On the Christian Faith

12. A Faith Not Perfunctory in Confessing Christ

Not every one, he says, who says to me: Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. Faith, then, must not be perfunctory, Augustus Emperor; for it is written: The zeal of thy house hath eaten me up. Let us therefore invoke the Lord Jesus with a faithful spirit and devoted mind, believing him to be God; that in his name we may obtain whatever we ask of the Father; for the Father wills to be asked through the Son, and the Son wills the Father to be asked.

13. One Power in the Father's and Son's Works

The grace of their devotion agrees, nor do the deeds of their power disagree. For whatsoever the Father does, the Son likewise does the same. And he does likewise, and does the same things; but he wills the Father to be asked in that which he himself is about to do; that you may recognize therein not a sign of impossibility, but the unity of power. Rightly, therefore, is the Son of God to be adored and venerated, who by his divinity founded the world, and by his loving-kindness has shaped our affection.

14. The Divine Attributes Belonging to God

And therefore we must believe God to be good, everlasting, perfect, omnipotent, true, as we have received in the Law and the Prophets and the other divine Scriptures, because without these he is not God. For he who is God cannot be other than good, since in the nature of God there is fullness of goodness: nor can he who made the ages himself be of time: nor can God be imperfect; for what is less is certainly imperfect, lacking something whereby it might be made equal to what is greater. This, then, is the preaching of the faith: God is not evil, nothing is impossible to God: God is not temporal, God is not lesser. If I err, let them refute me.

15. Christ's Possession of the Divine Attributes

Since therefore Christ is God: he is certainly good, and omnipotent, and everlasting, and perfect, and true; for these are of the nature of divinity. Either, then, let them deny the nature of divinity in Christ, or they cannot deny to God the things that belong to the divine nature.

16. The Scriptural Names of the Son

Certainly, lest anyone be able to err, let him follow those things by which Holy Scripture has signified what we ought to understand of the Son. He is called Word, he is called Son, he is called the Power of God, he is called the Wisdom of God. Word, because immaculate: Power, because perfect: Son, because begotten of the Father: Wisdom, because one with the Father, one in eternity, one in divinity. For the Father himself is not the same as the Son: but between Father and Son there is an express distinction of generation; so that God is from God, one abiding from one abiding, full from the full.

17. One Divinity Signified in Father and Son

These, then, are not bare names, but tokens of operative power; for there is fullness of divinity in the Father, there is fullness of divinity in the Son, not differing, but one divinity. Nor is that confused which is one; nor is that manifold which is undivided.

18. Analogies of Unity Applied to Father and Son

For indeed if of all the believers, as it is written, there was one soul and one heart: if every one who cleaves to the Lord is one spirit, as the Apostle said: if husband and wife are one flesh: if all men, so far as pertains to nature, are of one substance: if Scripture says this of human things, that many are one, things which can have no comparison with things divine; how much more are the Father and the Son one in divinity, where there is no difference either of substance or of will?

19. Unity of Power Excludes Plurality of Gods

For otherwise how shall we say one God? Diversity makes plurality; unity of power excludes the quantity of number; because unity is not number, but is itself the beginning of all number.

20. Isaiah's Prophecy: God in Thee

But how great is the unity of Father and Son according to divinity which divine Scripture has expressed, the prophetic oracles bear witness. For thus says the Lord of Sabaoth: Egypt has labored, and the merchandise of the Ethiopians and of the Sabeans: men of stature shall pass over unto thee, and shall be thy servants, and they shall follow after thee bound in chains, and shall worship thee, and shall make supplication unto thee; because God is in thee, and there is no God besides thee. For thou art God, and we knew it not, God of Israel.

21. The Prophecy Answers the Arians

Hear the prophetic voice: In thee, he says, is God, and there is no God besides thee. How does this agree with the Arians? They must needs deny the divinity either of the Father or of the Son, unless they believe in the unity of the same divinity.

22. The Mutual Indwelling of Father and Son

In thee, he says, is God; because the Father is in the Son. For it is written: The Father who abides in me, he himself speaks; and: The works which I do, he also does them. But elsewhere too the Son is in the Father, who says: I am in the Father, and the Father in me. Let them dissolve, if they can, this property of nature, and this unity of operation.

23. God from God, Yet One God

God, then, is in God, but there are not two Gods; for it is written that there is one God: and Lord is in Lord, but there are not two Lords; because it is likewise written: You shall not serve two lords. And the Law says: Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one God. And indeed in the same Testament: The Lord rained from the Lord. The Lord, it says, rained from the Lord. So too in Genesis you have: And God said, and God made; and further on: And God made man in the image of God; yet not two Gods, but one God made. In both, therefore, unity of operation and of name is preserved. For indeed when we read, God from God, we do not say two gods.

24. Psalm Forty-Four: God Anointed by God

Finally, you have in Psalm forty-four, where the Prophet both called the Father God and declared the Son to be God, saying: Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever; and further on: God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows. It is God who anoints, and it is the Son of God, according to the flesh, who is anointed as God. Finally, whom does Christ have as partakers of his anointing, if not those in the flesh? You see, then, that God is anointed by God; but in the assumption of human nature the anointed Son of God is designated, and the form of the Law is not violated.

25. Unity of Divinity Shown Through Unity of Works

And here too, when it is said: The Lord rained from the Lord, recognize the unity of divinity. For unity of operation does not make plurality of divinity, as the Lord himself shows, saying: Believe me, that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: or else believe for the very works' sake. And here we observe that he designated the unity of divinity through the unity of works.

26. The Apostle's Witness: One God, One Lord

But that one deity of both Father and Son, and one dominion, might be proved; lest we should fall into the error of Gentile or Jewish impiety, the Apostle, providing what we ought to follow, showed it, saying: One God the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him: and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him. For just as, by saying one Lord Jesus Christ, he did not deny the Father to be Lord; so, by saying one God the Father, he likewise did not separate the Son from the truth of deity. Whence he shows not plurality of divinity, but unity of power; because both in dominion there is divinity, and in divinity there is dominion; as it is written: Know ye that the Lord himself is God; he made us, and not we ourselves.

27. God in Thee by Unity of Nature

In thee, therefore, is God, by unity of nature: and there is no God besides thee, by property of substance, difference being excluded.

28. Jeremiah's Witness: God Seen on Earth

In the book of Jeremiah too, Scripture speaks of one God, and yet confesses both Father and Son. Thus you have: This is our God, and there shall no other be accounted of in comparison of him. He found out all the way of knowledge, and gave it unto Jacob his servant, and to Israel his beloved. Afterward he was seen upon earth, and conversed with men.

29. No Other God to Be Compared to Him

Of the Son he says: He it is who conversed with men; and he says: This is our God, and no other shall be reckoned in comparison with him. Why do we dispute concerning him of whom so great a prophet says that no other can be reckoned in comparison with him? For what other reckoning can there be, where there is unity of deity? The people confessed this when placed in perils: he who feared religion knew not how to sow questions.

30. An Appeal to the Prophets Against Worldly Wisdom

Be present, O Holy Spirit, to your prophets, in whom you have been wont to dwell, whom we believe. If we do not believe the prophets, shall I believe the wise men of this world? But where is the wise man, where the scribe? Our rustic, when he was grafting fig trees, found what the philosopher did not know. For the foolish things of this world God has chosen, that he may confound the things that are strong. Shall we believe the Jews, because God was once known in Judea? But this very thing they deny for which we believe, since they who have denied the Son do not know the Father.

31. One God Witnessed by Nature, Faith, and Magi's Gifts

The common nature of things bears witness to one God, because the world is one. Faith signifies one God, because there is one faith of the New and the Old Testament. Grace testifies to one Holy Spirit, because there is one baptism in the name of the Trinity. The Prophets speak of one God, the Apostles hear it. The Magi believed one God, and brought gold, frankincense, and myrrh in supplication to the cradle of Christ, confessing him King by gold, venerating him as God by frankincense. For the treasure is of a kingdom, the sacrifice is of God, the myrrh is of burial.

32. The Manger and the Stars Reveal Christ's Two Natures

What, then, did the mystic gifts mean, amid the lowly manger, unless that we should understand in Christ the difference of divinity and flesh? He is seen as man, he is adored as Lord: he lies in swaddling clothes, but shines in the stars: the cradle shows the one being born, and the stars the one reigning: it is flesh that is wrapped, it is divinity to whom the angels minister. Thus neither is the dignity of natural majesty lost, nor is the truth of the flesh assumed less proven.

33. The Three Youths in the Furnace and the Trinity

This is our faith. Thus did God wish to be known by all, thus did the three boys believe, nor did they feel the fires cast about them; since the harmful fire burnt the unfaithful, and the harmless flame sprinkled dew upon the faithful, for whom the burning of others brought refreshment; because by the merit of faith the penalty had lost its own nature. For there was present in the form of an angel one who admonished them that in the number of the Trinity there should be one praise of a single power. God was blessed, the Son of God was seen in the angel, holy and spiritual grace spoke in the boys. The various blasphemies of the Arians against Christ are recounted, before which are answered, the Catholics are warned to beware of the sophisms of the philosophers; because, namely, the heretics placed their chief hope in these.

34. The Questions the Arians Raise About the Son

Now let us consider what questions the Arians raise concerning the Son of God.

35. The Charge That the Son Is Unlike the Father

They say that the Son of God is unlike the Father. If this were objected against a man, it would be an injury.

36. Against the Claim That the Son Began in Time

They say the Son of God began in time; though he himself is the founder of the times. We are men, and yet we do not wish to be temporal. We began in time, and yet we believe that we shall be without time in the future. We wish to become eternal, and how can we deny that the Son of God is everlasting, whom nature, not grace, teaches and shows to be everlasting?

37. Against the Claim That the Son Was Created

They say he was created. Who would reckon the maker among his own works, so that he might seem to be the same thing he made?

38. Against the Denial That the Son Is Good

They deny that he is good. The sacrilegious utterance itself condemns itself, so that it cannot hope for pardon.

39. Against the Denial of the Son's Omnipotence and True Sonship

They deny that he is the true Son of God, they deny that he is omnipotent; while they confess that all things were made through the Son, that all things were created through the power of God. For what is power, if not perfect nature?

40. Against the Denial of the Son's Unity With the Father

They also deny that he is one with the Father in divinity. Let them, then, blot out the Gospel, let them blot out the voice of Christ. For he himself said: I and the Father are one. It is not I who say this, Christ said it. Was he deceitful, that he should lie? Was he impious, that he should usurp what was not his? But each point shall be more fully set out in its own place.

41. A Warning Against Philosophy and Vain Deceit

Now since the heretic says that he is unlike, and strives to establish this by crafty disputations, we must say what is written: Beware lest anyone despoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the elements of this world, and not according to Christ: for in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.

42. Dialectic Contrasted With the Simplicity of Faith

For they place the whole force of their poisons in dialectical disputation, which by the judgment of the philosophers themselves is defined as having not the power to build up, but the pursuit of tearing down. But it did not please God to save his people through dialectic: For the kingdom of God is in the simplicity of faith, not in contention of speech.

43. An Appeal to Scripture Rather Than Human Argument

They say, then, that he is unlike: we deny it; rather, we shudder at this utterance. But I do not wish you to trust argument, holy Emperor, nor our own disputation: let us question the Scriptures, let us question the apostles, let us question the prophets, let us question Christ. Why say more? Let us question the Father, for whose honor they claim to be zealous, if the Son is judged degenerate. But it is not honor to a good Father that the Son be wronged. It cannot please a good Father, if the Son is believed rather to have degenerated from the Father than to have equaled the Father.

44. Eunomius, Arius, and Aetius, Teachers of One Perfidy

Grant pardon, holy Emperor, if I turn my words for a little while to them directly. But whom should I read chiefly—Eunomius, or Arius, or Aetius their teachers? Many names indeed, but one perfidy, not discordant in impiety, though discordant in fellowship: not unlike in fraud, but distinct in their gathering. For why they should be unwilling to agree among themselves, I do not understand.

45. The Arians Divided Into Rival Factions

The Arians shun the person of Eunomius, but assert his perfidy, and carry out his impiety. They say that he set forth too openly what Arius had written. Great outpouring of blindness! They approve the author, they refute the executor. And so now they have divided themselves into many forms. Some follow Eunomius, or Aetius; others Palladius, or Demophilus and Auxentius, or the heirs of this perfidy; others follow different ones still. Is Christ divided? But those who divide him from the Father, they themselves are torn apart.

