On the Councils

He congratulates the bishops of Gaul for having denied communion to Saturninus, and for having condemned the Sirmian faith.—But having received the letters of your blessed faith, whose slowness and infrequency I understand to have arisen from both the length and the remoteness of my exile; I rejoiced in the Lord that you had remained undefiled and unharmed by every contagion of the detestable heresy, and that you, as sharers in my exile—into which Saturninus, fearing his own conscience, had thrust me by deceiving the emperor—had clung to me in faith and spirit by denying him communion up to this time, now for a full three years: and that the impiety of an unfaithful faith, recently sent to you from the town of Sirmium, you had not only refused to receive, but had also condemned it when it was announced and made known to you.

I understood it to be necessary and dutiful for me now, as a bishop to bishops communicating with me in Christ, to transmit the conversations of a salutary and faithful discourse: and whereas previously I rejoiced only on account of the uncertainty of events, in the consciousness alone of my own heart, that I was free from all these things, I might now rejoice in the integrity of our common faith. O the unshaken steadfastness of your glorious conscience! O the firm house built upon the foundation of the faithful rock! O the unharmed and undisturbed constancy of an inviolate will! For it has remained, and even now continues to remain, after the profession of the synod of Béziers, in which I had denounced before certain of you as witnesses the patrons of this heresy that was being forced upon some—innocent, inviolate, devout.

They do not yield to the heresy about to break forth, and break it when it does break forth. By their own example they move the Orientals to repentance.—For you awaited the glorious triumph of holy and unchangeable perseverance, not yielding to the threats, powers, and assaults of Saturninus: and when all the contests for initiating blasphemy against God were being set in motion, remaining faithful with me in Christ until now, you neither yielded beforehand to the occasion of the heresy about to break forth, nor now have you broken all its insolence in the encounter of its eruption. For you have conquered, Brothers, with the great rejoicing of our common faith: and the honor of your unharmed constancy has had a twofold glory, namely from the integrity of conscience and from the authority of example.

For the fame of your unperturbed and unshaken faith has moved certain of the Eastern bishops, late indeed, to some shame for the heresy nurtured and grown from that source: and having heard what had been most impiously written at Sirmium, they opposed the audacity of the irreligious by certain decrees of their own judgments. And although they resisted not without some scandal to the ears and offense to devout concern: yet they resisted to such a degree that they compelled those very men who had then at Sirmium conceded to the opinion of Potamius and Ossius, agreeing and confirming it as their own view, to a profession of ignorance and error; so that those men in turn, by subscribing, condemned what they had done. Which they did for this reason, that they might condemn something else beforehand.

Whose communion they are to avoid.—But your invincible faith even now holds the conspicuous glory of its conscience: and content to do nothing underhand, nothing ambiguous, nothing timid, it persists securely in Christ in the profession of its freedom, abstaining from the communion of those who keep in exile the bishops who contradict their blasphemies, and not adding itself to the guilt of unjust judgment through the assent of crafty dissimulation. For after the great and heavy grief of all of us on account of those things which were being done irreligiously by the impious, the Lord's communion is contained within ourselves alone from the time when the Church began to be vexed by these disturbances, so that bishops are exiled, priests are removed, peoples are terrified, faith is endangered, and the decrees of the Lord's teaching are established by human judgment and power.

This your unharmed faith neither pretends not to know, nor professes itself able to endure, understanding that it will not be free from the guilt of conscience even by the very assent of dissimulation.

The occasion of this letter. The difficulty of the work.—And indeed, although in all that you have done and are doing you bear witness to the steadfast freedom and security of your faith; yet you also prove in this the ardor of a fervent spirit, that some of you, whose writings could be conveyed to me, have desired that what the Orientals are doing and have done in their professions of faith should be made known to you by the letters of my humble self: adding also out of the affection of charity that I should indicate what I myself think concerning all their said statements; since it is most difficult to express in words the very sense of my own proper faith according to the affection of interior understanding, let alone that it should be easy to expound the understanding of what is said by others.

A adding out of the affection of charity, that I should indicate what I myself think concerning all their said statements; since it is most difficult to express in words the very sense of my own proper faith according to the affection of interior understanding, let alone that it should be easy to expound the understanding of what is said by others.

Under what condition it ought to be read. The usefulness of the work.—I beseech you, however, through the mercy of the Lord, that since I shall have discourse with you through these letters concerning divine matters, as you wished, and concerning the undefiled conscience of our faith, no one should think that I am to be judged before the completion of the discourse, from the opening of the letters. For it is unjust, when the reason of what is said has not been ascertained to the end, to bring a prejudged sentence from the beginnings whose cause is still unknown: since judgment is to be made not of things begun for the purpose of understanding, but of things completed for the purpose of understanding.

For I have a fear not concerning you, as the Lord is witness to my mind, but concerning certain persons who are too cautious and prudent in their own estimation, not understanding that the precept was given to them through the blessed Apostle not to be over-wise: whom I fear will be unwilling to come to know all those things whose completion is to be furnished by me at the end, while they avoid having the truth understood from those things which will be completed. But whoever shall have undertaken to read and learn these things, let him grant to himself and to me the measure of faithful patience, and let him review everything through to the completion. For perhaps this entire discourse of my faith will achieve that neither stealthy heretics obtain what they wish, nor perfect Catholics fail to attain what they desire.

What it comprises.—I comply, therefore, with the most impatient will of your Charity: and I have resolved to send all the statements of faith which have been published at various times and places since the holy synod of Nicaea, together with expositions of all the opinions and even the words added by me. In these, if anything is understood to be faulty, no one can assign the fault of the words to me: for I am myself a messenger, as you wished, not an author. But if anything is found to be correct and prescribed from apostolic teachings, no one doubts that the glory therein belongs not to the interpreter but to the author. I, however, have faithfully transmitted what was done: do you yourselves verify by the judgment of your faith whether these things are catholic or heretical.

What the aim is. The mutual suspicions of the Orientals and the Gauls.—For although it was necessary to reply to your letters, by which you had sent me the Lord's communion in the writings of your faith; and certain of you also, summoned to the synod which seemed likely to be held in Bithynia, maintaining with firmest constancy of faith their communion with me, were abstaining from the rest outside Gaul: and it was indeed worthy of episcopal ministry and voice, in the face of so great a fury of heretics, to share with you through letters some counsels of devout faith. For the word of God, though exiled with our bodies, could not be bound and detained so as to be unable to communicate with you wherever you might be.

But especially when I had learned that synods were to be assembled at Ancyra and Ariminum, and that two or one from each of the Gallic provinces were to come there; I judged that those things which are held back between us and the Eastern bishops by mutual suspicions should be set forth and made known to you by me, who was being detained in the regions of the East, though you already knew them: so that, since both you had condemned this heresy bursting forth from Sirmium, and they had judged it with anathema, you might yet know in what profession of faith that very thing which you had done had also been accomplished by the Eastern bishops; and I might not allow you, whom I would most wish to shine forth as approved in the coming synods, thinking catholically with one and the same apostolic sense of faith, to differ in any respect from the sincerity of the catholic faith through ignorance of the meaning of certain words.

Why the decrees of the Orientals against the Sirmian formula are here reported.—And indeed I consider it right and fitting that, before I enter upon discourse concerning the suspicions and disagreements about words, I should set forth with the most complete words I can those things which have been said and decreed by the Eastern bishops against the heresy written at Sirmium: not because all things have not been most plainly published by others; but because a translation expressed word for word from Greek into Latin very often brings obscurity, since the preserved correspondence of words cannot maintain the same completeness for intelligible simplicity.

What was attempted in the Sirmian formula.—For you remember that in that very writing of the blasphemy recently composed at Sirmium, this was attempted and labored at: that while the Father alone is proclaimed the one God of all, the Son should be denied to be God: and while it is decreed that silence be kept concerning homoousios and homoiousios, the decree was that the Son of God should be confirmed as born either from nothing as a creature, or from another essence as a consequence of creatures, and not from God the Father as God. Then furthermore in the statement that the Father is greater in honor, dignity, glory, and majesty, this was sought: that the Son should be in want of all those things in which the Father is greater.

Finally, while His unknowable birth is asserted, through this decree of ignorance we were commanded not to know that He is from God: as though it could be commanded and decreed that someone should either know what he is going to be ignorant of, or be ignorant of what he has known.

The very plague of the most impious blasphemy in its solid form I have reluctantly subjoined, so that the power and the reasoning of the responses which were set forth in opposition by the Orientals might be more fully known, whose endeavor it was to oppose all the arts of the heretics according to the sense of their own understanding.

That God is one. That the word Substance is to be passed over in silence. That the Father is greater than the Son.—Since there was thought to be some dispute concerning the faith, all things were carefully treated and discussed at Sirmium, in the presence of our most holy brothers and fellow-bishops, Valens, Ursacius, and Germinius. It is established that there is one God almighty and Father, as is believed throughout the whole world: and his only Son Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour, begotten from him before the ages. Moreover, that two gods neither can nor ought to be proclaimed; because the Lord himself said: I go to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God. Therefore the God of all is one, as the Apostle taught. Is he the God of the Jews only? Is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also. Since indeed there is one God, who justifies the circumcision by faith, and the uncircumcision through faith.

But the other matters also were agreed upon, and could have no disagreement. But as for what was moving certain persons or many concerning substance, which is called in Greek ousia, that is (to be understood more expressly), homousion, or what is called homoeusion, no mention whatsoever ought to be made of it; nor should anyone proclaim it, for this cause and reason, that it is not contained in the divine Scriptures, and that it is beyond human knowledge, nor can anyone narrate the birth of the Son, of whom it is written, Who shall declare his generation? For it is manifest that the Father alone knows how he begot his Son, and the Son how he was begotten by the Father. There is no ambiguity that the Father is greater.

It can be doubtful to no one that the Father is greater than the Son in honour, dignity, glory, majesty, and in the very name of Father, as he himself testifies: He who sent me is greater than I. And that this is catholic, no one is ignorant: that there are two persons of the Father and the Son, the Father greater, the Son subject together with all those things which the Father has subjected to him. That the Father has no beginning, is invisible, is immortal, is impassible. But that the Son was born from the Father, God from God, light from light. Whose generation, as was said before, no one knows save his own Father. But that the Son of God himself, our Lord and God, as it is read, took flesh or body, that is, man, from the womb of the Virgin Mary, as the Angel proclaimed. And as all the Scriptures teach, and especially the Apostle himself, the teacher of the Gentiles, that he took man from the Virgin Mary, through whom he suffered.

But that clause is the sum of the whole faith and its confirmation, that the Trinity must always be preserved, as we read in the Gospel: Go and baptize all nations in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. The Trinity is a whole and perfect number. But the Paraclete Spirit is through the Son; who, having been sent, came according to the promise, to instruct, teach, and sanctify the Apostles and all believers.

What essence and substance are. The Synod of Ancyra, A.D. 358. The Son, as image, is other than the Father not in name only.—After so many and so great professions of impiety had been published, the Eastern bishops, gathered together in one place, drew up in turn these contrary definitions of their judgments. But because the naming of essence and substance is frequently necessary for us, it must be understood what essence signifies, lest, when we are about to speak of things, we be ignorant of the meaning of the words. Essence is the thing which is, or that from which it is, and which subsists in that which remains. Moreover, essence, and nature, and genus, and substance of any individual thing can be said. But essence is properly so called because it always is. Which is also therefore substance, because the thing which is must necessarily subsist in itself; but whatever subsists, without doubt remains in genus or nature or substance.

When therefore we say that essence signifies nature or genus or substance, we understand it of that thing which in all these always subsists in being. Now therefore let us review the definitions of faith prescribed by the Easterners.

"If anyone, hearing that the Son of God is the image of the invisible God, should say that the image of God is the same as the invisible God himself: as though not confessing him to be truly Son, let him be anathema."

