7.

Who is there that hears all this, nay, the tune of the Thalia, but must hate, and justly hate, this Arius jesting on such matters as on a stage ¹? who but must regard him, when he pretends to name God and speak of God, but as the serpent counselling the woman? who, on reading what follows in his work, but must discern in his irreligious doctrine that error, into which by his sophistries the serpent in the sequel seduced the woman? who at such blasphemies is not transported? ‘The heaven,’ as the Prophet says, ‘was astonished, and the earth shuddered ²’ at the transgression of the Law. But the sun, with greater horror, impatient of the bodily contumelies, which the common Lord of all voluntarily endured for us, turned away, and recalling his rays made that day sunless. And shall not all human kind at Arius’s blasphemies be struck speechless, and stop their ears, and shut their eyes, to escape hearing them or seeing their author? Rather, will not the Lord Himself have reason to denounce men so irreligious, nay, so unthankful, in the words which He has already uttered by the prophet Hosea, ‘Woe unto them, for they have fled from Me; destruction upon P. 310 them, for they have transgressed against Me; though I have redeemed them, yet they have spoken lies against Me ³.’ And soon after, ‘They imagine mischief against Me; they turn away to nothing ⁴.’ For to turn away from the Word of God, which is, and to fashion to themselves one that is not, is to fall to what is nothing. For this was why the Ecumenical ⁵ Council, when Arius thus spoke, cast him from the Church, and anathematized him, as impatient of such irreligion. And ever since has Arius’s error been reckoned for a heresy more than ordinary, being known as Christ’s foe, and harbinger ⁶ of Antichrist. Though then so great a condemnation be itself of special weight to make men flee from that irreligious heresy ⁷, as I said above, yet since certain persons called Christian, either in ignorance or pretence, think it, as I then said, little different from the Truth, and call its professors Christians; proceed we to put some questions to them, according to our powers, thereby to expose the unscrupulousness of the heresy. Perhaps, when thus caught, they will be silenced, and flee from it, as from the sight of a serpent.