46. The Arian Teachers Given One Common Name

And therefore, since they have conspired together against the Church of God, though they do not agree among themselves, I shall call them by a common name, heretics, those to whom we must reply. For heresy, like a certain Hydra of the fables, has grown by its own wounds; and while it is often cut back, it has sprouted forth again, owed to fire, destined to perish by burning: or like a certain Scylla of monstrous portent, distinguished into various forms of perfidy, it puts forward the superfluous name of the Christian sect: but those wretches whom it finds tossing amid shipwrecks of faith in that strait of its impiety, girded about with brutish prodigies, it tears apart with the savage tooth of its foul doctrine.

47. The Cave Image: A Warning to Shun the Arian Teachers

Its cave, holy Emperor, as sailors report, bristling with blind hiding places, and all its vicinity resounding with dark-blue dogs among the rocks of perfidy, we ought in a certain manner to pass by with closed ear. For it is written: Hedge your ears with thorns. And elsewhere: Behold the dogs, behold the evil workers. And again: A man that is a heretic, after the first admonition, avoid, knowing that he who is such is subverted, and sins, being condemned by his own judgment. And so, like good pilots, that we may pass by more safely, let us set the sails of faith, and let us go back over the order of the Scriptures.

48. Christ the Image of the Father: Firstborn, Not First-Created

The Apostle says that Christ is the image of the Father; for he says that he himself is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. Firstborn, he says, not first-created; so that he is believed to be both begotten according to nature, and first according to perpetuity. Elsewhere too the Apostle affirmed that God set him as heir of all things, through whom he also made the ages, who is the brightness of his glory, and the character of his substance. The Apostle calls him image, and Arius calls him unlike; why an image, if it does not have likeness? In paintings men do not wish to be unlike, and Arius contends that the Father is unlike the Son, and wants the Father to have begotten one unlike himself, as though he were powerless who was unable to beget one like himself.

49. The Brightness and Mirror of the Father's Majesty

The prophets say: In your light we shall see light. The prophets say: For he is the brightness of eternal light, and the unspotted mirror of the majesty of God, and the image of his goodness (Wisdom 7:26). See how great the things said. Brightness; because the brightness of the paternal light is in the Son: unspotted mirror; because the Father is seen in the Son: image of goodness; because not body in body, but power wholly perceived in the Son. Image teaches that he is not unlike; character signifies that he is expressed; brightness marks that he is eternal. Image, of course, is not a bodily countenance, not composed with pigments, not with wax: but simple, from God, gone forth from the Father, expressed from the fountain.

50. Philip and the Vision of the Father in the Son

By this image the Lord showed the Father to Philip, saying: Philip, he who sees me, sees also the Father. And how do you say: Show us the Father? Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? For he sees the Father in the image who sees him in the Son. Do you see what image he means? This image is truth, this image is justice, this image is the power of God: not mute, because it is the Word: not without sense, because it is wisdom: not empty, because it is power: not void, because it is life: not dead, because it is resurrection. You see, then, that while he is called image, it signifies that the Father is he whose image the Son is; for no one can be his own image to himself.

51. Let Us Make Man to Our Image and Likeness

I could say more from the testimonies of the Son, but lest perhaps it be said that he favored himself too much, let us question the Father. Did he not himself say: Let us make man to our image and likeness? The Father says to the Son: To our image and likeness; and do you call the Son of God unlike?

52. John on the Sons of God Made Like Him

John says: Beloved, we are the sons of God, and it has not yet appeared what we shall be: we know that when it is revealed, we shall be like him. O improvident madness! O shameless obstinacy! We are men, and in the measure we are able, we shall be to the likeness of God; and do we dare to deny the Son of God to be like?

53. One Image and Likeness Shared by Father and Son

The Father, then, said: Let us make man to our image and likeness. In the beginning of the world itself I hear that there is Father and Son, and I perceive one work. I hear the one speaking, I recognize the one making; but I read of one image, one likeness, both of the Father and of the Son. This likeness is not of diversity, but of unity. What, therefore, you claim for yourself, you take away from the Son of God; since, indeed, unless through the image of God, you cannot be to the image of God.

53. Christ Takes Up Human Will and Sorrow

He took up, then, my will, he took up my sorrow. Boldly I name sorrow, because I proclaim the cross. Mine is the will, which he called his own; because as man he took up my sorrow, as man he spoke; and therefore he says: Not as I will, but as you will. Mine is the sorrow which he took up with my own feeling: for no one about to die exults. He shares my suffering, he is sorrowful for me, he grieves for me. Therefore he grieved for me and in me, he who had nothing of his own to grieve for.

54. Christ Grieves for Human Wounds, Not His Own

You grieve, then, Lord Jesus, not for your own, but for my wounds: not your death, but our infirmity, as the prophet says: For he grieves for us (Isaiah 53:4): and we, Lord, esteemed you to be in sorrows; when you were grieving not for yourself, but for me.

55. Christ's Weeping for Lazarus and Sorrow for All

And what wonder if he grieved for all, who wept for one? What wonder, if he who was about to raise Lazarus wept, should feel weariness at the point of dying for all? Indeed there too he was moved by the tears of the pious sister, because he was touched by human feeling: and here he works with a deep affection; so that, just as his death took away death, his bruise healed our sores, so also his sorrow might abolish our sorrow.

56. The Son's Troubled Soul and Human Frailty

As man, therefore, he wavers, as man he is troubled. His power is not troubled, his divinity is not troubled: but his soul is troubled: it is troubled according to the assumption of human frailty. And therefore, because he took up a soul, he took up also the sufferings of the soul; for God, insofar as he was God, could not have been troubled or have died. Finally, he says: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? As man, then, he speaks, bearing about my fears; since, placed in perils, we think ourselves forsaken by the Lord. As man he is troubled, as man he weeps, as man he is crucified.

57. The Flesh Suffered While the Divinity Remained Free From Death

For thus also the apostle Paul said: Because they have crucified the flesh of Christ. And elsewhere the apostle Peter says: Christ having suffered in the flesh. The flesh, therefore, suffered, but the divinity was free from death: the body yielded to suffering by the law of human nature; but can divinity die, when the soul cannot? Fear not, he says, those who can kill the body, but cannot kill the soul. If, then, the soul cannot be killed, how can the divinity?

58. Whence that which is read, that the Lord of majesty was crucified, let us not suppose that he was crucified as it were in his majesty: but because the same is God, the same is man, God through his divinity, man Jesus Christ through the assumption of flesh, he is said to be the Lord of majesty crucified, because, being a partaker of both natures, that is, human and divine, he underwent the passion in the nature of man; so that indiscriminately both he who suffered is called the Lord of majesty, and the Son of man, as it is written, who descended from heaven.

59. Weariness and Rising Explained by Human Nature

Through the nature of man, therefore, he both wavered, and was wearied, and rose again; for what fell, the same rises. Through the nature of man he says also that thing about which they are wont to calumniate; because it is said: For the Father is greater than I.

60. Going to the Father Through Death and Resurrection

But because it is said elsewhere: I came forth from the Father, and came into the world: again I leave the world, and go to the Father: how does he go, if not through death? And how does he come, if not through resurrection? Finally he added, to signify that he had spoken of his assumption: Therefore I have told you before it comes to pass; that when it comes to pass, you may believe. For he was speaking of the passion of his body, and of the resurrection through which those began to believe who before had doubted; for God does not pass from place to place, who is always everywhere. It is as man that he goes, he himself is the one who comes. Finally, elsewhere too he says: Arise, let us go hence. In this, then, he goes and comes, that which is common to us.

61. Called a Worm and Not a Man

For how can God be lesser, since God is perfect and full? But he is lesser in the nature of man; and do you marvel if from the person of man he said the Father was greater, he who in the person of man said he was a worm, not a man? For he said: But I am a worm, and not a man; and elsewhere: As a sheep he was led to the slaughter.

62. Made Lesser, Not Born Lesser

If you call him lesser in this respect, I cannot deny it: but, to use the word of Scripture, he was not born lesser, but was made lesser, that is, he became lesser. But how did he become lesser, except that: Though he was in the form of God, he thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself: not relinquishing indeed what he was, but assuming what he was not; because he received the form of a servant.

63. Made a Little Lower Than the Angels

Finally, that we might know he was made lesser through the assumption of a body, he marked that David prophesied concerning man, saying: What is man, that thou art mindful of him: or the Son of man, that thou visitest him? Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels. And interpreting this very passage, the Apostle says: For we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death; that without God he might taste death for all.

64. Not Lesser Than the Angels Either

Not only, then, was the Son of God made lesser than the Father, but also than the angels. And if you draw this into an argument against him, is the Son then lesser in the nature of God than his own angels who serve and minister to him? Thus, while wishing to assert that he is lesser, you fall into impiety; for you prefer the nature of angels to the Son of God. But the servant is not above his master. Finally, even when he was established in the flesh, angels ministered to him; that you might recognize that he suffered nothing diminished by the nature of the body; for God could not suffer any loss to himself, since that which he assumed from the Virgin is neither an addition to, nor a diminution of, divine power.

65. Greater and Lesser Do Not Apply to Divinity

He who has the fullness of divinity and of glory is not therefore lesser according to divinity. For greater and lesser are usually distinguished among things that are corporeal: either by rank, or by fullness, or certainly by age. These things have no place where a discussion concerning divine matters is introduced. For one is commonly called greater who instructs and forms another: but it does not befall the wisdom of God that it should have been instructed by the teachings of another, since it itself handed down the institution of all disciplines. How well, moreover, has the Apostle put it: That without God he might taste death for all; lest we should think that suffering belonged to his divinity, and not to his flesh!

66. Father and Son as Names of Kinship

Therefore if they have not found how they might prove him greater, let them not slander with words, but seek the reason of the words. I ask them, then, in what respect they think him greater? If because he is the Father, they think him greater on that account: but here there is no age and time, nor is there the Father’s grey hair and the Son’s boyhood; for these things are wont to make a father greater. But father and son are the names of the one begetting and the one begotten, which do not seem to separate, but to join; for filial devotion is not a diminution of nature: for kinship reconciles men to one another, it does not separate them.

67. The Evangelist Testifies to Christ's Equality with God

Therefore if they cannot bring forward any question from nature, let them at least believe the testimonies. Finally, the evangelist testifies that the Son is not lesser because he is the Son; and he himself signifies that he is equal, because he is the Son, saying: For this cause therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only broke the sabbath, but said also that God was his own Father, making himself equal with God.

68. The Evangelist, Not the Jews, Affirms Equality

It is not the Jews who say this, but the Evangelist testifies that he was making himself equal with God, calling himself the Son of God as his own. For it is not written from the person of the Jews saying: For this cause we sought to kill him; but the evangelist speaks from his own person: For this cause therefore the Jews sought to kill him. And he explained the cause, that the Jews were thus stirred to his death, because, when as God he was breaking the sabbath, and claiming God the Father as his own, he was assuming to himself, not only in the breaking of the sabbath the majesty of divine power, but also in the name of his own Father the right of eternal equality.

69. Whatever the Father Does, the Son Does Likewise

To whom the Son of God most fittingly answered, so as to prove both that he was the Son of God, and that he was equal: Whatsoever, he says, the Father doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise. The Son, therefore, is both said and proved to be equal to the Father. A good equality, which both excludes difference of divinity, and signifies, along with the Son, the Father to whom the Son is equal; for equality is neither diverse, nor solitary; because no one is equal to himself alone. Therefore the Evangelist interpreted what it means for the Son to call himself God’s own, that is, to make himself equal to God.

70. Equal in the Form of God, Servant in Flesh

Whence the Apostle, following this, said: He thought it not robbery to be equal with God. For what a man does not have, he tries to seize by robbery. Therefore he did not hold as if by robbery the equality with the Father which he possessed in his substance as God and Lord. Whence he added: He took the form of a servant. Servant and equal are certainly contrary. Equal, therefore, in the form of God; lesser in the assumption of flesh, and in the suffering of man. For how could the same one be both lesser and equal in nature? But how, if he is lesser, does he likewise do the same things which the Father does? For how could the same operation belong to a different power? Can a lesser thus operate just as a greater one does? Or can there be one operation, where there is a different substance?