Likewise he is other, as receiving life from the Father.—The assertion of those wishing to proclaim the Father and the Son by names only is excluded; since every image is an indifferent likeness of that to whose image it is co-imaged. For no one is an image of himself; but the image must necessarily show him whose image it is. An image, therefore, is a likeness fashioned and indistinguishable from the thing, for the purpose of being made equal to that thing. There is therefore the Father, and there is also the Son: because the Son is the image of the Father; and he who is an image must necessarily have in himself, in order to be the image of the thing, the form and nature and essence of its author, according as he is an image.

"And if anyone, hearing the Son say, For as the Father has life in himself, so also he has given to the Son to have life in himself, should say that he who received life from the Father, who also confesses this same thing, I live because of the Father, is the same as he who gave it: let him be anathema."

The Son is not dissimilar in essence from the Father, in that he is his image.—The person of the receiver and of the giver is distinguished, lest the one and only be the same. For since it is anathema to have believed in a solitary and unique one in the profession of receiver and giver, it cannot be understood that he who gave received from himself. For he is not alone, who both lives and through whom one lives; because one is he who lives of himself, another he who professes that he lives through his author: and no one will profess that he who uses life and he through whom the cause of living exists are one and the same.

"And if anyone, hearing that the only-begotten Son of the invisible God is like him, should not say that the Son, who is the image of the invisible God and whose image is also understood according to essence, is like in essence: as though not truly calling him Son, let him be anathema."

Likewise, in that as the Father, so he himself has life in himself. The life of the Father and of the Son is the very essence of both.—An indistinguishable and not dissimilar nature is confirmed. For since the only-begotten Son of God is also the image of the invisible God, he must necessarily be of like essence through form and nature. Or how is the nature of the same genus distinguished between the Son and the Father; when the Son, subsisting in those things which are proper to the Father, stands firm through the nature begotten in himself, of glory, that is, as it is, not of outward form and appearance alone, but of the inner reality and nature. For other images, as is said in book vii of On the Trinity.: from different metals or pigments or kinds or arts render the likenesses of those whose images they have been fashioned; but they do not present the things themselves.

Hence it is easily apparent that in the foregoing decree, where he who says the image of God is the same as God is condemned, the image is not denied to be the same in nature, but in subsistence and person. To wit, of power, of might, of invisibility, of essence? And so in these equal goods of divinity it is understood that neither is he lesser, since he is Son; nor does this one excel, since he is Father: since the Son is co-imaged to the Father in form and is not dissimilar in genus; because the likeness of the Son begotten from the substance of the Father does not admit diversity of substance, and the Son and image of the invisible God embraces in himself all the paternal divinity, of whatever kind and however great its form is: and this truly is to be Son, namely, to have rendered back in himself the truth of the paternal form by the perfect likeness of the co-imaged nature.

"And if anyone, hearing this, For as the Father has life in himself, so also he has given to the Son to have life in himself, should not say that the Son is also like the Father according to essence, testifying that he has it just as he said: let him be anathema. For it is manifest that the life which is understood in the Father signifies substance; and the life also of the Only-begotten, which was generated from the Father, being understood as essence, thus signifies the likeness of essence to essence."

There is joined to such a confession of his origin the perfect birth of an indistinguishable nature. For what in both is life, that in both is signified as essence. And in the life which is generated from life, that is, the essence which is born from essence, since it is born not dissimilar—namely because life is from life—it holds in itself the not dissimilar nature of its origin; because the likeness of the born and the begetting essence, that is, of the life which is possessed and which was given (namely given by the Father to the Son), does not differ. For what God begot from himself, since it is from the likeness of his own nature, he did not abandon in which the innate likeness holds the property of the natural substance. For he has not given other than what he has: and as he who has life, so he gave life to be had.

And thus what is born from essence, as life from life, like to itself according to essence, the essence of the born and the begetting admits no diversity and dissimilarity.

"If anyone, hearing he founded me or created me, and he begot me from the same source, should understand this he begot me not so much from the likeness of essence, but should say that he begot me and he created me are the same: as though not saying that the Son perfect from God is signified by the Son through two names (but through two names, that is, he created me and he begot, saying only creation and by no means Son); as Wisdom has handed down the devout understanding from two: let him be anathema."

The word he created me is to be understood in light of the following he begot me. The distinction between birth and creation.—Against those who say that the Son of God is a creature or a creation, the following reasoning is brought to bear. For the profane presumption of the heretics' impiety arises from this, that they say they have read, The Lord founded or created me; for the same thing seems to be understood by founding or creating: but suppressing the following sentence, from which the former takes its meaning, they seize from the first the authority for their impiety, so as to call him a creature, because Wisdom said that she was created. But if she was created, how could she also be born? Because every birth, of whatever kind it is, consists in its own nature from the begetting nature: but creation takes its beginning from the power of the creator, namely a Creator able to found a creature from nothing.

Wisdom therefore, which said that it was created, in what follows likewise said that it was also begotten: referring creation to the unchangeable nature of the parent, which, outside the manner and custom of human birth, without any diminution or change of itself, created from itself what it begot. For the work of the creator has no experience of passion, or of mixture, or of birth. For that which is created from nothing begins at some point to exist. And he who creates effects by his power what he founds: and creation is a work of power, not a birth of nature from a begetting nature. But birth is the perfect advance of legitimate origin and genuine nature: for the begotten nature took nature from the generating nature. But because the Son of God was not begotten after the example of bodily parturition, but perfect God was born from perfect God; therefore Wisdom says that she was created, excluding every nature of bodily passion in her generation.

How aptly she explains the nature of her origin by saying at once that she was created and begotten. Those who attribute to the Son only a likeness of power are condemned.—But in order to show that the nature in her is not of creation but of birth, she added also that she was begotten, so that by confessing herself both created and begotten, she might provide a complete understanding of her birth: while she both signifies the unchangeable nature of the Father in creation, and shows that the substance of her own nature, begotten from God the Father, is legitimate and proper. And so the word brought the understanding of perfect birth through creation and generation: since the one is without change, the other is in the property of nature. And both become one, and one both perfect: while the Son, born from God and without change of God, is so born from the Father as to be created; and the Father, unchangeable from himself and natural to the Son, so founds the Son as to beget him.

The heresy therefore, which dared to profess that the Son of God is a creature, is condemned: because the following profession of natural generation extinguishes the impious opinion of a creature from nothing, since through it the impassible perfection of divinity is shown.

"And if anyone, in the Son, the likeness of the Father according to essence—which the Son himself reveals through what he says: For as the Father has life in himself, so also he has given to the Son to have life in himself; and according to efficacy through what he teaches: For whatever the Father does, the same the Son also does likewise—granting only the likeness according to efficacy, but defrauding the Son of the likeness according to essence, which is the most principal point of our faith: as though defrauding himself of the knowledge of eternal life, which is in the Father and the Son: let him be anathema."

The likeness of power exists only from the likeness of nature. Life signifies essence.—Heretics, cornered by the authorities of the Scriptures, are accustomed to grant to the Son only this much: that he is like the Father in power alone, but they take away from him the likeness of nature—foolish and impious men, not understanding that the likeness of power exists only from the likeness of nature. For an inferior nature never attains the power of a nature superior to and more excellent than itself. Or what will those who assert this profess concerning God the almighty Father, if the power of an inferior nature is made equal to his power? For it cannot be denied that the Son is able to do the same things; since he said: Whatever the Father does, the same the Son also does likewise. But the likeness of nature follows upon the likeness of power, when he says: As the Father has life in himself, so also he has given to the Son to have life in himself.

In life there is the signification of nature and essence: which, as it is possessed, so it is taught to have been given for possessing. The likeness of life therefore holds the likeness of power: for the likeness of power cannot belong to a dissimilar nature. And so it is necessary that the likeness of essence should follow upon the likeness of power: because just as what the Father does, the same the Son also does, so just as the Father possessing life, so he gave life to the Son to be possessed. The rashness of an impious profession is therefore condemned, which, while confessing the likeness of power, has dared to proclaim the unlikeness of nature: since the faith of our principal hope is to confess the undifferentiated substance of divinity in the Father and the Son.

"And if anyone, while professing to believe in the Father and the Son, calls the Father the father of a Son of dissimilar essence to himself, but of similar efficacy; as though speaking profane and novel words against the essence of the Son, and destroying the truth that he is truly the Son of God: let him be anathema."

Heretics deceitfully confessing the Father and the Son. Those who deny the Son to be other than the Father on account of the likeness of nature are refuted.—Heretics very frequently elude the truth with confused and mingled words, and capture the ears of the unwary with the sound of common vocabulary, proclaiming the Father and the Son by names alone, and not also through the truth of a natural and genuine essence: because they know that God is called the father of all creatures, and they remember that certain holy ones are called sons of God. Following this example they confess the Father and the Son according to the common names of the universe; so that Father and Son are said rather than are. For they are said, but are not also, if in these there is a nature separated by a different essence: since the truth of the paternal name cannot be acquired except from offspring of its own nature.

A father therefore cannot be called the father of an essence alien to and unlike himself; because a perfect birth does not admit a divergent diversity of the original substance. All this impiety is therefore repudiated, which speaks of the Father not as the father of a Son begotten from himself according to his own nature. For God will not be called father by reason of having a creation similar to his power and efficacy; but if he has begotten a nature not dissimilar and not alien to himself in essence: because natural birth does not admit a diversity of paternal nature. And on this account those are under anathema who assert that the Father is the father of a nature dissimilar to himself: so that from God something other than God was born, and they think that the essence of the Father has degenerated from itself in the Son by begetting.

For they destroy, as far as in them lies, that very unbegotten and immutable essence of the Father, who have dared to impose upon it, in the birth of his Only-begotten, the unlikeness of a degenerate natural essence.

"And if anyone, while understanding the Son to be like in essence to him whose Son he is understood to be, says that the Son is the same as the Father, or a part of the Father, or by emanation or some passion, as bodily sons are, an incorporeal Son subsisting from an incorporeal Father: let him be anathema."

Guard is taken in all things against the vices of individual perversities, and no occasion for fraud is admitted. For many of the heretics say that the Son is like the Father in divinity, in order that through the property of likeness they may confirm that the Father is the same as the Son: because an undifferentiated likeness seems to admit the occasion of something unique and singular. For what does not differ in kind seems to remain in a union of nature.

The Son, by reason of being born, is neither the same as the Father nor other than the Father. Those who want the Son to be other than the Father, on account of the distinction of person.—But birth does not admit this fable; because union does not have birth. For what is born has a father of its birth. Nor, because the divinity of the one born is undifferentiated from the one begetting, is he therefore both the generator and the begotten; since the one generating and the one born cannot be other than distinct from one another, nor again can the one born and the one generating be unlike. Anathema therefore is he who will proclaim the likeness of nature in the Father and the Son so as to abolish the personal significance of the Son: because although thing does not differ from thing through mutual likeness, yet likeness itself, not admitting union, confesses the Father and the Son through the fact that the Son is the immutable likeness of the Father.

For the Son is not a part of the Father, so that the one born and the one generating could be called one. Nor is he an emanation, so that by a continuous flow through a bodily and indivisible procession the same flow retained in its origin should itself be, by a coherent series and extension, the origin of what the flow is. But he is a perfect birth, remaining with the likeness of nature: not bodily begun by bodily conception and birth, but an incorporeal Son subsisting from an incorporeal Father according to the likeness of the same nature.

"And if anyone, because the Father is never understood to be the Son, and because the Son is never understood to be the Father, says that the Son is other than the Father, because the Father is one and the Son is another, according to what was said, There is another who bears witness to me, the Father who sent me: on account of this pious property of the person of the Father and the Son to be understood in the Church, fearing lest the Son and the Father be at some point understood to be the same, does not say that he is like the Father also according to essence: let him be anathema."

