On Apostate Kings 1–5

Since you are pleased to have a saying always on your lips, that unless you believed soundly and unless what you are doing to us were pleasing to God, you would already have been destroyed, I have wished to lay open the deeds of a few kings who were your equals in apostasy and cruelty, so that that voice of yours may be buried which says: “Unless the faith of Arius, that is, mine, were catholic, unless it were pleasing to God that I persecute that faith which they wrote against us at Nicaea, I would certainly not still be flourishing in the empire.” I make no mention of those kings who were strangers to the knowledge of God; I deal only with those who are known to have reigned in Judaea. In the book of Judges we find that Jerubbaal, the son of Joash, was chosen by God and was told: “Go in your strength, and you shall save Israel from the hand of Midian. Do I not send you?” And further on: “I will be with you, and you shall strike Midian as one man.” Scripture says that this Midian had a multitude like the sand of the sea. But when all that God had promised Gideon was fulfilled, when he saw himself raised up from lowliness, enriched from poverty, made a king from the condition of a commoner, what does he do at once? He says to the people: “Give me each one an earring from his spoil.” And when he had received a weight of golden earrings up to one thousand seven hundred shekels, besides the bracelets and necklaces and garments and the purple that were on the kings of Midian, and besides the golden chains that were on the necks of the enemies' camels, what does holy Scripture say Gideon did? “And Gideon made them into an ephod and set it up in his city Ephrath; and the children of Israel prostituted themselves there, and it became a snare to Gideon and his house.” Did he wait some days and only then do this wicked work against God? When he set about doing this, could he not remember that God had said to him, “Go, I will be with you”? Where is that deed of his, when according to God's command he pulled down Baal and cut down his groves and offered sacrifice to God? Where is what he said to the messenger of God who told him, “The Lord is with you, mighty in strength”: “On me, Lord? If the Lord is with us, why then have all these evils seized us? And where are his wonders, which our fathers told us, saying, Did not God bring us up out of Egypt? And now the Lord has spurned us and handed us over into the hand of Midian.” When he attempted to act against God, did he call to mind that those evils had come upon them because of idolatry? But as soon as they had been rescued, so as to live without fear of their adversaries, from all those evils with which he said he and the whole people were weighed down, at once he does the thing through which both he himself and the whole people alike would be handed over into the hands of their adversaries because of idolatry. He had heard from God that all those evils had befallen them because they had served idols and forsaken God; he remembered that the prophet had spoken; and yet on the very day on which their enemies were made as nothing before them, that king, in his folly, whom you are pleased to resemble, decided that idols should be served rather than the God who had granted him those things. “And the children of Israel,” says Scripture, “did evil before the Lord God, and he handed them into the hands of Midian for seven years, and the hand of Midian prevailed greatly over Israel. And Israel made for themselves, because of Midian, caves in the mountains and dens and strongholds. And it came about that when Israel sowed, Midian and Amalek and the sons of the East came up, came up against him and fought with them and ruined the borders of the land as far as Gaza, and left nothing alive for Israel, neither sheep nor calf nor ass. For they and their cattle came up, and they brought their tents and led their camels, and they came like locusts in multitude, for there was no number to them, and they came upon the land to ruin it. And Israel was made poor before Midian. And the children of Israel cried to the Lord; and because the children of Israel had cried to the Lord on account of Midian, the Lord sent a man, a prophet, to the children of Israel, and he said to them: Thus says the Lord God of Israel: It is I who brought you up out of Egypt and led you out of the house of slavery and took you from the hand of the king of Egypt and from the hand of all who persecuted you, and drove them out before you and gave you their land. And I said to you: I am the Lord your God; you shall not fear the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell; and you did not listen to my voice.” What does Jerubbaal, who is also called Gideon, do after this rebuke of the Lord? As soon as he sees his enemy brought to nothing, as soon as all those adversaries, who are said to have been like the sand of the sea, have been slaughtered, and that not by a huge number of Israelites but by three hundred men, as soon as he saw all the foreign kings killed, he fashions the thing through which the children of Israel could sin against God; and yet this man is found to have ruled in Israel forty years even after committing so great a crime. It will not be surprising, then, if you too, a man of sacrilege, still live in the body, when you see that Gideon the king lived forty years after committing idolatry and kept his rule; for holy Scripture says that the Israelites had rest forty years and that no adversaries at all were let loose on them and no foreigner ruled over them, because they had cried out to God. Such good things God did for your fellows in sacrilege, showing that he is almighty, but that they were unworthy to obtain rest, since not even for one day after receiving rest from such great dangers did they choose to serve him who had shown them such mercy. Though the Israelites were such, he spared them in his kindness even when they practised idolatry after this, and did not repay them at once; but he did repay them again at the time that pleased him. The guilt of idolatry could not go unpunished for them. So he will repay you too, Constantius, unless you look out for yourself in the meantime. If the Israelites, serving demons and forsaking God, when they had already become strangers to the knowledge of God, were nevertheless heard and freed from the hand of Midian and from all their persecutors as soon as it entered their hearts that he is the almighty God who had brought their fathers out of the land of Egypt, what do you think? Do you suppose that we Christians cannot be rescued from your hands? Or do you deny, or do you not see, as far as I know, that we worship the same God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and of all the prophets, apostles and martyrs? Believe me, we have been heard and we will be heard, so that you, with all your fragile loftiness, may lie under the heel of all his servants. But that there are some little delays, so that he does not yet grant his holy church the full security of peace by destroying you Arians, the reason is this: it is fitting that, while you, the adversary, rage, all should come to their testing.