71. Christ Swears by Himself, Having No One Greater

Take it, then, that Christ according to divinity cannot be called lesser. He himself speaks to Abraham: By myself have I sworn. Now the Apostle shows that he who swears by himself cannot be lesser. Thus he says: When God had made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself, saying: Surely, blessing I will bless thee, and multiplying I will multiply thee. Therefore Christ had no one greater, and for that reason swore by himself. And well he added: For men swear by one greater than themselves; because men have someone greater, God does not.

72. Abraham Saw Christ, Not the Father

Or if they wish this to be understood as said of the Father, the rest does not fit; for the Father was not seen by Abraham, nor did anyone wash the feet of God the Father, but of him in whom was the figure of the man to come. Finally the Son of God says: Abraham saw my day, and was glad. He, therefore, is the one who swore by himself, whom Abraham saw.

73. One Majesty, No Distance Between Father and Son

And indeed how does he have anyone greater, who in divinity is one with the Father? For that which is one is not unlike itself: but between greater and lesser there is a distinction. Therefore the example of the present reading teaches concerning the Father and the Son, that neither does the Father have anyone lesser, nor does the Son of God have anyone greater; since in the Father and the Son there is no distance of divinity, but one majesty.

74. Being Sent Does Not Mean Being Lesser

Nor indeed do I fear that argument which they are wont to bring forward, that he is lesser because he was sent. For if he is not taught to be lesser, and an equality of honor is taught; since all thus honor the Son as they honor the Father, it is established that he is not lesser because he was sent.

75. Sent by the Father and by the Spirit

Look, then, not at the narrowness of human speech, but at the clarity of the words; believe the works. Consider that our Lord Jesus Christ said in Isaiah that he was sent by the Holy Spirit. Is the Son then lesser than the Spirit, because he was sent by the Spirit? You have it written, therefore, that the Son says he was sent by the Father and by his Spirit: I am, he says, the first, and I am forever, and my hand has founded the earth, and my right hand has established the heavens; and below: I have spoken, and I have called; I have brought him, and made his way prosperous. Come near unto me, and hear this: I have not spoken in secret from the beginning. When they came to be, I was there: and now the Lord has sent me, and his Spirit. Certainly he who made heaven and earth himself says he was sent by the Lord and by his Spirit.

You see, then, that it is the simplicity of speech, not the injury of a mission. He, then, who was sent by the Father, is the same one sent by the Spirit.

76. The Son Also Sends the Holy Spirit

And that you may know there is no distance of majesty, the Son also sends the Spirit, as he himself said: But when the Paraclete has come, whom I will send unto you from my Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceedeth from my Father. This same Paraclete he taught above was also to be sent by the Father, saying: But the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name. See the unity, that whom God the Father sends, the Son also sends: and whom the Father sends, the Spirit also sends. Or if they are unwilling that the Son be sent, since we read that the Son is the right hand of the Father, they will confess of the Father what they deny of the Son: unless perhaps the Arians should find either another Father for themselves, or another Son.

77. One Son Speaking in Two Natures

Let them be silent, then, with vain questions about words; because the kingdom of God, as it is written, is not in the persuasiveness of speech, but in the demonstration of power. Let us preserve the distinction of divinity and flesh. It is the one Son of God who speaks in each; for in the same one both natures exist: and though the same one speaks, he does not always speak in the same manner. Notice in him now the glory of God, now the sufferings of man. As God he speaks the things that are divine, because he is the Word: as man he says the things that are human, because he was speaking in my substance.

78. The Living Bread and the Sanctified Flesh

This is the living bread, which came down from heaven. This bread is flesh, as he himself said: This bread which I will give is my flesh. This is he who came down from heaven, this is he whom the Father sanctified, and sent into this world. Nor does the letter itself teach us that divinity had need of sanctification, but the flesh. Finally the Lord himself said: And for their sakes I sanctify myself; that you may recognize that he is both sanctified in the flesh for us, and sanctifies by his divinity.

79. My Doctrine Is Not Mine, but His Who Sent Me

This is the same one whom the Father sent, but made of a woman, made under the Law, as the Apostle said. This is he who says: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, wherefore he has anointed me: he has sent me to preach the gospel to the poor. This is he who says: My doctrine is not mine, but his who sent me. If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself. One doctrine, therefore, is from God, another from man. And so when the Jews sought his doctrine according to man, and said: How knoweth this man letters, having never learned? Jesus answered and said: My doctrine is not mine; for since he teaches without the instruction of letters, he appears to teach not as a man, but rather as God, who did not learn doctrine, but discovered it.

80. Christ Discovered the Whole Way of Knowledge

For he found out the whole way of knowledge, as is read above; for indeed it is said of the Son of God: This is our God, and there shall no other be accounted of in comparison of him, who found out all the way of knowledge. Afterward he was seen upon the earth, and conversed with men. How then does he not have his own doctrine according to divinity, who found out the whole way of knowledge before he was seen upon the earth? Or how is he lesser, of whom it is said: There shall no other be accounted of in comparison of him? Surely he is called incomparable, to whom no other can be reckoned as equal: but incomparable in such a way that he cannot be preferred to the Father. But if they think this said of the Father, they will not escape the impiety of Sabellius, in attributing to the Father the assumption of human flesh.

81. He Who Speaks of Himself Seeks His Own Glory

Let us follow what comes next: He that speaketh of himself, he says, seeketh his own glory. See the unity, which signifies both the Father and the Son. He who speaks cannot fail to be; but what he speaks cannot be of himself, in him in whom all things are naturally from the Father.

82. One Glory Shared by Father and Son

But what is meant by: He seeks his own glory? This is, not glory divided from the Father; for indeed the Word also, as God, has glory. Hence he says: That they may see my glory. But that glory of the Word is the same glory of the Father, as it is written: The Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father. Thus therefore, according to the divinity of God, the Son has his own glory, such that the glory of Father and Son is one. He is therefore not lesser in brightness, because the glory is one: not lesser in divinity, because the fullness of divinity is in Christ.

83. Father and Son Glorify Each Other

And how, you say, is it written: Father, the hour has come, glorify your Son? He who says this, you say, needs glorification. Thus far you have your eyes open: what remains you have not read; for there follows: That your Son may glorify you. Does the Father also need to be glorified, then, who is to be glorified by the Son?

84. The Obedience of Christ Unto Death

In like manner they are wont to object the obedience of the Son, because it is written: And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death. And he set forth "man" first, and said "unto death"; that we might understand that the obedience was of death, not of divinity, but of the incarnation: in which he also took up our offices and our names.

85. One Power of the Trinity in the Passion

We have learned, then, that there is one power of the Trinity, which he taught us in the very passion itself and after it; for the Son suffers through the sacrament of the body, the Holy Spirit is poured out upon the apostles: the spirit is commended into the hands of the Father, and God the Father also is signified by the loudest voice. We have learned that there is one image of the Father and the Son, one likeness, one sanctification. We have learned that there is one operation, one glory, and also one divinity.

86. One God and One Divinity Against Sabellius

One and only, then, is God; because it is written: You shall worship the Lord your God, and him alone shall you serve. One God, not that he himself is Father and Son, as the impious Sabellius asserts: but because there is one divinity of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit: and where there is one divinity, there is one will, one commandment.

87. The Unity of the Father and Son's Blessing

Finally, that you may know both that the Father is, and that the Son is, and that there is one work of Father and Son, follow the Apostle, who said: Now may God himself, and our Father, and our Lord Jesus, direct our way unto you. He speaks of the Father, and he speaks of the Son: but there is unity of the directing; because there is unity of the power. So also elsewhere you have: Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God, and our Father, who has loved us, and given us eternal consolation, and good hope in grace, console your hearts, and confirm them. What great unity he shows, so that there is unity, not plurality, of consolation! Let perfidy, then, fall silent, or if it is not conquered by reason, let it be bent by moral gentleness.

88. Christ's Subjection to Mary and Joseph in the Flesh

Let us consider how morally the Lord acted; that he might teach us not only faith, but also conduct. For being established in the form of man, he was subject to Joseph and Mary. Is he then lesser than men, because subject? One thing is of piety, another of power: but piety does not prejudge power. In what, then, do you read him subject to the Father? In the body, evidently, in which he was subject to his mother.

89. The Good Samaritan and the Medicine of Gentleness

Let us also act morally, let us persuade them of what will profit them, let us beseech and weep before the Lord who made us. For we do not wish to conquer, but to heal: we do not act insidiously, but admonish with religious care. Gentleness often bends those whom neither strength nor reason could overcome. Finally, the Lord healed with oil and wine that man who, going down from Jericho, fell among robbers, whom he had not cured with the harsher medicines of the Law, nor with prophetic severity.

90. The Heavenly Medicine Prepared for Healing

Let all, then, who wish to be healed come to him; let them receive the medicine, which he both brought from the Father, and prepared in heaven, compounded of those immortal essences. This does not sprout from the earth; for all nature is a stranger to this compounding. For by divine plan he took up this flesh, that he might show the law of the flesh to be subject to the law of the mind. He took up flesh, that as man he might conquer, who as one instructing men.

91. Christ Tempted and Victorious in the Flesh

What would it profit me, if, as God, exerting his power, he had shown only his divinity to be inviolable? Or why should he take up flesh, unless to allow himself to be tempted by the condition of my nature and weakness? He had to be tempted, he had to suffer with me; that I might know how, having been tempted, I might conquer, and having suffered with him, I might escape. He conquered through continence, he conquered through contempt of riches, he conquered through faith: he trampled ambition, put intemperance to flight, banished wantonness.

92. Peter's Nets and the Medicine of Faith

Peter saw this medicine, and left his nets, that is, the instruments and means of his trade, renouncing the concupiscence of the flesh as a corrupted ship, into which, as it were, a bilge-water of many passions enters. Great, then, is the medicine, which not only cut off the scar of the old wound, but also excised the cause of the affliction. O faith, more opulent than all treasures! O medicine more excellent for our wounds and sins!

93. Christ Made Sin and Curse for Our Sake

Let us consider that it profits us to believe rightly. For it profits me to know that for my sake Christ took up my infirmities, underwent the sufferings of my body: for me he was made sin, that is, for every man, for me he was made a curse, for me and in me subjected and made subject, for me a lamb, for me a vine, for me a stone, for me a servant, for me the son of a handmaid, for me not knowing the day of judgment, for us not knowing the day or the hour.

94. The Curse and the Unknown Day Explained by the Flesh

For how could he not know the day, who made the days and the seasons? How could he be ignorant of the day of judgment, who both declared the hour of the future judgment and its cause? He was made a curse, then, not according to divinity, but according to the flesh; for it is written: Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree. According to the flesh indeed he hung; and therefore he was made a curse, who took up our curses. He wept, that you, man, might not weep for long: he suffered injuries, that you might not grieve over your own injury.

95. Christ's Sufferings as Our Remedy

It is a great remedy, to have consolation from Christ. For he bore these things more patiently for us, and shall we be unable patiently to bear these things for the sake of his name! What appetite would not learn to forgive, when even for his persecutors Christ, even while crucified, prayed? Do you not see that those things which you think are the weaknesses of Christ are your virtues? Why do we raise a question against him about our own remedies? Those tears wash us, that weeping cleanses us, and that doubt strengthens us; lest, if you begin to doubt, you should despair. The greater the injury, the more abundant the grace that is owed.

96. Divinity Revealed in the Crucifixion

But in the very injuries recognize the divinity. He hung on the cross, and all the elements served him. The sun fled, the day set, darkness was poured out and spread around, the earth trembled: he who hung there did not tremble. What else do these things signify, than reverence for the Author? That he is on the cross, you see: that he grants the kingdom of God, you do not see. That he tasted death, you read: that he also invited the thief into paradise, you do not read. You look upon the weeping women at the tomb, you do not look upon the angels keeping watch. What he said, you read; what he did, you do not read. You say that the Lord said to the Canaanite woman: I was not sent except to the sheep that have perished of the house of Israel: you do not say that he did that for which he was asked by her.