How cautiously two heresies against the Son of God are destroyed.—The Lord said to the Apostles: Be wise as serpents, and simple as doves. By which he wished there to be in us the nature of animals differing from one another: but in such a way that the simplicity of the dove should temper the prudence of the serpent, and the prudence of the serpent should instruct the simplicity of the dove; and there should come to be both a simple wisdom and a wise simplicity: which precept has been observed in the exposition of this faith.

For whereas the preceding statement, of which we have spoken, had taken care lest, through the likeness of essence, a personal union be proclaimed; and lest the indifference of nature should destroy the birth of the Son; and lest there be for us one solitary being in our understanding, because one would not differ from the other in kind: yet by the subsequent statement, against that prudence of the serpent to which we are commanded to be conformed together with the simplicity of the dove, through a simple and apostolic prudence a counter-measure was again taken; lest perchance through the fact that personal union is not admitted, because the Father is one and the Son is another, the proclamation of a dissimilar nature might again creep in: lest, when one is he who sent and another is he who was sent (because the one sent and the one sending are not one), the one sent and the one sending should be thought to be of a separate and dissimilar nature, since the one born and the one begetting cannot be of a diverse essence.

The likeness of an undifferentiated nature is therefore retained in the Father and the Son through the birth of essence: yet the likeness of nature does not bring harm to the person, so that the one sent and the one sending should be one. Nor again, in the property of person—since one and the same cannot be called both son and father to himself—is the likeness of nature taken away. And so both the truth of birth advances toward the likeness of essence, and the likeness of essence does not lose the personal truth of birth. Nor again does the profession of the one begetting and the one begotten exclude the likeness of essence; because although the one begetting and the one begotten cannot be one, yet the one born and the one generating are not of diverse nature.

"And if anyone understands God to be the Father of the Only-begotten Son at some point in time, and does not understand that the Only-begotten Son existed before all times and beyond all human estimation without passion: as though passing beyond the evangelical proclamation, which has spurned any interval of times between the Father and the Son, but has faithfully taught us that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God: let him be anathema."

The Father is not within time. The Gospel teaches that the Son already exists rather than is being born.—It is a pious profession that the Father is not contained within time: for the truth of the paternal name, which is beyond time, exceeds every sense of understanding. And although the devout confession of the paternal name itself, through which the impassible origin of the one born exists, is itself a religious act: yet it is not held within time; because the eternal and infinite God cannot be understood as a temporal father, and according to the evangelical proclamation the Only-begotten God the Word is known to be already in the beginning with God rather than to be being born.

"And if anyone says that the Father is older in time than the Only-begotten Son from himself, and that the Son is younger than the Father: let him be anathema."

The Son, as the image of the Father, is not younger than him. From the fact that God is once and for all Father, he always was Father, and always also the Son.—The likeness of essence, configured in kind, is also taught to be undifferentiated in time: lest he who is the image of God, who is the Word, who is God with God in the beginning, who is like the Father, should, by an interval of time interposed between himself and the Father, not have perfectly in himself what he is both as image and as Word and as God. For if he is proclaimed younger in time, he has lost the truth both of image and of likeness: because that which is found dissimilar in time would no longer be a likeness. Because that very fact, that God is Father, cannot have any time in which he is not Father: from which neither can there be time in the Son in which he is not Son.

And on this account, neither is the Father to be said to be older than the Son, nor the Son younger than the Father: because the truth of either name cannot exist without the other.

"And if anyone refers the timeless substance of the Only-begotten Son from the Father to the unbegotten essence of God, as though calling the Son the Father: let him be anathema."

The Son, although timeless, is nevertheless not unbegotten.—The preceding definition seemed to give an occasion to heretics, when the time of the Son's birth was denied (because it would be impious if the Father were in time: but he would be in time if the Son were subject to time): so that through this opportunity of denied time, under the name of the Son, the Father, who is unbegotten, might be proclaimed as singular and unique, himself both father and son to himself; because where the time of being born is excluded, there the opinion of unbegottenness seems to be admitted; so that one whose birth is not in time should not be thought to have been born.

Therefore, lest through this occasion of denied time the heresy of union (Sabellian) should creep in; this impiety is condemned, which dares to refer a timeless birth to the unique and singular substance of the unbegotten essence: since it is one thing to be timeless, and another thing to be unbegotten; of which the one has (though outside of time) a birth, while the other is itself alone and the same, its own eternal author of what it is.

The reasoning behind these definitions. The manner of exposition employed by Hilary. By whom subscription to them was extorted. A synopsis of these.—We have run through, dearest Brethren, all the published definitions of faith of the Eastern bishops, which they composed against the heresy that recently emerged, having assembled a synod among themselves.

And we, as much as we were able, adapted the language of our exposition to the sense of their meaning, serving rather their words than to be considered authors of words foreign to them: by which they decree against the new and profane impiety these established principles of their conscience and of the doctrine long since received, and compelled those who had written down this heresy at Sirmium, or had received it when written down, to confess their ignorance and to subscribe to such decrees: where the Son is the perfect image of the Father; where under the property of an indifferent image, the Son is not abolished by profane fraud so as to be the Father; where the Son, proclaimed as the image of the Father through the truth of likeness, does not differ from the substance of the Father, whose image he is, by a diversity of substance; where through the life held from the Father and the life received from the Son, the Father has nothing differing in the substance which is signified in life from what the Son received to hold; where the Son who is begotten is not a creature, but a substance undivided from the nature of the Father; where just as the power between Father and Son is indifferent, so the essence suffers no diversity between them; where the Father, in begetting the Son, degenerates nothing from himself in him by a diversity of nature; where because the likeness of nature differs in nothing between the two, yet the property of likeness rejects the union of personal names, lest he who is called both Father and Son be one subsisting person; where because it is piously said both that the Father sends and the Son is sent, yet in nothing is the essence discerned between Father and Son, that is, between the one sent and the one sending; where the truth of the paternal name is not contained within time; where the Son is not later than the Father in time; where the perfect nativity beyond all time does not admit in itself the error of innascibility.

At what time the decrees were published. On what occasion, and why. Then other creeds.—And all this doctrine of faith that has been published, dearest Brethren, emerged through a few Easterners relative to the number of the whole, in these very days near to those in which you rejected the heresy thrust upon you: the reason for expounding it was that silence concerning one substance was being decreed. But already in earlier and various times, many causes on both sides demanding it, it was necessary that other creeds be written, and what these are like will be understood from the texts themselves. For when all that was done by them is known, we shall then more easily and more fully bring a religious resolution, congruent with unity, of those matters about which the question is among us.

An exposition (published in the year 341) of the ecclesiastical faith, which was set forth in the synod held at the Encaenia of the completed church of Antioch. The ninety-seven bishops who were present set it forth, when one of the bishops had come under suspicion of holding perverse opinions.

We believe, in accordance with the evangelical and apostolic tradition, in one God the Father almighty, builder and maker and provider of all things that exist, from whom are all things; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, his only-begotten Son, God through whom are all things, who was begotten from the Father, God from God, whole from whole, one from one, perfect from perfect, king from king, Lord from Lord, the word, wisdom, life, true light, true way, resurrection, shepherd, door, the unchangeable and immutable, the incommutable image of divinity and essence and power and glory, the firstborn of all creation, who was always in the beginning with God, the Word God, according to what is said in the Gospel, And the Word was God, through whom all things were made, and in whom all things consist; who in the last days descended from above, and was born of a virgin according to the Scriptures, and was made a lamb, the mediator of God and men, predestined for our faith, and the leader of life.

For he said: I came down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. Who suffered and rose again for us on the third day, and ascended into the heavens, and sits at the right hand of the Father, and is to come again with glory to judge the living and the dead. And in the Holy Spirit, who was given to believers for consolation and sanctification and completion, according to what the Lord Jesus Christ also ordained when he said to his disciples: Go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: manifestly the Father truly Father, and certainly the Son truly Son, and the Holy Spirit truly Holy Spirit; and these names proposed not simply nor idly, but signifying carefully the proper substance and order and glory of each one named, so that they are indeed three by substance, but one by harmony.

"Having therefore this faith, and being about to hold it from the beginning even to the end in the sight of God and Christ, we anathematize every heretical and perverse sect: and if anyone teaches beyond the wholesome faith of the Scriptures, saying either that there is a time, or a space, or an age, which either is or was prior to the begotten Son: let him be anathema. And if anyone calls the Son a creature, as one of the creatures; or a nativity, as nativities are; or a making, as makings are, and not as the divine Scriptures have handed down each several thing, as has been said above; and if anyone teaches or preaches otherwise than what we have received: let him be anathema. For we truly and with fear believe and follow all things that have been handed down in the divine Scriptures by the prophets and by the apostles."

How far this faith is suspect.—This faith perhaps seems to have spoken less expressly concerning the indifferent likeness of Father and Son, especially since it held this concerning the Father and Son and Holy Spirit: that the proper substance and order and glory of each one named is signified in the names, so that they are indeed three by substance, but one by harmony.

It is excused by the scope of the council. A new heresy after the Nicene synod. Those among the Easterners who rightly speak of three substances of the Trinity.—And first it must be known that the assembly at Antioch was not against the heresy which dared to proclaim the Father and Son to be of dissimilar substance, but against that which after the holy Nicene synod had burst forth to the point of wishing to ascribe three names to the Father, of which we shall treat in its proper place. For I remember that at the beginning of my discourse I asked the patience and equanimity of readers and hearers until the completion of all my words, lest any rash person should become a judge against me before the full discourse was known.

Therefore the assembled holy synod, wishing to destroy that impiety which would evade the truth of the names of Father and Son and Holy Spirit by their number, so that, with the cause of each name not subsisting, a threefold appellation would obtain a union under the falsity of names, and the Father alone and one and the same would hold both the name of Holy Spirit and of Son: for this reason they said there are three substances, teaching the persons of the subsisting ones through substances, not separating the substance of Father and Son by the diversity of a dissimilar essence. And what was said—that they are indeed three by substance, but one by harmony—is not open to reproach: because when the Spirit, that is the Paraclete, is named together with them, it is fitting that unity be proclaimed by harmony rather than by essence through the likeness of substance.

That by this formula the same essence of Father and Son is proclaimed. The distinction of nativity and innascibility. The Son is immutable.—Moreover, the entire foregoing discourse has in nothing distinguished the Father and Son by a diversity of essence and nature. For where it is said, God from God, whole from whole, there is no doubt that the whole God is born from the whole God. For the nature of God from God does not differ; and the whole from whole is in him the very same things in which the Father is. One from one excludes the sufferings of human birth and conception: so that while he is one from one, he who is one from one, perfect from perfect, is not from elsewhere, nor different, nor other. Nativity does not differ from innascibility except in the cause of origin, since the perfection of each does not differ. King from King. Power co-named by one and the same name does not admit dissimilarity of power. Lord from Lord.

Lordship too is equalized in the Lord; nor does the dominion confessed in both without diversity admit difference. But that which after many other things is added—unchangeable and immutable, the incommutable image of divinity and essence and power and glory—is absolute. For God from God, whole from whole, one from one, perfect from perfect, king from king, Lord from Lord, since the Son also subsists born in that entire glory and nature of divinity in which the Father remains, he also has this from the paternal substance, that he cannot be made mutable. For in his being born, the nature from which he was born was not changed; but the one born obtained an immutable essence from the authority of an immutable nature. For although he is an image, yet he is an immutable image (the nature in him, that is, not having been changed through dissimilarity from the paternal essence from which he was begotten), because in him the image of the paternal essence would be born.

Now indeed when he is taught to be the firstborn of all creation, and that same one is said to have always been in the beginning with God, the Word God; while he is born first, he is shown to have been born; while he always was, he is not separated from the Father by time either. Therefore it cannot appear that a division of substances (understand: by this synod) (which aimed at nothing other than to exclude by the name of three substances the union of a threefold appellation) was introduced to the separation of a diverse substance in the Son and in the Father: since the entire exposition of the faith distinguishes Father and Son, the innascible and the only-begotten, neither by time, nor by name, nor by essence, nor by dignity, nor by dominion. It is also worthy of our common conscience to know the other creeds of these same Eastern bishops written at various places and times, so that through multiple confessions the sincerity of their conscience may be understood.

