On the Trinity

Most men have felt that they were born for other things.—And it seems to me that most mortals, for no other reason indeed, have both rejected for themselves this custom of an inept and beast-like life, and have condemned it in others, than that, driven by nature herself as their guide, they judged it unworthy of man to think himself born only for the service of the belly and for idleness; and that they were not led into this life for the sake of any pursuit of noble deed or good art, nor that this very life had been granted for no advancement toward eternity (which assuredly could not be doubted to be no gift of God to be so reckoned, if it consumed itself, afflicted with such great anguishes and hindered by so many troubles, within itself, from the ignorance of childhood even to the ravings of old age):

and therefore they betook themselves, both in teaching and in practice, to certain virtues of patience, and continence, and gentleness, because they judged that to act well and to understand well was, in the end, to live well: but that life was not to be thought given by the immortal God for death alone; since it would not be understood to belong to a good giver to have bestowed the most delightful sense of living only for the most sorrowful fear of dying.

Hilary burns for the knowledge of God.—And although I did not consider this opinion of theirs to be foolish or useless—to keep the conscience free from all fault, and either to foresee prudently, or avoid deliberately, or bear patiently, all the troubles of human life: yet these men themselves did not seem to me sufficiently competent guides for living well and blessedly, establishing only common precepts of teaching agreeable to human sense: which, since not to understand would be beast-like, yet, once understood, not to act upon them would seem to exceed even the madness of beast-like savagery.

But my mind was eager, not merely to do these things, which not to have done would have been full of guilt and of sorrows, but to know this God and Father of so great a gift, to whom it owed itself wholly, in whose service it thought itself to be ennobled, to whom it might refer every opinion of its hope, in whose goodness, amid so many calamities of present affairs, it might rest as in a most safe and familiar harbor. To understand or to know Him, therefore, my mind was kindled with the most burning zeal.

Various opinions of the ancients about God. Hilary does not approve them, having it for certain that God is but one.—For many of them brought in numerous families of uncertain gods; and thinking that male and female sex operated in the divine natures, they asserted births and successions of gods from gods. Others proclaimed greater and lesser gods, differing according to power. Some, affirming that there was no God at all, worshipped only that nature which came into being by chance motions and concourses. But most, indeed, spoke by common opinion of there being a God, yet pronounced this same one to be careless and negligent of human affairs. Others again adored the very corporeal and visible forms of created things in earthly and heavenly elements. Finally, some placed their gods in images of men, of cattle, of wild beasts, of birds, of serpents, and confined the Lord of the universe and the Parent of infinity within the narrow bounds of metals and stones and stocks of wood.

Nor was it any longer fitting that authors of truth should exist, who, pursuing things ridiculous, foul, and irreligious, disagreed even among themselves in these very opinions of their emptiest views. But amid these things my anxious mind, striving toward the useful and necessary way to the knowledge of its Lord, since it judged that neglect of the things He had created was not worthy of God, nor understood that sex of gods and successions of begettings and births befitted a nature powerful and incorrupt: further held it for certain that nothing divine and eternal exists save as one and undivided, because that which is author to itself of what it is need not have left outside itself anything more excellent than itself: and thus that omnipotence and eternity belong to none but the One; because neither in omnipotence could there be a stronger and a weaker, nor in eternity a later and an earlier; but in God nothing is to be venerated save what is eternal and powerful.

From the Scriptures he learns what God is; that He is eternal.—Pondering these things, then, and many others of the same kind, in my mind, I came upon those books which the religion of the Hebrews handed down as written by Moses and the prophets: in which the Creator God Himself, testifying of Himself, these things were contained thus: I am who am; and again: Thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel, He who is hath sent me to you. I was altogether astonished at so complete a signification concerning God, expressing the incomprehensible knowledge of the divine nature in speech most fitted to human understanding. For nothing is understood to be more proper to God than to be; because that very fact of being neither at some time ceases nor began: but that which, by the power of incorrupt blessedness, is perpetual, could not nor shall be able ever not to be; because everything divine is subject neither to abolition nor to a beginning.

And since in nothing does the eternity of God fail Him, He fittingly showed only this—that He is—as testimony of His incorrupt eternity. God is infinite; He cannot be grasped by the mind.—And to this signification of infinity indeed the utterance of Him saying: I am who am, seemed to have sufficed: but the work of understanding His magnificence and power was still ours to do. For since it was proper to Him to be, who, ever abiding, had never also at some time begun; this word again worthy of the eternal and incorrupt God was heard concerning Him: Who holds the heaven in the palm of His hand, and the earth in His fist; and again: Heaven is my throne, and earth is the footstool of my feet. What house will you build for me, or what place shall be my resting-place? Has not my hand made all these things? The whole of heaven is held in God's palm, and the whole of earth is enclosed in His fist.

But the word of God, even though it advances to the notion of a religious understanding, contains more of meaning when perceived by inward insight, than when received by hearing alone.

For heaven, enclosed in the palm, is again a throne to God; and earth, which is contained in the fist, is likewise the footstool of His feet: lest, in the throne and footstool, according to the posture of one sitting, an extension of bodily form might be understood, since that which is to Him a throne and a footstool is again grasped and enclosed by that very infinite and powerful palm and fist; but that in all these origins of creatures God might be known within and without, both transcendent and immanent, that is, both poured around and infused into all things, since both the palm and the fist, containing, show the power over the exterior nature; and the throne and footstool, being set beneath, show the exterior things belonging to the interior, since He who is interior, sitting upon His own exterior things, again Himself, exterior, encloses the interior things: and thus He, wholly containing within and without Himself (understood: all things), is neither absent, infinite as He is, from all things, nor are all things not present in Him who is infinite.

In these most religious opinions concerning God, then, my mind, held fast by zeal for truth, took delight. For it did not think anything else worthy of God, than that He so exists beyond the understanding of things, that in whatever measure the mind, even in a presumed opinion, might stretch itself toward some limit, in that same measure the infinity of unmeasured eternity would exceed all the infinity of the nature pursuing it. And though this was understood by us piously, it was nevertheless plainly confirmed by the prophet saying thus: Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy face? If I ascend into heaven, thou art there; if I descend into hell, thou art present. If I take my wings before the dawn, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there thy hand shall lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. No place is without God, nor is any place not in God. He is in the heavens, He is in hell, He is beyond the seas.

He is within, interior; He exceeds, exterior. Thus He both holds and is held; neither is He Himself in anything, nor is He not in all things.

God is most beautiful. Because we attain the form of other things, if not by word, at least by sense; but the form of God by neither.—Although, then, my mind rejoiced in the sense of this best and inexplicable understanding, because it venerated this infinity of immense eternity in its Parent and Creator; yet with even more intent zeal it still sought that very form of its infinite and eternal Lord, that it might suppose His uncircumscribed immensity to exist under some adornment of beautiful understanding. And while in these matters the religious mind was shut up within the error of its own weakness, it grasped this measure of the most beautiful judgment concerning God through prophetic words: For from the greatness of the works, and the beauty of the creatures, correspondingly the maker of the generations is beheld. The creator of great things is in the greatest things, and the maker of the most beautiful things is in the most beautiful things. And though the operation exceeds sense itself, yet the operator must far exceed every sense.

Beautiful, therefore, is the heaven, the ether, the earth, the seas, and the whole universe, which from its own adornment, as it also pleases the Greeks, seems fittingly to be called κόσμος, that is, world. But if this very beauty of things is measured by sense according to natural instinct, as happens even in the appearance of certain birds and cattle, so that, while the word falls short of the judgment, sense itself nevertheless, understanding, does not express it; which again, since all speech comes from sense, sense speaks to itself, understanding: is it not then necessary that the Lord of this very beauty be understood to be the most beautiful of all beauty; so that, though the form of His eternal adornment escapes the sense of all understanding, yet the adornment does not abandon the opinion of understanding to sense? And thus God must be confessed most beautiful: so that He is neither within the reach of a judgment of understanding, nor outside the understanding of sense.

God, exceeding understanding, is to be attained by faith.—My mind, then, imbued with these pursuits of pious opinion and doctrine, rested in a certain retreat and most beautiful watch-tower of this judgment, understanding that nothing else was left to it by its own nature, in which it could render greater or lesser service to its Creator, than to understand Him to be so great as cannot be understood, and yet can be believed: while faith takes up for itself the understanding necessary to religion, and the infinity of eternal power exceeds it.

Hilary rises to the hope of immortality. Reason itself persuades him of this.—There still lay beneath all these things a natural sense, that some hope of incorrupt blessedness might nourish the profession of piety—a hope which holy opinion concerning God and good morals might merit as a kind of pay for victorious warfare. For there would be no fruit at all in thinking well of God, if death destroyed all sense, and if a certain setting of failing nature abolished it. Moreover, reason itself persuaded him that it was not worthy of God to have led man into this life, a partaker of counsel and of prudence, under the failing of living and the eternity of dying, so that he should be set up only for this—that, not existing, he might be replaced, lest, having been replaced, he should exist; since it was understood that the sole reason of our constitution was this: that what was not should begin to be, not that what had begun to be should cease to be.

The Gospel of John increases hope and the knowledge of God.—But the mind was wearied, partly by its own fear, partly by fear for the body. Although it kept its constant conviction through pious profession concerning God, and had taken up an anxious care for itself and for this dwelling of its own, which it thought was about to perish, after the knowledge of the Law and the Prophets it also comes to know the teachings of this kind, of evangelical and apostolic institution: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was made nothing. That which was made in him is life, and the life was the light of men, and the light shines in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came for a witness, to bear witness of the light.

He was not the light, but that he might bear witness of the light. That was the true light, which enlightens every man coming into this world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them he gave power to become sons of God, to those who believe in his name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us: and we saw his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. The mind advances beyond the understanding of natural sense, and is taught more about God than it had supposed. For it learns that its Creator is God from God: it hears that the Word is God, and was with God in the beginning.

It understands the light of the world remaining in the world, and not recognized by the world. It also learns of him coming unto his own, not received by his own: but it knows that those who received him were advanced, by the merit of their faith, into sons of God—not from the embrace of flesh, nor from the conception of blood, nor from the will of bodies, but born of God. Then it learns that the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and that his glory was beheld, which, as of the only one from the Father, was perfect with grace and truth.

The Son of God is God. To become sons of God is a power, not a necessity. The Son of God made man, that man might become a son of God. Christ true God and true man.—Here now the trembling and anxious mind finds more hope than it expected. And first it is instructed unto the knowledge of God the Father. And what before it had supposed by natural sense concerning the eternity and infinity and form of its Creator, this it now accepts as proper also to the only-begotten God: not relaxing its faith into gods, because it hears God from God; not departing into a diversity of nature in God from God, because it learns that God from God is full of grace and truth; nor perceiving God from God in a preposterous order, because it discovers that God was with God in the beginning.

It then perceives that faith in this saving knowledge is exceedingly rare, but that it knows the greatest reward: because his own received him not, and those who received him were increased into sons of God, not by birth of flesh, but of faith. And it knows that to be sons of God is not a necessity but a power: because though the gift of God is set before all, it is not brought by the nature of those begetting, but the reward follows the will. And lest this very thing—that it becomes a power for each to be a son of God—should hinder in any way the infirmity of a trembling faith, because through its own difficulty that is scarcely to be hoped for which is more desired and less believed: the Word, God, was made flesh, so that through God the Word made flesh, the flesh might advance into God the Word.

And lest the Word made flesh should be either something other than God the Word, or not the flesh of our body, he dwelt among us: so that while he dwells, he might remain nothing other than God; yet while he dwells among us, he might be nothing other than God made flesh of our flesh; through the condescension of the flesh assumed, not lacking his own, since as the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth, he is both perfect in his own and true in ours.

Only faith grasps divine things.—The mind, rejoicing, therefore received this teaching of the divine mystery, advancing into God through the flesh, and called into a new birth through faith, and entrusted to its own power for obtaining heavenly regeneration, recognizing in itself the care of its Parent and Creator, and not thinking that it would be reduced to nothing by him through whom it had come to subsist, out of nothing, into this very thing that it is: and measuring all these things beyond the sense of human understanding, because reason, incapable of common opinions of heavenly counsel, thinks that only to be in the nature of things which either it understands within itself, or which it can supply of itself.

But it weighed the powers of God according to the magnificence of eternal power, not by sense, but by the infinity of faith: so that it might not disbelieve that God was in the beginning with God, and that the Word made flesh dwelt among us, on the ground that it did not understand it; but rather that it might remember that it could understand it, if it believed.

The deeds of Christ do not yield to the natural senses of minds.—And lest it be delayed by any error of worldly prudence, it is further taught, unto the most absolute faith of this pious confession, by the divine words through the Apostle, as follows: See that no one spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the elements of the world, and not according to Christ: for in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and you are complete in him, who is the head of all principality and power: in whom also you were circumcised with circumcision not made by hand, in the putting off of the body of the flesh, but with the circumcision of Christ, buried with him in baptism, in whom also you rose again through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.

And you, when you were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he made alive together with him, forgiving you all trespasses, blotting out the handwriting of decrees that was against us, which was contrary to us: and he took it out of the way, nailing it to the cross: and having stripped himself of the flesh, he made a show of the powers openly, triumphing over them with confidence in himself.

Constant faith rejects the deceitful and useless questions of philosophy, and, not succumbing to the fallacies of human follies, truth does not offer itself as spoil to falsehood; not holding God according to the sense of common understanding, nor deciding concerning Christ according to the elements of the world, in whom the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily: so that, while the infinity of eternal power is in him, the power of eternal infinity exceeds every embrace of the earthly mind: he who, drawing us to the nature of his own divinity, did not still bind us with a bodily observance of precepts, nor imbue us, through the shadow of the law, with the solemn rites of cutting off the flesh (that is, circumcision); but so that, circumcised from vices by the Spirit, he might cleanse away every natural necessity of the body through the purification from the cutting off of sins: with whose death we should be buried together in baptism, that we might return into the life of eternity; while regeneration unto life should be a death out of life, and, dying to vices, we should be reborn unto immortality; he himself dying for us out of immortality, that we might be raised together with him out of death unto immortality.

For he took on the flesh of sin, that by the assumption of our flesh he might forgive sins, becoming a partaker of it by assumption, not by crime; blotting out through death the sentence of death, that by a new creation of our race in himself he might abolish the constitution of the former decree; permitting himself to be nailed to the cross, that by the curse of the cross, once blotted out, he might nail fast all the curses of earthly condemnation; suffering at last in man, that he might disgrace the powers; while God, about to die according to the Scriptures, might also triumph in these things with the confidence of one conquering in himself; while he himself, immortal, not to be conquered by death, died for the eternity of those who were dying.

These things, therefore, done by God beyond the understanding of human nature, do not in turn yield to the natural senses of minds; because the working of infinite eternity demands an infinite measure of opinion: so that when God is man, when the immortal is dead, when the eternal is buried, this is not a matter of understanding, but an exception of power; so again, on the contrary, it is not a matter of sense, but a mode of power, that God should be from man, that the immortal should be from the dead, that the eternal should be from the buried. We are therefore raised together by God in Christ through his death. But since in Christ is the fullness of the Godhead, we have also the meaning of God the Father raising us together in the dead one, and Christ Jesus is to be confessed as nothing other than God in the fullness of the Godhead.

Faith in Christ takes away both the fear of death and the weariness of life.—In this leisure, then, conscious of its own security, the mind rested, glad in its hopes: not fearing the interruption of this death so much that it even counted it as passing into eternal life. And it thought that the life of this body of its own was not only not troublesome or grievous to it, but believed it to be like letters to boyhood, medicine to the sick, swimming to the shipwrecked, discipline to youths, or soldiering to those about to command: that is, the endurance of things present, tending toward the reward of blessed immortality. Indeed, it even preached to others, through the ministry of the priesthood laid upon it, that which it itself believed, extending its own duty to the office of public salvation.

The character of heretics.—But amid these things there emerged the desperate and, toward all, savage minds of impious rashness, tempering the powerful nature of God by the weakness of their own nature: not so as themselves to rise up to an infinity of opining about infinite things, but so as to enclose things indefinite within the limit of their own perception; and to make themselves arbiters of religion, though the work of religion is the office of obedience; forgetful of themselves, neglectful of things divine, correctors of the precepts.

Two chief heresies concerning Christ, that of Sabellius and that of Arius.—For, to say nothing of the other most foolish pursuits of the heretics—concerning which, nevertheless, we shall not be silent, when the course of our discourse offers occasion—certain men so corrupt the mystery of the evangelical faith, that, under a merely pious profession of one God, they deny the birth of the only-begotten God; so that it is rather an extension into man than a descent: nor do they hold that he who was the Son of Man according to the times of the flesh assumed was the same who had always before been, and still is, the Son of God: lest there be in him a birth of God, but rather that he is the same out of the same; so that, as they think, an unbroken series, drawn solidly forth into flesh, may preserve the inviolable faith of the one God, while the Father, extended even unto the virgin, is himself born to himself as a son.