97. The Canaanite Woman and the Freedom of the Son's Will

Whence it is fitting for you to understand that "sent" does not signify that he was constrained by another's command, but that he acted by voluntary decision: otherwise you show contempt of the Father. For if, as you interpret it, Christ had come into Judea as a servant of the Father's commands, to heal only its inhabitants, and yet he freed the daughter of the Canaanite woman first, as we read; then he was not indeed the executor of another's command, but the free exerciser of his own will. But where there is freedom of will, there is no transgression of the sending.

98. The Son's Works Please the Father

Nor should you fear that what the Son did displeases the Father; since he himself says: I always do the things that are pleasing to him; and elsewhere: The works that I do, he himself does. How, then, could that which he himself did through the Son displease the Father? For there is one God, as it is written, who justified circumcision from faith, and uncircumcision through faith.

99. God Discerned in the Man Christ

Read everything, attend to everything diligently; you will find that Christ showed himself in such a way that God was discerned in the man: nor should you take maliciously the Son's glorying concerning the Father, when you hear the Father being well pleased in the Son.

100. The Father Gives All Judgment to the Son

But if they cannot be bent by moral considerations, let us appeal to the judge. To whom, then, shall we go? Surely to him who has judgment. Shall we go to the Father? But the Father judges no one; for he has given all judgment to the Son. He gave it, indeed, by begetting, not by bestowing. See how he did not wish to derogate from you in favor of his Son, so as to give you the Son himself as judge.

101. Honoring Christ Before the Judgment

Let us see, then, before judgment, who has the better case; I, or you. Surely it is the part of a prudent litigant to conciliate the judge to himself beforehand. You honor a man, and you do not honor God? What, then, conciliates a judge—honor, or injury? Suppose that I have sinned, which is not so; is Christ offended in his honor? We all sin: who, then, will merit pardon—the one who offers honor, or the one who inflicts insult?

102. Christ Seated at the Right Hand of the Father

Or if reason does not move you, let at least the very appearance of the judgment move you. Lift up your eyes to your judge, behold who sits, with whom he sits, where he sits. Christ sits at the right hand of the Father. Or if you cannot grasp this with your eyes, hear the Prophet saying: The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand. The Son, then, sits at the right hand of the Father. Now tell me, you who think divine things are to be measured by worldly standards, does he who sits at the right hand seem to you inferior? Is it an injury to the Father, because he sits at the left? The Father honors him, and you consider it an injury? The Father prefers this to be an example of devotion, and you think it a command of authority? He rose from death, and sits at the right hand of God.

103. The Right Hand and the Assumption of the Body

But, you say, the Father said it. Hear also where the Father does not say it, and the Son foretells: Henceforth you shall see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of power. And he says this concerning the assumption of the body; to him it is said: Sit at my right hand. For if you inquire concerning the eternal seat of divinity, when asked by Pilate whether he himself was the King of the Jews, he says: For this I was born. Whence the Apostle also admonishes that it is useful for us, if we believe that Christ sits at the right hand of God not by precept, nor by favor, but as the most beloved Son. For thus you have it: Seek the things that are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God: mind the things that are above. For this is to be wise in higher things, to believe that Christ, in that he sits, does not obey as one commanded, but is honored as the most beloved Son.

On account of the reckoning of the body, then, he says: Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet.

104. The Father Draws to the Son, Who Delivers the Kingdom

But if you drag even this into calumny, because the Father said: I will put your enemies; the Father also draws to the Son those whom the Son may raise up and give life. For, he says, No one can come to me, unless the Father who sent me draws him: and I will raise him up on the last day. And do you say that the Son of God is subjected because of weakness, to whom the Father draws those whom he is to raise up on the last day? Does this seem to you to be subjection, in which the kingdom is prepared for the Father, when the Father draws to the Son, and there is no place for calumny, since the Son delivers the kingdom to the Father, and nothing is preferred?

For these are proofs of devotion, that both the Father delivers to the Son, and the Son to the Father; for they deliver to each other in such a way that neither does he who receives acquire something foreign, nor does he who delivers lose anything.

105. No Precedence in Sitting at Right or Left

To sit at the right hand also is no precedence, nor is sitting at the left an injury; for divinity knows no rank, nor is it circumscribed by any place, nor defined by times. We measure these things with narrow human minds. There is no difference of love, no discrepancy of unity.

106. The Angels and Powers Adore the Son

But why do we wander further afield? You have looked all around, you have seen the judge, you have noticed the angels proclaiming. They praise, and you find fault! Dominations and Powers venerate, and you slander! All his saints adore: does not the Son of God adore, does not the Holy Spirit adore? The Seraphim say: Holy, holy, holy.

107. The Threefold Holy and the Unity of the Trinity

What does the threefold repetition under one name of holiness mean? If a threefold repetition, why one praise? If one praise, why a threefold repetition? Why a threefold repetition, unless because the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one in holiness? He did not say it once, lest he should set apart the Son; not twice, lest he should pass over the Spirit; not four times, lest he should join in creatures. And that he might show the Trinity to be one Godhead, when he had said thrice, Holy, holy, holy, he added in the singular: The Lord God of Sabaoth. Holy therefore is the Father, holy the Son, holy also is the Spirit of God. The Trinity therefore is adored, it does not adore: the Trinity is praised, it does not praise. I prefer to believe as the Seraphim, and to adore as all the heavenly Powers and Virtues.

108. A Challenge to Distinguish the Son from the Father

Let us then see your line of argument, how you win the judge over to yourself. Say plainly, I say, say: I think, O Christ, that thou art unlike the Father. He too will answer: Distinguish, if you can; distinguish, I say, in what respect you think him to be unlike.

109. Answer to the Charge That Christ Is a Creature

Say something else: I think thee, you will say, to be a creature. Christ too will answer: If the testimony of two men is true, ought you not at least to have believed me, or the Father, who called me begotten?

110. Answer to the Denial of Christ's Goodness

I deny, you will say, that thou art good. He too will say: Be it done to you according to your faith, that I be not good to you.

111. Answer to the Denial of Christ's Omnipotence

I do not think thee omnipotent. He himself will answer: I cannot then forgive you your sins.

112. Answer to the Charge That Christ Is Subject

I say thou art subject. He will reply to this: Why then do you seek freedom and pardon from him whom you think to be subject on account of servitude?

113. An Appeal for the Reader's True Desire

I see your line of argument sticking fast: I do not press you, because I myself am conscious of my own sins. I do not begrudge pardon, since I myself desire indulgence: I wish to know your desire. Behold, I plead your desires before the judge: I do not betray your crimes, I await the sequence of your wishes.

114. The Request to Be Made After God's Image

Say then those things which are in the common wish; say, I say: Lord, make me after the image of God. He will answer: After what image? The one you have denied?

115. The Request to Be Made Incorruptible

Say: Make me incorruptible. He will surely reply: How can I make you incorruptible, you who, by calling me a creature, have wished me to be capable of corruptibility? The dead shall rise incorrupt, and do you call corruptible him whom you perceive to be God?

116. The Request for Goodness and Forgiveness of Sins

Say: Be good to me. He will say to you: What do you ask, which you have denied? I willed that you be good, I said: Be ye holy, because I myself am holy; and do you strive to deny this to me? And do you expect pardon of sins? But no one can forgive sins, except God alone. Therefore, since I am not the true and only God to you, I cannot forgive your sins.

117. Answer to the Photinians on Christ's Divinity

Let the Arian say these things, and the Photinian: I deny, he says, that thou art God. The Lord will answer him: The fool has said in his heart, There is no God (Psa. LII, 1). Of whom do you think this was said—of a Jew, of a gentile, or of the devil? Whoever it was said of, Photinian, he is more tolerable who was silent: but you have dared even to say it with your voice, that you might be proved more foolish than the fool. You deny then, he says, that I am God; whereas I have said: Ye are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High (Psa. LXXXI, 6). And do you deny God, whose divine works you see all around you?

118. Answer to Sabellius on the Father and Son

Let the Sabellian too say: I think that thou art thyself the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Lord too will answer: You do not hear the Father, you do not hear the Son. Is there any confusion here? Scripture itself teaches you that the Father is he who delivered the judgment: the Son is he who judges. Have you not heard me saying: I am not alone; but I, and he who sent me, the Father?

119. Christ's Answer to the Manichean on the Flesh

Let the Manichean too say: I believe the devil to be the author of our flesh. He will answer him: What then will you do among the heavenly things? Go to your author. I wish those to be with me whom the Father has given me. You think yourself, Manichean, to have been created by the devil: hasten then to his seat, where there is fire and brimstone, where his burning is not quenched, that the punishment may never die.

120. Christ's Reproach to His Ungrateful People

I pass over the other monstrosities of heretics, not their names; what judgment will there be for them, what form of sentence will there be? He will answer all these too in a moral tone: My people, what have I done to you, or wherein have I grieved you? Did I not bring you out of Egypt, and free you from the house of bondage?

121. Christ's Sacrifice and the Profit of His Blood

But it is too little to have freed you from Egypt, and to have rescued you from the house of bondage: it is more to have given yourself for us. You will say then: Have I not taken upon myself all your wrongs? Have I not offered my body for you? Did I not seek death, which was not of my divinity, but of your redemption? Are these the thanks that are returned? Has my blood profited thus, as I myself already said in the Prophet: What profit is there in my blood, since I go down into corruption (Psa. XXIX, 10)? This then it has profited, that you should impiously deny me, for whom I endured these things.

122. A Plea for Forgiveness, Not Judgment

But I, then, O Lord Jesus, even though I myself be conscious of grave sins, shall nevertheless say: I have not denied thee; thou hast that which thou mayest forgive to the frailty of the flesh. I confess the fault, I do not deny the sin: If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean; because he said this, he deserved it. Enter not, I beseech thee, into judgment with thy servant (Psa. CXLII, 2). I do not ask that thou judge, but that thou forgive.

123. The Son's Right to Equal Honor

What do we think Christ will judge? Do I say he will judge? Nay, he has already judged. We hold his sentence: Let all, he says, honor the Son, as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.

124. The Father's Words Affirm the Son's Likeness

If the sentence displeases you, appeal to the Father, rescind the judgment which the Father delivered. Say that he has a Son unlike himself. He will answer you: Have I then lied, who said to the Son: Let us make man after our image and likeness?

125. Against Calling the Son a Mere Creature

Say that he created. He will answer you: Why then did you adore one whom you thought a creature?

126. Against Measuring the Son's Begetting as Lesser

Say that he begot a lesser Son. He will answer: Measure it, let us see.

127. The Father's Command at the Transfiguration to Hear the Son

Say that you ought not to have believed him. He will reply to this: Did I not say to you: This is my most beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased, hear him? What is it, hear him? Hearing him surely saying: All things which the Father has are mine. The apostles heard this, as it is written: And they fell on their faces, and were exceedingly afraid. If those who confessed fell down, what shall those do who denied? But Jesus touched them and raised them up: he will suffer you to lie prostrate, lest you see the glory which you denied.

128. Honoring the Son as the Way to the Father

Let us see then that whom the Son condemns, the Father also condemns. And therefore let us honor the Son, as we honor the Father; that through the Son we may be able to come to the Father.

129. Peter's Confession as Sufficient Faith in Christ

These things, most august Emperor, I have set forth briefly and piecemeal, rather unpolished, than arranged in orderly fashion. But if the Arians think anything unfinished, I scarcely admit them begun: if they think anything still remains, I think almost everything remains; for to the unfaithful the whole is lacking, but it abounds to the faithful. Finally, one confession of Peter sufficed for faith in Christ: Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God; for it is enough to know the divine generation, not divided, not diminished, not derivative, not created.

130. The Blindness of Unbelief in the Scriptures

This too is set forth in the whole body of the Scriptures, and yet is not believed by the impious: For the heart of this people, as it is written, is grown fat, and their ears they have heard heavily, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart. For, in Jewish fashion, the Arians are wont to close their ears, or to stir up tumults, whenever the word of salvation is heard.

131. The Father's Heavenly Voice Disbelieved by the Jews

And what wonder if unbelievers are not wont to believe human voices, who do not believe divine ones? The Son of God was saying, as you have it in the Gospel: Father, glorify thy name. The voice of the Father was heard from heaven, saying: I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again. The unfaithful heard these things, but did not believe. The Son spoke, the Father answered; and the Jews said: It thundered to him; others said: An angel spoke to him.