The holy synod assembled at Sardica from various provinces of the Eastern regions—the Thebaid, Egypt, Palestine, Arabia, Phoenicia, Coele Syria, Mesopotamia, Cilicia, Cappadocia, Pontus, Paphlagonia, Galatia, Bithynia, the Hellespont, Asia, the two Phrygias, Pisidia, the Cycladic islands, Pamphylia, Caria, Lydia, Europe, Thrace, Haemimontus, Moesia, the two Pannonias—has set forth this faith.

"We believe in one God the Father almighty, creator and maker of all things, from whom every fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named. We believe also in his only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ, who was begotten from the Father before all ages, God from God, light from light, through whom all things were made that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible: who is the word, and wisdom, and power, and life, and true light: and who in the last days was incarnate for our sake, and born of the holy Virgin, who was crucified, and died, and was buried, and rose from the dead on the third day, and was received into heaven, and sits at the right hand of the Father, coming to judge the living and the dead, and to render to each according to his works; whose kingdom remains without cessation through immeasurable ages. For he sits at the right hand of the Father not only in this age, but also in the age to come.

We believe also in the Holy Spirit, that is, the Paraclete, whom he promised to the Apostles and sent after his return to the heavens to teach them and to bring all things to their remembrance, through whom also the souls of those who sincerely believe in him are sanctified. But those who say that the Son of God is from non-existing things, or from another substance, and not from God, and that there was some time or age when he was not, the holy and catholic Church recognizes as alien. Likewise also those who say there are three gods; or that Christ is not God and before the ages, nor Christ, nor the Son of God; or that he himself is the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit; or that the Son is innascible; or that the Father begat the Son neither by counsel nor by will: the holy and catholic Church anathematizes."

This faith establishes the eternal origin of the Son, and that from the substance of God.—This exposition of the faith has employed brief but most complete definitions. For by condemning those who would say that the Son is from things non-existent, it granted him an origin not begun but abiding. And lest this origin of his, from which he is born as abiding, be understood to be any other substance than that of God; it also pronounces as blasphemers those who would say that the Son was born from some other substance and not from God: and so since he subsists not from nothing, nor has his being from any source other than God, it cannot be doubted that he was born in those things which belong to God; because the only-begotten essence of the Son is generated neither from things non-existent, nor from any other than the unbegotten and eternal substance of the Father. It also rejects intervals of times and ages: so that he who differs not by nature cannot be separable by time.

God is none other than one; in what sense many may be spoken of. The foregoing faith proclaims one substance of the Father and the Son.—From every side to which anxious care could turn itself, access is blocked against the devices of heretics, lest any diversity be proclaimed in the Son. For it anathematizes those who say there are three gods: because according to the truth of nature, that substance does not admit a plurality of designations, except as is customary among men and Angels, when a name is given on account of the honor of merits, yet the substance of nature differs between them and God; and for this reason there are many gods. But in the nature of God, God is one; yet in such a way that the Son also is God, because in him the nature is not different: and since God is from God, it is impossible that both should not be God, whose essence is not distinguished by any difference of kind.

The plurality of the name in designation is rejected; because there is no diversity in the quality of nature. Since therefore it is anathema to say gods, and anathema to deny that the Son is God; it is absolutely shown that the unity of one name for both derives from the property of an undifferentiated substance: since in the confession of the unbegotten God the Father and the only-begotten God the Son, with neither differing from the other by dissimilarity of essence, both, though each is God, are nevertheless to be believed and proclaimed as one God. Therefore with very careful and diligent caution the faith of the bishops safeguards the indifference of the nature of the begotten and the begetting, confirming it by the union of the name.

Yet the faith rightly does not teach that the Son is a solitary God, nor that he is unbegotten. That he is born of will.—Yet lest again the proclamation of one God should wish to affirm a single and solitary substance of God without his offspring; it immediately condemns that rashness which, because God is one, would confess one and solitary God the Father, holding within himself the name both of Father and of Son: whereas in the generating Father and the born Son, God is to be proclaimed as one on account of the substance of nature undifferentiated from each other. The faith of the saints also knows not the Son as unbegotten: because the nature of the Son does not exist except from birth. But the nature of birth in him is so perfect, that he who was born from the substance of God is also born from his counsel and will.

For from will and counsel, not from the passion of bodily nature, is the absolute perfection of the essence of God born from the essence of God. It follows, moreover, that we should now review that faith which was written not long ago when Photinus was deposed from the episcopate.

We believe in one God the Father almighty, creator and maker, from whom all fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named. And in his only Son our Lord Jesus Christ, who before all ages was born from the Father, God from God, light from light, through whom all things were made in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible. Who is the Word, and wisdom, and power, and life, and the true light: who in the last days for our sake was embodied, and born of the holy Virgin, and was crucified, and died, and was buried: who also rose from the dead on the third day, and ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of the Father, and is to come at the consummation of the age to judge the living and the dead, and to render to each according to his works: whose kingdom, enduring without end, remains unto perpetual ages. For he shall be sitting at the right hand of the Father, not only in this age, but also in the age to come.

And in the Holy Spirit, that is, the Paraclete, whom, having promised to the Apostles, after he ascended into heaven, he sent to teach them and to remind them of all things, through whom also the souls of those who sincerely believe in him are sanctified.

But those who say: The Son is from things non-existent, or from another substance and not from God; and that there was a time or age when he was not: the holy and catholic Church regards as aliens.

But if anyone says that the Father and the Son are two gods: let him be anathema.

And if anyone, saying God is one, does not confess that Christ, the Son of God before the ages, served the Father in the creation of all things: let him be anathema.

And if anyone dares to say that the unbegotten God, or a part of him, was born of Mary: let him be anathema.

And if anyone says that the Son is from Mary according to foreknowledge or predestination, and does not say that he was born before the ages from the Father and was with God, and that all things were made through him: let him be anathema.

If anyone says that the substance of God is expanded or contracted: let him be anathema.

If anyone says that the expanded substance of God makes the Son; or names the extension of his substance, as seems good to him, the Son: let him be anathema.

If anyone says that the Son of God is an immanent or uttered word: let him be anathema.

If anyone says that the Son from Mary is a mere man: let him be anathema.

If anyone, saying that God and man were born of Mary, so understands God as the unbegotten God: let him be anathema.

If anyone, hearing that the Word was made flesh, thinks that the Word was transformed into flesh, or says that he received flesh undergoing change: let him be anathema.

If anyone, hearing that the only Son of God was crucified, says that his divinity (θεότητα) suffered corruption or passion (πάθος) or change or diminution or imperfection: let him be anathema.

If anyone says that in Let us make man, it was not the Father speaking to the Son, but God speaking to himself: let him be anathema.

If anyone says that it was not the Son who was seen by Abraham, but the unbegotten God, or a part of him: let him be anathema.

If anyone says that it was not the Son who wrestled with Jacob as a man, but the unbegotten God, or a part of him: let him be anathema.

If anyone does not understand The Lord rained from the Lord of the Son and the Father, but says that he rained from himself: let him be anathema. For the Lord the Son rained from the Lord the Father.

If anyone says that the Lord and the Lord, the Father and the Son (because the Lord rained from the Lord), are two gods: let him be anathema. For we do not equate or compare the Son to the Father, but we understand him as subject. For he did not descend upon Sodom without the will of the Father; nor did he rain of himself, but from the Lord, that is, by the authority of the Father; nor does he sit at the right hand by himself, but he hears the Father saying, Sit at my right hand.

If anyone says that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one person: let him be anathema.

If anyone, calling the Holy Spirit the Paraclete, says he is the unbegotten God: let him be anathema.

If anyone does not say, as our Lord taught us, that the Paraclete is other than the Son; for he said: And the Father will send you another Paraclete, whom I will ask: let him be anathema.

If anyone says that the Holy Spirit is a part of the Father or of the Son: let him be anathema.

If anyone says that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are three gods: let him be anathema.

If anyone understands in a Jewish sense, to the destruction of the only-begotten God before the ages, what was said: I am the first God, and I am the last God, and besides me there is no God, as though it were said for the destruction of idols and of those who are not gods: let him be anathema.

If anyone says that the Son was made by the will of God as some one thing among creatures: let him be anathema.

If anyone says that the Son was born against the will of the Father: let him be anathema. For the Father was not compelled, against his will, or led by natural necessity while unwilling, to beget the Son; but as soon as he willed, he showed him begotten from himself without time and without passion.

If anyone says that the Son is unbegotten and without beginning, so as to speak of two without beginning and two unbegotten and two unborn, and thus make two gods: let him be anathema. For the head, which is the beginning of all things, is the Son; but the head, which is the beginning of Christ, is God: for thus we refer all things through the Son to the one who is without beginning, the beginning of all things.

And again, confirming the understanding of Christianity, we say, that if anyone does not say that Christ the Son of God, subsisting before the ages and ministering to the Father for the completion of all things, but says that from the time he was born of Mary, from that point he was named Christ and Son, and received a beginning of being God: let him be anathema.

The manifold deceit of Photinus is refuted. The Son differs from the Father neither in substance nor in time.—Necessity and the occasion moved those who had then assembled to set forth the exposition of the faith more broadly and at greater length through manifold questions; because the heresy which was being revived through Photinus was attempting to creep into the catholic house by many hidden tunnels: so that through each individual kind of inviolate and uninjured faith, each individual kind of heretical and stealthy fraud might be countered; and there should be as many resolutions of faith as there were sought occasions of perfidy. And first, after that general and undoubted exposition of the sacraments, the beginning of setting forth the faith against the heretics commenced from this point.

"But those who say: The Son is from things non-existent, or from another substance and not from God; and that there was a time or age when he was not: the holy and catholic Church regards as aliens."

What place here is there for ambiguity? Or what remains from the conscience of sincere faith? He is not from things non-existent: so that he may have an existent origin. There is no other existent substance for his origin, save that alone which is God's: so that nothing else can be understood to have been born in him than all that is God's; because, not subsisting from nothing, he has his being from no other source. He does not differ in time: so that the Son also may be timeless together with the Father. All things therefore are inseparable between the unbegotten Father and the only-begotten Son, whom in time the very indifference of that one paternal existence alone, from which birth is derived, distinguishes in no respect of essence.

"If anyone says that the Father and the Son are two gods: let him be anathema.

And if anyone, saying God is one, does not confess that Christ, the Son of God before the ages, served the Father in the creation of all things: let him be anathema."

As they are one in the name of essence, so they are one in the kind of essence.—That very devout profession of the name grants us a complete understanding of the matter. For since it is a matter of condemnation to say that the Father and the Son are two gods; and again it is anathema to deny that the Son is God: the opinion of a substance diverse, one from the other, is excluded in the proclamation of two gods. For there is no other essence, besides that of God the Father from which God the Son is born as God without time. For since we necessarily confess God the Father, and absolutely proclaim Christ the Son of God as God, and meanwhile the irreligious confession of two gods is condemned: they cannot, according to the indifference of nature and the indifferent name, fail to be one in kind of essence, whose name of essence it is not permitted to be other than one.

"If anyone dares to say that the unbegotten God, or a part of him, was born of Mary: let him be anathema."

The Son and the Father are not one person. Against those who assert that the Son before Mary existed only through predestination.—Lest the fact that the name of the so-called essence in the Father and the Son is one, by reason of an indissimilar nature, should furnish an occasion to heretics for proclaiming that the innascible God, or a part of him, was born of Mary; provision was made by the definition of a saving sentence, that whoever confessed this should be anathema. For the devout unity of the name, established from the essence of an indifferent nature, did not take away the person of the begotten essence, so that the substance of the one and singular God should be understood through the union of the name: since the one name of both essences, that is, one God, is predicated on account of the indissimilar substance of the indiscrete nature in both.