You say: “If I had done evil, if I held a heresy, God would already have taken vengeance on me.” You hear holy Scripture saying that the Lord spared even foreigners for a long time, and yet afterwards they received the due reward of their deeds. Samuel said to Saul: “The Lord sent me to anoint you king over Israel; and now hear the voice of the word of the Lord: Thus says the Lord almighty: Now I will avenge what Amalek did to you, Israel, how he met you on the way when you came up from Egypt. And now go and strike Amalek and all that is his, and you shall covet nothing of theirs, but you shall destroy him and devote him and all that is his to destruction; and you shall not spare him, and you shall kill all that is his, from man to woman and from infant to suckling.” And further on: “And Saul came to the city of Amalek, and approached, and laid siege to Amalek in the valley. And Saul said to the Kenite: Go, turn aside from the midst, and turn aside from Amalek, and do not join yourself with him, for you showed mercy to the children of Israel when they came up from Egypt. And the Kenite turned aside from the midst of Amalek. And Saul struck Amalek from Havilah as far as Shur, which is opposite Egypt. And Saul took Agag king of Amalek alive, and killed all his people with the edge of the sword.” You see how they received the due of their crime, though late; and you say: “Unless I were doing well, I would never reign for long.” We find that Saul himself, because he acted against the Lord's command, was rejected, and yet reigned for a long time after his rejection, after God had said to Samuel: “I repent that I anointed Saul king.” And you say: “Unless I believed rightly, unless I lived as is pleasing to God, I would certainly not be ruling until now.” And so that you may take in thoroughly what we are saying about Saul, hear what he did against the Lord's command: “And Saul and all his people took Agag the king and the best of the flocks and herds and of the food and the vineyards and of all good things, and they would not destroy all the good things, but kept back all that was precious and destroyed what was worthless. And the word of the Lord came to Samuel, saying: I repent that I made Saul king, for he has turned away from me and has not established my words. And Samuel was grieved, and cried to God all night and before dawn; and Samuel went to meet Israel.” And further on: “And Samuel came to Saul, and behold, Saul was offering a burnt offering to the Lord and the first of the spoils which he had brought from Amalek. And Samuel reached Saul, and Saul said to him: Blessed are you of the Lord; I have established all that the Lord spoke. And Samuel said: Then what is this voice of the flock in my ears, and the voice of oxen that I hear? And Saul said: I have brought them from Amalek, the best of the flock and the oxen which the people took as spoil, to be sacrificed to the Lord your God, the King; the rest I have destroyed and wiped out. And Samuel said to Saul: Were you not least in your own sight, the leader of the sceptres of the tribe of Israel, and the Lord anointed you king over Israel, and the Lord sent you on the way and said to you: Go and destroy those who sin against me, Amalek, and fight against them until you consume them? Why then did you not listen to the voice of the Lord, but rushed on the spoil and did what is evil before the Lord? And Saul said: Because I listened to the people; I went on the way on which God sent me, and brought Agag the king of Amalek, and destroyed Amalek; and the people took of the spoil the flock and the chief of the herds of those I destroyed, to sacrifice before the Lord our God in Gilgal. And Samuel said: Does the Lord want burnt offerings and sacrifices more than listening to the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and obedience than the fat of rams. For since sin is an abomination, you have brought sorrows and groans upon yourself. Because you have held the word of the Lord of no account, the Lord will hold you of no account, so that you shall not reign. And Saul said to Samuel: I have sinned, for I have transgressed the word of the Lord and your word, because I feared the people and listened to their voice. And now take away my sin; return with me, and I will worship the Lord your God. And Samuel said to him: The Lord will tear your kingdom from Israel out of your hand today, and will give it to your neighbour, who is better than you.” And further on: “And Samuel did not see Saul again until the day of his death, for Samuel mourned over Saul; and the Lord repented that he had made Saul king over Israel. And the Lord said to Samuel: How long will you mourn over Saul? Behold, I am driving him out, so that he does not reign over Israel. Fill your horn with oil and come; I will send you to Jesse in Bethlehem, for I have seen among the sons of Jesse a king for me.” You can now recognize, Constantius, that even those rejected by the