Against the Jews, Pagans, and Arians (Sermon on the Creed) 1–12

Amid the pressures and straits of the present time and the duties of our service we are compelled, dearly beloved, not to keep silent, though it would be more fitting to weep than to say anything. Yet, so that the Lord’s treasury may receive no less profit, and it not be said to us, “Wicked and lazy servant, you should have paid out my money, and on my return I would have required it with interest,” I ask your Charity to be pleased to receive gladly what the householder himself has ministered to you through us. These are the Apostle’s words: “The night is far gone, the day is at hand; so cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.” So, with the gloom of night driven out and the darkness of sins put to flight, let the ray of the true light shine in our hearts. For the purpose of this great gathering requires of us both to give you an account of the night that has passed and to show the true and everlasting salvation of this day, from the great sacrament you have received. If we consider the works of the past night, and can, by the Lord’s gift, explain what we did, we will find that in the night we did not the works of the night but those of the day. For we did not find our senses lulled by the pleasure of sleep, nor our souls deceived by phantoms, nor did rest bend our bodies, weighed down by the warmth of bedding, into deep slumber; but by keeping vigil, praying, singing psalms, and fighting against the adversary the devil, we felt a great light poured into our hearts and did the works of the day in the night. What, then, did we do this night? We put the devil to flight; we brought Christ in. What did we do this night? We took the captor captive. What did we do this night? We shut the devil’s darkness out of your hearts; we showed that the true light must be drunk in. What was done this night? The true strength came, bound the strong man, and plundered the goods of his house. What was done this night? Pride was rooted out, humility brought in. What was done this night? The prince of all vices was driven out, the fountain of all good things was received. You see, dearly beloved, what good things you have prepared for you, and from what burden, from what loads of sins, you are relieved by him who calls you to take up his easy yoke and his light burden. “Cast off,” then, “the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.” What this means, know that it has been explained to you from the words of the Creed which you have just received. What is “Cast off the works of darkness,” if not “Renounce the devil, his pomps, and his angels”? And what is “Put on the armor of light,” if not “Believe in God the Father almighty”?

But first, dearly beloved, let us discuss who or what the devil is, and what his pomps are, by renouncing which we cast off the works of darkness; then at last, so far as he grants, we will speak to your Charity about God the Father almighty, who is the true light. What is the devil? An angel separated from God through pride, who did not stand in the truth, the author of the lie, deceived by himself, who desired to deceive another. He became the adversary of the human race, the inventor of death, the founder of pride, the root of malice, the head of crimes, the prince of all vices, and the persuader to shameful pleasures. When he looked upon that first man, Adam, the father of us all, and saw man made from the mud of the earth in the image of God, adorned with chastity, ordered by temperance, surrounded by love, clothed with immortality, he was jealous and envious that an earthly man had received the things which he himself, while he was an angel, is known to have lost through pride. At once the insatiable murderer envied, and stripped our first parents of those gifts and so many good things, and killed them besides. For, dearly beloved, when the devil had taken from man such great goods, chastity, continence, love, immortality, and had made him naked and shameful, he mocked him, clothed in his own rags, bound him to his dominion, and by that bond made all his offspring his own. For Adam took on shameful rags when he was stripped by the devil: having lost chastity, he was girded with unchastity; having lost temperance, he became intemperate; having lost love, he was found evil; stripped of immortality, he was handed over to death. Alas, what he lost, and what he received! To these most shameful rags of his he bound his descendants as well.

Let us renounce this ruinous inheritance: we have become orphans. If anyone neglects to renounce, before the collector comes, this worst of inheritances, in which are the devil’s rags, that is, his pomps and his angels, then when the judge comes, as the Gospel says, the debtor will be handed over to the collector, and the collector will thrust the debtor into prison. “Truly I say to you,” says the Lord, “you will not get out from there until you pay the last penny.” So divine Scripture commends the whole human race as a poor man and an orphan, saying to God, “To you the poor man is left; you will be the orphan’s helper.” And pointing to his adversary the devil, it adds next, “Break the arm of the sinner and the wicked.” Let some devout person come forward, then, and show some mercy to this orphan and poor man. For he faces a fierce and cunning adversary, and this orphan is losing his case, because his adversary has bound him through evil deeds. Let us bring in suitable advocates for this orphan, and put in his place the patronage of the apostles, as of heavenly jurists. What must be done before such persons for such a one? Before you, then, Peter, Paul, John, and you other holy counsellors of the true Judge, friends of the supreme power, we set out the case, which you know very well, of this poor man and orphan, the human race, who, found a debtor and guilty under his father’s bond, is held bound by the adversary. There is no other way for him to be helped except by your counsel. So whatever seems good to your serenity in this matter for this wretch’s freedom, deign after common deliberation to give a united opinion on his behalf. For this obligation had bound you too, had grace not come to your aid. You who have been set free, set free: bring out the counsel you received from the true Judge, so that he who is held captive may follow it and pass through your defence from evil slavery to true freedom. And this is the voice of all: “Let him do what we did.” What, I pray, is he to do? Let him renounce the devil, his pomps, and his angels: this is that ruinous inheritance which we are compelled to renounce. You see, dearly beloved, what opinion our defenders have given.