"If anyone says that the Son exists before Mary according to foreknowledge and predestination, and not that he was born before the ages from the Father with God, and that all things were made through him: let him be anathema."

Those who are about to deny that the Son of God, our God of all, existed before his bodily birth, maintain that he existed according to foreknowledge and predestination, not according to the essence of a subsisting nature: that is, that through the Father's foreknowledge, because he predestined him to exist at some point—namely, to be begotten of the Virgin—he was rather announced to us, than that he existed as born before the ages in the substance of the divine nature; and that all things which he himself spoke in the prophets concerning the mysteries of his incarnation and passion, were those things spoken of him by the Father according to foreknowledge. And so the perversity of this teaching is condemned: so that the only-begotten Son of God is known to us as born from the Father before the ages, and himself founding those ages together with all creatures, rather than as predestined to be begotten.

"If anyone says that the substance of God is expanded or contracted: let him be anathema."

Expansion and contraction do not befall God. Nor is the Son an expansion of the divine substance.—To be contracted and expanded is a bodily affection: but God, who is spirit and breathes where he wills, does not expand or contract himself through a change of substance. For remaining free from the necessity of bodily nature, he accomplishes from himself what he wills, and when he wills, and where he wills. It is therefore impious to ascribe a change of substance to the freedom of so great a power.

"If anyone says that the Son is made from the expanded substance of God, or names the breadth of his substance the Son: let him be anathema."

The preceding sentence, although it wished to teach that God is immutable, nevertheless prepared the way for this following heresy. For some have dared to extend the innascible God all the way to the holy Virgin by an expansion of substance: so that the breadth, drawn out by a certain extension of his nature and taking on a man, should be called Son; and that the Son, born as perfect God before the ages, should not be the same one who was afterwards also born as man. All of this, therefore, catholic faith condemns, in which both the Father is said to be mutable and the birth of the Son is denied.

"If anyone calls the Son of God an innate and uttered word: let him be anathema."

In what sense heretics proclaim the Son of God to be a word. The Son from Mary is God and man.—Heretics, destroying the Son of God as much as lies in them, confess him to be only a word—namely, the speech proceeding from the mouth of one speaking, and the incorporeal sound of an insubstantial voice: so that the Word is to God the Father such a Son as every word is brought forth into sound through the innate nature of speaking that is in us. This entire fraud therefore stands under condemnation: which affirms that God the Word, who was in the beginning with God, is a word such as an innate and uttered voice.

"If anyone says that only a man from Mary is the Son: let him be anathema." We do not proclaim the Son of God from Mary unless we proclaim him both man and God. But lest what we proclaim—that he is God and man—should furnish an occasion for fraud, he immediately added the following.

"If anyone, saying that God and man was born from Mary, so understands God as innascible: let him be anathema."

The Son is distinguished from the Father by birth alone. Taking on flesh, he was not changed.—The name and power of the substance are preserved. For since it is anathema to say that the Son of God from Mary is man without God; and since it is under the same judgment to say that the innascible God is in the man: it is not said that the God who is in the man is not God; but the innascible God is denied, with the Father distinguished from the Son not by the name of nature, since not by diversity of substance, but by the sole authority of innascibility.

"If anyone, hearing 'the Word was made flesh,' thinks that the Word was translated into flesh, or says that he received flesh by undergoing change: let him be anathema."

The deity suffered no corruption when the Son of God was crucified.—The dignity of divinity is preserved: so that in the fact that the Word was made flesh, while the Word is made flesh, it did not lose through the flesh what it was as Word, nor was it translated into flesh so as to cease to be Word; but the Word was made flesh, so that the flesh rather began to be what the Word is. For otherwise, whence to the flesh the powers in works, the glory on the mountain, the knowledge of the thoughts of human hearts, the security in the passion, the life in death? But God, knowing no change, lost nothing of the goods of his substance when made flesh.

"If anyone, hearing that the only Son of God was crucified, says that his deity underwent corruption, or passibility, or change, or diminution, or destruction: let him be anathema."

What passibility and passion are. That the Son was seen by the patriarchs.—It is shown absolutely why the Word, although made flesh, was nevertheless not translated into flesh. For since these kinds of passions afflict the weakness of flesh, yet God the Word, made flesh, could not be mutable in himself through suffering. For it is not the same thing to suffer and to be changed: because passion of any kind changes all flesh in sense, in pain, in endurance. But the Word, which was made flesh, although it submitted itself to passion, was nevertheless not changed by the passibility of suffering. For it could suffer, and could not be passible: because passibility is a mark of natures that are weak; but passion is the endurance of things that are inflicted: which things, because God is immutable, yet since the Word was made flesh, had in him the material of passion without the weakness of passibility.

And so the nature remains immutable even in passion; because the substance born from an impassible essence is indifferent to its author.

"If anyone says that 'Let us make man' was not spoken by the Father to the Son, but that God spoke to himself: let him be anathema."

"If anyone says that it was not the Son who was seen by Abraham, but the innascible God or a part of him: let him be anathema."

"If anyone says that it was not the Son who wrestled with Jacob as a man, but the innascible God or a part of him: let him be anathema."

"If anyone does not understand 'The Lord rained from the Lord' as referring to the Son and the Father, but says that he rained from himself: let him be anathema. For the Lord the Son rained from the Lord the Father."

The opinion of Photinus.—Because Photinus, against whom the assembly had then been convened, denied these things, they had to be inserted into the faith: lest anyone should dare not to proclaim the Son of God before the Son of the Virgin, and should fit all the foregoing things, which are proper to the Son of God, to the innascible God by the most foolish perversity of heretical madness; and while referring these to the Father, should deny substance to the Son. Since these matters are clear, they have left us no necessity of interpretation.

"If anyone, because the Lord and Lord—Father and Son—(since Lord is from Lord) says there are two gods: let him be anathema. For we do not equate or compare the Son to the Father, but understand him as subject. For he did not descend into Sodom without the Father's will; nor did he rain from himself, but from the Lord, that is, by the authority of the Father; nor does he sit at the right hand by himself, but hears the Father saying, 'Sit at my right hand'."

This definition is freed from suspicion. In what respect the Son is not to be equated to the Father, while the equality of nature remains.—Both what precedes and what follows entirely exclude whatever suspicion may seem to exist in these words, lest a diversity of dissimilar deities be proclaimed in the Lord and Lord. And in this the Son is not compared, because it would be impious to speak of two gods: but the Son is not therefore not compared or equated to the Father, lest he himself be believed not to be God.

For since it is anathema to deny that Christ is God, it cannot seem profane that two gods are named together, lest Christ also be proclaimed God; since by the property of natural essence, God is therefore one, because the only-begotten Son God, born from the innascible God the Father who is the one God, has his being as God from no other source than from God: and with the essence of him who is begotten being indifferent from him who begot, the one name of the nature cannot but be indifferent.

And indeed in this especially the Son is not compared or equated to the Father: while he is subject through the obedience of submission, while the Lord rains from the Lord, lest according to Photinus or Sabellius he should have rained from himself, as Lord from Lord; while he then sat at the right hand of God, when it was said to him that he should sit; while he is sent, while he receives, while in all things he complies with the will of him who sent him. But the subjection of piety is not a diminution of essence, nor does the duty of religion make the nature degenerate: since through the fact that both the innascible Father is God and the only-begotten Son of God is God, yet God is one; and the subjection of the Son is taught together with his dignity, while he is also himself to be named subject to that very name which, though it belongs to God the Father, is nevertheless by nature his own name.

Possessing the name, but of him whose Son he also is, he is made subject to the Father both in obedience and in name; yet in such a way that the subjection of the name bears witness to the property of a natural and indifferent essence.

"If anyone says that the Father and the Son are one person: let him be anathema."

The Father and the Son are not one person.—Absolute perversity has no need to contradict itself: and yet the foolish fury of certain persons has burst forth to the point of daring to proclaim one person for two names.

"If anyone, calling the Holy Spirit the Paraclete, says he is the innascible God: let him be anathema."

The Holy Spirit is not the innascible God. He is other than the Son.—The addition now of Paraclete makes the proclamation of the innascible God in him subject to anathema. For it is most impious to call him the innascible God who was sent by the Son for our consolation.

"If anyone does not say, as the Lord taught us, that the Paraclete is other than the Son; for he said: 'And the Father will send you another Paraclete, whom I will ask': let him be anathema."

Why he is said to be sent by the Father.—We recall that the Paraclete was sent by the Son, and the faith itself set this forth at the beginning. But because the Son frequently said, by virtue of his indifferent nature, that his works are the works of the Father, saying: "I do the works of my Father"; and being about to send the Paraclete, as he frequently promised, he also sometimes said that he would be sent by the Father, since he was accustomed to refer piously to the Father everything that he did. From this heretics frequently seize the occasion to say that the Paraclete himself is the Son: whereas in the fact that he was going to ask that another Paraclete be sent by the Father, he signifies the difference between the one sent and the one asking.

"If anyone says that the Holy Spirit is a part of the Father or of the Son: let him be anathema."

He is not a part of the Father or of the Son.—It was foolishness of heretical fury, not a genuine question, that compelled these things to be set down in writing. For since the name of the Holy Spirit has its own signification, and the Holy Spirit the Paraclete has both the office and the order of his own substance, and since the immutable Father and Son are proclaimed everywhere: how is the Holy Spirit asserted to be a part either of the Father or of the Son? But because, as among other kinds of madness, this too is wont to be put forward by the impious; it therefore had to be disapproved by the holy.

"If anyone says that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are three gods: let him be anathema."

Three gods are denied.—Since the profession of two gods is irreligious, because we have remembered and do proclaim that only one God has been proclaimed: how much more is the naming of three gods in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit damnable? Yet because heretics say this, catholics rightly condemn it.

"If anyone understands the words, I am God the first, and I am God the last, and besides me there is no God, as having been spoken for the destruction of idols and of those who are not gods, and understands them in a Jewish sense as spoken for the destruction of the only-begotten God before the ages: let him be anathema."

The words "there is no God besides me" do not deny that the Son is God.—With the multitude of gods condemned and one God alone proclaimed, the Son of God cannot be denied to be God. But the genuine property of nature brings this about, that the name which is denied with respect to number is owed to the essence; and that which says "there is no God besides me" cannot take away from the Son what he is, namely God: because there is no other God besides him who is from God. And by this utterance of God the Father, he cannot fail to be God who is born from him with an essence undifferentiated with respect to his own nature. This is what the Jews refer to the unity of God, because they do not know the only-begotten God. But when we deny two gods, we abominate a diversity of natural essence in the Father and the Son: because the statement "there is no God besides me" destroys the impious opinion concerning false gods.

But when, confessing one God, we also call the Son God, we proclaim nothing different in substance under one name in either of them.

"If anyone says that the Son was made by the will of God as one of the creatures: let him be anathema."

The Son is from the substance of God, not as creatures are from the will.—The will of God brought substance to all creatures: but a perfect birth from an impassible and unbegotten substance gave nature to the Son. For all created things were created such as God willed them to be: but the Son, born from God, subsisted as such as God himself is. Nor did nature bring forth a nature unlike itself: but begotten from the substance of God, he brought the essence of the will according to origin, not according to creatures.

"If anyone says that the Son was born against the Father's will: let him be anathema. For the Father was not compelled against his will, nor led by natural necessity, to beget the Son when he was unwilling; but as soon as he willed, without time and impassibly, he manifested him as the only-begotten from himself."

