On Not Sparing Those Who Sin against God 25–31

You ought not to judge me insulting because I say that you are driven by an unclean spirit, because I say you are the forerunner of Antichrist; for your own mouth reveals that you are this, since no one who has the Spirit of God could assert such things as you Arians assert, or all your fellow heretics of various sects. You deny that God has a true Son; you say he is adopted; and you think you are not understood to be one of those antichrists, as John declares. You are revealed, I say, as led by an adverse spirit. That is why, in the end, we did not believe you when you said of the Son, “He was made from nothing.” For we knew that only the spirit of a false prophet, only the forerunner of Antichrist, only the attendant and slave of demons, could say this. We could not have believed you when you said this, since the Holy Spirit spoke through the prophets too of the only Son of God, that he is the true Son of God, that he is eternal and coeternal with the Father, that neither was the Son ever without the Father nor the Father ever without the Son; and the blessed apostles reported the same things, since the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, who was in the prophets, also remained in the apostles. Since this Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, is in the church of God, and you are placed outside the church of God, since he does not remain in you, you are certainly proved to have the spirit of Antichrist; and that unclean spirit, so that you may not see what we press upon you, pours darkness over your heretical hearts with the blind fog of errors, so that you may not emerge from his snares. You judge us insulting because we declare you to be what we see you are. See, when I find that the Lord said in the Gospel according to Matthew, “Behold, I send you as sheep among wolves,” you seem to me one of those wolves, and indeed the one in whom I see heaped up the rage of all the wolves that roar against God's flock. For what denier of the only Son of God would not rejoice and show it openly, when he sees how you have laid waste the flock of Christ? I take you also as one of those unbelievers, of those faithless ones to whom it is said: “Brood of vipers, how can you speak good things, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart each one speaks with his mouth. The good man out of his good treasure brings forth good things, and the evil man out of his evil treasure brings forth evil things.” If what you speak is good, Constantius, you can have a good treasure. I am insolent because I tell you that darkness dwells in your heart; hence, from your most darkened senses, being what you are, you dare to bring forth unclean and dark things. See, if you hear also what the Lord said to blessed Peter, you will without doubt call me insulting. The most holy Matthew says: “While he was still speaking, behold, Judas, one of the twelve, and with him great crowds with swords and clubs, sent by the chief priests and the elders of the people. Now he who betrayed him had given them a sign, saying: Whomever I kiss, that is he; seize him. And at once he came up to Jesus and said: Hail, Rabbi; and he kissed him. And Jesus said: Friend, why have you come? Then they came up and laid hands on Jesus and seized him. And behold, one of those who were with Jesus stretched out his hand, drew his sword, and struck the servant of the high priest and cut off his ear. Then Jesus said to him: Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.” You must call me insulting when you hear that if you use the sword you will perish by the sword. Or have you not used the sword? If you have killed no Christian with the sword, if you have persecuted no one to death because he confessed the only Son of God to be the true Son, because he held the apostolic and evangelical faith, because he refused to be an Arian, you will be able not to perish by the sword. For you hear that it was said to blessed Peter, and indeed by God, the only Son of God, that everyone who uses the sword will perish by the sword. I am insulting because I said to you: Christians may not kill, since it is fitting for Christians to suffer wrong, not to do it, to be killed; for you ought not, for Christ's sake, to kill those who proclaim themselves Christians. The Lord has given us these commands; if they are kept, then we shall persevere as Christians. You, on the contrary, since you see fit to persecute his servants with the sword, we shall no longer be able to call a Christian, but plainly a robber or a gladiator.