Let each one keep watch, then, lest, if he has not renounced wholly after his profession, the devil recognize his own rags on him, and he who Christ willed to free by his grace begin to be held guilty for ever. Let those not flatter themselves who after receiving grace refuse to be corrected and go back again to their former pleasures. For the day of judgment is awaited; that most just judge will be present, who will show favor to no powerful person, and whose palace no one will corrupt with gold or silver. All souls will stand there, that each may receive according to what it did through the body, whether good or evil. The adversary the devil will also be present; the words of our profession will be read out. And if anyone is found such that he leaves this life a debtor, that adversary will exult in the sight of the most severe judge, crying that he has won, and pleading such a case before such a judge: “Most just judge,” he says, “judge justly: justice and judgment are the preparation of your throne. Judge that he is mine, who refused to be yours: he is mine; he must be condemned with me. After the renunciation, why did he seize my rags? What was unchastity, which he had renounced, doing with him? What intemperance, what avarice, what anger, what pride, what the rest of my things? Lastly, most just one: he fled from me and took refuge with you, and afterwards I caught him with my things which he had renounced; I held him as a trespasser; he was caught by me, as it were, on my own property. For what was he doing in the circus, there taking sides in frenzies, quarrels, mad shouting, and empty victories, things he had already put away from himself? What was the renouncer of shameful pleasures doing in the theater? What in the amphitheater, gazing with his eyes on cruelties? He has stored up wrath for himself on the day of wrath. All these things of mine he seized after the renunciation; he chose to be mine, and he coveted what is mine. Judge, most just judge: for he whom you deigned to free at so great a price afterwards chose to bind himself to me.” Will he who is found such after his profession, dearly beloved, be able to open his mouth, when he is justly handed over to the devil? See what you are doing, my sons, my brothers; see what you are doing, how you keep this profession of yours. We adjure you by the Judge himself and by all the heavenly powers, which both hear us admonishing you and receive you as you profess, not to receive the grace of God in vain, but to renounce and spurn so ruinous an inheritance of the devil with a whole heart, with all your strength, and with perfect faith, so that you do not remain orphans or poor.

Believe in God the Father almighty. As you change your father, change your inheritance. Who is this almighty Father? We who believe acknowledge God as Father of ourselves and of the whole world by grace; but we also look for his own Son by substance, for even before the world was formed by him, he was Father. If he was Father, whose Father was he? He surely had a Son, from himself, with himself, what he himself is, but not he himself; for that one is the Father, this one the Son. For the almighty Father begot an almighty Son from himself, so equal to himself that he remained whole in himself, and was Father of the Son, and the Son was Son of the Father: God from God, day from day, light from light; yet not two gods, or two days, or two lights, but one God, one day, one light. If you do not grasp it by seeing, understand it by believing: cleanse the eyes of your heart; or rather, let the very light you long to see cleanse your heart, so that it is cleansed from the darkness of sins: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” Look, stretch out the eye of your heart and see; turn the ear of your heart and hear. “Father” and “Son” sound like two; but when the Son himself says, “I am in the Father, and the Father is in me,” the Son is the Word of the Father; and the Father was never without the Word, since “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; he was in the beginning with God.” Since this Word, the Son, is in the Father, and the Father in his Son, his Word, there are not two gods, but one God. “Day from day” seems to mean two days; but the Son himself says in the Gospel to the Jews, “Your father Abraham longed to see my day; he saw it and was glad”; and Abraham, seeing three men under the oak of Mamre, did not call them three lords but addressed one Lord in them all, as though the three were one day. Hence the Lord himself in the Gospel, wishing Father and Son to be understood as one day, answered Philip, who asked for the Father as though for another day, since he already saw the Son as day; and he showed with what eye he should seek to see the unity of God, because Philip had fixed the eye of the flesh on the humanity: “Philip,” he says, “whoever has seen me has seen the Father”; for I and the Father are not two days, but one. If you can grasp it, grasp the everlasting day.