132. Paul's Sole Hearing of Christ's Voice

Paul too, as it is written in the Acts of the Apostles, when he was called to grace by the voice of Christ, and several companions were walking together with him, said that he alone heard the voice of Christ. So it is, holy Emperor: he who believes, hears; and he hears, that he may believe: he who does not believe, does not hear; but neither wills nor is able to hear, lest he should believe!

133. A Call to Hear the Truth with Charity

And would that, as far as it is in me, they were willing to hear, that they might believe: to hear with good charity and gentleness, as those seeking the truth, not attacking the truth. For it is written that we should not attend to fables and endless genealogies, which minister questions rather than the edification of God, which is in faith. But the end of the commandment is charity from a pure heart, and a good conscience, and unfeigned faith. From which certain persons having strayed, have turned aside into vain talk, wishing to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say, nor concerning what they affirm Elsewhere too the same Apostle says: But foolish and undisciplined questions avoid.

134. Warning Against Those Who Sow Divisive Questions

The Apostle says that such men are to be shunned, who sow questions, that is, heretics: concerning whom also elsewhere he says that some will depart from the faith, giving heed to spirits of error and doctrines of demons.

135. The Arians Identified as Antichrist

And John says that the heretics are Antichrists, meaning of course the Arians. For this heresy began after all the other heresies, and has gathered poisons from every heresy. For as it is written of Antichrist, that he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name, and to make war upon his saints: so also these detract from the Son of God, nor have they spared the martyrs; and, what perhaps he himself will not do, they have falsified the divine Scriptures. Therefore he who says that Jesus is not the Christ, this is the Antichrist: he who denies the Savior of the world, denies Jesus: he who denies the Son, denies also the Father; because it is written: Whosoever denies the Son, denies also the Father. 136. But I ought not to detain you, Emperor, at greater length, intent as you are on war, and contemplating victorious trophies over the barbarians.

Go forward plainly, girded with the shield of faith, and holding the sword of the spirit: go forward to the victory promised in former times, and prophesied by divine oracles.

137. Ezekiel's Prophecy of Gog and the Goths

For Ezekiel also prophesied, already at that time, both our future devastation and the wars of the Goths; for so you have it: Therefore prophesy, son of man, and say: O Gog, thus says the Lord: Shall it not be in that day, when my people Israel shall be settled to dwell in peace, that thou shalt arise and come from thy place, out of the uttermost north: and many peoples with thee, all of them riders of horses, a great and numerous assembly, and a mighty army; and thou shalt come up against my people Israel, as a cloud to cover the earth, in the latter days.

138. The Promised Defeat and Burial of Gog

This Gog is the Goth, whom we already see has gone forth, of whom future victory is promised us, the Lord saying: And they shall despoil those who despoiled them, and shall spoil those who took spoils from them, says the Lord. And it shall be in that day, I will give to Gog, that is, to the Goths, a renowned place, a monument of Israel, a mound gathered of many men, who came upon the sea: and round about it he shall build the mouth of the valley, and shall bury there Gog and all his multitude, and it shall be called the Valley of the Multitude of Gog; and the house of Israel shall bury them, that the land may be cleansed.

139. Broken Faith Toward God as Cause of the Empire's Troubles

Nor is it doubtful, holy Emperor, that we, who have received the war of another's faithlessness, shall have the help of the catholic faith flourishing in you. For an evident cause of divine indignation preceded before this; so that faith was first broken to the Roman empire, there where it was first broken toward God.

140. The Persecution of Confessors on the Troubled Frontier

I do not care to recall the slaughters, tortures, exiles of confessors, the gifts of priesthoods to traitors of the devout. Did we not hear that whole frontier line, from the regions of Thrace through Riparian Dacia and Moesia, and all Pannonian Valeria, shuddering alike with sacrilegious voices and barbarian commotions? What could such a deadly neighborhood bring upon us? Or how could the Roman state be safe with such a guard?

141. A Prayer to Restore the Standards of the Faith

But now, enough and more than enough, almighty God, have we atoned by our exile and our blood for the slaughters of confessors, the exiles of priests, and the crime of so great impiety: it has become sufficiently clear that those who have violated the faith cannot be safe. Turn thou, O Lord, and raise up the standards of thy faith.

142. The Emperor's Faith as the True Standard

Here there are no military eagles, nor do flights of birds lead the army: but your name and worship, Lord Jesus. Here is no unbelieving region, but that which Italy is wont to send forth confessors; Italy, once tried, but never changed: which you defended long ago from the barbarian enemy, and now have also vindicated. Here in the Emperor is no wavering mind, but fixed faith.

143. A Prayer for a Sign of Divine Majesty

Show now a clear sign of your majesty; that he who believes you to be the true Lord of virtues and leader of the heavenly host: he who believes you to be the true power of God and wisdom, not indeed temporal nor created, but everlasting, as it is written, the power of God and the divinity of God, supported by the help of your majesty, may deserve the trophies of his faith.

144. Wisdom of Solomon Identifies the Son as Wisdom

Of whom then do they suppose it was said, of the Father, or of the Son? If of the Father: but the Father is not the Wisdom of God; for the Wisdom of God is the Son. But what is there that Wisdom cannot do, of which it is written: Since she is one, all-powerful and abiding, she renews all things in herself? We do not, then, read of her as approaching, but as abiding. You have, therefore, according to Solomon, Wisdom omnipotent and abiding. You have her also good, for it is written: But wickedness does not overcome wisdom.

145. The Father's Judgment Given to the Son

But let us return to our subject. How inscrutable, he says, are his judgments! If, then, the Father has given all judgment to the Son, the Father appears to be declaring the Son, who judges.

146. The Son's Equality by Nature, Not by Gift

Finally, that you may know he speaks not of the Father, but of the Son, he added: Who, he says, has first given to him? For the Father did give to the Son: but he gave by right of generation, not by the gift of bestowal. And therefore, because it cannot be denied that the Son received from the Father, according to what is written: All things have been delivered to me by my Father: yet by saying, Who has first given to him? He did not deny that the Son received by nature from the Father, but declared that between the Father and the Son neither can be called prior; because although the Father gave to the Son, he did not give as to one who came after: because the uncreated and inestimable Trinity, which is of one eternity and glory, admits neither time nor degree, whether of a later or of a prior.

147. All Things From, Through, and In the Son

But if we think the Greek copies should rather be followed, which have τὶς προσέδωκεν αὐτῷ, you see that he to whom nothing can be added is not unlike one who is complete. Therefore if this whole passage of the Apostle applies rather to the Son, we see that it must be believed of the Son also, because from him are all things, as it is written: For from him, and through him, and in him are all things.

148. Through the Son Is Through the Father Too

Let it be, however, that they suppose it said of the Father. Then let us remember that just as we read that all things are from him, so also all things are through him: for the authority of the Father and the Son is set forth over the whole universe of creation. And although we have proved above by the Father's own example that the Son is omnipotent, yet since it is their eager purpose to disparage him, let them consider that they disparage the Father as well. For if the Son is weak because all things are through him, is the Father too weak, because all things are also through the Father?

149. Called Through the Father, Created Through the Son

But that they may recognize there is no distinction between these, I will again show that it belongs to the same one, both that from whom something comes, and through whom something comes; and I will show both said of the Father. For thus we have: God is faithful, through whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son. Let them consider what the Apostle said. We are called through the Father, and there is no question about it: we are created through the Son, and have they judged this a lesser thing? The Father called into the fellowship of the Son, and this we accept reverently, as we ought: the Son created all things, and do they think this was not the free choice of will, but the compliance of a forced and servile operation?

150. The Fellowship That Comes From the Son's Fullness

But that you may recognize more fully that there is no distance between the power of the Father and of the Son, since we are called through the Father into the fellowship of his Son; that very fellowship is from the Son, as it is written: For of his fullness we have all received; though according to the Greek Gospel we ought to understand "from his fullness."

151. One Single Fellowship With Father and Son

Behold, both fellowship is through the Father, and fellowship is from the Son: but it is not a discrepant fellowship, but one single fellowship; as the same John said in his epistle: And our fellowship may be with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.

152. Fellowship With the Father, Son, and Spirit

Receive also this, that Scripture has recorded one fellowship for us not only from the Father and the Son, but also from the Holy Spirit: The grace, it says, of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the charity of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

153. The Father and the Son Both at Work

But I ask in what respect he through whom all things exist should seem lesser than he from whom all things exist? Is it because he is asserted to be an operator? But the Father also operates; for he is true who said: My Father works until now, and I work. Just as the Father operates, then, so also the Son operates. He who operates is not, therefore, weak or base; since the Father also operates: and therefore that which is common to the Son with the Father ought not to be taken as inferior on account of the Father either; lest the heretics disparage the Father rather in the Son.

154. Born of the Son Through Justice and Grace

Nor is that a small matter, which elsewhere too the same holy John says for refuting the questions of Arian faithlessness: If you know that he is just, know that whoever does justice is born of him. But who is just except the Lord, who loved justice? Or whom, as what has gone before shows, do we have as the promiser of eternal life, if we do not have the Son? If, then, the Son of God promised us eternal life, and he himself is just, then we certainly have been born of him. Or if they deny that we have been born of the Son through grace, they do not confess the Son to be just.

155. All Things Created and Sustained in the Son

You must, therefore, believe that all things are from the Son of God too; because just as God the Father is author and creator of all things, so also is the Son. We see, then, that this question is empty, since it is fitting to believe of the Son also, that from him, and through him, and in him are all things. 156. We have said how all things are from him, how also through him. But that all things are in him, who could doubt, since it is written elsewhere: For in him were all things created in the heavens, and in him were they created: and he is before all, and all things consist in him? You have, therefore, grace from him, him as the operator, and in him the foundation of all things.

157. The Objection of the Vine and the Husbandman

They are also accustomed to object this, in order to separate the divinity of the Father and the Son, that the Lord said in the Gospel: I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman; saying that the husbandman and the vine are of different nature, and that the vine is in the power of the husbandman.

158. The Vine as the Mystery of the Incarnation

Do you then wish the Son to be, according to divinity, such as the vine is; so that without a cultivator he would avail nothing, and could be abandoned or cut back: and do you fashion a calumny out of the letter, because the Lord said he was the vine, signifying the mystery of his incarnation? Yet if it pleases you that we should argue from the letter, I confess, indeed I profess, that the Son named himself the vine. For woe to me, if I should deny the sacrament of the public salvation!

159. Would the Vine Make the Son Lesser Than Paul

How then do you wish to understand that the Son of God named himself the vine? If you take it as said according to the divine substance: and just as between the husbandman and the vine, so also between the Father and the Son you believe there is a distance of divinity, you do a twofold injury, both to the Son and to the Father: to the Son, because if according to divinity he is inferior to a husbandman, by your assertion he must necessarily be reckoned inferior even to Paul the apostle; for Paul too said he was a husbandman, as you have: I planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. Do you wish, then, that Paul be better than the Son of God?

160. The Vine Would Equate the Son's Nature With Ours

You have one injury. Here is another: because if according to the substance of eternal generation the Son is a vine, since he said: I am the vine, you are the branches; that divine generation will seem to be of one substance with us also. But who is like you among the gods, O Lord, as it is written? And again in the psalm: For who among the clouds shall be equaled to the Lord? Or who shall be like God among the sons of God?

161. Making the Apostle Equal to the Father

Nor, however, do you disparage the Son alone, but also the Father. For if in the name of husbandman lies the whole prerogative of paternal power, since Paul too is a husbandman, you make the Apostle equal, indeed, to the Father, to whom you deny the Son.

162. The Husbandman's Name Applied Also to the Father

Then, since it is written: But neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters: but God who gives the increase; in that name you place the sum of paternal majesty which you see to be weak. For if he who plants and he who waters is nothing, but God who gives the increase; see what your impiety strives to assert, that the Father too must be held in contempt under the name of husbandman; and that some God must be sought who bestows increase upon the paternal work. Impiously, then, do they think the power of God the Father should be preferred from the name of husbandman, in which there is a shared fellowship of the appellation between God the Father and man.

163. The Vine Would Deny the Son's Incarnation

But what is remarkable, if he (as you wish, heretics) should be preferred to the Son, whose divine substance would not differ from human condition? For if you suppose the Son was called a vine according to divine substance, you judge him subject not only to corruption and to the uncertainty of the elements, but also a partaker only of human nature; since vine and branches are of one nature; so that the Son of God would not seem to have assumed flesh through the sacrament of incarnation, but rather to have taken his very origin from flesh.