Others, however (since there is no salvation without Christ, who in the beginning was with God, God the Word), denying birth, have professed creation alone: lest birth should admit the truth of God, but creation should teach a falsehood, which, while feigning itself within the kind of the one God, would not exclude it in mystery; but, subjecting the true birth to the name and faith of creation, they make him separable from the truth of the one God, so that the creation of a substitute should not usurp for itself the perfection of divinity, which the truth of birth had not given.

The true faith is to be established against both errors throughout this whole work.—My mind, therefore, burned to answer the madness of these men: recalling that this above all is salutary for itself, not only to have believed in God, but also in God the Father; nor to have hoped in Christ only, but in Christ the Son of God; nor in a creature, but in God the creator, born from God. We hasten, therefore, especially from the prophetic and evangelic proclamations to confound the madness and ignorance of those who, under the sole preaching—truly the only useful and religious one—of one God, either deny that Christ is God born, or contend that he is not truly God; so that the creation of a mighty creature may leave the sacrament of faith within one God; because the birth of God, outside the faith of one God, may protract the religion of those confessing.

But we, taught by divine instruction, neither preach two gods nor a lone one; this reasoning of the evangelic and prophetic proclamation, in the confession of God the Father and God the Son, we shall set forth, so that in our faith both may be one, not one alone: neither confessing both as the same, nor as anything else between true and false; because, God being born from God, the birth permits him neither to be the same, nor to be another.

Faith is necessary for the reader.—And you indeed, whom the warmth of faith and the study of truth—unknown to the world and to the wise of the world—has called to reading, must remember that the weak and feeble opinions of earthly minds are to be cast aside, and all the narrow confines of imperfect judgment are to be relaxed by a religious expectation of learning. For there is need of new perceptions of a regenerated understanding, so that each one's conscience may illuminate him according to the gift of his heavenly origin. One must first stand by faith, as the holy Jeremiah admonishes, in the substance of God: so that, about to hear concerning the substance of God, he may moderate his own understanding to things worthy of the substance of God; and let him moderate it not by some manner of understanding, but by infinity.

Indeed, conscious of himself as a partaker of the divine nature, as the blessed apostle Peter says in his second epistle, that he has been made such, let him not measure the nature of God by the laws of his own nature, but weigh the divine declarations according to the magnificence of the divine testimony concerning itself. For the best reader is one who expects the understanding of the words to come from the words themselves rather than imposing it upon them, and who brings back rather than brings to them, and does not force what he had presumed before reading ought to be understood to seem contained in the words. When, therefore, the discourse concerns the things of God, let us grant to God the knowledge of himself, and let us serve his words with pious reverence. For he is a fit witness to himself, who is not known except through himself.

No comparison to divine things is perfect.—But if, in treating of the nature and birth of God, we shall bring forward examples of comparisons, let no one suppose that they contain in themselves the perfection of an absolute reasoning. For there is no comparison of earthly things to God: but the weakness of our understanding compels us to seek certain likenesses from lower things, as indicators of higher ones; so that, by the familiarity of things known to us admonishing us, we might be led from the consciousness of our own sense to an opinion of an unaccustomed sense. Let, therefore, every comparison be held as more useful to man than fitting to God, because it signifies understanding rather than fulfills it: nor let it be reckoned as presuming to equate the natures of flesh and spirit, and of things invisible and tangible, since it declares itself both necessary to human weakness of understanding and free from the reproach of an insufficient example.

We proceed, therefore, to speak of God in God's own words, yet imbuing our understanding with the likeness of the things familiar to us.

The order of the whole work.—And first we have so tempered the plan of the whole work, that an order of connected little books, most suited to the advancement of readers, might follow one upon another. For we resolved to bring nothing forward unarranged and undigested: lest a disordered heap of a work should present a certain rustic tumult by confused clamor. But since there is no advance through steep places, unless the step be carried by degrees gradually laid beneath it toward the heights; we too, arranging certain beginnings of advance, have smoothed this arduous path of understanding with a gentler slope, as it were, no longer cut into steps, but sloping down with a creeping levelness, so that, almost without the climbers feeling it, the concord of those going forward might advance.

What the second book contains.—For after this little book of our first discourse, the following one so teaches the sacrament of the divine generation, that those to be baptized in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit may not be ignorant of the truth of the names, nor confuse understanding with words, but may conceive each one in sense such as it is and is called; being about to recognize most fully in the things that have been said, that the name is not other than the truth, nor is the truth other than the name.

The third book.—After this, then, gentle and brief discourse demonstrating the Trinity, the third book, though gradually, nevertheless already advances progressively. For that which the Lord professed of himself beyond the understanding of human sense, he fits to the faith of the understanding by as many examples of power as he can, saying: I am in the Father, and the Father in me: so that what by nature the sluggish sense of man does not grasp, faith might already attain to it by a reasonable knowledge; because it is neither right to disbelieve God concerning himself, nor to suppose that the understanding of his power lies outside the reason of faith.

The fourth book.—The fourth book then takes its beginning from the doctrines of the heretics, purging itself of the vices by which the faith of the Church is defamed; bringing forward that very exposition of perfidy, not long ago published by many, and proving that they had defended one God from the Law deceitfully, and thereby most impiously, all the testimonies of the Law and the prophets being so demonstrated, that to confess one God without the God Christ is irreligion; and, the only-begotten God Christ being confessed, not to preach one God is perfidy.

The fifth book.—The fifth, indeed, kept in the order of its response the order which the heretics had established in their profession. For since they had falsely claimed to preach one God according to the Law, they also deceived themselves in claiming to derive one true God from the same; so that, by making an exception of God being both one and true, they might take away birth from the Lord Christ; because where there is birth, there also is understanding of truth. But we, teaching by the same degrees by which this very thing was denied, have preached, neither two gods, nor a solitary true God, but the Father as true God, so from the Law and the prophets, as neither to corrupt the faith of one God, nor to deny the birth.

But because, according to them, the name of God was to be attributed to the Lord Jesus Christ as created rather than born, rather than as inherent; the truth of divinity was so demonstrated from the prophetic authorities, that we, with the Lord Jesus Christ preached as true God, might contain within the understanding of one true God the truth of the divinity native in him.

The sixth book.—The sixth book now lays open the whole fraudulence of the heretical assertion. For, in order to gain credence for their statements, condemning the sayings and vices of the heretics, namely of Valentinus and Sabellius and Manichaeus and Hieracas, they stole the pious preachings of the Church under the covering of an impious profession: so that, the words of the irreligious being corrected for the better, and moderated by an ambiguous meaning, they might, under the condemnation of impiety, extinguish the doctrine of piety.

But we, having demonstrated the sayings and professions of each, have vindicated the holy preachings of the Church, and have allowed nothing in common between them and the condemned heretics, so that, condemning what is to be condemned, we might follow only what is to be reverently pursued, teaching through these things that the Lord Jesus Christ is (understand: is) the Son of God, which was chiefly denied by them, while the Father bears witness of him, while he himself professes it of himself, while the Apostles preach it, while the religious believe it, while the demons cry it out, while the Jews, denying, confess it, while the nations, ignorant, understand it; lest now (that is, so that it should not) be permitted to be doubted, what was not left to be unknown.

The seventh book. Sabellius, Hebion, and Arius, in conquering each other, are conquered by the Church.—The seventh book next tempered the discourse of the undertaken disputation according to the degree of perfect faith. For first, through a sound and uncorrupted demonstration of inviolable faith, it contended in dispute between Sabellius and Hebion, and those who are not preachers of the true God, as to why Sabellius denied that he subsisted before the ages, whom the others confessed to be created. For Sabellius was ignorant of the subsisting Son, while not doubting that the true God worked in a body. These others, however, denied the birth and affirmed the creature, while not understanding that his works are the works of the true God. Their dispute is our faith. For while he denies the Son (and therefore errs), Sabellius conquers in this, that God (as he rightly proves) truly worked; and the Church conquers those who have denied the true God in Christ.

But indeed, when these prove against him that Christ, subsisting before the ages, always worked, they triumph with us over Sabellius, condemned along with them, knowing indeed the true God, but not knowing the Son of God. Hebion, however, is conquered by both, so that this one (Arius) proves him subsisting before the ages, and this one (Sabellius) proves him to have truly worked as God. And all, by conquering each other, are conquered: because the Church, both against Sabellius, and against the preachers of a creature, and against Hebion, testifies that the Lord Jesus Christ is true God from true God, both born before the ages, and afterward begotten as man.

The eighth book.—The eighth book now, the two preceding books having greatly advanced the faith of believers concerning the Son of God and the true God, is wholly occupied in the demonstration of the one God; not taking away birth from the Son of God, but neither introducing through it the divinity of two gods. And first it taught in what ways the heretics, since they could not deny the truth of God the Father and God the Son, nevertheless strove to evade it; dissolving their inept and ridiculous pretexts, by which, through that which is said: Now of the multitude of believers there was one soul and one heart; and again: But he who plants, and he who waters, are one; and again: But I pray not for these only, but for those also who shall believe through their word in me: that all may be one, as thou, Father, in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: they assert the truth rather of will and unanimity than of divinity.

But we, treating these very words according to their own force (that is, according to the force of the words), have shown that they contain in themselves the faith of the divine birth: and, reviewing all the professions of the Lord's sayings, we have taught the whole and perfect sacrament of the paternal and only-begotten majesty from the apostolic proclamations and the properties of the Holy Spirit: since both the Son understood in the Father, and the Father known in the Son, showed the birth of the only-begotten God, and the truth of the perfect God in him. Let not unexamined assertions of our statements deceive the hearers' understanding, unless also the demonstrated emptiness of the adversaries' propositions confirm our faith, in this very fact, that they are proved to be ridiculous.

The ninth book, therefore, is wholly devoted to repelling those things which are employed by the impious to weaken the nativity of the only-begotten God: men who, forgetful of the mystery of the dispensation hidden from the ages, do not remember that by the evangelical faith God and man are proclaimed together. For when they deny that our Lord Jesus Christ is God, and like to God, and equal as God the Son to God the Father, born of God, and that according to the property of His nativity He subsists in the truth of the Spirit (that is, of divinity); they are wont to rely upon these professions of the Lord's own sayings: "Why callest thou me good? None is good but one, that is, God"; so that, since He rebukes being called good, He should be reckoned outside the goodness of God who alone is good, and not within the truth of the God who is one.

To these sayings they also join, for the arguments of their impiety, this: "Now this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent"; so that, since He confessed the Father alone the true God, He Himself would be neither true nor God, because the exception "of the only true God" does not exceed the signified property beyond its author. And this is to be understood as having been said by Him without ambiguity, because He also said: "The Son cannot do anything of himself, but what he seeth the Father doing"; so that, since He can perform nothing except by the example of another's work, a weakness of nature is understood in Him; because that which is subject to the necessity of another's operation can by no means be compared with omnipotence; and reason of understanding urges this, that in all things "to be able" and "not to be able" differ.

And they differ to such an extent that concerning God the Father He thus professed: "The Father is greater than I"; and let the calumny of contradiction cease in the face of such absolute profession; because it would be an impious madness to refuse to attribute honor and nature to God who denies it. But in every way He is so far removed from the property of the true God, that He even testified this: "But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father only"; so that, since the Son does not know what the Father alone knows, he who does not know is far removed from him who knows; because a nature liable to ignorance is not of that virtue and power which is exempt from the dominion of ignorance.

"even unto death"; so that He is far from the blessedness and incorruption of God, into whose soul a dominating fear of imminent sorrow fell: who was even so overwhelmed unto this prayer by the necessity of the passion: "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me"; and without doubt He would seem to have feared to suffer what He prayed not to suffer; because the trepidation of suffering supplied the cause of the entreaty: indeed the force of pain so overcame His weakness, that in the very hour of the cross He said: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"—He who, moved even to the complaint of His desolation by the bitterness of the passion, bereft of paternal aid, breathed out His spirit with this word, saying: "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit"; and, troubled with the trepidation of expiring, commended this Himself to be guarded by God the Father; because the desperation of security demanded the necessity of commendation.

Other things are opposed to these.—But most foolish and most impious men, not understanding that nothing contrary in the same matters was said by the same one, clinging only to the words, have abandoned the very causes of the sayings. For since it is far and greatly different, "My soul is sorrowful even unto death", and, "Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power"; nor is it the same thing, "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me", and that other, "The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?"; and far different is: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?", from that: "Verily I say unto thee, to day shalt thou be with me in paradise"; and greatly at variance also: "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit", and that, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do": unable to grasp the divine sayings, they have fallen back into impiety.

And since trepidation and freedom, haste and excuse, complaint and exhortation, distrust and intercession, do not agree, forgetful of the divine profession and nature, they have seized upon the deeds and words of the dispensation as an argument for their impiety. And so we, having set forth all things which belong to the mystery both of the soul and of the body of the Lord Jesus Christ, have left nothing unexamined, nothing unspoken: but by fitting the peaceable understanding of all the sayings to each several kind of cause, we have shown that neither did confidence tremble, nor did will avoid, nor did security complain, nor did He who commends Himself in prayer desire pardon for others: confirming the faith of all the sayings by the absolute proclamation of the evangelical mystery.

Book XI refutes other arguments of the heretics.—Since, therefore, not even the glory of the resurrection itself has restrained these most desperate men within the understanding of religion, but they have either taken up, as weapons of their impiety, the profession of His condescension, or turned the revelation of the mystery to the reproach of God: so that, through what is said, "I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God", while the Father is common to us and to Him as Father, and God is God to both, He would be, in this common profession, outside the exception of the true God, and, just as we are, would be subjected by the necessity of creation to God the Creator, and would be adopted as a son; so that now no property of the divine nature would be reckoned in Him, according to the Apostle's saying: "But when he saith, All things are put under him, it is manifest that he is excepted, which did put all things under him.

And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all". Because subjection both attests the weakness of the one subjected, and signifies the power of the one who dominates: in these matters also, treated with the highest demonstration of religion, the eleventh book is occupied, showing, even from these very apostolic sayings, that subjection does not at all tend to the weakness of the divinity, but that through this very subjection (understand: subjection) the truth of God is shown, because He was born of God: and that through the fact that both to Himself and to us the Father is Father and God is God, much is gained for us, and nothing is taken away from Him; since, of course, having been born man, and having undergone all the sufferings of our flesh, He should ascend, as our man, to be glorified into God, unto God and our Father.

Book XII more openly assails the Arian heresy. The Son of God was so born that He always was.—But, as we have always remembered to be observed in every kind of teaching, that if any, first through slight practice and by the long use of a humbler study, have been trained, then they are at last sent to the trial of the very matters in which they have been instructed; so that, when they have well played at war, they are drawn forth to be soldiers in earnest; or when they have tried forensic lawsuits as matter for school exercise, they are then sent to the battles of the tribunals; or when a fearless sailor has fitted out a ship on domestic pools, he is then committed to the storms of the great and foreign sea: this same thing we have taken care to do in this greatest and gravest understanding of the whole faith.

For whereas before, from slight beginnings, we had instructed the tender faith concerning the nativity, the name, the divinity, the truth, and by a gentle progress had raised the zeal of our readers even to the uprooting of all the occasions of the heretics; then we brought them forth to the very wrestling-ground of the glorious and great contest: so that, in so far as the human mind fails, by the common opinion of ordinary sense, to embrace the understanding of the eternal nativity, so far it might strive, by divine studies, to perceive those things which are beyond the opinion of our nature; especially dissolving this question, which, growing strong through the dullness of secular wisdom, thinks it can say of the Lord Jesus by reasoning: "There was when he was not," and, "He was not before he was born," and, "He was made out of things non-existent": as though, because nativity seems to bring this about, that he should be who was not, and should be born though he did not exist; through this too they subject the only-begotten God to the sense of times: (as if indeed the faith itself and the reason of the nativity showed that He at some time was not) and therefore they say that He was born from that which was not, because nativity bestows being what was not.

But we, proclaiming by apostolic and evangelical testimonies that the Father always was, the Son always was, will teach that God of all is not after some things, but before all things: nor does He fall into the rashness of this irreligious understanding, that He should be born out of things non-existent, and that He was not before He was born; but that He so always was, that we also proclaim Him born; and that He was so born, that we manifest Him to have always been: and that in Him there is not the exception of unbegottenness, but the eternity of the nativity; because both the nativity has an author, and the divinity does not lack eternity.