Meanwhile, since we have recited how Judas Iscariot, as mad as you, betrayed the Lord, let us at this point go thoroughly back over the causes of his sacrilege and of yours, and you will find that you and Judas Iscariot are one. He betrayed the Lord to the Jews because he did not believe except as your fellow Scotinus of Sirmium now believes, who was and is unworthily called Photinus. You have betrayed him, and indeed to the whole world, so that all may deny his divinity. Which of you is the greater in crime? I think you are. For “everyone who sins against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but he who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, neither here nor in the age to come.” You came forward as the betrayer of his Godhead, so that all may deny it. For as far as it lies with you, you have betrayed him: you have issued books written about him and appointed preachers of your good pleasure in every place. So that all might deny that he is the true Son of God, you had the apostolic and evangelical faith, written down at Nicaea against you heretics, judged heretical, and had your blasphemy called catholic. And yet this Judas, who had betrayed him, seeing that he had worked the death of his own salvation, was led by repentance to bring back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying: “I have sinned in betraying innocent blood.” But they said: “What is that to us? See to it yourself.” And throwing the silver into the temple he withdrew and went and hanged himself with a noose. He, though only for a moment, repented and returned the price he had received; what such thing have you done, who, when told by his servants that you are committing an outrage, have not only not repented but have grown still more defiant? What such thing have you done, who give all the resources of your kingdom to strengthen your sacrilege; who have corrupted some with huge rewards from your wealth, those you could not corrupt from the truth in any other way; who have so enriched a certain number of needy men that they can be equalled with your counts in the greatness of their riches? Judas, after he saw his crime, ended his life with a noose; you, who for the greatness of your wrongdoing deserve to be struck with a greater punishment, what will you do when you recognize, though late, that you have done wrong, when your eyes, which now cannot see at all because they are festering with heretical poison, begin to see? And yet, if you are willing to believe, what you do out of ignorance must be forgiven you, as you see it was forgiven the blessed apostle Paul; but if not, you will go down like Judas into the night of hell, and then you will say to those who now drive you to do these things, that is, to your fellow Arians: “I sinned with you in denying the only Son of God; I sinned in giving you authority to deny his eternal mercy.” Then, when you begin to recognize that we rightly confess one eternity of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, when you begin to see that there is one greatness and one power in the Father and in his only Son and in the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, where then will those be who drove you to commit this sacrilege, so that you may say to them: “I repent that I ran with you, enemies of God, that I persecuted the house of God with you”? They will without doubt be with you in Gehenna. Where then will the riches of your kingdom be, which profit you not for salvation but for your eternal destruction? We pray indeed that God may deign to reveal the truth to you, an enemy of your own salvation, and that you may emerge from such great dangers. For the rest, how far you surpass Judas Iscariot in crime is no labour to judge, since you have called the whole world together to deny his divinity, while Judas betrayed the Lord only to those who had not yet believed in him; you, on the contrary, have seen fit to provoke even those who already believed to deny his Godhead. Judas used force on no one to perish with him; you, on the contrary, fight with an armed force against us, whom you know to believe as the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs believed. Surely it is no great labour to weigh how far apart you and Judas stand.

You call me insulting because I long that neither I nor those entrusted to me be wounded by your pestilent teaching; because I tell you that you are full of disease and therefore must be avoided by the servants of God, lest we too, become diseased, perish together with you in this plague of yours. “Would that you would bear with a little of my foolishness,” says the apostle to the Corinthians, “but do bear with me. For I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. For I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your minds may be corrupted from the chastity that is in Christ Jesus.” This is why I seem insulting to you: because I fear that by your blasphemy you may corrupt the chastity we have in Christ Jesus; because we are afraid that, as the serpent, your dearest friend, deceived Eve by his cunning, you may lead us astray from God and make us guilty of death. You call me defiant because I say you are a deceitful workman, a false Christian. These things are not first brought against you by me. For you hear that the blessed apostle marked you out as a deceitful workman, a false apostle: “For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself disguises himself as an angel of light; it is no great thing if his ministers disguise themselves as ministers of righteousness; their end will be according to their works.” This is why I seem proud to you: because, knowing it from your deeds, I say you are one of those whom the Holy Spirit showed beforehand through the apostle would be such. If you are not a deceitful workman, refute me; for I know that you pretend to be a Christian, though you are an Arian, and that you have wanted to make us all servants of him whose attendant you are. If you are not a deceitful workman, prove it; for we see that in some things you pretend to be devout, while you practise all your impiety against us Christians. If you are not a deceitful workman, how is it that, pretending to make peace, you had tried to destroy the whole church of God, to dissolve the peace handed down to it through the only Son of God? For I could not have the Lord's peace from the moment I had done what you ordered me against the Lord's command, from the moment, in short, I had begun to deny the only Son of God as you deny him. If you have not disguised yourself as an apostle of Christ, who are you, that you are