Yet the Son is not from an unwilling Father.—Since it was being taught that the Son does not subsist from will as other things do, lest he should have his essence according to will alone and not also according to nature, an occasion seemed to be given to heretics to ascribe to God the Father a necessity of begetting the Son from himself, as though he brought him forth unwillingly under compulsion of the law of nature. But this condition of passions does not exist in God the Father: for in the ineffable and perfect birth of the Son, neither did will alone beget the Son, nor was the essence changed or compelled by the command of natural law. Nor was substance sought out for the purpose of begetting, nor is the nature of the begetter different in the begotten, nor is there a solitude of the paternal name in time: but before all times the Father, willing impassibly from the essence of his own nature, gave to the Son the essence of natural birth.

"If anyone calls the Son unbegotten and without beginning, thereby speaking of two without beginning and two unbegottens and two ungenerates, and so makes two gods: let him be anathema. For the head, which is the beginning of all things, is the Son; but the head, which is the beginning of Christ, is God; for thus through the Son we refer all things to the one without beginning, the beginning of all things."

The unity of God does not permit the Son to be called unbegotten.—To confess the Son as unbegotten is most impious. For then God will not be one: because the nature of the one unbegotten God requires that one God be proclaimed. Since therefore God is one, there cannot be two unbegottens: since God is one for this reason (given that the Father is God and the Son of God is God), because unbegottenness belongs to one alone. But the Son is God for this reason, because he exists as born from an unbegotten essence. Therefore the holy faith rejects the proclamation of the Son as unbegotten, so that through the one unbegotten God it may proclaim one God: so that it may embrace the only-begotten nature, born from the unbegotten essence, within the one name of the unbegotten God. For the Son is the head of all things, but God is the head of the Son.

And all things are referred to the one God by this gradation and this confession: since all things take their beginning from him to whom the Father himself is the beginning.

"And again, confirming the understanding of Christianity, we say: If anyone does not confess that Christ, God, the Son of God, subsisting before the ages and ministering to the Father for the completion of all things; but says that from the time he was born of Mary, from that point he was named Christ and Son, and received a beginning of being God: let him be anathema."

The heresy of Photinus. The principal article of our faith.—It was fitting that the condemnation of that heresy, on account of which the assembly had been convened, should be concluded by an exposition of the whole faith which it opposed: that heresy which falsely claimed that the beginning of the Son of God was from the birth of the Virgin. For this is the principal article of our faith according to evangelical and apostolic teaching, that our Lord Jesus Christ, God and Son of God, is not separated from the Father either by a confession of honor, or by power of virtue, or by diversity of substance, or by an interval of time.

The difficulty of speaking briefly about God.—Truth was sought, as is understood, in many ways through the counsels and judgments of the bishops, and the principle of understanding was set forth through the individual professions of the written faith: with each and every kind of impious proclamation being extinguished. For the infinite and immeasurable God could neither be understood nor set forth in the brief utterances of human speech. For the brevity of words often deceives both hearers and teachers: and by the conciseness of speech either what is sought cannot be understood, or even what was signified rather than fully expressed is corrupted when it does not stand firm through the completeness of reason.

And therefore the bishops, speaking with the sense of understanding, on account of the difficulty of natural understanding, used both very many definitions and more copious words for the purpose of teaching: so that they might both instruct the minds of their hearers by the distinction of truth set forth through many things, and speak nothing else that was dangerous or obscure concerning divine matters in this manifold completeness of many judgments.

The faith in the East. Often set forth; sound in few. Hosius. Subscriptions to a coerced faith. Westerners do not know written creeds.—It ought not to seem remarkable to you, most distinguished Brethren, that creeds have begun to be set forth so frequently: the fury of heretics imposes this necessity. For so great is the danger to the Eastern Churches that it is rare to find either priests or people of this faith (of what kind it is, you yourselves judge). For authority has been badly given to impiety by certain persons: and by the exiles of bishops, whose cause you are not ignorant of, the strength of the profane has been increased. I speak of no foreign matters, nor do I write of things unknown: I have heard and seen the vices of those present; not of laymen, but of bishops. For apart from bishop Eleusius and a few with him, the greater part of the ten provinces of Asia, within which I dwell, truly do not know God.

And would that they were entirely ignorant of him; for they would be ignorant with more ready pardon than they now detract from him. But the grief of these bishops, not containing itself within silence, seeks the unity of this faith which it long since lost through others. For that faith in the first exposition presented had this necessity: because at Sirmium, through Hosius, forgetful of his own deeds and words, the teaching of a new yet long-festering impiety had broken out. But of him I say nothing, who has been reserved for this purpose, that it might not be unknown to human judgment what manner of life he had lived before. But everywhere there are scandals, everywhere schisms, everywhere treacheries. Hence it comes about that some of those who had previously written otherwise were compelled to subscribe to a profession of faith.

Nor do I complain of the most patient Eastern bishops, for whom it sufficed, after the will toward blasphemy, to have at least a profession of a coerced faith: for in such great heretical obstinacy of blaspheming bishops, it seems a matter for gratitude that any one of them is received as a penitent. But amid all this, O blessed and glorious are you in the Lord, who, retaining the perfect and apostolic faith by the profession of your conscience, have until now known nothing of written creeds! For you had no need of the letter, who abounded in the Spirit. Nor did you desire the service of the hand for writing, you who professed with your mouth unto salvation what was believed in your hearts. Nor did you find it necessary to read as a bishop what you held as regenerate neophytes. But necessity introduced the custom of setting forth creeds and of subscribing to those set forth. For where the sense of conscience is endangered, there the letter is demanded.

Nor indeed does it hinder the writing of what it is salutary to confess.

Hilary's faith concerning the Father and the Son.—We confess indeed, always innocent in the gift of the Holy Spirit, and we write willingly: not two gods, but one God; nor by that reason not also God the Son of God; for he is God from God. Not two unbegottens, because by the authority of unbegottenness God is one: nor by that reason is the Only-begotten not also God; for his origin is the unbegotten substance. Not one subsisting, but a substance not different. Not one name of God in dissimilar natures, but an essence indissimilar of one name and nature. Not one surpassing another in kind of substance, but one subject to the other by birth of nature. That the Father is greater in that he is Father, that the Son is not lesser in that he is Son. That there is a difference of signification, not a difference of nature. To confess the Father as not within times, but not to deny the Son as co-eternal with the Father.

To proclaim the Father in the Son, because the Son has nothing in himself dissimilar from the Father: to confess the Son in the Father, because what the Son is comes from no other source. Not to be ignorant of their mutual and mutually similar nature, because it is equal: not to suppose that they are one because they are one thing: to proclaim them one in such a way through the indifference of an indissimilar nature, that they be not one.

Hilary lacks words, not understanding.—I have set forth, dearest ones, as far as the custom of human speech permitted, and as the Lord, always besought by me as he himself knows, has granted, the consciousness of the common faith. And if anything has been said less—or rather, because less and almost nothing has been said—remember that it is not understanding that I lack, but words. I shall perhaps convict my own nature in this, yet I shall not convict my will: and I pardon nature, if it cannot speak of God what it wills, since it may suffice for salvation to have believed the things that are of God.

He passes to the other part of the treatise. Let him not be judged before the end.—Now since my faith and yours, as far as I am conscious to myself, is not in danger before God; and I have shown you, as you wished, what creeds had previously been set forth by the Eastern bishops, but by few (for I will repeat it, because according to the number of the Eastern Churches, this is the faith of a few bishops); and I myself have also professed what I think concerning divine matters according to apostolic teaching: it remains that you should come to know, without any suspicion—for now none is left for hearing—those things which bring error upon us from the security of simplicity. And although I no longer fear being judged concerning myself according to the exposition of the whole faith, nevertheless bear with me in that I wish not to be judged concerning myself until all things have been resolved.

When homousion is rightly proclaimed.—Many among us, dearest Brethren, proclaim the one substance of the Father and the Son in such a way that they may seem to proclaim it no more piously than impiously: for this word contains within itself both the consciousness of faith and a prepared fraud. For if according to the property and likeness of nature—so that the likeness may not bring only a resemblance of appearance but may hold to the genus—we religiously proclaim one substance, provided we understand one substance as the likeness of property, so that what they are one means not a single individual but equals. I speak of equality, that is, the indifference of likeness, so that likeness may be held to be equality; and equality may be said to be one for this reason, because it is equal; but the one, in which equality is signified, may not be claimed as a single individual.

One substance, therefore, if it does not destroy the subsisting person, nor divide one substance partitioned into two, will be religiously proclaimed: which, from the property of birth and from the likeness of nature, is so indifferent as to be called one.

The threefold perverse sense of the same word.—But if the Father and Son are said to be of one substance for the reason that he who subsists here, though under the signification of two names, is one and alone: we do not hold in conscience what we confess in name as Son, if by confessing one substance we say that he himself is both his own unique and singular Father and Son. Indeed there also immediately arises the occasion of this error, that the Father is understood as divided from himself, and as having cut off a part which would be his son. For this is what heretics contend who preach one substance: and the language of our pious confession greatly flatters them, so that while this word is ambiguous by reason of its undefined brevity, it may serve to advance error.

There is moreover this third error, that when the Father and Son are said to be of one substance, it is thought to signify a prior substance which two equals share between themselves: and so the expression signifies three things—one substance, and two who are as co-heirs of one substance. For just as two co-heirs exist, and the inheritance is prior to the two who are co-heirs of it: so two equals may be seen to be sharers of one prior substance. And so one substance of the Father and Son, when thus proclaimed, either signifies one subsisting being who has two designations; or that one divided substance has made two imperfect substances; or a third prior substance, which has been appropriated and assumed by two, which is therefore called one because one has been cut into two. And where after all this is the birth?

Where is the Father, where is the Son understood; if it is rather a cutting or a sharing of a prior substance, rather than a birth from a nature, that will be proclaimed as making Father and Son?

In what context the homousion may safely be set forth.—In so many and such grave dangers to the faith, therefore, the brevity of words must be tempered; lest what is piously understood be thought to be impiously said: lest, with a conscience secure and innocent, the expression become guilty through heretical occasion. One who is about to say that the Father and Son are of one substance as a Catholic should not begin from that point: nor should he hold this as though it were the greatest thing, as if without it there were no true faith. He will safely say one substance, when he has first said: the Father is unbegotten; the Son is born, subsists from the Father, is like the Father in power, honour, and nature. He is subject to the Father as to his author: nor did he count it robbery to be equal with God, in whose form he remained; he was obedient even unto death. He is not from nothing, but is a birth. He is not unbegettable, but co-eternal.

He is not the Father, but is Son from him. He is not some portion, but is whole. He is not himself the author, but is the image: the image of God born from God into God. He is not a creature, but is God. He is not another God in the genus of substance, but one God through the essence of an indifferent substance. God is one not in person, but in nature: because the one born and the one begetting have nothing diverse or unlike in themselves. And after these things, by saying that the Father and Son are of one substance, he does not err: but by denying one substance after these things, he now sins.

That it should not be proclaimed baldly and before other things.—Let no one therefore think that one substance is denied by us: the reason for it is set forth precisely so that it may not be denied. Let no one think that one substance is to be proclaimed in a brief and bare expression: so that one substance may be said religiously. For I do not hear, Christ was born of Mary; unless I also hear, In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God. I will not hear, Christ was hungry; unless after the fast of forty days I hear, Man does not live by bread alone. I will not hear, he thirsted; unless I hear, Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. I will not hear, Christ suffered; unless I hear, Now is the hour that the Son of man should be glorified. I will not hear, he died; unless I hear, he rose again.

Let us set forth nothing in isolation from the divine mysteries so as to arouse the suspicion of hearers and to give occasion to blasphemers. First the birth of the Son must be proclaimed, first his subjection, first the likeness of nature: so that it may be proclaimed without impiety that the Father and Son are of one substance. And I do not understand why, before all other things, as though it were the greatest and most important and sole thing, that should be proclaimed which cannot be proclaimed piously before all other things, and which after all other things it is necessarily impious to deny.