The words are expounded: "The Lord created me,"—And because they are ignorant of the prophetic saying, and unskilled in heavenly doctrine, corrupting the sense and the property of the meaning, they strive to affirm that God was rather created than born through this, because it is said, "The Lord created me in the beginning of his ways for his works"; so that He should be of the common nature of created things, though more excellent in the class of creation; and that in Him there should not be the glory of the divine nativity, but the power of a mighty creature.

But we, bringing forward nothing new, nothing assumed from outside, will show, by that very testimony of Wisdom itself, the truth and the reason of the saying, and that it cannot be drawn to the understanding of the divine and eternal nativity, that He was created in the beginning of the ways of God and in His works, because it is not the same thing to be created in these, and to be born before all things: since, where there is the signification of nativity, there is the sole profession of nativity; but where there is the name of creation, there the cause of that same creation is prior: and since Wisdom was born before all things, yet because she was also created for certain things, that which is before all things is not the same as that which began to be after some things.

Book XII sets forth what must be confessed concerning the Holy Spirit.—Thereafter it seemed fitting, once the name of creation had been repudiated from the faith which we hold concerning the only-begotten God, to teach also those things which would be fitting and religious for the confession of the Holy Spirit: so that, with the matters of the earlier books now confirmed by long and diligent treatment, nothing should be lacking to the completeness of the whole faith, since, the irreligious notions concerning the Holy Spirit arising from vicious proclamations having been removed, the apostolic and evangelical authority might contain, within the saving definition, the unharmed and uncontaminated mystery of the regenerating Trinity: nor should anyone any longer, by the judgment of human sense, dare to reckon the Spirit of God among created things, whom we receive as the pledge of immortality, and unto fellowship of the divine and incorrupt nature.

Grace is implored as necessary for right writing.—I indeed am conscious that I owe this as, so to speak, the chief duty of my life to thee, Father, Almighty God, that all my speech and thought should speak of thee. For this very use of speaking granted to me by thee can bring me no greater reward than that by preaching thee it should serve thee, and should show thee to be what thou art, Father, namely the Father of the only-begotten God, to an ignorant world or to a denying heretic. And in this indeed there is only the profession of my will: but for the rest, the gift of thy help and mercy must be prayed for, that thou mayest fill with the breath of thy Spirit the sails of our faith and confession spread out to thee, and drive us forward on the course of the preaching we have begun.

For he is not unfaithful to us who is the author of that promise, saying: Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. We indeed, being needy, will pray for the things we lack, and will bring persistent zeal to the searching out of the sayings of thy prophets and apostles, and will knock at every barred entrance of understanding: but it is thine both to grant what is prayed for, and to be present to what is sought, and to open to what is knocked upon. For we are sluggish with a certain slothful torpor of our nature, and by the weakness of our understanding we are held within the necessity of ignorance for understanding thy things: but the pursuits of thy teaching instruct us unto the sense of divine knowledge, and the obedience of faith carries us forward beyond natural opinion.

We await, therefore, that thou wouldst rouse the beginnings of this trembling undertaking, and confirm it with growing progress, and call us to the fellowship of either the prophetic or the apostolic spirit: that we may grasp their sayings with no other sense than that with which they themselves spoke, and follow the proprieties of the words with the same significations of the things. For we are about to speak of those things which were proclaimed by them under a mystery—that thou art the eternal God, the Father of the eternal only-begotten God; and that thou alone art without birth, and that the one Lord Jesus Christ is of thee by an eternal birth, not to be reckoned among a number of gods by any diversity of truth; nor yet is he not to be proclaimed as begotten of thee, who art the one God; nor is anything else to be confessed but the true God, who was born of thee, the true God the Father.

Grant us, therefore, the true meaning of the words, the light of understanding, honor for the things said, faith in the truth: and grant that what we believe we may also speak; namely, that it may befall us, knowing from the Prophets and Apostles the one God the Father and the one Lord Jesus Christ, now against the denying heretics, so to proclaim thee as God, that thou be not alone; and to preach him, that he be not false.

That the knowledge of the Trinity delivered in baptism suffices.—It ought to have sufficed for believers, the word of God which has been poured into our ears by the Evangelist's testimony together with the very power of its truth, when the Lord says: Go now, teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I command you: and lo, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world. For what is not contained in that concerning the mystery of human salvation? Or what remains, or is obscure? All things are full, as from one who is full, and perfect from one who is perfect. For they comprehend the meaning of the words, and the efficacy of the things, and the order of the transactions, and the understanding of nature.

He commanded to baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, that is, in the confession both of the Author, and of the Only-begotten, and of the Gift. The Author of all is one. For one is God the Father, from whom are all things; and one is the Only-begotten, our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things; and one is the Spirit, the gift in all. All things, therefore, are ordered according to their own powers and merits: one power from which are all things, one offspring through whom are all things, one gift of perfect hope. Nor will anything be found lacking to so great a consummation, within which there is, in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, infinity in the Eternal, form in the Image, use in the Gift.

The vice of heretics compels us to discourse further about it.—But we are compelled, by the vices of heretics and blasphemers, to do unlawful things, to climb steep heights, to utter what cannot be spoken, to presume what is not permitted. And whereas it would have been fitting that what has been commanded be fulfilled by faith alone—namely, to adore the Father, and to venerate the Son together with him, and to abound in the Holy Spirit—we are compelled to extend the lowliness of our speech to things that are ineffable, and are constrained, against our will, by another's fault: so that what ought to have been kept within the religious silence of minds must now be brought forth into the peril of human speech.

Heresy is born from Scripture wrongly understood.—For there have arisen many who received the simplicity of heavenly words according to the sense of their own will, not according to the fullness of the truth itself, interpreting otherwise than the force of the sayings demanded. For heresy arises from understanding, not from Scripture; and it is the sense, not the wording, that becomes the crime. Can truth possibly be corrupted? When the name of Father is heard, is not the nature of the Son contained in the name? Will he not be the Holy Spirit, who is so called? For it is not possible that what belongs to the Father as Father should not be in the Father, nor that what belongs to the Son as Son should be lacking in the Son, nor that what is taken to belong to the Holy Spirit should not exist in the Spirit.

But men perverse in mind confound and entangle all things, and by the perversity of their own understanding strive even to the point of changing nature; so that they take away from the Father what he is as Father, while wishing to deprive the Son of what he is as Son. And they take it away when they hold that the Son is not of the same nature with them. But he is not of the nature, when the begetter and the one begotten do not have the same in themselves. For he is not a son to whom the substance will be other and unlike that of the father. But how will he be a father, if he has not begotten in the son that which is of substance and nature in himself?

New doctrines of heretics—of Sabellius, Ebion, the Arians, the Pneumatomachi.—These things, therefore, although they can in no way be changed from what they are, nevertheless men bring forward new doctrines and human inventions concerning them: so that Sabellius extends the Father into the Son, and thinks this should be confessed rather in names than in realities, since he sets forth the Son himself as the Father himself; so that Ebion derives every beginning of the Son of God from Mary—as if resuming, as it were, the very same point, "He is not of the nature." granting that not man is from God, but God is brought forth from man; and holding that the Word of God, which subsisted before, being in the beginning with God, was not received by the Virgin, but that flesh was begotten through the word; because he says that in the Word previously there was no nature of the only-begotten God existing, but only the raised sound of a voice: as some preachers of this present time now do, who bring forth the form and wisdom and power of God out of nothing and from time; lest, if the Son be from the Father, God should be diminished into the Son; being overly anxious lest the Father be emptied by the Son born from him: and therefore they come to God's aid in the creation of the Son, comparing him from things that do not exist, so that within the perfection of his own nature the Father, because nothing is begotten from him, may remain intact.

Now indeed what wonder is it that they hold diverse views concerning the Holy Spirit, they who are such rash authors in creating, changing, and abolishing him who is the bestower of the Spirit? And thus they dissolve the truth of this perfect mystery, while they contrive substantial diversities in things so much in common: denying the Father, while they take from the Son what he is as Son; denying the Holy Spirit, while they are ignorant both of his use and of his author. Thus they destroy the unlearned, while they affirm the reasoning of this preaching; and they deceive the hearers, while they take away nature by means of names, because names cannot take away nature. I pass over the remaining names of human peril—the Valentinians, the Marcionites, the Manichees, and the other pestilences, which sometimes take hold of the minds of the unlearned, and infect them by the very contagion of intercourse: and there is one plague of them all, while the sickness of the preachers is poured into the minds of the hearers.

With what unwillingness and trembling Hilary sets about discourse concerning divine things.—The unfaithfulness of these men, therefore, draws us into a doubtful and dangerous course, so that it becomes necessary to bring forth something beyond the heavenly precept concerning matters so great and so hidden. The Lord had said that the nations were to be baptized, In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. The form of the faith is certain: but as far as the heretics are concerned, all its meaning is made uncertain.

Therefore nothing is to be added to the precepts, but a limit must be set to our boldness: so that, since malice, stirred up by the instigation of diabolical deceit, evades the truth of things through the names of nature, we may set forth the nature of the names; and, in what we shall have set forth, according to what we shall have in words, with the dignity and office of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the names may not be defrauded of the properties of nature, but may be confined by the names within the meaning of nature. And I do not know what state of mind those have who think otherwise about these things, corrupting the truth, bringing darkness upon light, cutting apart what cannot be divided, splitting what is incorrupt, dividing what is undivided.

If it is so easy a deed for them to tear apart what is perfect, to set a law over power, to circumscribe a limit around the infinite: for me, certainly, in answering them, there is a fever in my cares, a wasting in my sense, a stupor in my understanding; and in speech I shall confess not merely weakness, but silence. And indeed this willingness is wrung from me, while both boldness is resisted, and error is provided against, and ignorance is guarded against. But immense is what is demanded, incomprehensible is what is dared; that beyond the limit set by God there should be discourse about God. He has set the names of nature: Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Whatever is sought beyond this is outside the significance of speech, outside the reach of sense, outside the conception of understanding; it is not declared, not attained, not grasped. The nature of the thing itself exhausts the significance of words, an inscrutable light blinds the contemplation of sense, whatever is contained by no limit exceeds the capacity of understanding.

But we, begging pardon of this necessity from him who is all these things, will dare, will inquire, will speak: and this alone we promise in so great a question of things—that we will believe the things that shall be signified.

The notion of the Father.—The Father is he from whom everything that exists has come to be. He himself in Christ and through Christ is the origin of all things. But his own being is in himself, taking what he is from nowhere else, but possessing what he is from himself and in himself. Infinite, because he himself is not in anything, but all things are within him; always outside place, because he is not contained; always before eternity, because time is from him. Run in thought if you suppose there is any limit to him, you will always find him: because, however far you extend your thought, there is always something further to extend it to. But your reaching after his place is such to you, that to him it is to be without end. Speech will fail concerning him, but nature will not be enclosed. Turn back the ages again, you will find that he always is: and when the number of reckoning fails in speech, yet God's ever-being does not fail.

Stir up your understanding, and embrace the whole with your mind; you hold nothing. This whole has a remainder, but the remainder is always within the whole. Therefore he is neither a whole, to which there is a remainder; nor is the remainder all that the whole is. For a remainder is a portion; but that which is the whole is all. But God is both everywhere, and is wholly wherever he is. Thus he exceeds the region of understanding, he outside whom there is nothing, and to whom it is to be always, that he may always be. This is the truth of the mystery of God, this is the name of an inscrutable nature in the Father. God is invisible, ineffable, infinite: to utter whom speech falls silent, to search out whom sense is dulled, to embrace whom understanding is straitened. Yet he has, as we have said, the name of his own nature in "Father": but he is only Father. For he does not, after a human manner, have from elsewhere that which he is as Father.

He himself is unbegotten, eternal, having in himself always that he may always be. Known to the Son alone: for no one knows the Father but the Son, and he to whom the Son wills to reveal him; nor does anyone know the Son but the Father: to them the knowledge is mutual, to them, in turn, the knowledge is perfect. And because no one knows the Father but the Son, let us hold our sense of the Father together with the Son who reveals him, who alone is the faithful witness.

The Father is ineffable. The knowledge of God is perfect.—And these things I should rather feel concerning the Father than say them: for it does not escape me that all speech is weak for the uttering of those things which are his. He is to be perceived as invisible, incomprehensible, eternal. But this very fact, that he is in himself and from himself, and is through himself; that he is invisible, and incomprehensible, and immortal: in these there is indeed a confession of honor, and a signification of perception, and a certain circumscription of opinion, but speech falls short of nature, and words do not unfold the thing as it is. For when you hear that he is in himself, no resolution for human reason presents itself; for to have and to be had are distinguished, and there will be one thing which is, another in which it is. If again you take that he is from himself; no one is to himself both bestower and gift.

If that he is immortal; therefore there is something not from him, to which another does not become subject: nor is it only that which is claimed for another by the utterance of this word. If that he is incomprehensible: then nowhere will that be which is denied to be attainable. If that he is invisible, whatever does not exist for sight lacks itself. Therefore confession fails in naming; whatever form of words shall be applied, it will not utter God as he is, and how great he is. It is perfect knowledge, so to know God that, though you know him not to be unknowable, yet you know him to be inexpressible. He is to be believed, he is to be understood, he is to be adored; and by these offices he is to be uttered.

What the Son is, what he is not.—We have been carried up into the deep from harborless places, with the sea in turmoil, and it is not permitted either to go back or to go forward without peril: yet there is more difficulty in the traversing than in what has been traversed. The Father is as he is, and he is to be believed as he is. The mind is dismayed to grasp the Son, and every speech trembles to betray itself. For he is the offspring of the unbegotten, one from one, true from true, living from living, perfect from perfect, power of power, wisdom of wisdom, glory of glory, image of the invisible God, form of the unbegotten Father. But what offspring shall we suppose of the only-begotten from the unbegotten? For the Father often cries from the heavens: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

There is no cutting off, or division: for he who begot is impassible, and he who was born is the image of the invisible God; and he testifies: For the Father is in me, and I in the Father. There is no adoption: for he is the true Son of God, and cries: He who has seen me has seen the Father also. But neither was he commanded to exist as other things: for the Only-begotten is from the One, and has life in himself, as he who begot has life in himself; for he says: As the Father has life in himself, so has he given to the Son to have life in himself. But neither is a part of the Father in the Son; for the Son testifies: All things that are the Father's are mine: and again: And all mine are yours, and yours mine; and: Whatsoever the Father has, he has given to the Son; and the Apostle also testifies: For in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.

Nor does nature have all being as a portion. But he is perfect from the perfect: because he who has all things has given all things. Nor is he to be thought not to have given because he has; or not to have, because he has given.

The generation of the Son of God surpasses human comprehension.—Both, therefore, have the secret of this nativity.

And if anyone should perhaps impute to his own understanding that he cannot attain to the mystery of this generation, though nevertheless both the Father is understood absolutely and the Son also; he will hear from me with greater grief that it is unknown. I do not know, I do not seek; and yet I will console myself. Archangels do not know, angels have not heard, ages do not hold it, the prophet did not perceive it, the apostle did not inquire, the Son himself did not utter it. Let the grief of complaints cease. I do not call you back, whoever you are who seek these things, to the height, I do not extend you into breadth, I do not lead you down into the depth: will you not with equanimity be ignorant of the nativity of the Creator, being ignorant of the origin of the creature? This at least I ask: do you perceive that you were begotten, and do you understand what things are begotten from you?

I do not ask whence you drew sense, whence you were allotted life, whence you obtained understanding, of what sort is the smell, the sense of sight, of hearing that is in you; certainly no one is ignorant of what he does: I ask whence you bestow these things upon those whom you beget, how you insert sense, kindle eyes, fix the heart. Tell these things, if you can. You have, then, things you do not know, and you bestow things you do not understand: be equanimous in your ignorance of your own affairs, though insolent in your ignorance of the things of God.

How the generation of God is to be devoutly inquired into, and with what fruit.—Hear then the unbegotten Father, hear the only-begotten Son; hear: The Father is greater than I; hear: I and the Father are one; hear: He who has seen me has seen the Father also; hear: The Father is in me, and I in the Father; hear: I came forth from the Father; and, He who is in the bosom of the Father; and, All things that the Father has, he has delivered to the Son; and, The Son has life in himself, as the Father also has in himself; hear the Son called image, wisdom, power, glory of God: and understand the Holy Spirit proclaiming: Who shall declare his generation?

And remonstrate with the Lord testifying: No one knows the Son but the Father, neither does anyone know the Father but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal him: and insert yourself into this secret, and between the one unbegotten God and the one only-begotten God, plunge yourself into the mystery of an inconceivable nativity. Begin, run on, persist: even though I know it will not be reached, yet I shall rejoice that you will make progress. For he who devoutly pursues infinite things, even if he never arrive, will yet profit by advancing. In this the understanding stands at the limit of words.

