ABSTRACT
Why then is it that the heretics are now distancing themselves from us? For what reason do we suffer such and so many kinds of persecutions? Who is ignorant of the opposition that the heretics are always waging against us? Every mine and every deserted location [where prisoners are sent in exile] are overflowing with our brethren because of our devotion to [the true] doctrine [lacuna]. The blessed Miletus3 was the first subjected to all these [attacks] by the heretics and then, after him, many others throughout our provinces, cities, and neighborhoods, what was the reason? Is it not because they were preaching that the true Son of God was begotten from the Father’s essence, always existing at the same time with [His] generating Father, together with a fervent confession of the Holy Spirit? Can we, therefore, who have suffered as much [as these have] in making this confession, suffer those [now] calumniating us [with the charge] that we are affirming [Christ] to be a “pure man” – though the facts clearly contradict this calumny?