It can both be said piously and be passed over in silence piously.—The one substance of the Father and Son is not to be denied, dearest Brethren: but neither is it to be proclaimed without reason. Let there be one substance from the property of the begotten nature; let it not be from portion, or from union, or from communion. One substance can be said piously, and passed over in silence piously. You have the birth, you have the likeness. Why do we suspiciously cling to the reproach of a word, when we do not disagree in the understanding of the matter? Let us believe and say that there is one substance; but through the property of nature, not to signify an impious union. Let it be one from likeness, not from solitariness.

Whether the word homousion is less proper.—But perhaps likeness may seem to have too little propriety in itself. If this is so, I ask in what way I can make one equal to another except through likeness? Or is it not the same thing to be like as to be equal? If I say one, it also carries the suspicion of uniqueness: if I say like, it carries the comparison of an indifferent thing. Between like and one I ask what place equal holds: and I inquire whether it is rather a matter of likeness or of solitariness. There is no equality among unlike things, nor is there likeness within one. Or how do like and equal differ; so that equal is again distinguished from one? Those that are equal are therefore not unlike. And what else can like things be but equal, since there is no equality among unlike things?

Likeness of nature signifies perfect equality. What likeness is for Moses, equality is for John.—In proclaiming, therefore, dearest Brethren, the Son like to the Father in all things, we proclaim nothing other than equal. Likeness has the signification of perfect equality: and this is to be understood from the holy Scriptures. For we read: And Adam lived two hundred and thirty years, and begot according to his own image and according to his own likeness, and called his name Seth. I ask what kind of likeness and image of himself Adam begot in Seth. Remove the infirmities of bodies, remove the beginning of conception, remove the pains of childbirth, and every human necessity: I ask whether this likeness which is in Seth differs by nature from its author, or whether the essence in both was of a different kind, lest Seth born of Adam should not have had Adam's natural essence. But he is the likeness of Adam, even if we deny it; because his nature is not unlike.

Moreover the likeness of nature did not have in Seth a nature of a different kind, because Seth was not born from elsewhere: so likeness naturally makes the things themselves equal, through the likeness of an indifferent essence. Every son, therefore, according to natural birth, is the equality of his father; because he is also the likeness of his nature. And blessed John teaches that in the nature of the Father and Son, what Moses calls likeness in Seth and Adam, this same equality of nature exists, for he says: For this reason the Jews sought all the more to kill him, because he not only broke the sabbath, but also called God his own Father, making himself equal to God. Why do we insert into the teachings and words of such great men minds torpid with grave sins, and dull and rash senses and weary the impious against indissoluble proclamations?

Through Moses Seth is the likeness of Adam, through John the Son is equal to the Father: and we seek some third thing I know not what between the Father and Son, which nature does not admit. He is like the Father, he is the Son of the Father, he is born from him: through this alone can it be piously proclaimed that they are one.

Those who confess likeness while denying equality are refuted.—Nor does it escape me, dearest Brethren, that there are some who, confessing likeness, deny equality. But let them speak as they will, and pour the poison of their blasphemy into the ignorant. If they say that likeness and equality differ; I ask from what equality is to be compared. For if the Son is like the Father according to essence and power and glory and time; I ask from what he does not appear equal. For even this condemnation is established in the superior creed: that he should be anathema who said the Father was of a dissimilar essence to himself. If therefore he gave a nature neither other nor unlike to him whom he was begetting impassibly; he cannot have given any other than his own. Thus likeness is property, property is equality, and equality differs in nothing. But those things which differ in nothing are one; not by union of person, but by equality of nature.

The same power of the Son and the Father.—Although indeed both by common sense and by divine authorities it is understood that there is no difference between likeness and equality—since according to Moses and John the Son is both like and equal to the Father—yet let us see whether the Lord, when the Jews were angry that by calling God his Father he had made himself equal to God, taught that he was equal to God. For he says, The Son can do nothing of himself, but only what he sees the Father doing. He distinguished the author when he said, He cannot do anything of himself: he signifies obedience when he adds, but only what he sees the Father doing. For it is not a difference of power that he cannot do unless he sees; because nature confers power more than sight does: but it is rather obedience, that he can act when he sees.

And so through the fact that he can act when he sees, he signifies that he does not receive power from sight, but presumes authority by the authority of sight. The power of nature therefore does not differ in the Father and Son: to whom this ability to do what the Father can do is attributed not by any increase of natural advancement, but by the example of the author. Finally honour, which subjection preserved, the power of nature made equal. For he added: For whatever he does, the Son likewise does the same things. Is not likeness equal? It is plainly equal even if we deny it: for he does the same things likewise. Are not things done likewise the same? Or do the same things not admit equality? Or does something else differ between like and equal; when those things which are done likewise are understood to be done the same?

Unless perhaps someone will deny that things which are the same are equal; so that things which are like are not called equal: when things which are done likewise are proclaimed not only to be done equally, but the same.

That the homoeousion can rightly be said.—Likeness of nature, therefore, Brethren, is free from the suspicion of insult: nor can the Son be seen to be not in the property of the paternal nature because he is like; since there is no likeness except from equality of nature; but equality of nature cannot exist unless it be one; and one not by unity of person, but of kind. This is the pious faith, this the religious conscience, this the saving expression: not to deny one substance of the Father and Son, because he is like; but to proclaim him like for the reason that they are one.

Having set forth, dearest ones, the faithful and pious understanding of one substance, which in Greek is called homousion, and of like substance, which is called homoeousion; and having most fully demonstrated the faults which can arise from either the subtle brevity or the dangerous bareness of words: my remaining discourse is to be directed to the holy men the Eastern bishops; so that since now no suspicion between us concerning our faith has been left, those things which still give rise to suspicion from words may be purged: and they will grant pardon to one who will speak with them more freely from the faith of a shared conscience.

Praise of the Orientals because heresy has been restrained.—O men at last zealous for apostolic and evangelical doctrine, whom the warmth of faith has kindled amid such darkness of heretical night! How great a hope of restoring the true faith you have brought, by steadfastly beating back the assault of bold treachery. For previously, in obscurity and in corners, it was denied that the Lord Christ was Son of God according to nature; and, destitute of the Father's essence, he was proclaimed to have received his origin with creatures from things that did not exist. But now heresy, bursting out with a public profession of authority, was openly boasting as victor of what before it had whispered secretly. For by what tunnels did it not previously try to creep into the catholic Church? What powers of the age did it not put forward under the flattering show of false religion? For perverse men had broken out so far that, although they themselves did not dare to proclaim this publicly, they nevertheless deceived the Emperor into hearing it.

They deceived an uninstructed king, so that, occupied with wars, he set forth a faith of such treachery, and, not yet regenerated, imposed a form of belief upon the Churches. They drove opposing bishops into exile. They drove us to choose exile, while they imposed the necessity of impiety. But let us always be exiles, provided that the truth begins to be preached. Thanks be to the Lord, therefore, that the Emperor, admonished through you, recognized his ignorance, and, through these statements of your faith, recognized the error not as his own but as that of those who urged him on; and he freed himself, before God and men, from the reproach of impious will, since, receiving your embassy with honor, he came to know the falsehood of those by whose authority he was being brought into odium, when you compelled him to profess his ignorance.

The authors of the Sirmian formula are always deceitful. They are neatly censured and refuted. Christ is one, not two. The subscription of Valens and Ursacius is suspect.—They deceive, as far as I fear and as it seems to me, dearest Brethren, they deceive; because they have always deceived: and that present subscription itself is not without falsehood. For they excuse themselves, saying that they wished homoousion and homoeousion to be passed over in silence because they thought one and the same thing was signified by both words. Simple bishops, I suppose, and ignorant of the meaning of homoousion: as though there had never been either a synod or disputes about this. But let it be granted that they did not know homoousion, or did not know that homoousion signified what was of like essence. Now if they did not know this, why did they wish the generation of the Son to be unknown? Is it because it is inexpressible that it is also unknowable?

But if the manner of his birth is unknown, can even this be unknown, that the Son, God born not from another substance but from God, does not have a diverse essence? Had they not read that the Son is to be honored as the Father is honored, so that they should prefer the Father in honor? Did they not know that the Father is seen in the Son, so that in their view the Son should differ in dignity, brightness, and majesty? Or did this also come from ignorance, that the Son should be subject to the Father together with the rest; so that, while he is subjected together with the rest, he is not distinguished from the rest? For the subjection of the Son belongs to the piety of nature, but the subjection of the rest belongs to the weakness of creation. They knew indeed that he suffered; but let them tell me, I ask, when did they learn that he suffered together? They avoid homoousion and homoeousion because they knew homoeousion?

Among the legates of the Synod of Ancyra, who had rejected homoousion, that excuse had force by which they answered that they had thought homoousion and homoeousion to have one and the same meaning.

Where is it written? I ask, from where did they presume that he suffered together? Or do they wish there to be two who suffered? For shared suffering testifies to this. Where then is that saying, Jesus Christ the Son of God? Or is Jesus Christ one, and the Son of God another? If he is not the same and one Son of God within and without, then believe that there was ignorance about homoousion, if these things may be unknown. But if in these very matters that ignorance itself is impious, and yet cannot be excused even falsely, I fear that the profession of ignorance about homoeousion is also lying. I do not greatly complain of the pardon which you have given: it is religious to reserve God's own things to God, and the error of ignorance is human. But let the two bishops Valens and Ursacius now pardon me, because I do not believe that, given their age and experience, they were ignorant.

And it is very difficult for them not to be thought to be lying, since in another matter this gives more reason for us to think badly than for them not to have known. For I would rather be judged as thinking badly than have your faith violated by fellowship with a heretical conscience.

But I ask you, most holy men, to weigh my anxieties with kind indulgence. For the Lord is witness of my conscience, that in no way do I wish to overthrow the expositions which you brought to Sirmium from your faith. But grant pardon if there are certain things I cannot understand, and I shall comfort myself, because I have read: The spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets. From this, perhaps not shamelessly, I too presume that I may understand what another does not know. Not that I have dared to say that you are ignorant of anything according to the measure of knowledge; but concerning the unity of the catholic faith, allow there to be no less solicitude in us than in you.

The letter brought to Sirmium concerning the exposition of homoousion and homoeousion. Homoousion is wrongly rejected because of birth.—I have read the letter which Valens and Ursacius and Germinius requested from you at Sirmium concerning the exposition of homoousion and homoeousion, and I understand that in some respects it is no less cautious than free. And the very demonstration of homoousion and homoeousion left no difficulty. And indeed concerning homoeousion, which means of like essence, there is a common judgment. But in treating of homoousion, which means of one essence, you declared first that it should be rejected because, through the utterance of this word, there would be understood a prior substance which two had divided between themselves. I understand the fault in that understanding. This is a profane meaning, and it should be rejected from the Church by common judgment.

Secondly you added this also, that our fathers, when Paul of Samosata was pronounced a heretic, also rejected homoousion: because through this designation of one essence he proclaimed that the Father and Son were solitary and single to himself. And this also the Church now recognizes as most profane: to draw the Father and Son, in these professions of names, back to a union and a singular solitude by denying the proper character of the persons. Thirdly, this cause also for rejecting homoousion was recalled by you: that in the synod which was held at Nicaea, our fathers, compelled by those who said the Son was a creature, introduced the name homoousion; and that it should not be received because it is nowhere found written. I am quite astonished that this was said by you. For if homoousion must be rejected because of novelty, I fear that homoeousion too is in danger, because it is nowhere found written.

In what sense it is condemned by common judgment.—But I do not raise a charge from this. For I would rather that something new had been recalled than that something had been impiously rejected. Therefore, leaving aside the question of novelty, the question does not even rest in those things which are condemned by the common judgment of us all. For what sane person will proclaim a third substance common to both Father and Son? Or who, born again in Christ and confessing the Son and the Father, will confess according to the Samosatene that Christ is in himself both father and son to himself? Our judgment, then, is equal in condemning the impieties of heretics: and it not only rejects but also hates this understanding of homoousion. And so no question of a faulty understanding is left where there is common agreement in condemning the fault.