The nature of the Son. The office of faith.—The Son is from that Father who is, only-begotten from the unbegotten, offspring from the parent, living from the living. As to the Father is life in himself, so also to the Son life is given in himself. Perfect from perfect, because whole from whole; there is no division or cutting apart, because the one is in the other, and the fullness of the Godhead is in the Son. Incomprehensible from the incomprehensible; for none knows, except each the other in turn. Invisible from the invisible: because he is the image of the invisible God; and because he who has seen the Son has seen the Father also. Another from another; because Father and Son: not one nature of Godhead and another; because both are one.

God from God, from the one unbegotten God the one only-begotten God; not two gods, but one from one; not two unbegotten, because he was born from the unborn; the one differing in nothing from the other, because the life of the living one is in the living one. These things concerning the nature of the Godhead we have touched upon, not comprehending the sum of understanding, but understanding that the things we speak of are incomprehensible. There is, then, you say, no office of faith, if nothing can be comprehended. Nay rather, let faith profess this office, to know that that concerning which it inquires is incomprehensible to itself.

The generation of the Son of God, unknown to the wise of the world, to the scribes of the law, not sufficiently proved by miracles.—There remains yet something concerning the inexpressible generation of the Son, nay rather that something is still the whole matter. I am troubled, distracted, dulled, and I know not whence to begin. For I do not know when the Son was born; and it is impiety for me not to know that he was born. Whom shall I entreat? Whom implore? From what books shall I presume words for the narration of such great difficulties? Shall I unroll the whole school of Greece? But I have read: Where is the wise man? Where is the disputer of this world? In this, then, the sophists of the world and the wise men of the age are mute; for they have rejected the wisdom of God. Shall I then consult the scribe of the law? But he is ignorant; because to him the cross of Christ is a scandal.

Shall I perhaps exhort you to shut your eyes and be silent, because it is enough for the veneration of him who is preached, that lepers were cleansed, the deaf heard, the lame ran, paralytics stood, the blind received light, one blind from the womb obtained eyes, demons were put to flight, the sick recovered, the dead lived? But these things heretics also confess, and perish.

The same things revealed to a fisherman. The Word is free from time.—Expect, then, nothing less than the running of the lame, the sight of the blind, the flight of demons, the life of the dead. For there stands with me, in defense of the difficulties set forth above, a fisherman, needy, ignorant, unlearned, his hands occupied with line, his garment wet, his feet smeared with mud, all fresh from the boat. Seek and understand whether it was more wonderful to have raised the dead, or to have imparted to the unskilled the knowledge of this doctrine. For he says: In the beginning was the Word. What is this, "in the beginning was"? Times pass by, ages are sent on, epochs are removed. Set down whatever beginning you will, according to your own opinion: you do not hold it by time, for it was, whence it is treated. Look to the world, understand what is written of it: In the beginning God made heaven and earth.

That which is created, then, comes to be in the beginning, and that which is contained in the beginning that it might come to be, is contained by an age. But my unlettered, unlearned fisherman, free from time, released from the ages, has conquered every beginning: for he was what he is, nor is he enclosed in any time so as to have begun, since he was, rather, in the beginning, than was coming to be.

Yet he is not solitary.—But perhaps we shall find our fisherman to have fallen from the order of the proposed arrangement: for he has freed the Word from time, and that which is free is its own and belongs to itself, and is solitary and obedient to none. Let us give ear: for it comes back to the same point. For if the Word is free from time, it seems to follow that it will take to itself what is free, that is, it will claim to be of its own right, and to be solitary and dependent on no one. This objection indeed he dissolves by the words of the Apostle subjoined, "and the Word was with God." Let us prick up our ears, he says. For although the Word was before time, yet it was with God; and he who is absent from time is not absent from the author. For thus we read in the same place.

Here in the same codex "erans" is found, in place of the Greek "ho ēn," "who was." let us prick up our ears for the rest. He says: And the Word was with God. Already, without beginning, he who was before the beginning is with God. He, therefore, who was, is with God: and he who is absent from the time of cognition is not absent from the author. Our fisherman has escaped: but perhaps he will stick fast in what follows.

Whether it be a sound of the voice, according to Ebion. It did not befit that "was" should agree with a sound of the voice. The Word is God.—For you will say: The Word is a sound of the voice, and the utterance of business matters, and the expression of thoughts. This was with God, and was in the beginning: because the speech of thought is eternal, since he who thinks is eternal. I answer you meanwhile briefly on behalf of my fisherman, until we shall see how he himself defends his own rusticity. Speech has it in its nature that it can be, but it follows for it that it has been; but it exists only when it is heard. And how was it "in the beginning," which is neither before time, nor after time?

And I do not know whether it can even exist in time at all: for the speech of those speaking neither exists before they speak, nor, when they have spoken, will it exist; and in the very act of speaking, when they finish, already that from which they began will no longer be. This I say of myself, as one among the rest. But the fisherman speaks otherwise on his own behalf: and he will rebuke you first, for having listened carelessly. For even if, as an unlearned hearer, you missed the first sentence, "In the beginning was the Word," what do you seek from what follows, "And the Word was with God"? Did you hear "in God" (and not "with God"), so as to take it as the speech of hidden thought? Or did it escape the rustic what difference there was in that moment between "being in" and "being with"? For that which "was in the beginning" is not predicated as being in another, but as being with another.

But I take nothing from what precedes; let the consequences stand by themselves; wait for the status and name of the Word. For it says: "And the Word was God." The sound of the voice ceases, and the utterance of thought. This Word is a reality, not a sound; a nature, not a speech; God, not an emptiness.

Nor does it harm the unity of God.—But I tremble at the saying, and an unaccustomed speech disturbs me. I hear: "And the Word was God," to whom the prophets announced one God. But lest my trembling be able to go any further, render, my fisherman, the dispensation of so great a mystery, and refer all things to the One without insult, without abolition, without time. He says: "This was in the beginning with God." Since this was "in the beginning," it is not held in time; since it is God, it is not referred to a mere voice; since it is "with God," nothing is either offended or taken away: for it is not abolished into another, and it is predicated with the one unbegotten God, from whom he himself is the one only-begotten God.

Time is from him; what time is.—We still await from you, fisherman, the fullness of the Word. It was indeed "in the beginning," but it could not have been non-existent before the beginning. Here too I offer something on behalf of my fisherman: What "was," could not have "not been"; for "was" does not admit of "not having been" in time. But what does he say for himself? "All things were made through him". Therefore if nothing is without him, through whom all things began; and it is infinite, that through whom whatever is has been made. For time is the measured limitation of duration, signified not in place, but as abiding in an age. And since all things are from him, there is no thing not from him: and therefore time is from him.

The Word is not solitary.—But someone says to you, my fisherman: You were too facile and indiscriminate here; "all things were made through him" has no limit. There is the unbegotten, who is made by no one: and there is he himself begotten of the unbegotten. All things are without exception, and they leave nothing outside. But while we dare say nothing further, or perhaps while we labor to say it, this meets us: "And without him was made nothing." You have restored the author, when you have professed the companion. For since "nothing is without him," I understand not only this—that one is he through whom, another is he without whom: by both is discerned the meaning both of the one intervening and of the one acting.

He did not merely assist in making all things, but he also made them.—But being anxious about the author, who alone is unbegotten, lest, when you said "all things," nothing be excepted, you resolved the fear by saying: "And without him was made nothing." But truly I am confounded and disturbed at this, that "without him was made nothing." There is then something made through another, which yet is not made without him: and if something is through another, though not without him, then no longer are all things through him; because it is one thing to have made, another to have assisted in making. Here, my fisherman, I have nothing, as in other places, to bring forward from my own; from your own must the answer at once be given, "All things were made through him." I understand. For the Apostle taught: "Things visible and invisible, whether Thrones, or Dominations, or Principalities, or Powers, all things were made through him, and in him".

All things created in the Word. The Word exists perfect not by succession, but by birth.—Since therefore all things are through him, come to my aid and explain, what was not made "without him." "What was made in him, was life". This therefore was not without him, what was made in him: for what was made in him was also made through him. For "all things were created through him and in him". But they were created "in him," because the creator God was being born. But even from this it is shown that nothing was made without him—namely from this, that what was made in him, since the God being born was life: and he who was life, did not become life after he was born; for in him "that which was born" is not one thing, and "that which the one born received" another. Time and birth and progress have no interval between them.

But nothing was made without himself among the things which were made in him, since he in whom they were made is life, and God who was born of God, was God not after he was born, but by being born he came forth as God. For being born living from the living, true from the true, perfect from the perfect, he was not born without the power of his own birth, that is, not perceiving his birth afterward, but understanding himself to be God in the very fact that God was being born from God. This is: the only-begotten from the unbegotten: this is, "I and the Father are one": this is, in the confession of Father and Son, one God: this is, the Father in the Son, and the Son in the Father. Hence, "He who has seen me has seen the Father also". Hence, "All things that the Father has, he has given to the Son". Hence, "As the Father has life in himself, so has he given to the Son to have life in himself".

Hence, "No one knows the Son but the Father, nor the Father but the Son". Hence, "In him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily".

The generation of the Word is not grasped by human reason; it must therefore be held by faith.—This life is the light of men, this light illuminating the darkness. And that he might comfort us for the impossibility of narrating his generation, according to the prophet, the fisherman added: "And the darkness did not comprehend it". Speech gives way before nature, and has nowhere further to run; and yet this fisherman, reclining on the Lord's breast, received it. This is not the speech of the age; because the matter concerned is not a matter of the age. Let something be produced, if in the meaning of words anything can be found beyond what has been said: and if there are any other names of a nature already set forth by us, let them be brought forward.

But if there are none—nay, because there are none—let us marvel at this teaching in the fisherman, and in it let us perceive the oracles of God: and the confession of Father and Son, unbegotten and only-begotten, unutterable and exceeding every grasp of speech and of sense, let us hold and adore: and in the Lord Jesus, after the example of John, that we may be able to perceive and speak of these things, let us recline.

The arts of heretics are vain against the faith. One faith conquers all heresies.—Now the integrity of this faith is commended both by the authority of the Gospel, and by the apostolic teaching, and by the idle fraudulence of heretics clamoring on every side. For this foundation stands strong and unmoved against all winds, rains, torrents, not to be driven by blasts, not to be pierced by drippings, not to be undermined by floods: and it is the best of all things, that whatever is attacked by very many, can yet be overthrown by none. And as there are certain kinds of medicines so composed that they are useful not merely for single ailments, but heal in common for all, and have in themselves the power of a general remedy: so too the catholic faith imparts the help of a common remedy not against single plagues, but against all diseases, not to be weakened by kind, not to be overcome by number, not to be deceived by diversity; but one and the same it stands against each and all.

For it is a great thing that in this one faith there are as many remedies as there are diseases, and that there are as many doctrines of truth as there will be pursuits of falsehood. Let the names of the heretics be gathered together into one, and let all their schools come forth: let them hear of one unbegotten God the Father, and one only-begotten Son of God, the perfect offspring of a perfect Father; not begotten by diminution, not cut off from the solid in some part, but having all things, having begotten all things attained; not deduced by derivation or flow, but born from all and in all things, from him who, in all things in which he is, does not cease to be; free from time, released from ages, through whom all things were made: for he could not exist in those things which were instituted by himself. This is the catholic and apostolic confession concerning the Gospels.

Testimonies against Sabellius, against Ebion, against the Arians. Peter's confession is the Rock.—Let Sabellius, if he dares, proclaim the Father and the Son to be the same, and that he himself is the one who has been named as both; so that with him both are one, not one thing. He will at once hear from the Gospel, not once nor twice, but frequently: "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased". He will hear: "The Father is greater than I". He will hear: "I go to the Father"; and, "Father, I give thee thanks"; and, "Glorify me, Father"; and, "Thou art the Son of the living God". Let Ebion creep in, granting the Son of God his beginning from Mary, and understanding the Word from the days of the flesh.

Let him read again: "Father, glorify me with thyself with that glory which I had with thee before the world was"; and, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God"; and, "All things were made through him"; and, "He was in the world, and the world was made through him, and the world knew him not". Let there arise novel apostolates, but preachers from antichrist, mocking the Son of God with every insult: and let them hear, "I came forth from the Father"; and, "The Son in the bosom of the Father"; and, "I and the Father are one"; and, "I am in the Father, and the Father in me". And finally let them be angry together with the Jews, because Christ, confessing God as his own Father, made himself equal to God: and let them hear along with them, "Or believe for the works' sake, that the Father is in me, and I in the Father".

This, then, is the one immovable foundation, this the one blessed rock of faith confessed by Peter's mouth, "Thou art the Son of the living God", sustaining in itself so many proofs of truth as there will be raised questions of perversity and calumnies of unbelief.

What Christ undertook for the sake of our salvation.—Now as to the rest, it is the dispensation of the Father's will. The Virgin, and the birth, and the body; and afterwards the cross, death, the underworld, are our salvation. For on behalf of the human race the Son of God was born of a virgin and of the Holy Spirit, He Himself ministering to Himself in this operation; and by His own power—namely, the power of God overshadowing—He sowed for Himself the beginnings of a body, and instituted the origins of flesh; so that, having been made man from a virgin, He might take upon Himself the nature of flesh, and through the fellowship of this admixture the body of the whole human race might be sanctified in Him: so that just as all were founded in Him through that which He willed to be corporeal, so in turn He Himself might be referred back to all through that which is invisible in Him.

Therefore the invisible image of God did not refuse the shame of a human beginning, and passed through conception, birth, wailing, the cradle, and all the reproaches of our nature.

That we are able to render nothing worthy in return.—What, then, worthy shall be rendered by us for the affection of so great a condescension? The one only-begotten God, of an origin inexpressible from God, is inserted into the form of a tiny human body in the womb of the holy Virgin, and grows. He who contains all things, and within whom and through whom all things exist, is brought forth by the law of human birth, and He at whose voice Archangels and Angels tremble, heaven and earth and all the elements of this world are dissolved, is heard in the wailing of infancy. He who is invisible and incomprehensible, not to be measured by sight, sense, or touch, is wrapped in swaddling clothes. If anyone should reflect that these things are unworthy of God, he will confess himself obliged by so much the greater a benefit, by how much the less these things befitted the majesty of God.

He did not need to be made man, through whom man was made; but we needed that God should become flesh, and dwell in us, that is, that by the assumption of one flesh He might dwell within all flesh universally. His humility is our nobility, His reproach is our honor: because He, being God, abode in flesh, we in turn, from flesh, are renewed into God.

The dignity of the conception and birth commends its humility.—But lest perchance the cradle, the wailing, the birth and conception should detain the scrupulous thoughts of minds, the dignity of God must be rendered back to each of these; so that the ambition of power may precede the humility of the will, nor may dignity abandon condescension. Let us then see what are the ministries of the conception. An angel speaks to Zachariah, a birth is brought to the barren woman, the priest comes forth mute from the place of incense, John, still held within his mother's womb, breaks forth into a voice, an angel blesses Mary, promising the virgin to be the mother of the Son of God. She, conscious of her virginity, is troubled by the difficulty of the deed; the angel expounds the efficacy of the divine operation; for he says, "The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee from above, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee".

The Holy Spirit, coming from above, sanctified the inward parts of the virgin, and breathing within them for the Spirit breathes where He wills mingled Himself with the nature of human flesh; and that which was foreign to Himself He took possession of by His own power and might: and lest anything should be at variance through the weakness of the human body, the power of the Highest overshadowed the virgin, confirming her infirmity as though enveloped by a shadow, so that for the seminal efficacy of the entering Spirit the overshadowing of divine power might temper the bodily substance. This is the dignity of the conception.

The dignity of the birth.—Let us see what dignity follows the birth, the wailing, and the cradle. The angel speaks to Joseph of the Virgin about to give birth, and that he who has been born is to be called Emmanuel, that is, God with us. The Spirit proclaims through the prophet, the angel is witness, that He who is born is God with us. A new light of a star from heaven is brought to the Magi, and a heavenly sign attends the Lord of heaven. An angel announces to the shepherds that Christ the Lord is born, the salvation of all. A multitude of the heavenly host gathers together in praise of the childbirth, and the joys of the divine assembly speak forth the heralding of so great a work. Then glory to God in the highest is announced, and on earth peace to men of good will. Then the Magi are present, they adore Him wrapped in swaddling clothes: and after that vain operation of their own knowledge, laid in the cradle, they bend the knee.

Thus through the Magi the poverty of the cradle is adored, thus the birth is honored through the divine joys of angels, thus the Spirit proclaiming the birth through the prophet, and the angel announcing, and the new star of light minister to it. Thus the Holy Spirit coming upon and the power of the Highest overshadowing bring about the beginnings of the birth. One thing is understood, another is seen; one thing is perceived by the eyes, another by the mind. The virgin gives birth: the birth is from God. The infant wails: angels are heard praising. The swaddling clothes are mean: God is adored. Thus the dignity of power is not lost, while the humility of the flesh is taken up.