as anxious as if the whole care of the church truly belonged to you, anxious, that is, that no catholic bishop should anywhere preside over a church, that no one should be left who could confess himself a Christian? You remove catholic bishops, ordain heretics, write dreadful threats, lest perhaps a riot arise. Surely one who does not know thinks, when he sees you do these things, that you are a Christian; we, on the contrary, taught by the blessed apostle, know that Satan has disguised himself as an angel of light. Since he carries out all these things against the holy church through you, we cannot be surprised if we see you as his minister, if we see you, a minister of injustice, disguised as a minister of righteousness. We exhort you: would that you would turn yourself to this, that you might be believed a servant of God, that you might be judged and understood a Christian. Whenever we tell you that you could not have become a denier of the only Son of God unless you were full of an adverse spirit, you are accustomed to say that we are doing you wrong; and although I have already proved this in very many places, that you come against the household of God with unclean spirits stirring your hearts, take further what happened in the Acts of the Apostles: “And it came about, as we were going to prayer, that a certain girl having a spirit of divination met us, who brought her masters much gain by soothsaying. She followed Paul and us and cried out, saying: These men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to us the way of salvation. And she did this for many days. When Paul was grieved at it, he turned to the spirit and said: I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her. And it came out that very hour. But when her masters saw that the hope of their gain was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the magistrates, and brought them forward, saying: These men are disturbing our city, being Jews, and they proclaim a way of life that it is not lawful for us to accept or practise, since we are Romans. And the whole crowd rose up together against them, and the magistrates tore their tunics off them and ordered them to be beaten with rods. And when they had laid many blows on them, they threw them into prison, ordering the jailer to keep them carefully. Having received such an order, he put them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks. About midnight, as Paul and Silas were praying and singing a hymn to God, the other prisoners heard them. And suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken, and the doors were opened and all the bonds were loosed. The jailer woke up, and when he saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword to kill himself, thinking the prisoners had fled. But Paul cried out with a loud voice, saying: Do yourself no harm, for we are all here. Hearing this, the jailer asked for a light and went in, and trembling fell at the feet of Paul and Silas, and when he had brought them out, he said: Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said: Believe in God, Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household. And they spoke the word of the Lord to him with all who were in his house. And taking them that same hour of the night, he washed them from their wounds, and he was baptized, he and all his household. And bringing them into his house he set a table before them and feasted with his whole household, believing in the Lord.”

So, as that spirit of divination, hearing the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, was at once driven from its dwelling and stirred up the whole people of the city against the preachers of the majesty of the only Son of God, so those unclean spirits have stirred up you and yours against us, his servants. Do not doubt that you are driven by the same spirits by which those were driven who rose against Paul and Silas, since you see yourself become a persecutor of God's religion in the same way. That mob had not yet believed in the only Son of God, and was such for no other reason than that they were without the Spirit of God, as you too are proved to be. For that you cannot have the Holy Spirit unless you believe in the only Son of God is shown by what this jailer did: although he was certainly one of that resisting people, yet after he believed, because he was now ruled by the Holy Spirit by whom Paul and Silas were ruled, he embraced nothing but the way of those for whose sake he had seen the prison doors open of themselves. So you, who are now driven by a contrary spirit, unless you believe in the only Son of God as we too believe, can have in you only the spirit of our adversary. For that jailer said to the glorious Paul and Silas: “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” And they said: “Believe in our Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” It is clear, then, that you are not saved, because you have not yet believed in the Lord Jesus. For you cannot assert that you have believed in him, since you persecute him. Or do you think that you are not persecuting him in us? If you are not persecuting him in us, how does he himself say to Saul: “Why are you persecuting me? I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. It is hard for you to kick against the goad.” What was Saul doing, that he heard this from the Lord? Surely what you are doing; for he denied the only Son of God as you deny him. For Paul, a persecutor then, who afterwards began to endure persecution, did not persecute the Christians because they believed as you believe, that there was when he was not, that he was made from nothing, and that he is [not] a true Son; but certainly because they dared to confess the only Son of God, because the Christians declared that they believed that there is one eternity of the Father and the Son, one Godhead, one power in the Father and the Son. Paul cursed this, thinking the Christians were in error; but when he was enlightened by him whom he denied, when he learned from the books of Moses and from all the volumes of the prophets, at once he began to defend what he had been attacking, that is, what those whom he persecuted defended before he believed. For the rest, who was so senseless, as you Arians are, or as Photinus of Sirmium is, who is truly called Scotinus, as to believe in a creature, in one who was when he was not, in one created from nothing? It is plain, then, that all of you, not believing as the glorious church believes, are led by an adverse spirit, from which adverse spirit you cannot be freed unless you believe that he is the true Son of God.