What was piously received by the Nicene synod ought not to be disapproved.—But now that I am finally about to speak of the third question, I ask you: where there is peace of conscience, let there not be a battle of suspicions; and do not suppose that I put forward anything except for the advancement of unity. For it is empty to fear a charge against a word, where the thing itself, of which the word is the word, has no difficulty. Does it displease anyone that homoousion was received at the Synod of Nicaea? If this displeases anyone, it must please him that it was denied by Arius. For homoousion was denied for this reason, lest God the Son be proclaimed as born from the substance of God the Father, but as made from nothing according to creatures. We speak nothing new: the treachery of the Arians itself, published in many letters, is witness against itself.

If, because of the impiety of those who denied it, the understanding of those who confessed it was then pious, I ask why that is overturned today which was then piously received because it was impiously denied? If it was piously received, why is the establishment of piety brought into accusation, when by those very things through which impiety was acting impiously, it piously extinguished impiety?

The aim of the Nicene synod. The Nicene Creed.—Let us therefore see what the Nicene synod intended by confessing homoousion, that is, of one substance: surely not to give birth to the heresy which is conceived from a faulty opinion of homoousion. They will not, I think, say this: that the Father and Son divided between themselves one prior substance into their own substance. And indeed we shall insert into this discourse of ours, not irreligiously even now, the faith then written religiously. "We believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, born from the Father, only-begotten, that is, from the substance of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, born not made, of one substance with the Father, which the Greeks call homoousion, through whom all things were made, those in heaven and those on earth; who for our salvation descended, was incarnate and made man, suffered, rose again on the third day, ascended into heaven, and will come to judge the living and the dead. And in the Holy Spirit. But those who say, There was when he was not, and before he was born he was not, and that he was made from things that did not exist, or from another substance or essence, or who say that God is changeable and alterable: these the catholic Church anathematizes." Here the most holy synod of religious men does not introduce some prior substance, divided in two, but the Son born from the substance of the Father. Do we also deny this?

Or what else do we confess? And after the other expositions of the common faith it says, "Born not made, of one substance with the Father, which the Greeks call homoousion." What occasion for faulty understanding is here? The Son is proclaimed to have been born from the substance of the Father, not made, lest the birth of divinity be a creaturely making. And he is therefore of one substance: not so that one or a solitary one subsists, but so that the one born from the substance of God does not subsist from elsewhere, nor subsist in any diversity of a discordant substance. Or is this not our faith, that he does not subsist from elsewhere, and that he does not subsist as unlike? Or does homoousion testify to anything else here than that the essence of the two is one and not unlike according to the offspring of nature, because the essence of the Son is not from elsewhere?

And because it is not from elsewhere, both are rightly believed to be of one essence; because the Son does not have the substance of birth except from the authority of the paternal nature.

Whether homoousion should be disapproved because it is often understood faultily.—But perhaps it will be said on the other side that it ought to be disapproved because it is often understood faultily. If we fear this, let us erase from the Apostle what was said: The mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus; because Photinus uses this for the authority of his heresy. Let it not be read by us, because it is badly understood by him. Let the Epistle written to the Philippians also perish, either by fire or sponge, lest Marcion reread in it, And being found in appearance as a man, confessing a phantom of a body, not a body. Let the Gospel of John not exist, lest Sabellius learn: I and the Father are one.

Nor should these present preachers of a creature have written: The Father is greater than I. Nor should those who wish to affirm the Son unlike to the Father read: Of that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, except the Father alone. Nor should the books of Moses exist, lest darkness be coeternal with God, who inhabits unbegotten light, because in Genesis day began after night; lest the years of Methuselah exceed the age of the flood, and there be not only eight souls preserved; lest, when the sins of Sodom were already full, God, hearing their cry as though ignorant of the cry, descend to see whether the sins were complete with the cry, and God be found not to know what he knew; lest anyone of those burying Moses know the tomb of the one buried; lest through these things, as heretics think, the law itself be at war with itself. And because these things are not understood by them, let them not be read by us.

Let all those divine and holy Gospels of human salvation also perish, if it seems good (which I would not say myself, but the necessity of reply demands it): lest they fight against one another by the seeming contradiction of their words; lest the Lord, who is about to send the Holy Spirit, be read as himself born of the Holy Spirit; lest he who is to denounce death by the sword, should indicate by his suffering that a sword be bought; lest he who is about to descend to the underworld, should be with the thief in paradise; lest finally the apostles be found guilty of a crime, who, having been commanded to baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, baptized only in the name of Jesus.

For I speak to you, Brethren, by voice, you who are no longer nourished by milk but are strong enough for solid food: Surely, because the wise of this world do not understand these things, and they are foolishness to them, we shall not be wise together with the world so as to believe these things foolish? And because these things are blind to the impious, shall we not shine, having understood the truth of the doctrine? Holy things are ill judged in advance, if because they are not held as holy by some, they ought not to exist. Let us not therefore glory in the cross of Christ, because it is a scandal to the world; nor shall we preach death in the living God, lest God be accused of being dead by the impious.

Because it was rejected by 80 bishops.—Homousion is badly understood: what is that to me who understand it rightly? The Samosatene confessed homousion badly; but did the Arians deny it better? Eighty bishops once rejected it; but three hundred and eighteen recently received it. And indeed that very number is holy to me, in which Abraham, victor over the impious kings, is blessed by him who is the figure of the eternal priesthood. Those condemned it against a heretic; did these not also approve it against a heretic? The authority of the ancients is weighty; is the holiness of these men then of little account? If they held contrary opinions to one another, we ought, as judges, to approve the better; but if both, by approving and by disapproving, established one and the same thing, why do we overturn what has been rightly established?

Because Osius, who was present at Nicaea, decreed that it should be passed over in silence.—But perhaps it will be said to me: Some today of those who were then present at the synod have decreed that homousion should be passed over in silence. And I, though unwillingly, will reply to the one who says this: Do not those same men also decree that homousion should be passed over in silence? I beg you, let no one else among them be found, apart from the aged Osius, and that man himself who is far too fond of his own tomb, who thinks that silence should be kept about either. And to what end shall we at last fall in the midst of such raging fury of heretics, if, while we do not receive either, we retain neither? For it cannot seem to be said impiously that, since neither is found written, either neither should be confessed, or both.

What Hilary understands by homousion. Objections against homousion are removed.—Homousion, most holy men, I understand as God from God, not of dissimilar essence, not divided, but begotten, and a co-born only-begotten nativity in the Son, congenital from the substance of the unbegotten God, according to likeness. Understanding it thus from the beginning, homousion confirmed me in this understanding not a little. Why do you condemn my faith in homousion, which through the profession of homoeousion you cannot but approve? For you condemn my faith, or rather your own, when you condemn the understanding of it in the name. But does another understand it badly? Let us together condemn the faulty understanding, let us not take away the security of faith. Do you think we should subscribe to the Synod of Samosata, lest anyone claim homousion for himself according to the understanding of the Samosatene? Let us also subscribe to the Synod of Nicaea, lest the Arians reject homousion. But is it to be feared lest homousion should seem not to signify homoeousion according to the faith?

Let it be decreed that they differ not at all, that they are of one and like substance. But can homousion be badly understood? Let it be established how it can be rightly understood. We think piously one and the same thing; I ask that we be willing to hold among ourselves that what we think is one and the same pious thing. Grant the pardon, Brethren, which I have so often asked: you are not Arians; why, by denying homousion, are you reckoned as Arians?

Homoeousion is not without its stumbling-block. True likeness.—But you say: The ambiguity of homoeousion troubles me along with its scandal. Hear me again, I pray, without scandal: the bareness of homoeousion also troubles me. Many things often deceive which are similar. I fear gold leaf, because it can deceive me within; and yet what is seen is similar to gold. I fear the likeness of milk, lest the milk offered to me not be sheep's milk, because cow's milk also appears similar to it. For sheep's milk to be like sheep's milk, it cannot be like it unless it be from a sheep. True likeness is in the truth of nature. But the truth of nature in both is not denied by homousion. For this is likeness according to essence, if a mass similar to a mass does not deceive in the leaf, if milk that is of the same color is not different in taste.

Nothing can be like gold unless it is gold; nothing can be like milk unless it is of the same kind. The color of wine has often deceived me; and yet by taste I recognized a liquid of another kind. I have seen flesh similar to flesh; but afterwards the taste revealed to me the dissimilarity of nature. For these likenesses, which do not arise from unity of nature, I fear.

The faith of Ancyra brought to Sirmium with certain things suppressed.—For I fear, Brethren, the heresies of the East sprouting up in successive times; and what I fear in the middle, I have now also read. Nothing indeed in those things which you, as ministers of the embassy undertaken with the assent of certain Easterners, brought to Sirmium to be subscribed, nothing of suspicion has been left: but from the beginning they had not a little that was offensive, which I believe you, most holy men Basil and Eustathius and Eleusius, suppressed and kept silent so that no scandal might be caused. If these things were rightly written, they ought not to have been kept silent. But if they are now kept silent because they were not rightly written, care must be taken lest they be spoken of at some time. Still sparing, I say nothing about these things for now; yet you yourselves recognize with me that not all the faith drawn up at Ancyra was in such a state.

I speak not a rumor of hearsay: I hold the testimony of letters, taken not from laymen, but given by bishops.

Exhortation to receive homousion. He did not hear the Nicene faith until he was about to go into exile.—I beg you, Brethren, remove the suspicion, exclude the occasion. That homoeousion may be approved, let us not disapprove homousion. Let us think of so many holy and now resting priests: what will the Lord judge concerning us, if they are now anathematized by us? What will become of us, who bring the matter to such a point that, because they were not bishops, we too have not even begun? For we were ordained by them, and we are their successors. Let us renounce the episcopate, since we received its office from those under anathema. Grant pardon, Brethren, to my grief: what you dare is impious. I cannot endure this word, that homousion, confessed according to a devout understanding, should be under anathema. The name has no guilt in it, which does not disturb the sense of religion. Homoeousion I know and understand only as the confession of like essence.

I call God of heaven and earth to witness that, when I had heard neither, I had always nonetheless understood both in the sense that homoeousion ought to be understood through homousion: that is, nothing can be like to itself according to nature unless it were from the same nature. Having been regenerated long ago, and having remained in the episcopate for some time, I never heard the Nicene faith until I was about to go into exile; but the Gospels and the Apostles made known to me the understanding of homousion and homoeousion. What we desire is pious. Let us not condemn the fathers, let us not encourage the heretics; lest, while we drive out heresy, we nourish heresy. Our fathers interpreted the property of homousion after the Synod of Nicaea in a devout manner; their writings survive, their conscience endures: if anything is to be added to the interpretation, let us take counsel together.

The best state of faith can be established among us: so that neither what has been rightly established be disturbed, nor what has been badly understood remain.

I have gone beyond, dearest Brethren, the modesty of human conscience; and, unmindful of my own humility, compelled by love of you, I have written these things concerning matters so great and so recondite, and pressed upon and kept silent until this our age, and I have spoken what I myself believed; conscious within myself that I owe this as the service of my duty to the Church, that through these letters I should send forth the voice of my episcopate in Christ, in accordance with the evangelical teachings. It is for you in common to discuss and to provide and to act, so that what you have maintained until now with inviolable faith, you may preserve with devout conscience, and hold fast to what you hold. Remember my exile in your holy prayers; from which, after the setting forth of this faith, I know not whether it is as joyful to return to you in the Lord Jesus Christ, as it is safe to die.

I pray that God and our Lord may preserve you undefiled and unharmed unto the day of revelation, dearest Brethren.