20. These are the doctrines for which they are contending; for these they assail the ancient Council, because its members did not propound the like, but anathematized the Arian heresy instead, which they were so eager to recommend. This was why they put forward, as an advocate of their irreligion, Asterius who sacrificed, a sophist too, that he might not spare to speak against the Lord, or by a show of reason to mislead the simple. And they were ignorant, the shallow men, that they were doing harm to their own cause. For the ill savour of their advocate’s idolatrous sacrifice betrayed still more plainly that the heresy is Christ’s foe. And now again, the general agitations and troubles which they are exciting, are in consequence of their belief, that by their numerous murders and their monthly Councils, at length they will undo the sentence which has been passed against the Arian heresy. But here too they seem ignorant, or to pretend ignorance, that even before Nicea that heresy was held in detestation, when Artemas was laying its foundations, and before him Caiaphas’s assembly and that of the Pharisees his contemporaries. And at all times is this gang of Christ’s foes detestable, and will not cease to be hateful, the Lord’s Name being full of love, and the whole creation bending the knee, and confessing ‘that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father’ (Phil. ii. 11).