“Light from light” seems to sound like two lights; but far be it from us, lest the error of the Manichaeans take hold of us, who think that this sun is Christ. We believe that the sun of righteousness is the Word of the Father, inseparable, equal, abiding with the Father and ordering all things with him: the Father doing all things through the Son and building the fabric of the world through his Word; the Son coming to us and not deserting the Father, always with him, never without him, illuminating, shining, beaming, and flashing both from himself and from him: not two lights, but one light. For “I and the Father,” he says, “are one.” Of this only-begotten Word the prophet David says: “God has spoken once; these two things I have heard.” How has God spoken once and sounded a second time, unless the Word, proceeding without passing from the Father’s heart, took flesh from his mother’s womb so as to be man? He came, and he remained: he came to us and did not withdraw from the Father. See, through God’s speaking once our whole fabric arose; through his sounding a second time he became our peace, to dissolve the enmity in the flesh. Not regarding this Word, this light, the Arian dares to call the Son less, whom we confess equal: in mad obstinacy he wants to dispute about the Word abiding in the Father’s heart, when he cannot understand himself. Mad heretic, first come back to yourself, consider your whole self, whether you can comprehend yourself; and then dispute about him who made both me and you. See how that humble man did not think lofty thoughts but sought to know God in simplicity of heart, who with one stone brought down the proud brow of Goliath. See how he did not think lofty thoughts: he considered what went on within himself; he considered his soul, examined his own make, searched within what he was, and from what part he governed so beautiful a frame, and how in a vessel of clay the soul dwelt as mistress, full of such treasures of wisdom, knowledge, and prudence; where such great, precious, and grand things were held there; what places the soul occupied, in which there is no place; and how from one fountain the several virtues proceeded without diminishing either what flows out or what pours it forth. He saw these things, he considered these things; he wished to comprehend them and could not; he cried out to God, saying: “Your knowledge is made wonderful beyond me; it is mighty, and I cannot attain to it.” This was to say: When can I comprehend you, so great, when I cannot explain myself, the lowest and small? See also another humble man who looks at the measure of his weakness and does not go beyond it, but bends to lowly things: “The sand of the sea,” he says, “and the drops of rain, and the days of the age, who has numbered? The height of heaven and the breadth of the earth and the depth of the abyss, who has measured? The wisdom of God that goes before all things, who has searched it out?” See, the prophet says, or rather the Lord himself who spoke through the prophet, that no one has searched out the wisdom of God. For Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. No one could search out the wisdom of God according to his divinity; for according to his being born as Son of the Father without a mother, “who shall declare his generation?”

Tell me, heretic, you who dare to say that the Wisdom of God is less: tell me how great the height of heaven is, the breadth of the earth, the depth of the abyss. Count, if you can, the drops of rain, the sand of the sea, and the days of the age; show me even the number of your hairs, since “all the hairs of your head are numbered”; explain these small lower things, and then I will believe that you can search out the higher. But you cannot, you are not able. The Spirit of God convicts you, who foresaw you heretics long ago. For those who wrote and understood what we said above were moved by the Spirit of truth, not of error. But you, heretic, though you cannot explain these things, dare to dispute about the very Wisdom of God, which cannot be searched out; and you think yourself great because you dispute with no one arguing against you and no judge presiding. And while the times favor your error, you think yourself something when you are nothing: seduced, you long to seduce many, some by money, some by power; you gather to yourself such people, so as to destroy very many with you. This labor of yours is not useful for salvation but rather for ruin. For by teaching such things, or rather not teaching but blaspheming, you are shown to do injury not to some powerful man but to God the Father himself in his Son. “The Father is greater, the Son is less; the Father is better, the Son inferior.” Not even any wise man would gladly accept such insults, who strives to have a son better than himself or equal. Hence that prophetic saying too: “The father rejoiced in a wise son; he saw it in his life, and at his death he was not grieved. For the father is dead, and it is as though he were not dead; for he has left one like himself behind him.” See, the prophet says that the wise son of a man is like his father; and do you, heretic, dare to say that Wisdom itself, that is, the Son of God, is unlike the Father? The prophet says that a man who dies lives in his son because he left a son like himself; and do you dare to separate eternal Life itself, which is the Son of God, from the Father, who never dies?