Lord, even those destined for eternal death, reign long after committing a grave sin, since you see that after the glorious son of Jesse, David, had been anointed king, Saul still reigned a long time and had the power to persecute even the man whom God had chosen for himself as prophet and king: the evil man persecuting the good, the unjust the just, the one hateful to God persecuting the one God loved. Since this is so, do not boast that after committing so great a crime you are still living as Saul lived; but consider what punishment came upon Saul, which can also come upon you, unless you take thought for yourself. For if the Lord was so angry with him, first because he took spoil against the prohibition, and second because he persecuted God's man David, how much more must the punishment of his anger come upon you, you whose crimes are so enormous that you have come into the guilt even of sacrilege.

“If I had acted wickedly,” you say, “if I were a heretic as Lucifer says, God would already have taken the kingdom from me.” Hear, then, that Solomon too lived on after committing idolatry, and deign to understand that you are such as he was after his idolatry. “And the Lord raised up an adversary against Solomon, Hadad the Edomite, and Rezon the son of Eliada in Bemathad, whose lord was Hadadezer king of Zobah. And men gathered to him, and he was the leader of the band, and he seized Damascus and settled in it and reigned in Damascus; and they were adversaries to Solomon and to Israel all the days of Solomon.” We have proved to you that Solomon too reigned for some years after his idolatry, serving by then not God but the devil; and so he is noted as having clung to devilish men. So you too cling to your fellows in sacrilege, the Arians; and though you are still in the body, though you remain on the throne, you are found to be such as Solomon was after he had forsaken God and followed idols. You wanted us to cling to such men as Solomon made the Israelites cling to. Where was that love of God which the holy Scriptures say was in Solomon, at the time when he was pleased to follow idols and forsake God? Whence this, unless he had become a man wholly estranged from sober understanding? I would not have you applaud yourself because, though you are a blasphemer and a destroyer of God's religion, you still hold the kingdom and are proud after your sacrilege, since we find that Rehoboam the son of Solomon, practising idolatry, lived twenty years on the throne. For holy Scripture says of him: “And King Solomon slept with his fathers in the city of David; and his son Rehoboam reigned in his place in Jerusalem; he was sixteen years old when he became king, and he reigned twenty years in Jerusalem.” And further on: “And he did evil in the sight of the Lord and did not walk in the way of David his father.” Since, then, both Solomon, from the time he was pleased to enslave himself to idols, and his son Rehoboam, who always served idols, did not walk in the paths of David and yet lived on the throne, and both reached the last day of their lives reigning, why do you marvel to yourself that, after committing an abomination and living in that crime, you are proud as king because neither the kingdom nor life is taken from you by God? For you see that Jeroboam too tried, as you have, to overthrow the religion of the Lord from its foundations, and yet he lived on for very many years, and that while remaining in that crime, as it is written: “And there was a man from Mount Ephraim, a servant of Solomon, and his name was Jeroboam, and his mother's name was Sarira, a harlot”; and in another place: “And it came about, when all Israel heard that Jeroboam had returned from Egypt, they sent and called him to the assembly and made him king in Israel”; and further on: “And Jeroboam said in his heart: Now the kingdom will return to David. If this people goes up to offer sacrifice in the house of the Lord in Jerusalem, the heart of the people will turn back to their lord Rehoboam king of Judah. Then Jeroboam took counsel and went and made two golden heifers and said to the people: Let it be enough for you to have gone up to Jerusalem. Behold your gods, Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt. And he set one in Bethel and put one in Dan. And this thing became a sin, and the people went before one of the heifers as far as Dan. And they made houses on the high places, and he made priests from a part of the people who were not of the sons of Levi. And Jeroboam made a feast in the eighth month, on the fifteenth day of the month, like the feast in Judah, and he went up to the altar which he had made in Bethel, to sacrifice before the heifers he had made, and he appointed in Bethel the priests of the high places which he had made. And he went up to the altar which he had made on the fifteenth day of the eighth month, on the feast day which he had devised in his own heart, and made a feast for the children of Israel.”