Christ enacted God in his deeds.—The course of the rest of His life is likewise parallel. For all the time which He spent in man, He fulfilled in the works of God. It is not the time to speak of each particular: only this must be observed in all the kinds of virtues and healings, that in the assumption of flesh He existed as man, but in the deeds performed, as God.

That the Holy Spirit is.—Concerning the Holy Spirit, it is neither fitting to be silent, nor necessary to speak; but it cannot be passed over in silence by us, for the sake of those who do not know. It is not necessary to speak of Him, since He is to be confessed on the authority of the Father and the Son. And indeed I think that whether He is, should not be treated as a question. For He is; since indeed He is given, received, obtained; and He who is joined to the confession of the Father and the Son cannot be separated from the confession of the Father and the Son. For the whole is imperfect for us, if anything is lacking from the whole. Concerning whom, if anyone asks the sense of our understanding, we read in the Apostle both: "Because you are sons of God, God sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father". And again: "Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you were sealed".

And again: "But we have not received the spirit of this world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we may know the things that have been given to us by God". And again: "But you are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His". And again: "But if the Spirit of Him who raised up Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised up Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies, because of His Spirit who dwells in you". Whence, since He is, and is given, and is possessed, and is of God, let the discourse of the slanderers cease at this point.

When they say through whom He is, and for what He is, or of what sort He is: if our answer displeases those who say, "Through whom are all things, and from whom are all things," and that He is the Spirit of God, the gift of the faithful; let the Apostles and Prophets also displease, who spoke of Him as being this only; and after them let the Father and the Son also be displeasing.

The Holy Spirit is both the Father and the Son.—I think some remain in ignorance and doubt on this point, because they see that this third, that is, He who is named the Holy Spirit, is frequently understood in place of the Father and the Son. In which there is no scruple: for whether it be the Father, or the Son, He also is Spirit, and holy.

But that which is read in the Gospels, "Because God is Spirit", must be diligently considered—how and for what reason it was said. For every saying is spoken out of some cause, and the reasoning of the saying is to be understood from the sense of what is said; lest, because it was answered by the Lord that God is Spirit, therefore both the name and the use of the gift of the Holy Spirit be denied on that account. The Lord's discourse was with the Samaritan woman: for the redemption of all had come. To her, after much discourse concerning living water, and the five husbands, and now the one who was a stranger to her, the woman replied: "Lord, I perceive that Thou art a prophet. Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and you say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship." The Lord answered: "Believe me, woman, that the hour is coming when neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, shall you worship the Father.

You worship what you do not know, we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeks such to worship Him. For God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth, because God is Spirit". The woman therefore, mindful of her ancestral traditions, supposed that God was to be worshipped either as Samaria on the mountain, or as Jerusalem in the temple: for Samaria, through transgression of the law, had chosen the place of the mountain for worship, while the Jews considered the temple built by Solomon as the seat of religion: the presumption of both, either on the height of the hill, or in the hollow of the built house, confined God, within whom all things are, and outside whom nothing is capable of containing Him.

Therefore, since God is invisible, incomprehensible, immense, the Lord says that the time has come, that God is not to be worshipped in mountain or temple: because God is Spirit, and Spirit is neither circumscribed, nor held, but through the power of His own nature is everywhere, nor is absent anywhere, overflowing wholly in all: these therefore are true worshippers, who will worship in spirit and in truth. But to those who are to worship God who is Spirit, in spirit, one thing pertains to office, another to honor; because it is distinguished in what respect each is to be worshipped. For it does not take away the name and the gift of the Holy Spirit, because it is said, "God is Spirit." But the answer was given to the woman who was confining God to temple and mountain, that all things are in God, God is in Himself, and He, invisible and incomprehensible, is to be worshipped among those things which are invisible and incomprehensible.

And thus both the nature of the gift and of the honor were signified, when He taught that God who is Spirit is to be worshipped in spirit, showing both the freedom and knowledge of the worshippers, and the infinitude of worship, while God who is Spirit is worshipped in spirit.

Similar to this is also that saying of the Apostle: "Because the Lord is Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty". He distinguished, for the sake of the understanding of the meaning, Him who is, from Him whose He is. For to have and to be had are not the same, nor does the same signification contain "He" and "His." Thus when he says, "The Lord is Spirit," he shows the nature of His infinity; but when he adds, "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty," he signifies him who is His; because both the Spirit is Lord, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. These things have not been said because the matter demanded it, but lest any obscurity should cling to them.

For the Holy Spirit is one everywhere, illuminating all the patriarchs, prophets, and the whole choir of the law, inspiring even John while in his mother's womb: given afterward to the apostles and the rest of believers, unto the recognition of that truth which has been granted.

What is the office of the Holy Spirit in us.—But let us hear from the words of the Lord himself what his office is in us. For he says: I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. For it is expedient for you that I go; if I go, I will send you an Advocate. And again: I will ask the Father, and he will send you another Advocate, that he may be with you forever, the Spirit of truth. He will guide you into all truth: for he will not speak from himself, but whatever he shall hear, he will speak, and he will announce to you things to come. He will glorify me, because he will receive of mine.

These things have been said, out of many others, as a way toward understanding, in which both the will of the one bestowing the gift, and the reason and condition of the gift, are contained: so that, because our weakness was capable of neither the Father nor the Son, and our faith concerning the incarnation of God was difficult, the gift of the Holy Spirit might illumine it by a certain covenant of his intercession.

It is now fitting that we also hear the apostle explaining the power and office of this gift; for he says: For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God. For you have not received again the spirit of bondage unto fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry: Abba, Father. And again: Because no one speaking in the Spirit of God says Anathema to Jesus, and no one can say the Lord Jesus, but in the Holy Spirit. And again: There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are diversities of ministries, but the same Lord; and there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God who works all in all. But to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for profit.

To one indeed is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit; to another faith in the same Spirit; to another gifts of healing in the one Spirit; to another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another the discerning of spirits; to another divers kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues. But all these things one and the same Spirit works. We have, then, the cause of this gift, we have its effects, and I do not know what ambiguity there could be about him, whose cause, and reason, and power are already assured.

The gift of the Holy Spirit is most necessary. Without it we have the nature for understanding God, but not the use of it.—Let us then use such liberal gifts and seek the use of a most necessary gift. For, as we have already shown above, the Apostle says: But we have not received the spirit of this world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we may know the things that have been given to us by God. It is received, then, for the sake of knowledge.

For just as the nature of the human body will be idle when the causes of its function cease—for the eyes, unless there is light or day, will have no use of their function; as the ears, unless voice or sound be given, will not recognize their office; as the nostrils, unless a scent is diffused, will not know in what office they serve—not that nature is lacking to them in respect of the cause, but the use is had from the cause: so also the human mind, unless through faith it has drawn in the gift of the Spirit, will indeed have the nature for understanding God, but will not have the light of knowledge. But the gift which is in Christ is one, open to all; and, though it is nowhere lacking, it is given to the extent that anyone is willing to take it up; it abides to the extent that anyone is willing to merit it.

This is with us until the consummation of the age; this is the solace of our expectation; this, in the workings of the gifts, is the pledge of future hope; this is the light of minds, this is the splendor of souls. This Holy Spirit, therefore, is to be sought after, to be merited, and thereafter to be retained by faith in and observance of the precepts.

Human sense does not grasp the Son in the Father, and conversely.—The Lord's saying brings obscurity to many, when he says: I am in the Father, and the Father in me, and not without reason; for the nature of human understanding does not grasp the reason of this saying. For it seems that it cannot come to pass that what is in one thing should equally be that same thing outside of it; and, since it is necessary that the things in question not be solitary in themselves, yet preserving their own number and state in which they exist, they cannot mutually contain one another, so that what has something else within itself, and thus remains, and remaining always exterior, should, in turn, always remain equally interior to that which it has within itself. These things indeed human sense will not attain, nor will any human comparison furnish an example for divine matters: but what is unintelligible to man is possible to God.

Let this not be said by me in such a way that the authority that it was said by God should suffice alone for the reason of the saying. It must therefore be known and understood what that is: I am in the Father, and the Father in me; if indeed we shall be able to comprehend this as it is: so that what by the nature of things is thought unable to be the case, the reason of divine truth might attain.

Once the Father and the Son are known according to the Scriptures, that saying is more easily grasped. What the Father is.—And that we may more easily attain understanding of this most difficult question, it is fitting first that the Father and the Son be known by us according to the teaching of the divine Scriptures, so that our discourse concerning things known and familiar may be more assured. The eternity of the Father, as we treated in the previous book, exceeds places, times, form, and whatever else can be conceived by human sense. He himself is outside all things and in all things, containing the universe and to be contained by no one, not mutable by increase or decrease; but he is invisible, incomprehensible, full, perfect, eternal, taking nothing from elsewhere, but sufficient to himself for that which thus remains his own.

What the Son received from the Father in being born. What he assumed for us in being born in the flesh.—This unbegotten One, then, before all time begot a Son from himself, not from some underlying matter, because all things exist through the Son; not from nothing, because the Son is from himself; not as a birth in the sense of a bringing forth, since nothing in God is subject to change or is empty; not as a part of himself, either divided or torn off or extended; because God is impassible and incorporeal, whereas these things belong to passion and to flesh, and, according to the Apostle, in Christ dwells all the fullness of divinity bodily. But incomprehensibly, ineffably, before all time and ages, he brought forth the Only-Begotten from those things which were unbegotten in himself, imparting to his nativity everything that God is, through love and power: and thus, from the unbegotten, perfect, and eternal Father, the Son is only-begotten, perfect, and eternal.

But those things which belong to him according to the body which he assumed are the will of his goodness for our salvation. For, invisible, incorporeal, and incomprehensible, as begotten of God, he received in himself only so much of matter and of lowliness as there was power in us to understand, perceive, and behold him; yielding rather to our weakness than lacking in those things in which he himself was.

By what reasoning he is in the Father.—Therefore the perfect Son of a perfect Father, and the only-begotten offspring of the unbegotten God, who from him who has all things has received all things, God from God, spirit from spirit, light from light, says confidently: The Father is in me, and I in the Father: because as the Father is spirit, so too is the Son spirit; as the Father is God, so too is the Son God; as the Father is light, so too is the Son light. From those things, then, which are in the Father, are those in which the Son consists, that is, from the whole Father the whole Son was born; not from elsewhere, because there was nothing before the Son; not from nothing, because the Son is from God; not in part, because the fullness of deity is in the Son; nor in some things only, because it is in all: but as he who was able willed, as he who begot knows.

What is in the Father, this is also in the Son; what is in the unbegotten, this is also in the only-begotten; one from the other, and both one; not two as one, but the one in the other, because it is not something different in either; the Father in the Son, because the Son is from him; the Son in the Father, because the Son is from no other source; the only-begotten in the unbegotten, because the only-begotten is from the unbegotten. Thus they are in one another mutually; because just as all things are perfect in the unbegotten Father, so also all things are perfect in the only-begotten Son.

This is the unity between the Son and the Father, this is the power, this is the love, this the hope, this the faith, this the truth, the way, the life: not to slander God as regards his own powers, nor, through the mystery and power of nativity, to disparage the Son; not to compare anything to the unbegotten Father, not to distinguish the Only-Begotten from him either in time or in power, but to confess the Son as God because he is from God.

God shows his power by deeds, whose reason lies hidden. Man does not grasp how water was turned into wine.—There are in God powers of this kind, whose rational explanation is incomprehensible to our understanding, yet faith is assured through the truth of their efficacy. Nor shall we find this only in spiritual matters, but also in corporeal ones; not shown as an example for the nativity, but for the admiration of an intelligible deed. On the day of the wedding at Cana in Galilee, wine was made from water: will either our speech or our understanding attain by what means the nature was changed, so that the simplicity of water failed and the taste of wine was born? It was not a mixture, but a creation; and a creation begun not from itself, but existing from one thing into another: what is weaker is not obtained by transfusion of what is stronger, but what was is abolished, and what was not begins to be.

The bridegroom is sad, the household is troubled, the solemnity of the marriage feast is imperiled. Jesus is asked; he does not rise up or press forward, but this work is his while at rest. Water is poured into the water-jars, wine is drawn out in the cups; the understanding of the one pouring does not agree with that of the one drawing. Those who poured think that water is being drawn; those who draw suppose that wine has been poured in; the time in between does not suffice for the nature of the liquid both to be born and to perish. The reasoning of the deed baffles both sight and sense: yet the power of God is perceived in these things that were done.

Or how the five loaves increased.—But concerning the five loaves the wonder of the deed is not dissimilar. By their increase, the hunger of five thousand men and countless women and children is overcome: the understanding of the work escapes the sight of our sense. Five loaves are offered and broken; certain productions of fragments creep beneath the hands of those breaking them. That from which it is broken is not diminished; and yet fragments always occupy the hand of the one breaking. The moments deceive the sight; while you follow the hand full of fragments, you behold the other without loss of its portion; meanwhile the heap of fragments grows. Those who break are at their task, those who eat are engaged in eating, those who were hungry are satisfied, twelve baskets are filled with what remains. Neither sense nor sight attains the progress of so remarkable an operation. There is what was not, there is seen what is not understood: it only remains that God be believed capable of all things.

Christ did not do these things for his own sake, but that he might blunt the human itch for judging the things of God.—Divine things therefore have no flattery in them, nor does any pretence underlie God for the sake of pleasing or deceiving. These works of the Son of God did not proceed from a zeal for boasting: for he to whom innumerable thousands of thousands of angels are in service did not flatter man. For of what things that are ours did he stand in need, he through whom all things that are ours exist?

Or did he demand honor from us, who are now stupefied with sleep, now wearied by nights of luxury, now ill-conscious after the brawls and slaughters of the day, now drunk after banquets—he whom Archangels, and Dominions, and Principalities, and Powers, without sleep, without occupation, without guilt, praise with eternal and unwearied voices in heaven: and they praise him because he, the image of the invisible God, has created all things in himself, has made the ages, has established the heaven, has set the stars in order, has founded the earth, has plunged down the abysses; because he, moreover, was born man, has conquered death, has broken the gates of hell, has acquired a people to be co-heir with himself, has transferred flesh from corruption into the glory of eternity. He therefore had no need at all of us, that these works, ineffable and unintelligible to us, should adorn him as though he were in want of praise.

But God, foreseeing the error of human wickedness and folly, and knowing that unbelief would break forth so far as to presume to pass judgment upon the things of God, overcame our audacity by examples drawn from those very matters concerning which doubt was raised.

Human reason is refuted against the generation of God.—For there are many wise men of this age, whose wisdom is foolishness to God, who, when they hear that God is born of God, the true from the true, the perfect from the perfect, the one from the one, contradict us as though we were preaching impossibilities, clinging to certain collections of arguments, saying: "Nothing could be born from one, because every birth is from two. Now if this Son is born from one, he has received a part of him who begot him: and if a part, then neither is perfect; for that is lacking to him from which he departed: nor will there be fullness in him who has consisted of a portion: neither therefore is perfect, since both he who begot loses his fullness, and he who is born does not attain to it." This wisdom of the world God, foreseeing it even through the prophet, condemns thus, saying: I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and I will reject the understanding of the prudent.

Likewise in the Apostle: Where is the wise man, where is the scribe, where is the disputer of this world? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For since the world by wisdom did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe: since the Jews seek signs, and the Greeks seek wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews indeed a stumbling-block, and to the Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God: because that which is foolish of God is wiser than men; and that which is weak of God is stronger than men.

The office of Christ among us.—The Son of God, therefore, having care for the human race, first became man that he might be believed, so that he might be for us a witness of divine things from among things of our own, and that through the weakness of the flesh he might preach God the Father to us, weak and carnal beings, effecting in himself the will of God the Father, as he says: I came not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me, not that the one is unwilling and the other does what he wills; but he shows his own obedience under the effect of the paternal will, himself willing to accomplish the Father's will. Now this was the will of accomplishing the will, of which he himself is witness, saying: Father, the hour has come, glorify thy Son, that the Son may glorify thee: as thou hast given him power over all flesh, that to all that thou hast given him, he may give eternal life.

And this is eternal life, that they may know thee, the only true God, and him whom thou hast sent, Jesus Christ. I have glorified thee upon earth, having finished the work which thou gavest me to do. And now glorify me, Father, with thyself, with the glory which I had, before the world was, with thee. I have manifested thy name to the men whom thou hast given me In brief and few words he set forth the whole work of his office and dispensation, fortifying nonetheless the truth of the faith against every breath of diabolical fraud. Let us run, then, through the several powers of his discourse.