“The bishops are insulting me,” you say. Why do we seem insulting to you? Surely because we say: “Why do you pretend to be a Christian? For you are seen to be an Arian; you are seen to be an enemy of God's religion.” This is why we seem offensive to you and yours. But consider what the most blessed apostle said, so that we bishops should act against you wolves: “You know from the first day that I entered Asia how I was with you all the time, serving the Lord with all humility and tears and trials which befell me through the plots of the Jews; how I held back nothing that was profitable, how I declared to you and taught you publicly and from house to house, testifying to Jews and Greeks repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus. And now, behold, bound in the Spirit I am going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will befall me there, except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city, saying that bonds and afflictions await me in Jerusalem. But I count my life as nothing dear to me, compared with finishing my course and the ministry of the word which I received from the Lord, to testify to Jews and Greeks the gospel of the grace of God. And now I know that you will see my face no more, all of you among whom I went about preaching the kingdom of the Lord Jesus. Therefore I testify to you this day that I am clean of the blood of all, for I did not hold back from preaching the whole will of God. Take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you bishops to rule the church of the Lord, which he obtained with his own blood. I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; from among yourselves men will arise and speak perverse things, to draw away disciples after them. Therefore be watchful, remembering that for three years I did not cease night and day to admonish each of you with tears.” Since you see that these are the apostle's commands, what do you order me to do, so as not to seem insulting to you? Surely you order me to keep silent and allow you, one of those designated fierce wolves, to rage against God's flock in any way you please. We see you wolves, whom the Holy Spirit deigned to show beforehand through the apostle, the chosen vessel, trying to seize the whole flock of God; and are we bishops, whom the Holy Spirit has appointed to rule the church of God, as the blessed apostle says, to spare you, the wolf? Are we to revere the diadem of your reign, the earring too and the bracelets? Are we to honour your robes, which you think magnificent, and despise the creator and ruler of all things? Who is more imprudent than you, that you say, “I suffer wrong from Lucifer, I the emperor from a needy man”? You do not even deign to say “from a bishop”, because you have been recognized as a wolf and have deserved rejection. You thought I should be loaded with such odium that you claimed that a servant of God had been insulting to you, the emperor. If you think us offensive, hear what blessed Paul answered the high priest who forbade him to preach the only Son of God. “Looking intently at the council,” says Scripture, “Paul said: Brothers, I have lived in all good conscience before God up to this day. And the high priest Ananias commanded those standing by him to strike Paul on the mouth. Then Paul said to him: God will strike you, you whitewashed wall. Do you sit to judge me according to the law, and contrary to the law order me to be struck?” So if the holy law cannot judge blessed Paul insulting because he said this to an unjust judge, neither can you justly call me proud for telling you the truth and what you are. You mark me as guilty of insults; but tell me, I beg you, to whom can you complain of me? If to God, how will you complain to him whom you do not know? How, when you are a stranger to his house? But if you complain to yourself, what will you do, a man who can in no way harm the servants of God? If you torture us, we are the more healed; if you torment us, we are the more refreshed; if you kill us, we shall the more live.