“And what,” you say, “am I to do? He himself said, ‘The Father is greater than I.’” Because you do not understand, what he said well sounds ill to you. For he himself said it; indeed he even confirmed it. Certainly he himself said, “The Father is greater than I”: the Son himself said it. But see when he said it: he said it as one who had taken up human nature. He said “The Father is greater than I” then, when he said, “My soul is sorrowful even to death.” He said “The Father is greater than I” then, when he wept, when he was weary, when he hungered, when he thirsted. He said “The Father is greater than I” then, when Scripture says that he was made a little less than the angels. Does your mad pride go so far in irreverence as to dare to say that the Word of God, abiding with the Father, is less than the angels in that very divinity? If you do not dare to say this, heretic, keep these degrees, and let your error perish. The Son with the Father, and equal with the Father, because eternal with the eternal, always abiding with him who always abides: equal when sent and when coming; less, in taking up man, not only than the Father but even than the angels; equal in the form of God, less in the form of a servant; equal with the Father in creating angels, less than the Father in making men angels; equal with the Father in building a new world, less than the Father in restoring the lost world; equal with the Father in granting eternal life, less than the Father in taking up our death.

We believe, then, that this Son of God is less in taking up man, equal to the Father in divinity, made, as the Apostle says, of the seed of David according to the flesh. For the virgin Mary was of the seed of David; she conceived by the Holy Spirit, and in her womb, when the Word had taken flesh, he became for us the mediator, wholly man and God: Word and soul and flesh, one Christ. The order of this sacrament makes this plain to us too, for after we believe in God the Father almighty, we believe also in his Son Jesus Christ, born of the Holy Spirit from the virgin Mary. And this birth confounds all human thinking, because it was worked by divine power. For when does the law of our generation allow that a virgin should conceive, should remain a virgin after giving birth, that a Son should be seen and her integrity be kept inviolate? No man born can accomplish this; but he could, because he was not man only, but God and man; and he willed to be born a man for this reason, that every man had perished. So the first great and unique miracle of this Mediator was that he was born so: that he who came to teach many to work miracles, which he worked both by himself and through them, should yet have something of his own, he who had usurped nothing belonging to another. For he alone was born of a virgin, because he alone was conceived by the Holy Spirit without the embrace of man and woman; he alone filled his mother’s womb without corruption, because he alone ascended above the heavens for us, to sit at the right hand of the Father. The disciples received from him the power to work many great miracles, and they worked them; yet none of them is preached or believed to have been born of a virgin or conceived by the Holy Spirit, except that one who, the creator of the times, was found in time and himself created, taking up the human nature which he had formed whole, so that through it he might as redeemer in some manner repair our ruin. And he is both Son of God and son of man: Son of God in the Father’s heart, son of man in his mother’s womb; one and the same Christ, who came forth from the virginal womb like a bridegroom from his chamber. In that womb a spiritual marriage was celebrated: God was joined to flesh, and flesh clung to God, so that there might be one Christ, God and man.