I would not have you boast, then, that while practising idolatry you still live in possession of the glory of the kingdom, when you see that this Jeroboam made golden heifers and turned the people of Israel to idolatry, and yet not only was not destroyed as soon as he had sinned, but was even allowed to live a long time. Could God not have removed those idolatrous kings? But it has been shown how ungrateful to God you are, who, though you are so greatly exalted, not only forget him who exalts you but even persecute him still in his servants, desiring to take his religion out of the way. Recognize that this is so from the deed of this king Jeroboam. He was the son of a slave woman; he remembered that he was born of a harlot; he received the kingdom of his lord Solomon to Solomon's disgrace; why did he forsake God and turn himself to idols? Though Jeroboam knew, I say, that the kingdom had been given him by God because Solomon his lord had followed idols, yet, counting all this as nothing, he planned to make idols, and to be enslaved to them with the whole people that served God, rather than to the living God, who from the son of a harlot had made him possess the kingdom of his lord Solomon. Do not marvel, then, that he spares you, ungrateful men who sin against him; but I urge you to see this: that, though late, if you remain in this wickedness of yours, you will receive what all your predecessors in sacrilege received. We exhort you to deign to rescue yourself from such great evils. And you have examples besides; you are not the first to do this. We see that this Jeroboam too held the Lord's warning as nothing. “And it came about at that time,” it says, “that Jeroboam went out of Jerusalem, and Ahijah the Shilonite, the prophet, found him on the way; and Ahijah was clothed with a new garment, and the two of them were in the field. And Ahijah took hold of the new garment that he had on and tore it into twelve pieces and said to Jeroboam: Take ten pieces for yourself, for thus says the Lord God of Israel: Behold, I am tearing the kingdom from the hand of Solomon, and I will give you ten sceptres; and two sceptres shall be his, for the sake of my servant David and for the sake of Jerusalem, the city which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel; because Solomon has forsaken me and has made Astarte, the unclean idol of the Sidonians, and Chemosh, the idol of Moab, and their king, the religion of the sons of Ammon, and has not walked in my ways, to do what is right before me, as David his father did. And I will not take the whole kingdom from his hand in the days of his life, for the sake of David my servant whom I have chosen; for I will act against him all the days of his life. And I will take the kingdom from the hand of his son, and I will give you ten sceptres, but to his son I will give two sceptres, so that my servant David may have a place before me all his days in Jerusalem, the city which I have chosen for myself, to put my name there. And I will take you, and you shall reign over all that your soul desires, and you shall be king in Israel. And if you keep all that I command you and walk in my ways and do what is right in my sight and keep my precepts and my commandments, as David my servant did, I will be with you and build you a sure house, as I built for David.” When a man born of a harlot, a man who remembered that he was born of servile stock, had heard these things from God, did he, after all that the Lord had promised was fulfilled, obey him who had promised him so much? Did he not, as soon as he saw himself exalted, begin to act against him? Did not Jeroboam at once take pains to see that God should be forsaken by all his worshippers?