Because I dare to call you the forerunner of Antichrist, you say I am offensive. If your deeds do not show you to be this, consider with great care the book of the most holy prophet Daniel as well, and you will find that you are one of those persecutors of God's religion shown beforehand. “In the first year of Belshazzar, king of the Chaldeans, Daniel saw a dream, and visions of his head on his bed, and he wrote down his dream: I, Daniel, was watching, and behold, the four winds of heaven were stirring up the great sea, and four beasts came up from the sea, one surpassing another in size. The first was like a lioness, and it had wings. And it rose from the earth and stood on the feet of a man, and the heart of a man was given to it. And behold, another beast like a bear, and it stood on one side, and three ribs were in its mouth between its teeth; and it was told: Arise, devour much flesh. After this beast I was watching, and behold, another beast like a leopard, and it had four wings of a bird upon it, and the beast had four heads, and power was given to it. After this I was watching, and behold, a fourth beast, terrible, astonishing, and exceedingly strong; its iron teeth devoured and broke in pieces, and it trampled what was left with its feet. And this beast was greater than the other beasts that had been seen before, and it had ten horns. And I was considering its horns, and behold, another, smaller horn came up among them, and three of the horns that were before it were uprooted before it. And behold, eyes like a man's were in this horn, and a mouth speaking great things. I was watching until thrones were set, and the Ancient of Days sat. His clothing was white as snow and the hair of his head like pure wool, and his throne was a flame of fire, its wheels burning fire. A river of fire shone before him; thousands of thousands served him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him. He sat in judgment, and the books were opened. I was watching then because of the sound of the great words that the horn was speaking, until the beast was slain and perished, and its body was given to be burned. And the dominion of the other beasts was taken away, and length of life was given them for a time. I was watching in the vision of the night, and behold, with the clouds of heaven one like a son of man came, and he came up to the Ancient of Days; he came forward and was presented to him, and to him was given the kingdom and honour and dominion, and all peoples, tribes, and tongues serve him, and his power is an everlasting power that will never pass away, and his kingdom will not be corrupted. My spirit was horrified within me, I, Daniel, and the visions of my head troubled me. And I approached one of those standing by and sought the truth from him about all these things. And he told me the truth and made known to me the interpretation of the words: These four great beasts are four kingdoms that shall arise on the earth, and the saints of the Most High God shall receive the kingdom and possess it for ever. And I inquired diligently about the fourth beast, which was exceedingly terrible beyond the other beasts; its teeth were iron and its claws bronze; it devoured and broke in pieces and trampled what was left with its feet; and about its ten horns that were on its head, and about the other horn that came up and struck down the three former horns, which had eyes and a mouth speaking great things, and whose appearance was greater than the rest. I was watching, and that horn made war with the saints and prevailed against them, until the Ancient of Days came and gave judgment to the saints of the Most High God, and the time came, and the saints possessed the kingdom. And he said: The fourth beast shall be a fourth kingdom on earth, which shall surpass all kingdoms and devour the whole earth and trample it and break it in pieces. As for its ten horns, ten kings shall arise, and after them another shall arise, who shall surpass in evils all who were before him, and he shall humble three kings and speak words against the Most High God, and wear out the saints of the Most High God, and think to change times and law, and they shall be given into his hand for a time, times, and half a time. And the judgment shall sit, and shall take away his dominion, to destroy and to bring it to ruin to the end; and the kingdom and the power and the greatness of the kings shall be given to the saints of the Most High God; and his kingdom is everlasting, and all shall serve and obey him.”

I ought indeed to have inserted only the part that declares by your deeds which of the beasts you resemble; but so that you might know that, unless you correct yourself, you will be in that Gehenna into which the glorious Daniel reports that beast was cast, and how those whom you persecute will reign for ever, placed in the Lord's kingdom, so that you might notice it, we have added all these things. Likewise I thought the whole revelation should be applied to this end, that even by reading you might satisfy yourself that you tyrants, persecutors of God's religion, have been called beasts. For I desire to clear myself before your conscience, infected with the poisons of the Arian dogma, before you, who are not religious but the destroyer of religion, of being insulting, as you claim, because I call you a wild beast or a savage monster, when you see that you are called so, names being applied to you according to your deeds. For the rest, it is plain that you bear the likeness of that fourth beast, that you desire to fulfil what it was foretold that beast would fulfil. It is written of Antichrist, whom you resemble or whom you are judged to be yourself: “He shall speak words against the Most High Lord and wear out the saints of the Most High God, and think to change times and law, and it shall be given into his hand.” This you have already done and are doing. For when you say, “The Son of God is not true God, but was made from nothing,” you speak words against God. For since we Christians maintain one divinity for the Father and his only Son, and you assail this defence of ours, asserting of the Son that there was when he was not and that he was made from nothing, you surely prove that you are either Antichrist or at least his forerunner. For you cannot be understood to be anything else but either the forerunner of Antichrist or Antichrist, you who dare to call the apostolic and evangelical faith heretical and try to claim your blasphemy as the catholic faith. You feel that you suffer wrong because you are called a beast by us; you are found thinking to change the faith, that is, that we should not believe as the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs believed, but you have established that we must believe as your fellow lost one, Arius, did. And do you say that you are not rightly called a beast, when the most holy prophet called you a beast because you were going to do these things? You are not less, Constantius, in unbelief than Antichrist; for you do not cease devouring God's servants with iron teeth. Why say more? Antichrist will do nothing except see that the only Son of God is denied; this your most unclean mind, fattened with folly, is doing.