heretics of all sects put forward now, the Scripture follows, saying: “Then they reasoned among themselves, saying, ‘It is because we have no bread.’ While they were reasoning, Jesus said: ‘Why do you reason among yourselves, you of little faith, that you have no bread? Do you not yet understand, nor remember the five loaves and the five thousand men, and how many baskets you took up, nor the seven loaves and the seven thousand men, and how many hampers you took up? Why do you not understand that I did not speak of bread when I said, Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees?’ Then they understood that he did not tell them to beware of the leaven, but of the teaching of the Pharisees.” Likewise, since the apostle, writing to the Corinthians, deigns to instruct us that we must withdraw from you heretics and from all foreigners, how did your heart, changeable and fickle in all things, but in this malice fixed with enormous firmness to the ruin of its own salvation, presume that we could have peace with you or with yours? “Do not bear the yoke with unbelievers; for what partnership has righteousness with iniquity? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? And what agreement has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? And what accord has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God; for it is written: I will dwell in them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore come out from their midst and be separate, says the Lord, and touch nothing unclean; and I will receive you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord almighty.” Since your precepts are seen to have arisen against these promises of the Lord, how could we, the faithful, have stayed with you, the unfaithful? Running on the way of light, could we have stood with you, men making your journey on a way full of the darkness of every error? For who is so foolish that, having heard God say, “I will dwell in them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore come out from their midst and be separate, says the Lord, and touch nothing unclean; and I will receive you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord almighty,” who, we said, is so foolish as not to want God to dwell in him, as not to want to be reckoned received by God among those whom he has deigned to call sons, that he would not flee you, who have been made unclean by your heresy? It did not seem right to us that we should be at one with you, since it is not right for men to dwell with serpents either. Or will you deny that those who deny the only Son of God are called serpents in the holy Scriptures? If you cannot deny it, observe that we did right to flee you serpents. You have read the apostle saying to Timothy: “Avoid profane novelties of words; for they will advance much in ungodliness, and their word creeps like a cancer.” Did you think that men of God could be with you, whose word is like a cancer? Likewise, since blessed John commands that you must be fled, saying: “I rejoiced greatly that I found some of your children walking in the truth, as we received commandment from the Father. I ask you, lady, not as writing you a new commandment, but the one we have had from the beginning, that we love one another. And this is love, that we walk according to his commandments. This is the commandment, as you have heard from the beginning, that you walk in it. For many deceivers have gone out into the world, who do not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh; these are deceivers and antichrists. Look to them, so that you do not lose what you have worked for, but receive a full reward. Everyone who withdraws and does not abide in the teaching of Christ does not have God; but he who abides in his teaching has both the Father and the Son. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into the house and do not say ‘greeting’ to him; for he who says ‘greeting’ to him shares in his evil works.” How could it have come about that we, soldiers of God, should be with you and yours, soldiers of the Antichrist, since the Holy Spirit, giving these commands through the blessed apostle, has not even allowed you to be greeted?