A Bishop Who Denies the Creed

I appeal, then, to you, to you yourself, I say. Tell me, I ask you: if any Jew or pagan denied the creed of the catholic faith, would you think we ought to listen to him? Certainly not. What if a heretic or an apostate does the same? Still less should we listen to him, for it is worse for a man to forsake the truth he has known than to deny it without ever having known it. We see, then, two men in you, a catholic and an apostate: first a catholic, afterward an apostate. Decide for yourself which you think we ought to follow, for you cannot press the claims of the one in yourself without condemning the other. Do you say, then, that it is your former self that must be condemned, and that you condemn the catholic creed, and the confession and faith of all people? [a]

And what then? What a shameful deed! What a wretched grief! What are you doing in the catholic church, you who stand in the way of catholics? Why do you, who have denied the faith of the people, still pollute the gatherings of the people? And above all, why do you dare to stand at the altar, to go up into the pulpit, and to show your shameless and treacherous face to God’s people; to occupy the bishop’s throne, to exercise the priesthood, to set yourself up as a teacher? To teach the Christians what? Not to believe in Christ; to deny that he in whose divine temple they stand is God. And after all this (what folly! what madness!) you imagine that you are a teacher and a bishop, while (what wretched blindness!) you deny his divinity, his divinity, I repeat, whose priest you claim to be.

But we are carried away by our grief. What, then, does the creed say? Or what did you yourself say in the creed? Surely this: “the Lord Jesus Christ, true God from true God, of one substance with the Father, through whom the ages were created and all things made”; and that this same person “for us came and was born of the Virgin Mary.” Since, then, you said that God was born of Mary, how can you deny that Mary was the Mother of God? Since you said that God came, how can you deny that he who came is God? You said in the creed: “I believe in Jesus Christ the Son of God; I believe in true God from true God, of one substance with the Father, who for us came and was born of the Virgin Mary, and was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and was buried.” But now you say: “If we should say, ‘I believe in God the Word, the only Son of God, begotten of the Father, of one substance with the Father, who came and was buried,’ would not our ears be shocked at the sound?” Do you see how you are utterly destroying and stamping out the whole faith of the catholic creed and the catholic mystery? “O sin, O monstrous thing, to be driven away,” as someone says, “to the farthest ends of the earth!” For this is more truly said of you: then you could go off, of course, into a wilderness where you would not be able to find anyone to ruin.

You think, then, that the faith of our salvation and the mystery of the church’s hope are a shock to your ears and hearing. Then how was it that, when you were hurrying to be baptized, you heard these mysteries with ears unharmed? How was it that your ears were not damaged when the teachers of the church were instructing you? At that time you certainly did your part without any double shock to mouth and ears, when you repeated what you heard from others and, as the speaker, heard yourself speak. Where, then, were these injuries to your ears? Where were these shocks to your hearing? Why did you not contradict and cry out against it? But the truth is that, at your own will and fancy, you are a disciple when you please and the church’s enemy when you please; a catholic when you please and an apostate when you please. A worthy leader indeed, to draw churches after you to whatever side you attach yourself; to make your will the law of our life, and to change mankind as you yourself change, so that, since you will not be what everyone else is, they may all be what you want! A splendid authority indeed: because you are not now what you used to be, the world must stop being what it formerly was!