From there, then, he came forth like a bridegroom from his chamber, and at his wedding the whole creation was seen to be moved and to exult. For the choir of angels proclaims from this wedding peace to men of good will: because he who was Son of God became also Son of man, taking up what he was not, not losing what he was. For this wedding the heavens, as the bridegroom himself worked in them, brought forth a new star, a new and splendid light, so as to announce the true light to those sitting in the shadow of death, and, as it were with their own tongue, to praise this bridegroom coming forth, whom they knew to have taken up mortal man so as to make him immortal. To this bridegroom the Magi come from the end of the earth; warned, they seek him; called, they offer gifts, not yet seeing the newborn infant, but longing, with the star as guide, to adore the king. At this wedding of the newborn king Herod was troubled, and the Jews were troubled too, not understanding the king of all creation. Herod seeks to destroy the one he hears is born an infant king, lest he lose his kingdom as the child grows; the Jews, unwilling to have the Son of God as king, betray to Herod where Christ was to be born; and the will of both is bound together in the death of one infant. After Herod had learned from the Jews’ account where Christ could be found to be killed, he called the Magi to him, inquired of them the time of the star, and sending them to Bethlehem said: “Go, search diligently for the child, that I too may come and adore him.” O deceitful lips! Why do you speak evil with a double heart? Your tongue has one thing, your conscience cries out another. You deceive yourself in thinking such things; you err, you deceive and are deceived. In vain does falsehood keep watch for evil; the truth is not sought by you as it should be. See, the Magi hear you saying one thing outwardly, but they do not know that you are thinking another within, and they go on so as never to return to you. For he warned them who, mocking your folly, bade the Magi do what the true king had commanded, not what the false king had craftily urged. “By another way,” says the Evangelist, “they returned to their own country.” But when you saw, Herod, that you had been fooled by the Magi, you wanted to destroy all the infants of that land so as to kill the one you were seeking. But our bridegroom, who came forth from his chamber to perfect praise from the mouth of infants and sucklings, let you carry out your will, so that an age which could not confess Christ with its own tongue might confess him by the testimony of its death, and your monstrous cruelty might be shown, and a crowd of infants might be gathered to the wedding of the heavenly bridegroom. Tell us, Herod: if Christ offended you because you heard from the Magi’s announcement of his kingdom, how had these leaders of the Jews offended you, who sided with you against Christ? By killing their sons you afflicted them rather with the most cruel punishment in their sons, for Christ you could not find at all. But why should I deal with you any longer? I will address the Jews themselves, the Jews themselves, who, when they refused to acknowledge the infant Christ, were forced to lose their own sons with him. Herod, your friend, killed them and handed them over to death; but Christ, whom you even now call your enemy, gave them immortality and eternal life.

You, I say, I address, O Jews, who to this day deny the Son of God. Was not yours that voice, when you saw him working miracles and said, testing him, “How long will you keep our souls in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly”? But he sent you to consider the miracles, saying, “The works that I do bear witness about me,” so that not words but deeds might bear witness to Christ. But you, not recognizing the Savior who was working salvation in the midst of your land, added to your evil and said, “You bear witness about yourself; your testimony is not true.” But what he answered you to this you refused to heed. “Is it not written,” he says, “in your Law, that the testimony of two men is true?” Transgressors of the Law, attend to the Law. You seek testimony about Christ: in your Law it is written that the testimony of two men is true. Let not two only but many witnesses to Christ come forward from your Law, and convict the hearers of the Law who are not doers. Isaiah, bear witness to Christ. “Behold,” he says, “a virgin shall conceive in her womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Emmanuel,” which is interpreted, “God with us.” Let another witness come forward: you too, Jeremiah, bear witness to Christ. “This is our God,” he says, “and no other shall be reckoned beside him, who found every way of knowledge and gave it to Jacob his servant and Israel his beloved. After this he was seen on earth and lived among men.” See, two competent witnesses from your Law, by whose testimony your hearts have not been pierced.

But let more and more witnesses to Christ be brought in from the Law, so that the hardest brows of his enemies may be broken. Let that holy Daniel come too, a youth in age but an elder in knowledge and gentleness, and convict all false witnesses: as he convicted the unchaste elders, so let him break the enemies of Christ with his testimony. Speak, holy Daniel, tell what you know of Christ. “When the Holy of holies comes,” he says, “anointing will cease.” Why, once he was present to whom you said insultingly, “You bear witness about yourself; your testimony is not true,” did your anointing cease, unless because he is the one who had come, the Holy of holies? If, as you say, the Holy of holies has not yet come but is awaited, show us the anointing; but if, as is true, your anointing has ceased, acknowledge that the Holy of holies has come. For he is that stone cut from the mountain without the hands of hewers, that is, Christ born of a virgin without the hands of those who embrace; who grew so much that he became a great mountain and filled the whole face of the earth. Of this mountain the prophet says, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord.” And of it David says, “The mountain of God, a fertile mountain: why do you suspect curdled mountains, the mountain in which it pleased God to dwell?” For when the Lord Christ himself asked his disciples whom men said that he, the Son of man, was, they answered: “Some Elijah, some Jeremiah, some John the Baptist, or one of the prophets.” And he answered: “Why do you suspect curdled mountains, the mountain in which it pleased God to dwell?” Peter recognized him, saying, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” He recognized the mountain and went up the mountain; he bore witness to the Truth and was loved by the Truth. Peter was founded on the rock, so as to undergo death out of love for him whom he had once denied out of fear.