Against the Sabellians

Now indeed it would be fitting to dispute against those who destroy the monarchy—which is the most august proclamation of the Church of God—by dividing and splitting it into certain three powers and separate hypostases and three deities. For I have heard that some of those who among you preach and teach the divine word are masters of this opinion, who indeed stand diametrically opposed, so to speak, to the opinion of Sabellius. For he blasphemes by saying that the Son himself is the Father, and vice versa: but those others in some manner preach three Gods, dividing the holy unity into three diverse hypostases entirely separated from one another. For it is necessary that the divine Word be united to the God of all things, and that the Holy Spirit remain and dwell in God; and accordingly that the divine Trinity be reduced and gathered into one, as into a certain summit, that is, into God the almighty Father of all things.

For the doctrine of the senseless Marcion, which cuts and divides the monarchy into three principles, is truly diabolical, and does not belong to the true disciples of Christ, nor to those who embrace the teaching of the Saviour. For these know well that the Trinity is indeed proclaimed in divine Scripture, but that there are three Gods is taught neither in the Old nor in the New Testament. 2. But no less blameworthy are those who consider the Son to be a work, and reckon that the Lord was made, as one of the things that are truly made: whereas the divine eloquences testify that he was begotten, as is fitting and proper, not created or made. It is therefore no light but the greatest impiety to say that the Lord was in any way made by hands. For if the Son was made, there was a time when he was not: and yet he always existed, if indeed he is, as he himself declares, in the Father.

And if Christ is the Word, Wisdom, and Power (for the divine Scriptures teach that Christ is these things, as you yourselves know), these are surely the powers of God. Wherefore if the Son was made, there was a time when these did not exist: and accordingly there was a time when God was without these: which is utterly absurd. But why should I discourse at greater length on these matters before you, men full of the Spirit and thoroughly understanding the absurdities that follow from that opinion which asserts the Son to have been made? The leaders of this opinion seem to me to have paid no attention to these things; and for this reason to have strayed entirely from the truth, those who explain otherwise than what the divine and prophetic Scripture intends that passage, The Lord created me the beginning of his ways. For the meaning of the word "created" is not single, as you know.

For in this place "created" is the same as "appointed over the works made by him," made, I say, through the Son himself. But here "created" is not to be understood in the same sense as "made." For to make and to create differ from one another. Is not he himself thy father who possessed thee, and made thee, and created thee? Says Moses in the great canticle of Deuteronomy. So also one might rightly reprove those others: O rash and reckless men! Was therefore the firstborn of every creature a made thing, he who was begotten from the womb before the daystar, of whom Wisdom says, Before all the hills he begot me? Finally, who has read that in many places of the divine eloquences he is said to have been begotten, but nowhere that the Son was made? By which arguments those are plainly convicted of holding false opinions concerning the generation of the Lord, who dare to call his divine and inexplicable generation a making.

Therefore neither is the admirable and divine unity to be separated into three divinities, nor is the dignity and supreme greatness of the Lord to be diminished by the word of making: but we must believe in God the Father almighty, and in Christ Jesus his Son, and in the Holy Spirit: and that the Word is united to the God of all things: for, I, he says, and the Father are one; and, I am in the Father, and the Father is in me. In this way, namely, the divine Trinity and the holy proclamation of the monarchy shall be kept whole.