What he asks in saying, Glorify thy son.—He says: Father, the hour has come, glorify thy Son, that thy Son may glorify thee. He does not say that a day, not a season, but an hour has come. In a day there is a portion of an hour. And what will this hour be? Surely that of which, in the time of his passion, comforting his disciples, he spoke: Behold the hour comes, that the Son of man may be glorified. This, then, is the hour in which he prays that he be glorified by the Father, that he himself may glorify the Father. But what is this? Does he, who is about to glorify, await being glorified himself, and demand as due an honor he is about to pay back, and need that which he will again spend? Here let the sophists of the world and the wise men of Greece come forward, and ensnare the truth with their syllogisms.

Let them ask how, and whence, and for what cause; and when they are stuck, let them hear: For God has chosen the foolish things of the world. Let us therefore, through our foolishness, understand what is unintelligible to the wise of this world. The Lord had said, Father, the hour is come: he had indicated the hour of the passion; for these things he was speaking under that very moment: then he added, Glorify thy Son. But how was the Son to be glorified? For, born of a virgin, he had come from the cradle and infancy up to full manhood; through sleep, hunger, thirst, weariness, tears he had conducted himself as man, even now to be spat upon, scourged, crucified. What then? These things would only attest to us that in Christ there was man alone. But we are not confounded by the cross, we are not condemned beforehand by the scourges, we are not defiled by the spittings. The Father glorifies the Son. In what way? At length he is fixed to the cross. Then what follows?

The sun does not set, but flees back. Why do I say it fled back? It was not received into a cloud, but it failed in the course of its work: and the rest of the world's elements felt its ruin along with it: and lest any celestial operations should be involved in this crime, they were exempted from their own dissolution by a certain necessity of this intercession. But what did the earth do? It trembled at the weight of the Lord hanging on the wood, attesting within itself that it could not contain him who was about to die. Do the rocks and stones too yield their own portion? But being broken they leap apart, and lose their own nature, and, cleft from themselves, confess that they cannot contain a sepulcher for the burial of the body.

Christ is the proper Son of God.—What of this? The centurion of the cohort also, the guard of the cross, cries out, Truly this was the Son of God. By the intercession of this atonement creation is freed; the rocks do not retain their firmness and strength. Those who had affixed him to the cross confess him to be truly the Son of God: the effect agrees with the preaching. The Lord had said: Glorify thy Son. He attested not only by name that he was a son, but also by the property whereby it is said "thine." For many of us are sons of God, but not such a son as this one. For this one is both a true and a proper Son, by origin, not by adoption; by truth, not by mere designation; by birth, not by creation. Therefore, after his glorification, confession of the truth followed. For the centurion confesses him the true Son of God; lest any believer should doubt what a man among the persecutors had not denied.

The glory to be given to the Son, and to be rendered back by him to the Father, signifies the unity of power in both.—But perhaps it may be believed that the Son needed that glorification for which he prayed: and he will be found weak, while he awaits the glorification of one more powerful. And who will not confess the Father to be more powerful, as the unbegotten than the begotten, as the father than the son, as him who has sent than him who is sent, as the one who wills than the one who obeys? And he himself will be our witness: The Father is greater than I. These things must be understood as they are; but care must be taken lest, among the unlearned, the honor of the Father should weaken the glory of the Son. Nor does this very glorification requested allow itself to be weakened: for to what was said, Father, glorify thy Son, there follows also this, that the Son may glorify thee.

The Son, therefore, is not weak, since he himself, when he is to be glorified, will render back the requital of glorification. But if he is not weak, what was he asking? For no one asks except for that of which he stands in need. Or is the Father too, perchance, weak? Or is he so lavish of what he has, that glorification must be rendered to him through the Son? But neither did this one need it, nor does that one desire it: and yet the one will impart it to the other.

Therefore the demand of glorification to be given, and in turn to be rendered back, neither takes anything from the Father, nor weakens the Son; but it shows the same power of divinity in both, since the Son prays to be glorified by the Father, and the Father does not disdain glorification from the Son: but this shows unity of power in Father and Son, through an alternation in time, but on account of the generation from the Father himself: thus also that saying of Origen may be excused, tom. In Joan. Ed. Huetius.

Thirdly it is said, this light is the true light: by which reason the Father, the God of truth, is ampler and greater than the truth; and the Father, since he is wisdom, is more excellent than wisdom itself: by this same reason too he excels him who is the true light, namely, Christ. Let the same judgment hold for similar sayings of other Fathers. They show the alternation of giving and repaying the glorification.

What the glory which the Father and the Son show to each other is.—But it must be known what this glorification is, and from what source it arises. God, I think, is not subject to change, nor does defect or amendment, or advance or loss, befall eternity; but what he is, he always is—for this is peculiar to God. That which always is can never at any time have it in its nature not to be: how then will that be glorified which needs nothing of its own, nor fails from itself; nor is there anything it can receive into itself, nor has it lost anything so as to take it up again? We are stuck, we hesitate. But the Evangelist does not abandon the weakness of our understanding, who shows what glorification the Son was about to render to the Father, saying: As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that whatsoever thou hast given him, he may give to it eternal life.

And this is eternal life, that they may know thee, the only true God, and him whom thou hast sent, Jesus Christ. The Father, therefore, is glorified through the Son, in that he comes to be understood by us. And this was the glory: that the Son had received from him power over all flesh, having himself become flesh, that he might render the eternity of life to perishing and corporeal and mortal beings. Now the eternity of our life was not the effect of a working, but of a power: since the glory of eternity was not to be won by some new exertion, but by the knowledge of God alone. Glory, therefore, is not added to God; for it had not departed, that it should be added: but through the Son he is glorified among us, the ignorant, the runaway, the defiled, the dead without hope, the darkened without law; and he is glorified in this, that the Son received from him power over all flesh, being about to give to it eternal life.

Through these works, then, of the Son, the Father is glorified. And so, when the Son received all things, he was glorified by the Father; and conversely the Father is glorified, when all things come to be through the Son. And the glory received is thus rendered back, that whatever of glory is in the Son, the whole of it is the glory of the Father: because he has received all things from the Father; because the honor of the one who serves belongs to the honor of the one who sends, as the honor of the one who begets belongs to the honor of the one who is born.

The hope of life is not in the Father alone, but also in the Son. The sending marks a distinction not of nature, but of persons.—But in what, after all, does the eternity of life consist? He himself says: That they may know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. What questions of difficulty are here, and what a contest of words is this? Life is to know the true God: but this alone does not make life. What then is joined to it? And Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. Due honor is rendered to the Father by the Son, when he says thee the only true God. Yet the Son does not separate himself from the truth of God, when he adds: and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. The confession of believers admits of no interval, since in both there is the hope of life: nor does the true God fall short in him who follows in conjunction with him.

When therefore it is said: That they may know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent; under this signification, that is, of the sender and the sent, the truth and divinity of the Father and the Son are not distinguished by any diversity of signification or of delay, but the faith of religion is instructed toward the confession of the begetter and the begotten.

The glory of the Son is the glory of the Father.—Therefore the Son absolutely glorifies the Father in what follows: I have glorified thee on earth, having accomplished the work which thou gavest me to do. All the glory of the Father is from the Son: because in whatever the Son shall be praised, it will be the glory of the Father. For he accomplishes all things which the Father willed. The Son of God is born a man; but in the childbirth of the virgin it is the power of God. The Son of God is seen as man; but God exists in the works of the man. The Son of God is fastened to the cross; but in the cross God conquers the death of man. Christ the Son of God dies; but all flesh is made alive in Christ. The Son of God is in the underworld; but man is carried back to heaven. In proportion as these things shall be praised in Christ, so much more praise shall he obtain from whom Christ is God.

In these ways, then, the Father glorifies the Son upon earth: and in turn the Son, to the ignorance of the nations and the folly of the age, through the works of his own powers, glorifies him from whom he himself is. And this alternation of glorification indeed pertains not to any advancement of divinity, but to the honor received from the recognition of the ignorant. For in what did the Father not abound, from whom are all things? Or what was lacking to the Son, in whom it pleased that all the fullness of divinity should dwell? Therefore the Father is glorified on earth, because his work which he commanded is accomplished.

What glory the Son awaits from the Father.—Let us see what glorification the Son awaits from the Father: and it is set forth plainly. For among what follows is this: I have glorified thee upon earth, I have accomplished the work which thou gavest me to do: and now glorify me, Father, with thyself, with that glory which I had, before the world was, with thee. I have manifested thy name to men. By the works of the Son, then, the Father is glorified: while he is understood to be God, while the Father of the only-begotten of God is made manifest, while for our salvation he willed his Son, born also of a virgin, to be man, in whom are fulfilled in the passion all those things which began with the virgin's childbearing.

And so, because the Son of God, perfect in every respect in which he is, and born before all time in the fullness of divinity, was now, from the origin of his flesh, as man, being brought to consummation unto death; he asks to be glorified with God, just as he himself had glorified the Father on earth: because then the powers of God were being made manifest in the flesh to an ignorant age. But now what is it that he awaits of glorification with the Father? Namely, that which he had with him, before the world was. He had the fullness of divinity; and he has it, for he is the Son of God. But he who was the Son of God had also, as it were, begun to be the son of man; for the Word was made flesh.

He had not lost what he was, but had begun to be what he was not; he had not departed from his own, but had received what is ours: he demands for that which he received the advancement (namely, of human nature) of that glory from which he had not departed. Therefore, because the Son is the Word, and the Word was made flesh, and the Word is God, and this in the beginning with God, and the Word before the establishment of the world is the Son: the Son now made flesh was praying, that this flesh might begin to be with the Father what the Word was; that that which was of time might receive the glory of that timeless splendor; that the corruption of the flesh, transformed into the power of God and the incorruption of the Spirit, might be swallowed up.

This prayer, then, is to God, this confession of the Son is to the Father, this is the supplication of the flesh: in which all shall see him on the day of judgment, pierced and recognized from the cross, in which he was prefigured on the mountain, in which he was raised to the heavens, in which he sat at the right hand of God, in which he was seen by Paul, in which he was honored by Stephen.

The name of God was unknown to men before Christ.—The name of the Father having thus been manifested to men, he asks this: but under what name? Was the name of God unknown? This Moses heard from the bush, this Genesis proclaimed at the beginning of the created world, this the law set forth, the prophets set before us, men perceived in these works of the world, the nations too, though lying, worshipped; the name of God, then, was not unknown. But plainly it was unknown. For no one knows God unless he confesses both the Father to be Father of the only-begotten Son, and the Son to be born not by portion, nor by dilation, nor by emission; but born of him ineffably, incomprehensibly, as a son from a father, possessing the fullness of divinity from which and in which he was born, true and infinite and perfect God; for this is the fullness of God. For if any of these were lacking, it would no longer be that fullness which it pleased to dwell in him.

This is proclaimed by the Son, this is made manifest to the ignorant; thus is the Father glorified through the Son, when the Father of such a Son is acknowledged.

Christ established faith in his own nativity by his deeds. Those who deny divine things because they do not comprehend them are rebuked.—The Son, then, wishing to establish faith in this his nativity, has set before us an example from his own deeds, that through the ineffable efficacy of his ineffable acts we might be taught concerning the power of his ineffable nativity: as when water becomes wine, as when five loaves, having satisfied five thousand men, apart from the remaining number of women and children, fill twelve baskets with fragments. The thing is perceived, and yet not known; it happens, and is not understood; the reason is not grasped, and the effect is thrust upon us. But it is foolish to press a charge of falsehood against that which by its very nature cannot be comprehended in the matter under inquiry. For as the Father is ineffable in that he is unbegotten; so the Son cannot be described in that he is only-begotten; because he who is begotten is the image of the unbegotten.

For when by sense and words we grasp an image, we must of necessity also attain him whose image it is. But we pursue invisible things, and attempt incomprehensible things, with an understanding constrained to visible and corporeal things. We are not ashamed of our folly, we do not accuse ourselves of irreligion, in bringing false charge against the mysteries of God, the powers of God. We inquire how the Son is, and whence the Son is, and by what loss to the Father, or from what portion, he was born. You had, in the example of these workings, grounds to believe that God could accomplish things whose efficacy you cannot understand.

They are challenged to explain Christ's entry through closed doors.—You ask how the Son was born according to the Spirit: I ask you concerning corporeal things. I do not ask how he was born of a virgin; whether the flesh, generating from itself perfect flesh, suffered any diminishment of itself. And surely it did not take back what it brought forth, but flesh advanced flesh without the shame of our elements, and itself, undiminished, generated a perfect being from its own substance. And indeed it would be right to suppose that not impossible in God, which through his power we recognize to have been possible in man.

But you, whoever you are who pursue things beyond investigation, and set yourself up as a grave arbiter of divine secrets and powers, I consult you, that to me, unlearned, and believing only concerning all things that God has said of himself as they are, you might at least furnish a reason for this deed. I hear the Lord, and because I believe these things which are written, I know that after the resurrection he frequently showed himself in the body to be seen by many who did not believe; certainly to Thomas, who would not believe unless he had touched his wounds, as he says: Unless I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe. The Lord accommodates himself to every weakness of our understanding, and, to satisfy the doubt of unbelievers, works the mystery of his invisible power: explain the reason for the deed, whoever you shall be, scrutinizer of heavenly things.

The disciples were gathered, sitting closed up and in secret after the Lord's passion. The Lord stands by, about to confirm Thomas's faith by the conditions proposed, and offers the opportunity of touching his body and handling the wound: and surely he who was to be recognized as pierced must necessarily have brought the body in which he was pierced. I ask, then, through which parts of the closed house he, being corporeal, brought himself in. For the Evangelist expressed it carefully, saying: Jesus came, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst. Did he, penetrating the constructed walls and the solid wood, pass through their impenetrable nature? For he stood there corporeal, not feigned or deceptive. Let the eyes of your mind, then, follow his penetrating entrance, and let the sight of your understanding enter with him into the closed house. All things are whole and locked: but he stands present in the midst, to whose power all things are permeable.

You bring a charge against invisible things: I demand of you a reason for visible things. Nothing yields from the solid, nor do wood and stones, by their own nature, admit anything as by some insensible slipping-through. The body of the Lord does not depart from itself, so as to reassume itself out of nothing: and whence then is he who stands present in the midst? Both sense and speech yield before this, and the truth of the deed is beyond human reason. Therefore, just as we err concerning the nativity, so also concerning the Lord's entrance, we err.

Let us lie about the Lord. Let us say the deed did not happen, because we do not grasp the understanding of the deed: and, our own perception ceasing, let the effect of the deed itself cease. But faith in the deed conquers our falsehood. The Lord stood in the midst of the disciples in the closed house: and the Son is born of the Father. Do not deny that he stood, because through the weakness of understanding you cannot attain the entrance of him who stood there: do not fail to know that from the unbegotten and perfect God the Father the only-begotten and perfect Son God was born, because the power of the generation exceeds the sense and speech of human nature.

If they could, all the works of God would be thrown into confusion by them.—And indeed all the works of the world besides could be present to us in testimony, that we should not think it right to doubt concerning the things and powers of God. But our unbelief rushes upon the very truth, and we burst violently in to the destruction of the power of God. If it were permitted, we would raise bodies and hands to heaven, we would disturb the sun and the other stars from the yearly bounds of their courses, we would confound the ebbs and flows of the Ocean, we would even check the streams of the springs, and turn back the nature of rivers, we would shake the foundations of the earth, and rage in utter parricide against this whole work of God. But it is well that the nature of bodies holds us within this necessity of restraint. Certainly we do not conceal what we would do, if it were permitted.

For because we are able, with the audacity of profane will we tear apart the nature of truth, and wage war against the sayings of God.

Christ manifested the Father to us as father, not as creator.—The Son said: Father, I have manifested thy name to men. Why do we slander concerning these things? Why do we grow heated? Do you deny the Father? Yet this was the greatest work of the Son, that we might know the Father. You plainly deny it, since according to you the Son was not born from him. And why should he be called son, made as though for the rest by will? I can admire God as founder of the world, Christ creating; and it is a virtue worthy of God that he made the archangels and angels, visible and invisible, heaven and earth, and all this creation. But this is not the labor of the Lord, that you should perceive God as able to do all things in creating things; but that you should know that God is the father of the son who speaks.

There are many powers in heaven, both efficient and eternal: but there is one only-begotten Son, differing from the rest not merely by power, because all things exist through him. But because the one true Son alone exists, let him not become degenerate, as though born out of nothing. You hear the Son: believe that he is son. You hear the Father: remember that he is father. Why do you insert suspicion, malice, audacity into these names? According to the understanding of nature, divine names have been fitted to things. Why do you bring force of words against truth? You hear father and son: do not doubt that what they are named, they are. The sum of the dispensation to the Son is that you should know the Father: why do you nullify the work of the prophets, the incarnation of the Word, the virgin's childbearing, the power of his works, the cross of Christ?