164. Christ's Flesh as the Sacrament of Salvation

But I will plainly say that his flesh, though by a new mystery of generation, was nevertheless of one nature with us, and that this is the sacrament of our salvation, not the beginning of the divine generation. For he is a vine, because he sustains my sufferings; since indeed, resting upon him, human condition, frail as it first was, grew up into the fruitful growths of a renewed piety.

165. Prophetic Words on the Vine and the Lamb

Yet if the pomp of the husbandman delights you, tell me, I ask, who he is who spoke in the prophet: Lord, make it known to me, that I may know: then I saw their thoughts. I was led like an innocent lamb to the slaughter, and I did not know it: they devised a plan against me, saying: Come, let us put wood into his bread. For if the Son speaks of the sacrament of the future incarnation, since it is impious that you should believe this of the Father, it is surely the Son who says above: I planted you a fruitful vine, how have you turned into the bitterness of an alien vine?

166. The Son as Vine and Husbandman Alike

Thus you see that the Son too is a husbandman, of one name with the Father, of one work, of one dignity and substance. Therefore if the Son is both husbandman and vine, we understand "vine" surely according to the sacrament of the incarnation.

167. The Cluster of Grapes and the Incarnation

But he not only said that he was the vine, but also named himself, by prophetic voice, the cluster of grapes, at that time when Moses, by the Lord's command, sent the spies to the valley of the cluster. What is that valley, but the lowliness of the incarnation, and the fruitfulness of the passion? And I think he was called a cluster for this reason, because from that vine brought over from Egypt, that is, from the family of the Jews, a fruit useful to the world shone forth. No one, surely, can refer the cluster to the divine generation: or whoever does so leaves nothing else but that we should believe that cluster was born of the vine. Thus the fool ascribes to the Father what he finds fault with in the Son.

168. The Father as Cultivator of the Lord's Flesh

But if it can no longer be doubted that the Son of God was named the vine according to the incarnation, you see according to what sacrament the Lord spoke; For the Father is greater than I. For when he had said this above, he immediately added: I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman, that you might recognize that in this respect the Father is greater: because just as the husbandman is greater than the vines, so the Father is the cultivator of the Lord's flesh: which could both increase through age, and be cut back through the passion; so that the shadow of the cross, spread abroad with its saving arms, might veil the whole human race from the harmful heat of worldly pleasures.

169. Christ Not Yet Subjected While the Church Is Divided

Someone will say: Is Christ then already subjected, because very many have believed? By no means; for the subjection of Christ is not in a few, but in all. For just as if in me the flesh should still lust against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, I do not seem to be subjected, even though I be in part subject: so, since the whole Church is one body of Christ, as long as the human race is at variance, we divide Christ. Christ therefore is not yet subjected, whose members are not yet subjected. But when we shall be not many members, but one spirit, then he himself also will be subjected, that through his subjection God may be all things and in all.

170. The Father's Work Unfinished in Our Imperfection

But just as Christ is not yet subjected, so the Father's work is not yet perfected; for the Son of God said: My food is to do the will of my Father who sent me, and to perfect his work. What question is there, then, that in me will be the subjection of the Son, in whom the Father's work is imperfect, because I myself am not perfect? Do I then, who make the Father's work imperfect, thereby make the Son to be subjected? But this is no injury, but grace; for in that we are subjected, it is our advancement, not that of the divinity; that we may be subjected to the Law, we may be subjected to grace. Since before, as the Apostle himself said, the wisdom of the flesh was enmity against God; for it was not subject to the Law: but now it has been made subject through the passion of Christ.

171. And yet, lest anyone should cavil, see what the divinely inspired Scripture has provided against beforehand; for it shows us in what respect Christ will be subjected to God, while it teaches in what respect he has subjected all things to himself. And so it says: But now we do not see all things subjected to him. For we have seen Jesus made a little lower than the angels because of the suffering of death. It shows, then, that he was made lower in the assumption of flesh. What, then, prevents it from also signifying subjection in the assumption of flesh, through which he will subject all things to himself, while in that very flesh he himself is subjected to God the Father?

172. The Prayer in Gethsemane and the Flesh's Obedience

Let us therefore consider his subjection: My Father, he says, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt. This subjection, then, will belong to the assumption of human nature; for as we read: Being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death: subjection indeed belongs to obedience, obedience to death, death to the assumption of humanity; therefore that subjection will belong to the assumption of humanity. It is by no means, then, a weakness of divinity, but this is the dispensation of piety.

173. Subjected to Mary as to the Father

See how I do not fear their propositions. They object that he must be subjected to God the Father; I read that he was subjected to Mary his mother; for it is written of Joseph and Mary: And he was subject to them. Or if they think this, let them say that divinity was subjected to men.

174. Dying Yet Alive, Subjected Yet Reigning

Let it not therefore prejudice him that he is said to be subjected, to whom it is no prejudice that he is read to be a servant, that he is asserted to be crucified, that he is proclaimed to be dead. He who, while dying, was alive; while being subjected, was reigning; while being buried, was raising up; and while presenting himself as subjected to human power, on the other hand declared himself Lord of eternal majesty. He was under a judge, and at the right hand of God he claimed for himself the throne as perpetual judge. It is written, finally: Henceforth you shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of the power of God, and coming in the clouds of heaven. He was beaten by the Jews, he commanded the angels: born of Mary he was under the Law, before Abraham he was above the Law. On the cross, venerable by nature: for the sun fled, the earth trembled, the angels were silent.

Whose passion, then, the elements feared to behold, could they behold his generation? And in that respect in which they could not bear the subjection of the body, will they endure the subjection of the venerable nature?

175. One Nature Rules Out the Father's Subjection

But since the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are of one nature, certainly the Father will not be subjected to himself. And therefore the Son will not be subjected in that respect in which he is one with the Father; lest through the unity of the divinity the Father also should seem to be subjected to the Son. Therefore, just as on that cross it was not the fullness of divinity but our fragility that was subjected: so also afterward the Son will be subjected to the Father, in the participation, certainly, of our nature; that, the enticements of the flesh being subjected, riches may not be in the heart, nor ambition, nor pleasure: but that God may be all things to us, if in all things, as far as we are able to grasp, we live according to his image and likeness.

176. Putting Off the Old Man for the New

The benefit, therefore, has passed over from the type to the community; for in his own flesh he subdued the nature of the whole human flesh. And so, according to the Apostle: As we have borne the image of the earthly, let us bear also the image of the heavenly. Which certainly cannot come about except through the inner man. Putting off, then, all things, that is, those which we read: anger, animosity, blasphemy, filthy speech; and as it is said further below: Stripping off from ourselves the old man with his deeds, let us put on the new, who is renewed in knowledge, according to the image of him who created him.

177. God All in All Without Dividing the Son

And that you might know that when he says: That God may be all in all, he does not separate Christ from God the Father, he himself says to the Colossians: Where there is neither male, he says, nor female, Jew nor Greek, Barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all and in all. Therefore also, saying to the Corinthians: That God may be all and in all, he has embraced both the unity and the equality of Christ with God the Father; for the Son is not separated from the Father. And likewise, just as the Father is all and in all, so also Christ works all things in all. If, then, Christ also works all things in all, he is certainly not subjected in the majesty of divinity, but in us. But how is he subjected in us, except in the manner in which he was made a little lower than the angels, namely in the mystery of the body?

For in that respect all things did not yet seem subjected to him, which from the beginning had certainly served their creator.

178. Christ Subjected in the Poor and the Sick

But if you should ask in what way he is subjected in us, he himself shows it, saying: I was in prison, and you came to me: I was sick, and you visited me. For what you did to one of these least, you did to me. You hear "sick," and are not moved: you hear "subjected," and are moved; since it is in the respect in which he was made sick, in which he was subjected, in which he was made sin and a curse for us.

179. Christ Made a Curse and Subjected for Us

Just as, then, not for his own sake, but for ours, he was made sin and a curse: so not for his own sake, but for ours, he will be subjected in us, not subjected in his eternal nature, nor cursed in his eternal nature: For cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree. Cursed, because he took up our curses: subjected too, because he himself took up our subjection, but in the assumption of the form of a servant, not in the majesty of God; that while he offered himself as a partaker of our fragility in the flesh, he might make us partakers of the divine nature in his power.

Not that we have this natural partnership with the heavenly generation of Christ, nor that that subjection belongs to the divinity in Christ: but just as the Apostle said that we sit in the heavenly places in him, through that flesh which is the pledge of our salvation, though we certainly are not sitting; so also he is said to be subjected in us through the assumption of our nature.

180. No One May Claim the Father's Throne

For who is so mad as to think, as we said above (chapters 5 and following), that a venerable seat at the right hand of God the Father is due to him; when, although it is granted even according to the flesh to Christ from the Father, yet it is conferred by reason of his heavenly generation and equal power? The angels adore, and do you with sacrilegious presumption strew for yourself the throne of God?

181. Sitting with Christ, Not at God's Right Hand

It is written, you will say, that when we were dead in our sins, he made us alive together in Christ, by whose grace you have been saved; and raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places, in Christ Jesus. I acknowledge it is written: but not that God suffers men to sit at his right hand, but that they sit in Christ; for he himself is the foundation of all things, and he himself is the head of the Church, in whom the common nature according to the flesh has merited the prerogative of the heavenly seat: for in Christ God is honored as flesh, but in the flesh the nature of the human race, common to all men, is honored.

182. Christ Subjected in Us by All Believers' Obedience

As we, then, sit in him through the community of the bodily nature, so also he who through the assumption of our flesh was made a curse for us; since a curse certainly does not fall upon the blessed Son of God: so, I say, he too through the obedience of all will be subjected in us; when the Gentile shall have believed, when the Jew shall have recognized him whom he crucified; when the Manichaean shall have adored him whose coming in the flesh he did not believe; when the Arian shall have confessed as omnipotent him whom he denied; when finally in all he shall have been the wisdom of God, righteousness, peace, charity, resurrection. Through his own works, then, and through the diverse kinds of virtues, Christ will be subjected to the Father in us; when, vices being renounced, and sin kept holiday, one spirit in one mind of all peoples shall begin to cleave to the one God in all, then God will be all things and in all.

183. Obedience, Subjection, and God All in All

Let us then briefly gather the conclusion of the whole resolution. Unity of power excludes the notion of injurious subjection: the emptying of powers, and the victory sought over death, does not diminish the power of the triumphant one: obedience effects subjection, Christ took up obedience, obedience unto the cross, the cross unto salvation. Therefore where the work is, there also is the author of the work. When, then, all things shall have been subjected to Christ through the obedience of Christ, so that in his name every knee should bend, then he himself will be all things in all; for now, because not all believe, not all seem to be subjected. When, therefore, all shall have believed, and shall have done the will of God, Christ will be all things and in all: when Christ shall have been all things and in all, God will be all things and in all; because the Father remains always in the Son. How, then, is he charged with weakness, who redeemed the weak?

184. Christ's Power to Subject All Things to Himself

And lest perhaps you refer even this to the weakness of the Son, that it is written that God subjected all things to him; learn that he himself also subjected all things to himself; for it is written: But our conversation is in heaven; whence also we look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus, who will transfigure the body of our humility, to be made conformable to the body of his glory according to the working whereby he is also able to subject all things to himself. You have learned, then, that he is able to subject all things to himself, according, certainly, to the working of divinity.

185. All Things Subjected to Christ According to the Flesh

Learn now that, according to the flesh, he receives all things subjected, as it is written: Which he wrought in Christ, raising him from the dead, and setting him at his right hand in the heavenly places, above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come; and hath put all things under his feet. According to the flesh, therefore, all things will be delivered subjected to him, according to which he was also raised from the dead, and according to the human soul, and by rational subjection.

186. The Soul Subject to God, Not the Divinity

Many interpret in a divine sense what is written: Shall not my soul be subject to God? He said "soul," not divinity; "soul," not majesty. And that we might know that the Lord through the Prophet spoke of the assumption of human nature, he added: How long will you set upon a man? According to that which he says in the Gospel: Why do you seek to kill me, a man? And he added: Nevertheless they thought to cast down my price, they ran in thirst, they blessed with their mouth, and cursed with their heart. For the Jews, when Judas brought back the price, refused to receive it, running in the thirst of madness; for they refused the grace of the spiritual drink.