We tell you that unless you correct yourself, unless you begin to walk in ways pleasing to God, you will perish as a new example; and you remain in your iniquity, you persevere in your sacrilege. This is nothing new, since God had what has been told above delivered to this king Jeroboam through his man; and when his son was held by a grave illness, Jeroboam sent to a member of God's household and heard the future; and yet, though he saw the evils promised him being fulfilled, he acted more and more against God and wanted God's house destroyed. “And there was a man,” it says, “from Shiloh, and his name was Ahijah; he was sixty years old, and the word of the Lord was with him. And Jeroboam said to his wife: Arise and take in your hand loaves for the man of God, and cakes for his children, and grapes and a jar of honey. And the woman arose and did as her husband told her. And Ahijah was a very old man, and his eyes were dim so that he could not see. And the woman arose from Sarira and went. And it came about, when she had entered the city to Ahijah the Shilonite, that Ahijah said to his servant: Go out now to meet Ano, the wife of Jeroboam, and say to her: Come in and do not stand there, for thus says the Lord: I am sending hard things upon you. And Ano went in to the man of God, and Ahijah said to her: Why have you brought me loaves and grapes and cakes and a jar of honey? Thus says the Lord: Behold, you will go from me, and when you enter the gate of the city of Sarira, your maids will come out to meet you and will say to you: The boy is dead. For thus says the Lord: Behold, I will destroy of this Jeroboam everyone who urinates against the wall; and those of Jeroboam who die in the city the dogs shall eat, and those who die in the field the birds of the sky shall eat.” It is nothing new, I say, if you persist in this obstinacy, since you know that this Jeroboam was not deterred by all these things. For at once, as the man of God had said, as soon as the woman entered the city, their son died; and yet Jeroboam did not see what God would repay him for having forsaken him and having made the people perish with him, nor did he fear from his son's death that the rest could follow him too; but he grew old in his cunning. For Jeroboam had become so senseless from the time he withdrew from him who had given him the kingdom that, although he had said, “Go to the man of God and learn whether our son will die,” and had learned through the man of God that not only would their son die but dangers threatened his whole kingdom, he nevertheless, as he had once determined, preferred to serve the devil. He sends to the man of God to inquire about the future, and he spurns him to whose man he sends, and to the insult of his majesty he makes heifers and makes the people worship them with him. This he did, and yet he was not destroyed on the spot but survived long on the throne. And you say: “If I were a heretic, if, as Lucifer, Pancratius and Hilarius say, I were attacking the religion of God, vengeance would already have been taken on me.” Hear further what happened to this king Jeroboam, and yet how not even so was he converted to God, but rather died persevering in his crime and perished in his sacrilege: “And Jeroboam made a feast in the eighth month, on the fifteenth day of the month, like the feast of Judah, and he went up to the altar which he had made in Bethel, that they might sacrifice to the heifers he had made; and he appointed in Bethel the priests of the high places which he had made; and he went up to the altar which he had made on the fifteenth day of the eighth month, on the feast day he had devised in his own heart, and made a feast for the children of Israel, and went up to the altar to sacrifice. And behold, a man of God came from Judah by the word of the Lord to Bethel, and Jeroboam was standing by his altar to sacrifice; and the prophet cried out against the altar by the word of the Lord, saying: O altar, altar, thus says the Lord: Behold, a son will be born to the house of David, and Josiah shall be his name, and he shall sacrifice upon you the priests of the high places who sacrifice upon you, and shall burn men's bones upon you. And he will give on that day the sign which the Lord has spoken: Behold, the altar will be broken and the fat on it will be poured out. And it came about, when he heard the words of the man of God crying against the altar that was in Bethel, that he stretched out his hand towards the altar, saying: Seize him. And the king's hand, which he stretched out against him, dried up, and he could not draw it back to himself. And the altar was broken, and its fat was poured out from the altar, according to the sign which the man of God had spoken by the word of the Lord. And the king answered and said to the man of God: Entreat the face of the Lord your God, that my hand may be restored to me. And the man of God entreated the face of the Lord, and the king's hand was restored to him and became as it was before.” When he had seen the signs fulfilled that had been uttered by the mouth of the man of God, and his impious arm, stretched out to kill the man of God, suddenly dried up as a warning and then at once made whole again by the prayer of the worshipper of God, did he break up the idolatry which he himself had set up? Did he at last take away the feast day which he had devised in his own heart? Not at all; he is found to have met the day of his death in the obstinacy of his presumption. We shall not be able to wonder, then, if (may God turn it from you) you decide to meet the day of your death in your heresy, since even by signs and wonders your earlier fellows in sacrilege could not be called back to worship God alone. For holy Scripture says of Jeroboam: “And after this Jeroboam did not turn from his wickedness, but turned again and made priests of the high places from part of the people; whoever wished, raised his hand and became a priest of the high places. And this thing became a sin to the house of Jeroboam, to its ruin and destruction from the face of the earth.”