All these things were expended for you, provided for you: that through them both the Father and the Son might be manifest to you. You now suppose will, creation, adoption: consider also the warfare and the wages of Christ. Indeed he proclaims: Father, I have manifested thy name to men; you do not hear, you have created the creator of heavenly things; you do not hear, you have made the maker of earthly things; but you hear: Father, I have manifested thy name to men. Make use of the gift of your Savior: know that he who begot is father, that he who was born is son; born of that father, who is, in the truth of nature. Remember that it is not to you that a father has been manifested because he is God, but that God has been manifested because he is father.

The Son is distinguished from the Father by subsistence, not by nature. As image, he has all that the Father has.—You hear: I and the Father are one. Why do you cut apart and drag away the Son from the Father? They are one: namely he who is, having nothing that is not also in him from whom he is. When you hear the Son saying: I and the Father are one; apply the matter to the persons, and grant to the begetter and the begotten the meaning of their own profession. Let them be one, as are the one who begot and the one who was begotten. Why do you exclude nature? Why do you destroy truth? You hear: The Father in me, and I in the Father: and the works of the Son testify this concerning the Father and the Son. We do not by our understanding insert body into body, nor as we pour water into wine: but we confess in both the same likeness of power and fullness of deity.

For the Son has received all things from the Father, and is the form of God, and the image of his substance. For he is from him who is: the image of substance distinguishes only for the assurance of subsistence, not for the understanding of any dissimilarity of nature. But that the Father is in the Son, and the Son in the Father, is the perfect fullness of divinity in each. For the Son is not a diminution of the Father, nor is the Son imperfect from the Father. An image alone (that is, solitary) does not exist, and likeness does not belong to itself. But nothing can be like to God, except what shall be from himself. For that which is like in all things is not from elsewhere: nor does the likeness of one to another admit diversity between the two.

Do not exchange things alike, nor separate them from truth as though undistinguished: because he who said: Let us make man to our image and likeness, showed, in saying "our likeness," that they are mutually like to one another. Do not touch, do not handle, do not corrupt. Hold to the names of nature, hold to the profession of the Son. I do not wish you to flatter, as though praising the Son from your own invention: it is well that you be content with what has been written.

Human prudence fails in the things of God. It is foolish while it thinks itself to know perfectly.—Human prudence is not to be trusted so far that anyone should think that he knows perfectly what he understands, and should judge that the sum of absolute reason is contained in that which, turning it over in his own mind, he reckons to stand consistently everywhere with himself according to an opinion of truth. For imperfect things do not conceive the perfect, nor can that which subsists from another absolutely obtain understanding either of its author or of itself: it senses only that in which it exists, but does not extend its sense further than the nature established for it allows.

For it does not owe its motion to itself, but to its author: and therefore that which subsists in another from its author is imperfect in itself, since it stands from elsewhere; and it must be that in that in which it thinks itself to know perfectly, it is foolish: because, not governing itself according to the necessity of its own nature, and thinking that all things are contained within the limits of its own infirmities, it boasts now in a falsely named wisdom: because it is not permitted to it to know beyond the power of its own sense, and its sense is as weak as the power of its subsisting.

And on this account, an imperfect nature substituting itself, glorying that it possesses the wisdom of perfect sense, is mocked with the reproach of foolish wisdom, the Apostle saying: For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not in the wisdom of speech, lest the cross of Christ be made void: for the word of the cross is foolishness to those who perish, but to those who are saved, it is the power of God. For it is written: I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the understanding of the prudent I will bring to nothing. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?

For since in the wisdom of God the world knew not God through wisdom, it pleased God through the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe: for the Jews require signs, and the Greeks seek wisdom: but we preach Christ Jesus crucified, unto the Jews indeed a stumbling-block, and unto the Gentiles foolishness, but unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God: because that which is weak in God is stronger than men, and that which is foolish in God is wiser than men. Therefore all unbelief is foolishness: because, using the wisdom of its own imperfect sense, while it governs all things by the opinion of its own weakness, it thinks that what it does not understand cannot be brought about. For the cause of unbelief is from the judgment of weakness, when a man does not think a thing to have been done, because he decides it cannot be done.

The wise foolishness of believers.—And therefore the Apostle, knowing the imperfect thought of human nature, that it thinks that alone to be in the account of truth which it understands, says that he did not preach in the speech of wisdom, lest the claim of his preaching should be void. And lest he should be thought a preacher of foolishness, he added, that the word of the cross is foolishness to them that perish: because unbelievers would believe that alone to be prudence which they understood; and since they understood nothing except within the nature of their own infirmity, they would think that to be foolishness which alone is the perfect wisdom of God; whereby, in that very thing, they would be foolish through the weak opinion of their own wisdom. Therefore whatever is foolishness to those who perish, this is the power of God to those who are saved: because they govern nothing by the weakness of their natural sense, but weigh the efficacy of divine power according to the infinity of heavenly virtue.

And therefore God disapproves the wisdom of the wise, and the understanding of the prudent, because through the opinion of human foolishness salvation is granted to believers: while both unbelievers judge foolish whatever is outside their own sense, and believers entrust all the mysteries of their salvation to the power and virtue of God who grants it. Therefore the things of God are not foolish; but it is the foolish prudence of human nature which demands from its God either signs or wisdom for faith. And it belongs to the Jews indeed to demand signs; because, not being entirely unlearned in the name of God through familiarity with the law, they are moved by the scandal of the cross. But it belongs to the Greeks to demand wisdom, because through gentile ineptness and human prudence they seek a reason for God lifted up on the cross.

Because this, hidden in mystery, is beyond the weak according to the sense of nature, it becomes an unbelieving foolishness: since what an imperfect mind naturally does not conceive, it decides to be outside the cause of prudence. But on account of this imprudent wisdom of the world, which through the wisdom of God did not know God beforehand, that is, through this magnificence of the world and the ornament of so wisely established a work, did not venerate the wisdom of its creator; it pleased God to save believers by the preaching of foolishness, that is, that eternity should come to mortals through faith in the cross: so that, the opinion of human judgment being confounded, salvation might be found there where it is believed to be foolishness.

For Christ, who is foolishness to the Gentiles and a scandal to the Jews, is the power of God and the wisdom of God: because the things which by human sense are judged weak and foolish in the things of God, these surpass earthly prudence and virtue, in the truth of wisdom and power.

Concerning the things of God, judgment is to be made not by our own sense, but by faith.—Nothing therefore in divine effects is to be treated by the opinion of the human mind, nor should anyone decide about his creator from the material of his own workmanship. But we must take up foolishness, that we may take up wisdom, not by a sense of imprudence, but by the conscience of our own nature: so that what the reasoning of earthly thought does not conceive, the reasoning of divine power may in turn instill into us.

For when, having recognized the understanding of our own foolishness, we have sensed the inexperience of the natural imprudence within us, then through the prudence of divine wisdom we shall be instructed unto the wisdom of God: when we measure the virtues and power of God without limit, when we do not confine the Lord of nature within natural laws, when we understand this alone to be well believed of God, to which he himself, together with us, stands as both witness and author concerning himself.

Three things to be prefaced to the assertion of truth against heretics.—Although in the earlier little books which we have already written some time ago, we think it thoroughly established that we hold the faith and confession of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit from the evangelical and apostolic institutions, and that we can have nothing in common with heretics, since they deny the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ without measure or reason or fear: nevertheless in these little books also certain things had necessarily to be included, so that, all their deceits and impieties having been set forth, a more thorough knowledge of the truth might come about.

And first it must be known what is the rashness of their teaching, and what the peril of their irreligion: then what opinions they hold against the apostolic faith, to which we conform, and what they are accustomed to say to the contrary, and by what ambiguity of words they deceive the simplicity of their hearers: finally, by what art of their interpretations they corrupt the truth and force of the divine sayings.

Divine things are not well explained by human words.—We are not unaware, moreover, that neither human speech nor comparison with human nature can suffice to explain divine things. For that which is inexpressible has no end or measure of any signification: and that which is spiritual is different from the appearance and example of corporeal things. Yet when speech is about heavenly natures, those very things which are contained in the sense of minds must be expressed by the common usage of both nature and speech—not indeed as befitting the dignity of God, but as necessary to the weakness of our understanding; that is, we shall speak, in our own matters and words, those things which we both feel and understand.

And these things, as we testified in the first book, have now also been recalled by us for this reason, that when we bring forth something from human comparisons, we should not be thought to feel concerning God according to corporeal natures, nor to compare spiritual things to our own passions, but rather to have brought forth the appearance of visible things for the understanding of invisible things.

The opinions of heretics concerning the Son of God.—For the heretics say that Christ is not from God, that is, that the Son was not born from the Father, nor is God by nature, but by constitution; namely his adoption in name, because just as there are many sons of God, so also this one is a son; and then a liberality in dignity, because just as there are many gods, so also this one is God: yet with a more indulgent affection both of adoption and of nomenclature toward him, so that he is adopted above the rest, and himself is greater than the other adoptive sons, and, being created more excellently than all natures, he himself excels the other creatures.

Some of them also, confessing the omnipotence of God, say that he was created in likeness to God, and, like the rest, out of nothing, established in the image of that eternal Creator of his: namely, that he was commanded by a word to subsist out of things not existing, God being powerful to fashion a likeness of himself out of nothing.

They pretend that they reject the Homoousion on account of its wicked senses. What those senses are.—Moreover they add this too, that when they hear it preached by earlier bishops that the Father and the Son are of one substance, they subtly weaken this under the appearance of heretical opinion: saying that they use and speak the signification of this word, that is, of one substance, which in Greek is called ὁμοούσιον, in this sense, as though he himself who is the Father is also the Son, extended, that is, out of his own infinity into the Virgin, from whom, assuming a body, he added to himself, in that body which he assumed, the name of Son. And this indeed is their first falsehood concerning the homoousion.

The following one is this, that they affirm that the pronouncement of homoousion signifies that there is a communion of some prior and other thing between two, and as though there had existed a prior substance or ousia of some matter, which, being participated by two, and consumed in each, testifies that each of them is both of a prior nature and of one thing. And therefore they say they disapprove of the confession of homoousion, because its pronouncement neither distinguishes the Son from the Father, nor makes the Father posterior to the matter, which stands with itself as not with itself, this sometimes through the declining of cases, but more often not. This term, preached in that earlier sense by Paul of Samosata, and rejected by the Fathers of Antioch, was indicated by the letter of the Orientals delivered to Sirmium, whose argument is related in the book on the Synods…may show that it is common to the Son.

Thirdly also they contrive this cause of disapproving the homoousion, that according to the signification of this word, the Son is thought to be from a division of the paternal substance; as though he had been cut off from him, so that one thing was divided into two; and therefore they are said to be of one substance, because the portion cut off from the whole is in that nature from which it was cut off: and it cannot fall upon God to suffer division, because he would also become subject to change, if he were made liable to diminishment through division: and he would be rendered imperfect, the substance of his perfection departing into the other portion.

Why they deny that the Son always existed.—Nor do they think they can elegantly contradict the prophetic, but also the evangelical and apostolic teaching in this, that they preach the Son's nativity within time. For since they falsely claim it is said by us that the Son always existed, it is necessary, by excluding that he always existed, that they confess his nativity from time. For if he did not always exist, there will be a time when he did not exist. And if there is a time when he did not exist, there will be a time before him: because he who does not always exist began to exist from time. But he who lacks time cannot lack that which always exists. But they affirm that they reject this, that the Son always existed, for this reason, lest through the fact that he always existed, he be believed to exist without a nativity: as though through that which is said to have always existed, he is proclaimed unborn.

The Church admits neither homoousion nor that the Son always existed in the senses related above.—O foolish and impious fears, and irreligious anxiety concerning God! These things, which are alleged in the signification of homoousion and in the statement that the Son always existed, the Church abominates, rejects, condemns. For she knows one God, from whom are all things: she knows also one our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things—one from whom, and one through whom; from the one the origin of all things, through the one the creation of all things. In the one "from whom" she understands the authority of unbornness; in the one "through whom" she venerates a power differing in nothing from the author: since from whom and through whom, with respect to that which is created, in those things that are created, there is a common authority.

She knows God in the Spirit, an impassible and indivisible Spirit; for she has learned from the Lord that a spirit does not have flesh and bones: lest perchance the detriments of bodily passions be believed to fall upon him.

She knows one unborn God: she knows also one only-begotten Son of God. She confesses the Father eternal and free from origin: she confesses also the origin of the Son from eternity: not himself from a beginning, but from him who is without beginning: not through himself, but from him who is from no one, always existing, born from eternity, deriving his nativity, that is, from the paternal eternity. Our faith, therefore, lacks the opinion of heretical depravity. For our sense has been set forth in profession, though the reasoning of that profession has not yet been expounded.

Nevertheless, lest any suspicion be left in the pronouncement of homoousion as named by the Fathers, and in the confession that he always existed, these things have been recorded, by which it might be known both that the Son subsists in the substance in which he was begotten from the Father, and that nothing was taken away from the Father with respect to the substance in which he remained, through the Son's nativity, and that the Son was called homoousios with the Father not for the vices and causes mentioned above by holy men who glow with the teaching of God; lest anyone perchance suppose that the nativity of the only-begotten Son is taken away by the ousia, because he is said to be homoousios with the Father.

By what necessity the word HOMOUSION was adopted.—But that we may understand the necessity of adopting both of these words, and the reason of their use against the raving heretics for the greatest security of the faith, I think an answer must be given to the perversity of the heretics, and all their foolish and death-bearing institutions must be refuted by evangelical and apostolic testimonies. For they seem to themselves to give a reason for each of the things they assert: because to each of their assertions they have subjoined certain testimonies out of the divine volumes, which, with the sense of understanding corrupted, flatter only the ignorant, and will present an appearance of truth according to the depravity of those interpreting it.

The Scriptures by which the Arians deceive the simple.—For they attempt, by celebrating only the divinity of God the Father, to take from the Son what he is God; because it is written: Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one. And that same text, when the doctor of the law asked what was the greatest commandment in the law, the Lord saying: Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one. And again, Paul thus preaching: For there is one God, and one Mediator of God and men.

Then, that he alone is wise, lest any wisdom be left to the Son, according to the Apostle's saying: Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery kept secret through ages of time, but now made manifest through the prophetic Scriptures, according to the command of the eternal God, made known unto all nations for obedience of faith, to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Then, that he alone is unborn, and that he alone is true, because Isaiah said: They shall bless thee, the true God. And that the Lord attested this same thing in the Gospels, saying: Now this is eternal life, that they may know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. Then, that he alone is good, lest there be any goodness in the Son, because it was said through him: No one is good but one, God.

Then, that he alone is powerful; because Paul said: whom in his own times he will show, who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords. Then, that they know him to be unchangeable and immutable; because through the prophet he said: I am the Lord your God, and I am not changed (Malachi 3:6); and the apostle James said: With whom there is no change. That he is a just judge, because it is written: God is a just judge, strong and patient. That he provides for all things, because the Lord said, when speaking of the birds: And your heavenly Father feeds them; and again: Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing, and one of them does not fall to the ground without the will of your Father? But even the hairs of your head are numbered. That he foresees all things, as blessed Susanna says: O eternal God, who knowest hidden things, who knowest all things before they come to be.

That he is also inconceivable, according to what is said: Heaven is my throne, and earth is the footstool of my feet. What house will you build for me, or what is the place of my rest? For my hand has made all these things, and all these things are mine (Isaiah 66:1). That he also comprehends all things, Paul testifying: For in him we live, and move, and have our being; and the Psalmist saying: Whither shall I go from your spirit, and whither shall I flee from your face? If I ascend into heaven, you are there; if I descend into hell, you are present; if I take my wings before the dawn, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea: even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. That he is also incorporeal, because it was said: For God is a spirit, and they who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.

That he possesses immortality and is invisible, Paul saying: Who alone has immortality, and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen, nor can see; and according to the Gospel: No man has seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him. That he alone remains unborn, because it was said: I am who I am; and again: Thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel: He who is has sent me to you; and through Jeremiah: Thou who art, O Lord.

The fraud hidden in the foregoing is uncovered.—And who does not understand that these things are full of fraud and full of deceit? Which, although they are subtly confounded and mingled together, nevertheless clearly attest the artful cunning of malice, and the folly and ineptitude thereof. For among other things they have added that they alone have known the Father to be unborn: as though from this anyone could doubt that he, from whom he was begotten through whom all things are, has received that which he himself is from no one. For in the very fact that he is called Father, the author of him whom he begot is shown; having that name which is understood neither to have proceeded from another, nor from which he who was begotten is shown to have subsisted. Let us, therefore, leave to God the Father that which is proper to him, and proper and secret, confessing in him the unborn power of eternal virtue.