187. The Pious Meaning of Christ's Subjection

This is the pious interpretation of the subjection. For since this is the gift of the Lord's passion, certainly in that respect in which he suffered, in this he will be subjected in us. We ask, for what reason? That neither angels, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor things present, nor things to come, nor any other creature, may be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus. We see, then, from what we have said, that no creature is excepted: but that with those which he mentioned above, every one, if there be any, is numbered.

188. The Charity of God and Christ Are One

At the same time this too must be considered, that when he had said above: Who shall separate us from the charity of Christ? He set down below: Neither death, nor life, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the charity of God, which is in Christ Jesus. We see, therefore, that the charity of God is the same as the charity of Christ. Finally, it was not without purpose that he set down the charity of God, which is in Christ Jesus, lest you should understand the charity of God and of Christ as separate. But there is nothing which charity divides, nothing which the everlasting divinity cannot do, nothing which lies hidden from truth, deceives justice, or escapes wisdom.

189. Against Denying the Son's Knowledge of the Times

Wherefore we must know that those who repeat these things are execrable, and are condemned by the Holy Spirit. For whom else, but the Arians especially, does the Prophet condemn, who say that the Son of God does not know the times and the years? For there is nothing which God is ignorant of; but Christ is God, and Christ is the most high; for he himself is God over all things.

190. Against Judging Divine Things by Human Disposition

See how holy David shudders at men of this sort who would take away knowledge from the Son of God; for thus you have it: They are not in the labour of men, and they shall not be scourged with men; therefore their pride has taken hold of them; they are covered with their iniquity and impiety: their iniquity has come forth as it were from fatness, they have passed on into the disposition of the heart. Assuredly he condemns those who think that divine things are to be judged by the disposition of the heart; for God is subject neither to disposition nor to order; since we perceive that even those things which are in the use of men, and in the succession of the human race, do not always come about by some solemn disposition of reason, but for the most part run their course through secret and hidden mysteries.

191. Condemned for Speaking Against the Most High

They have thought, he says, and spoken wickedness, they have spoken iniquity against the Most High, they have set their mouth against heaven. We see, therefore, that he condemns as guilty of impious sacrilege those who, from the likeness of human nature, arrogate to themselves the disposing of the heavenly mystery.

192. The Arian Objection: Does God Know?

And they said: How does God know? And is there knowledge at all in the Most High? Do not the Arians daily clamor these very things, that all knowledge cannot be in Christ? Because, they say, he himself professed to be ignorant of the day and the hour. Do they not say: How did he know—those who declare that he could not have known, except what he had heard and seen; and those things which pertain to the unity of the divine nature they, by a sacrilegious interpretation, drag down to infirmity?

193. Dispute Over the Words 'Nor the Son'

It is written, they say: But of that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone. First, the ancient Greek copies do not have "nor the Son knows"; but it is no wonder if they falsified even this, they who have interpolated the divine Scriptures. But for what reason it seems to have been added is revealed, when it is dragged down to the interpretation of so great a sacrilege.

194. The Title Son of Man and Assumed Weakness

Grant, however, that it was written by the evangelists. The name "Son" is a middle term; for he is also called the Son of man; so that, according to the weakness of our assumed nature, he may seem not to have known the day of the future judgment. For how could the Son of God not know the day, since in him are hidden the treasures of the wisdom and knowledge of God?

195. Is Christ's Knowledge Natural or Learned?

But I ask whether he had his knowledge from substance, or from accident; for all knowledge is either from nature or from discipline: from nature it is granted, as to the horse to run, to the fish to swim; for these things they do before they learn; from discipline again it is granted to man to swim; for unless he has learned, he cannot know. Since, then, it is granted to dumb animals by nature to do and to know what they have not learned, what do you judge concerning the Son of God, whether he has knowledge from instruction, or from nature? If from instruction: then he was not born wisdom, and began to be perfect by process, and was not always so. But if he has natural knowledge, then assuredly he was perfect in the beginning, he proceeded perfect from the Father; and therefore he had no need of foreknowledge of future things.

196. The Creator Cannot Be Ignorant of His Works

He did not, therefore, not know the day; for it does not belong to the wisdom of God to know in part and to be ignorant in part. For how can he not know a part, who made all things; since it is less to know than to make? For we know many things which we cannot make: nor do we all know in the same way, but we know in part. For the countryman knows the force of the winds and the courses of the stars in one way, the city-dweller in another, the pilot in another. And though not all know all things, yet they are said to know: but he alone knows fully who made all things.

The pilot knows at what watch Arcturus proceeds, what risings of Orion he must watch for; yet he does not know the groupings of the Pleiades, nor the number or names of the other stars, as does he Who numbers the multitude of the stars, and calls them all by their names: whom assuredly the power of his own work does not escape.

197. Christ as Wisdom Knows His Own Creation

For how do you wish these things to have been made by the Son of God? As it were like a ring, which does not perceive what it stamps? But the Father made all things in wisdom, that is, he made all things through the Son, who is the power of God and wisdom: and it belongs to wisdom to know both the powers and the causes of its own works. And therefore the creator of all things could not be ignorant of what he made, could not fail to know what he himself gave: he therefore knows the day which he made.

198. Christ's Knowledge Spans Past, Present, and Future

But you say, he knows the present, he does not know the future. Although the proposition is foolish, yet, that I may satisfy you from the Scriptures, learn that he made not only things past, but also things that are to come, as it is written: Who has made the things that are to come. And elsewhere Scripture says: Through whom also the ages were made, he is the brightness of glory, and the character of his substance. For the ages are past, present, and future. How, then, were the things made which are to come, unless because his operative power and knowledge comprehends the number of all the ages? For just as he calls the things that are not, as though they were: so also he has made the things that are to come, as though they were; because it cannot be that they should not be, but they are necessarily to come, which he has commanded to be.

Therefore he who made the things that are to come, knew them in the same manner in which they are to come.

199. The Day of Judgment Fixed by Christ's Ordinance

If this is to be believed concerning the ages, much more is it to be believed concerning the day of judgment; since the Son of God has knowledge of it as of a thing already made by himself; because it is written: By your ordinance the day shall continue. Nor did he say only "it continues," but also "it shall continue"; so that by his ordinance the things that are to come may be governed. Does he, then, not know the things which he has ordained? He who planted the ear, shall he not hear? He who formed the eye, does he not consider?

200. A Small Matter Disdained, Not Unknown

Let us see, however, whether perhaps there be something so great that it could have escaped its own creator; and yet let them choose whether they consider it as something great and more excellent than the rest, or as something most small and lowly. If small and lowly, it is no injury—if I may speak according to our common usage—not to know vile and slight things; for since it belongs to power to know what is greatest, it seems rather that he has despised the lowliness of a degenerate work. He is therefore exempt by disdain, not defrauded of power.

201. Knowing the Father Implies Knowing the Day

But if they judge it a great and supreme thing to know the day of judgment, let them say what is greater or better than God the Father. He knows the Father, then, as he himself says: No one knows the Father but the Son, and he to whom the Son wills to reveal him. Does he, I say, know the Father, and not know the day? Do you thus believe that he reveals the Father, and cannot reveal the day?

202. Testing Whether the Holy Spirit Knows the Day

Furthermore, since you make certain gradations, so that you set the Father above the Son, and the Son above the Spirit, tell me whether the Holy Spirit knew the day of judgment; for nothing is written of him in this place. You will deny it, surely. What if I show that he knew it? For it is read: But God has revealed it to us through his Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. Assuredly, because he searches the deep things of God, since God knows the day of judgment, the Spirit also knows it. For he knows all things which God knows, as the Apostle declares, saying: For who among men knows the things of a man, but the spirit of the man which is in him? So also the things of God no one has known, but the Spirit of God.

See to it, then, lest by denying that the Holy Spirit knows, you also deny that the Father knows; since the things of God the Spirit of God has also known: but whatever the Spirit of God has not known is assuredly not of God; or else, by confessing that the Spirit of God knows, you set the Spirit above the Son, contrary to your own assertion, in denying that the Son knows. But this is a doubt not only sacrilegious, but also foolish.

203. How Knowledge Is Shown by Time, Place, and Signs

Now let us consider by what means knowledge is gathered, and let us show that the Son himself demonstrated that he also knew the day. For what we know, we declare either by time, or by place, or by signs, or by persons, or by order. How, then, did he not know the day of judgment, he who expressed the hour of judgment, and the place, and the signs, and the causes?

204. Warning the Faithful to Flee the Coming Danger

Finally, thus you have it: In that hour, let him who is on the housetop not come down to take his goods out of his house; and let him who is in the field, likewise not return back. To such an extent, then, did he know the outcomes of the perils to come, that he even pointed out defenses to those in peril.

205. Lord of the Sabbath Cannot Lack Knowledge

Could the Lord be ignorant of the day, he who himself said of himself that the Son of man is Lord even of the Sabbath?

206. Prophecy of the Temple's Destruction

He designated the place also elsewhere, when, to the disciples showing him the structures of the temple, he said: Do you see all these things? Amen I say to you, there shall not be left a stone upon a stone, that shall not be thrown down.

207. Signs of Wars, Famines, and False Christs

Concerning the sign also, when asked by the Apostles, he answered: See that you be not seduced. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and further on: There shall be, he says, great earthquakes in various places, and famines, and pestilences, and terrors from heaven, and great signs shall there be. Thus he expressed both persons and signs.

208. The Son's Foreknowledge of Jerusalem's Fall

But in what manner armies would surround Jerusalem, or the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled, and in what order, is disclosed by the testimony of the Gospel reading. He knew, therefore, all things.

209. Why the Hour of Judgment Was Hidden

But we ask for what reason he was unwilling to designate the moments. If we inquire, we shall find that this is not a matter of ignorance, but of wisdom. For it would not have profited us to know; so that, while we do not know the certain moments of the future judgment, we might always, as if stationed on watch, and set as it were on a lookout tower of virtue, avoid the habit of sinning; lest the day of the Lord find us amid our vices. For it does not profit to know, but to fear what is to come; for it is written: Do not think highly of yourself, but fear.

216. Uncertainty of the Day Keeps Every Age Watchful

For if he had expressly designated the day, he would seem to have prescribed a rule of living for that one generation of men which was nearest to the judgment; while for an earlier time either the just would be more remiss, or the sinner more secure. For the adulterer, unless he fears a daily punishment, cannot cease from the desire of adultery: nor can the brigand abandon the secret places of the besieged forests, unless he knows that punishment threatens him at every moment. For, for the most part, to those for whom impunity is an incentive, fear is a weariness.

211. Ignorance of the Hour Breeds Watchfulness

I said, therefore, that it did not profit to know; nay rather it profited to be ignorant; so that, being ignorant, we might fear, and, being watchful, we might be amended, as he himself said: Be ready, for you know not at what hour the Son of man is to come. For the soldier, unless he knows that war is at hand, does not know how to keep watch in the camp.

212. Not for You to Know the Times

Whence also elsewhere the Lord himself, being asked by the apostles—I say, who certainly did not understand as Arius does, but believed that the Son of God knew future things; for unless they had believed this, they would never have asked—being asked, then, when he would restore the kingdom to Israel, did not say that he did not know, but said: It is not for you to know the times and seasons, which the Father has put in his own power. Note what he said: It is not for you to know. Read again: It is not for you. He said "for you," not "for me"; for now he was speaking not according to perfection, but according to the progress of the human body and of our soul. He said, then, "for you," not "for me."

213. Paul's Silence on the Times and Seasons

Which also the Apostle followed: But of the times and seasons, brothers, he says, you have no need that we should write to you. Thus not even the Apostle himself, the servant of Christ, said that he did not know the moments, but that there was no need to teach a people who ought always to be armed with spiritual defenses; so that the power of Christ might show itself forth in each one. But when the Lord says: Of the times which the Father has put in his own power, he certainly cannot be without a share in the paternal knowledge, of whose power he is by no means without a share; since power is begotten of wisdom and virtue, both of which Christ is.

214. Scripture's Language of God Coming Down to See

But you ask for what reason he did not deny it to the disciples in such a way as though he knew and were unwilling to tell them, but rather stated that neither the Angels nor the Son knew? I too will ask you, for what reason in Genesis God says: Let me go down, then, that I may see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me, and if not, that I may know? For what reason does Scripture also say of the Lord: And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men had built? For what reason also does the Prophet say in the Psalter: The Lord looked down upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, or seek God; as though, in the one place, if God did not come down, and in the other, if the Lord did not look down, he would either be ignorant of men's works or their merits?

215. The Father's Words in Luke and Matthew Compared

But also in the Gospel you have, according to Luke, that the Father says: What shall I do? I will send my most beloved Son, perhaps they will reverence him. But according to Matthew, and according to Mark, you have: that he sent his only Son, saying, They will reverence my Son. In one book he says: Perhaps they will reverence him, and, as if not knowing, he is in doubt; for this is the speech of one who doubts: but in the other two books: They will reverence, he says, my Son; that is, he affirms that reverence must be shown.

216. God Neither Doubts Nor Is Deceived

But it belongs neither to God to doubt nor to be deceived; for he doubts who does not know what is to come: but he is deceived who has foretold one thing, and another has followed. But what is more evident than that Scripture records that the Father said one thing of the Son, and that same Scripture testifies that another thing occurred? He said: They will reverence my Son: but the Son was scourged, mocked, crucified, and died; and according to the flesh he suffered things far more grievous than those servants who had earlier been sent. Did the Father, then, deceive, or was he ignorant, or was he unable to help? But the true one knows not how to deceive; for it is written: God is faithful, who does not lie. But how was he ignorant, who knows all things? Or what was he unable to do, who is able to do all things?

217. The Son's Equal Knowledge with the Father

Yet if he either was ignorant or was unable (for you more readily acquiesce in saying that the Father was ignorant, than confess that the Son knew), you see that from this very fact the Son is of one substance with the Father; since, just as the Father, so also the Son, to speak according to your folly, either does not know all things or is not able to do all things. For I am not so grudging or so rash concerning the praises of the Son as to venture to say that the Son is able to do more than the Father, I who make no distinction of power between the Father and the Son.

218. Doubting the Son's Words Undermines His Testimony

But perhaps you will say that the Father did not speak thus, but that the Son deceived men concerning the Father. Now, therefore, you accuse the Son not only of weakness, but even of sacrilege and lying. Yet if you do not believe the Son concerning the Father, do not believe him concerning himself either; for if he wished to deceive us, because he said the Father doubted, as though not knowing what was to come, then he wished also to deceive us concerning himself, because he said that he himself did not know future things; and it would be far more tolerable to shame, if he first alleged ignorance of himself, than if he should seem to have been mocked by a result contrary to what he had foretold of the Father.

219. Scripture's Custom of Feigned Not Knowing

But neither is the Father deceived, nor does the Son deceive: rather this is the custom in the divine Scriptures, as both the foregoing and many other examples testify, that God dissembles not knowing what he knows. And in this, then, the unity of divinity and the unity of disposition in the Father and the Son is proved, if, just as God the Father dissembles things known, so also the Son, being in this too the image of God, dissembles the things known to him.

220. The Son's Feigned Ignorance as an Act of Love

It has been taught, then, that the Son of God was not ignorant of things to come. But if they admit this, then I too, that I may now answer for what reason he recorded that neither the angels nor the Son, but the Father, knew, recognize in this very passage his habitual love and grace toward his disciples, which from its very frequency ought already to be known to all. For the Lord, inclined by excessive love toward his disciples, prefers, when they ask what he judges useless for them to know, to seem not to know what he knew, rather than to refuse them; and he loves more to instruct our usefulness than to demonstrate his own power.

221. Growth in Wisdom Explained by His Human Nature

Yet there are many not as timid as I am; for I prefer to fear lofty things rather than to know them: yet there are many relying on this, that it is written: And Jesus increased in age and wisdom and grace with God and men, who say confidently that, according to divinity indeed, he could not be ignorant of things to come, but according to the assumption of our condition he said that he, as Son of man, was ignorant before the cross. For when he says "Son," he does not speak as of another; for he himself is both our Lord the Son of God, and the Son of the Virgin: but by the middle term he forms our understanding, so that, as it were the son of man according to the taking up of our imprudence, or of progress, he might be believed not yet to have fully known all things; for it is not ours to know what is to come.

He seems, then, to be ignorant according to the same condition according to which he progresses: for how does he progress according to divinity, in whom dwells the fulness of divinity? Or what is there that the Son of God does not know, he who was saying: Why do you think evil in your hearts? How can he be ignorant, of whom Scripture says: But Jesus knew their thoughts?

222. The Son's Human Feeling Assumed for Our Sake

Let others say these things: but I, that I may return to what I proposed above, having set forth that it is written that the Father said: Perhaps they will reverence my Son; which I think was indeed set down for this reason, that since the Father was speaking about men, he seemed to speak with human feeling: much more do I think that the Son, who conversed with men and acted as man and took on flesh, assumed our affection; so that by our ignorance he might say that he did not know, not because he himself was ignorant of anything. For although he seemed to be man in the truth of the body, yet he was life, he was light, and power went out from him, which healed the wounds of the afflicted by the authority of his majesty.

223. The Charge Against the Son Refuted

You see, then, that the question has been removed from you, since both the saying of the Son is referred to the assumption of the whole human condition, and it was written of the Father for this reason, that you might at least in this way cease to slander the Son.

224. Equal Knowledge Excludes a Lesser Son

There was, then, nothing which the Son of God was ignorant of; for there was nothing which the Father was ignorant of. But if the Son too was ignorant of nothing, that we may now conclude, let them say in what respect they wish him to be seen as lesser. If God begot a lesser Son, he bestowed less; if he bestowed less, either he willed less or he was able to do less: but the Father is neither weak nor envious; for neither will nor power came before the Son: for in what respect is he lesser, who has all things which the Father has? For he both received all things from the Father by the right of generation, and expressed the whole Father in the glory of his majesty.

225. The Father Greater Yet the Son Equal

It is written, they say: For the Father is greater than I. But it is also written: He thought it not robbery to be equal with God. It is written that the Jews sought to kill him for this reason, that he called himself the Son of God, making himself equal with God. It is written: I and the Father are one. They read the one, they do not read the many. Can he, then, be both lesser and equal through the same nature? But one thing is referred to divinity, another to the flesh.

226. Who May Judge Between Father and Son

They call him lesser: I ask, who has measured him, who is of so exalted a heart as to set up, as it were before his own tribunal, God the Father and the Son, that he may judge of their preeminence? My heart is not exalted, nor are my eyes lifted up in vain, says David. King David feared to exalt his heart in human matters, and we exalt ourselves against divine secrets. Who, then, judges concerning the Son of God? Thrones, Dominations, Angels, Powers? But the Archangels are attendants and servants, but the Cherubim and Seraphim minister, but they praise. Who, then, judges concerning the Son of God, when he has read that the Father himself knows the Son, and does not judge; for no one knows the Son except the Father. He knows, it says, he does not judge. To know is one thing, to judge another. The Father has knowledge in himself; the Son has no power above himself.

And again: No one knows the Father, except the Son; and he himself knows the Father, as the Father knows him.

227. Fear to Call the Son's Nature Lesser

But you say that he called himself lesser: he also called himself a stone. You say more, and slander impiously: I say less, and construct piously. You call him lesser, and yet confess him above the angels: I call him lesser than the angels, and derogate nothing; because I do not impugn his divinity, but proclaim his mercy. 228. To you now, almighty Father, I turn my words with tears. I might indeed readily call you inaccessible, incomprehensible, inestimable: but I would not dare to call your Son lesser. For when I have read that he is the brightness of your glory, and the image of your substance, I fear lest, by calling the image of your substance lesser, I should seem to call your substance lesser, whose image the Son is, since the whole fulness of your divinity is in the Son. I have often read, and I gladly believe, that you and your Son and the Holy Spirit are immense, uncircumscribed, inestimable, ineffable. And therefore I cannot estimate, so as to be able to examine.

229. Christ's Type Versus Arius's Presumption in the Measuring Line

Yet suppose it were so, that I wished with rash spirit and daring to measure you; whence, I ask, shall I measure you? The prophet saw a measuring line, with which an angel measured Jerusalem. Yet it was an angel who measured, not Arius: he measured Jerusalem, not God. And perhaps even Jerusalem the angel could not measure; for he was a man. For thus you have it: And I lifted up my eyes and saw: and behold a man, and in his hand a measuring line. He was a man because the type of the body to be assumed was being declared. He was that man of whom it is said: After me comes a man, whose shoe's latchet I am not worthy to unloose. Christ, therefore, measures Jerusalem in a type; Arius measures God.

230. Arius Compared to Satan's Transformation

And Satan transforms himself into an angel of light; what wonder if Arius imitates his own author, that he may usurp things unlawful? Though what his father the devil did not do of himself, this man, with more intolerable sacrilege, presumes to himself knowledge of divine secrets, and of the mysteries of the heavenly generation; for the devil confessed the true Son of God, Arius denies him.

231. Against Dividing the Father's and Son's Majesty

If, then, I cannot measure you, almighty Father, can I without sacrilege dispute concerning the secret of your generation? Can I say that there is anything more or less between you and your Son; when he himself, who was born of you, said: All things which the Father has are mine? Who has made me a judge or a divider over human affairs? The Son says this, and shall we claim for ourselves division and judgment between the Father and the Son? Good piety shuns arbiters even in the division of a patrimony. Shall we, then, be arbiters, that we should divide the majesty of the uncreated substance between you and your Son?

232. The Sign of Jonah Points to the Incarnation

This generation, he says, this generation is wicked: it seeks a sign, and no sign shall be given it, but the sign of Jonah the prophet. A sign, indeed, is given not of divinity, but of the incarnation. Finally, about to speak of the incarnation, he says: Ask you a sign. And when he had said: I will not ask, neither will I tempt the Lord, the answer was given: Behold a virgin shall conceive in her womb Can we, then, not see the sign of divinity, and yet seek its measure? Woe is me, wretched man, do we dare impiously to discuss him whom we cannot worthily even ask?

233. Comparing the Father Invites Impious Judgment

Let the Arians see, however, what they do: if I say that you, Father, are greater than all things, I have injuriously compared you to your own works: if I say greater than the Son, as Arius asserts, I have judged impiously. That opinion concerning you will come first, for no preeminence can be made except by comparison, nor can anyone be preferred, unless a prior judgment has been made concerning him.

234. Judgment of All Things Given to the Son

It is not lawful for us to swear by heaven, yet is it lawful to judge concerning God: but you have granted judgment concerning all things to your Son alone.

235. John's Reverence in Baptizing Christ

John feared to baptize the flesh of the Lord, John forbade him, saying: I ought to be baptized by you, and you come to me; and shall I subject Christ to my own judgment?

235. Moses, Peter, and the Limits of Seeking God's Depths

Moses excuses himself from the priesthood, Peter declines the service enjoined upon him in the ministry: does Arius search out even the deep things of God? But it is not Arius who is the Holy Spirit: but it was said to Arius and to men: Seek not the things that are too high for you.

236. Moses's Veiled Sight Versus Arius's False Claim

Moses is forbidden to see the face of the Lord: Arius deserved to see the secret. Moses and Aaron among his priests, Moses who appears with the Lord in glory; that Moses, then, saw only the hinder parts of God in a figure: Arius has comprehended the whole of God face to face. But no man, He says, can see my face, and live.

237. Paul's Partial Knowledge Against Arius's Claim to Know Fully

Paul too speaks of things beneath: We know in part, and we prophesy in part. Arius says: I have known God wholly, not in part. Paul, then, is inferior to Arius; and the vessel of election knows in part, but the vessel of perdition knows wholly: I know, he says, a man, whether in the body or out of the body I know not, God knows, that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words. Paul, caught up even to the third heaven, knew not himself: Arius, wallowing in filth, knew God. Paul says of himself: God knows; Arius says of God: I know.

238. Arius's Presumption to Be Like the Most High

But Arius was not caught up into heaven, although he has followed him who with damnable boasting presumed the things of God, saying: I will set my throne above the clouds, and I will be like the Most High; for as that one said: I will be like the Most High: so also Arius wishes the Most High Son of God to be seen as like to himself; whom he does not venerate in the majesty of eternal divinity, but measures by the weakness of the flesh.