But I think it is doubtful to no one that for this reason, in the confession of God the Father, certain things are mentioned as, so to speak, peculiar and private to him, lest anyone besides himself be left a partaker of them. For when they say "only true," "only just," "only wise," "only invisible," "only good," "only powerful," "only possessing immortality"; in the fact that he alone is these things, the Son is, according to them, separated from communion in them. For, as they say, things proper to one alone are not shared by another. And if these things are thought to exist in the Father alone, and not also in the Son, it is necessary that the Son be believed to be a false God, and unwise, and corporeal according to visible matters, and malevolent, and weak, and outside of immortality—being excepted from all these things, since in these the Father alone is.

The honor of the Son detracts nothing from the Father.—But as we are about to speak of the most absolute majesty and most complete divinity of the only-begotten Son of God, we do not suppose that anyone will think that all this discourse, which we are about to use, tends to the disparagement of God the Father, as if something were taken away from his dignity if any of these things be referred to the Son: since rather the honor of the Son is the Father's dignity; and he is the glorious author from whom he who is worthy of such glory has come forth. For the Son has nothing except what is born, and the admiration of the honor of the begotten is in the honor of the begetter. Let, then, the notion of disparagement cease: since whatever majesty shall be shown to be in the Son will redound to the enlargement of the power of him who begot one of such a kind.

The doctrine of the Arians concerning the Son.—It follows next that, now that we have learned what they have confessed concerning the Father tending to the disfigurement of the Son, that very thing which they have professed concerning the Son should be heard. For as we are about to answer each of their propositions, and by the testimonies of the divine sayings to expose their irreligious doctrine, we ought to subjoin to those things which have been said about the Father the things which have next been recorded concerning the Son: so that, the confession concerning the Father and the Son being compared with one another, one and the same order may be kept by us in resolving each proposition.

For they relate that the Son of God was neither begotten out of any underlying matter, because all things were created through him; nor is he of God, because nothing can come forth from God by separation: but that he is of the things that were not; that is, a perfect creature of God, yet not like the rest of creatures. That he is a creature; because it is written, The Lord created me the beginning of his ways. That he is also a perfect work, but not like the rest of works: a work, moreover, by that which Paul said to the Hebrews: So much better made than the angels, as he has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they. And again: Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the apostle and high priest of our confession, Jesus Christ, who is faithful to him that made him.

But to weaken the virtue and power and divinity of the Son, they make the greatest use of this, that he said: The Father is greater than I. And they grant that he is not one of all creatures, for this reason, because it is written: All things were made through him. They conclude, therefore, all the doctrine of their irreligion in words of this kind, saying: 12.

"We know one God, alone unbegotten, alone everlasting, alone without beginning, alone true, alone possessing immortality, alone good, alone powerful, the creator, ordainer and disposer of all things, unchangeable, immutable, just and good, the God of the law and the prophets and the New Testament: that this God begot an only-begotten Son before all ages, through whom he made both the age and all things: that he was born, however, not putatively, but truly, submitting to his will, unchangeable and immutable, a perfect creature of God, but not as one of the creatures; a work, but not as the other works; nor as Valentinus devised, a Son who is an emanation of the Father; nor as Manichaeus explained the Son to be a part of one substance of the Father; nor as Sabellius, who divides the union, said that the Son himself is also the Father; nor as Hieracas, a lamp from a lamp, or a torch divided into two parts; nor one who existed before, and afterward was born or super-created into a son, as you yourself, most blessed pope, in the midst of the church and in the assembly of the brethren, have often refused those who introduce such things: but, as we have said, created by the will of God before times and ages, and receiving both life and being from the Father, and glories subsisting together with the Father.

For the Father, in giving him the inheritance of all things, did not thereby defraud himself of those things which are held as not made by himself; for he is the fountain of all things. 13. "Wherefore there are three substances (ὑποστάσεις), the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And indeed God is the cause of all things, altogether without beginning, solitary: but the Son, brought forth by the Father without time, and created and founded before the ages, did not exist before he was born: but, born without time before all things, he alone subsisted from the Father alone. For he is not eternal, nor co-eternal, nor unmade together with the Father, nor does he have being together with the Father at the same time, as certain persons say, or some who introduce two unbegun principles: but as the union and the beginning of all things, so also is God before all things. Wherefore he is also before the Son, as we have learned from you also preaching in the midst of the church.

According as, then, he has being from God, and glories, and life, and all things have been delivered to him; according to this, God is his beginning. And he rules over him, as being his God, since he is before him. For if that which is 'of him,' and that which is 'of the womb,' and that which is 'I came forth from the Father, and have come', be understood as it were as a part of him, of one substance, and as a kind of extended emanation; the Father will be composite, and divisible, and convertible, and, according to them, a body, and, as far as in them lies, will be a God without a body sustaining the properties of a body.

Because man does not perceive divine things except from the things God has said of himself, the heretical assertions must be repelled from these. The sayings of God are to be weighed not nakedly, but from their own causes.—Here is their error, this their deadly teaching: for the confirmation of which, with the sense of understanding corrupted, they misuse the testimonies of the divine sayings, and, under the pretext of human ignorance, lie about them. But it ought to be doubtful to no one that, for the knowledge of divine things, divine teachings must be used. For neither will human weakness attain by itself to the knowledge of heavenly things, nor will bodily sense itself assume for itself the understanding of invisible things. For neither that which is created and carnal in us, nor that which has been given by God for the use of our life, discerns by its own judgment the nature of its Creator and his work. Our wits do not rise into heavenly knowledge, nor will our weakness conceive by any sense the incomprehensible power.

God himself must be believed concerning himself: and obedience must be given to those things which he has assigned to our knowledge concerning himself. For either, after the manner of the Gentiles, he must be denied, if his testimonies are to be disapproved: or if he is believed to be God, as he is, he cannot be understood otherwise concerning himself than as he himself has testified concerning himself. Let, therefore, men's own private opinions cease, nor let human counsels extend themselves beyond the divine ordinance. We follow, therefore, against irreligious and impious institutions concerning God, those very authorities of the divine sayings: and we shall treat each matter with that very thing as authority concerning which the inquiry is made, not fitting together certain utterances of words, with their causes withdrawn, so as to deceive and ill-instruct the ignorance of the hearers. For the understanding of the sayings must be taken from the causes of the saying: because the thing is not subject to the word, but the word is subject to the thing.

But we shall pursue all things together, both the causes for speaking and the force of the sayings as they are set forth. Let each point, therefore, be treated again in the order of the proposition.

Moses, in saying, God is one, did not deny the deity of the Son.—For this is their chief point: We know, they say, one only God, Moses saying, Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one. But has anyone from this ever dared to doubt? Or has it ever been known to be preached otherwise by any of those who believed in God, than that there is one God from whom are all things, one unbegotten power, and that this power is without beginning? But it does not follow, because God is one, that it can be denied of the Son of God that he is God. For Moses, or rather God through Moses, established this as the chief commandment for a people occupied, both in Egypt and in the desert, with idols and, as they supposed, the religions of the gods, that they should believe in one God: and truly and deservedly he established it. For there is one God from whom are all things.

But let us see whether that same Moses also confessed that he through whom all things exist is God. For it is not taken from the Father that God is one, because the Son also is God. For he is God from God, one from one: for this reason one God, because God from himself. On the other hand, no less is the Son God for the reason that the Father is one God; for he is the only-begotten Son of God: not unbegotten, so as to take from the Father that he is one God; nor is he himself anything other than God, because he is born of God. Concerning which, although it ought not to be doubted that, being born of God, he is God—through which our faith holds that God is one—yet let us see whether Moses, who said to Israel, The Lord your God is one, preached the Son of God to be God.

For we shall need to use his testimony to confess the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, on whose authority the heretics, confessing one God only, think that it must be denied that the Son is God.

In the history of creation he does not teach a solitary God. One speaking, another making; both are God. The Son is God making.—Since, then, this is the absolute and perfect confession concerning God, according to the Apostle to speak thus, One God the Father from whom are all things, and one Lord our Jesus Christ through whom are all things, let us see the origin of the world, what Moses says of it. For he says: And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the water, and let it divide the waters from the waters: and it was so done, and God made the firmament, and God divided the waters. You have therefore God from whom, you have God through whom.

Or if you deny this, you must show through whom that which was made was made: or else you must demonstrate that the very nature of the things to be created was obedient to God, so that at that which was said, Let there be a firmament, it confirmed itself, commanded by the word of God. But the reasoning of divine Scripture does not admit this. For all things, according to the prophet, were made from nothing: nor does any nature remain, changed into another, but that which was not was created, and was brought to completion. Through whom? Hear the evangelist: All things were made through him. If you ask through whom, you will hear the same Evangelist saying, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, this was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him.

But if you wish to deny that it seems said by the Father, Let there be a firmament, you will hear again the prophet saying, He spoke, and they were made; he commanded, and they were created. So that which was said, Let there be a firmament, shows that the Father spoke it. But what is added: And it was so done, and it is said that God made it; in this the person of the one effecting is to be understood, who does the making. For he spoke, and they were made, not merely willed and made: he commanded, and they were created, not merely because it pleased him did they come to be; so that (thus) the office of Mediator between himself and the things to be created should not cease. So God is said to speak, from whom are all things, and God makes, through whom are all things, confessed under the same and equal name both in the signification of speaking and in the operation of effecting.

But if you will dare to say that "And God made" is not said of the Son; where then will be that which was said, All things were made through him, and that apostolic saying, And one Lord our Jesus Christ through whom are all things; and this, He spoke, and they were made? But if these divinely spoken words convict your impudence; the Son of God is not deprived of being God by that which is said: Hear, Israel, the Lord your God is one: since by him himself, who spoke these words, in the very establishment of the world both God and the Son were proclaimed. But let us see to what advantage this distinction of God commanding and God making is increased. For although the common sense of understanding does not admit that in what is said, He commanded, and they were made, a solitary and identical signification should be believed; yet, lest anything be left in doubt, it is fitting that the things which followed the creation of the world be explained.

Neither in the founding of man is God solitary.—When, therefore, the world being complete, its inhabitant was to be formed, such is the discourse concerning him: And God said, Let us make man to our image and likeness. And again, And God made man; to the image of God he made him. I ask now, do you think that God spoke only to himself, or do you understand that this speech of his existed not to himself, but to another? If you say it was solitary, you are refuted by his own voice saying, Let us make man to our image and likeness. For God spoke through the lawgiver (Moses) according to our understanding, that is, in words which he himself willed us to use, imparting to us the knowledge of the things he had accomplished.

For the signification of the Son of God, through whom all things were made, is in this, that it was said, And God said, Let there be a firmament; and again it is said thus, And God made the firmament: yet lest this same speech be thought empty and superfluous, if he had said to himself that it should be made, and again he himself had made it (for what would be so alien to one who was alone, as to say to himself that something was to be made, when only will was needed for it to be made?); he wished this signification to be understood more absolutely, as not to be referred only to himself. By saying, Let us make man to our image and likeness, he removed by the profession of fellowship the notion of singularity. But there can be no fellowship of a solitary being with itself. Nor again does the solitude of one who is solitary admit "let us make"; nor does anyone speak of "our" to one alien to himself.

Both expressions, "let us make" and "our," as they do not allow one solitary and the same, so neither do they signify one diverse and alien from himself. Or I ask, if you hear "solitary," do you not think it means the very same one? Or when you hear "not himself" and "not the same," do you understand it to mean merely that he is solitary? In the solitary, then, the solitary is found; in the "not the same," however, and "not himself," the solitary is not found. To the solitary, therefore, belongs "I shall make" and "my"; but to the not-solitary, "let us make" and "our."

There is neither solitude nor diversity of divinity.—When, therefore, we read, Let us make man to our image and likeness; since each expression signifies, as not solitary only, so neither differing; we too must confess neither solitary only, nor diverse: knowing through this, that he says "our image," not also "our images," the property of one nature in each. But it does not suffice to have brought forward the reasoning of the words alone, unless the understanding of what is said is also followed by the working of the facts: for it is written thus: And God made man, to the image of God he made him. I ask, if the speech was solitary and to himself alone, what do you think should be understood here? For I see now a threefold signification: of the one making, of the thing made, and of the model. He who was made is man; but God made him; and him whom he made, he made to the image of God.

If Genesis had spoken of a solitary being, it would surely have said, And he made to his own image. But announcing the evangelical mystery, it declared not two gods, but God and God, when it says that man was made through God to the image of God. And thus God is found working man to an image and likeness common to himself with God, and the same: so that neither does the signification of the one effecting admit the notion of solitude, nor does the operation, established to the same image and likeness, allow diversity of divinity.

The same is confirmed in another place.—And although after these things it may seem superfluous to bring forward anything further, since in divine matters not things said more often, but things said once, suffice: yet it is fitting to know what was said concerning this same matter. For we owe an account not of the divine sayings, but of our own understanding of them. God speaks thus to Noah among many commands: Whoever sheds the blood of man, for his blood shall his soul be shed; for I made man to the image of God. Here too the model, the work, and the worker are distinguished. God testifies that he made man to the image of God.

When man was to be made, since he was speaking of himself, and not to himself, he said "to our image": but when man was made, "God made man to the image of God." He surely was not ignorant of the propriety of the word, that if he were speaking to himself, he would say, "I made to my image." For he had said, to show the unity of nature, "Let us make to our image." Nor again did he confuse the understanding of solitary and not solitary: since God, making man, made him to the image of God.

That the Father did not speak these words to himself as one solitary, "Let us make."—But if you will wish to affirm that God the Father, solitary, spoke these things to himself, as though it might be conceded to you that one alone spoke to himself as with another, and it were believed that in that "I made man to the image of God" he wished to be understood as though, "I made man to my image"; first you would be refuted by your own testimony. For you have said, From the Father are all things, but through the Son are all things. For through what is said, "Let us make man," the origin is from him from whom the speech itself began: but in that "God made to the image of God," is signified also him through whom the work is consummated.

But that Wisdom, which by the heretics' own admission is Christ, was present with him.—Then further, lest you be permitted to lie about this, Wisdom, whom you yourself have confessed to be Christ, will come against you saying, When he set fixed fountains beneath the sky, when he made firm the foundations of the earth, I was with him, composing. I was she in whom he delighted. And daily I rejoiced in his presence at every time, when he rejoiced that the world was perfected, and rejoiced in the sons of men. Every occasion is shut off, and universal error is constrained to confess the truth. God-begotten Wisdom is present before the ages. And not only is she present, but she also composes. She is, therefore, composing, with him. Understand the office of composition or disposition. For the Father, in that he speaks, effects; the Son, in that he works the things that were said to be made, composes. But the distinction of persons is so made that the work is referred to both.

For in what is said, "Let us make," both the command and the deed are made equal: but in what is written, "I was with him composing", it signifies that he was not solitary to himself in the operation. But she rejoices before him, whom she signified she rejoiced together with, as he rejoiced. Wisdom has taught the cause of her joy. She rejoices because of the joy of the Father, rejoicing in the perfection of the world and in the sons of men. For it is written: And God saw that they were good. She rejoices that her works please the Father, works accomplished by herself according to his command. For she professes that her joy comes from this, that the Father was joyful in the completed world and in the sons of men: in the sons of men because already in the one Adam the whole beginning of the human race had been established.

Therefore the Father did not speak to himself alone in the making of the world, his Wisdom cooperating with him, and, the cooperation being consummated, rejoicing.

Conclusion of what has been proved from.—We are not unaware that many and very great matters remain for the full treatment of these sayings: but they are deferred by us rather than dissembled; for a fuller treatment of them is reserved for the other propositions. Now only this is answered, which was said by the impious in the exposition of their faith, or rather their infidelity, that only one God was proclaimed by Moses. And we remember indeed that he was so proclaimed, because there is one God from whom are all things: but it is not for that reason to be ignored that the Son is God; since the same Moses professed God and God throughout the whole body of his Work. We must therefore see how both the election and the giving of the law proclaim God and God in equal order of confession.

The Angel of God who addressed Agar is God. The Son is both the Angel of God and God.—For after many addresses of God to Abraham, when Sara was moved against Agar, the mistress, being sterile, envying the conception of her handmaid, and when Agar had departed from her sight, Scripture speaks thus of her: And the Angel of the Lord said to Agar, Return to thy mistress, and humble thyself under her hands. And the Angel of the Lord said to her, Multiplying I will multiply thy seed, and it shall not be numbered for multitude. And again: And she called the name of the Lord who spoke with her, Thou art the God who hast looked upon me. The Angel of God speaks (now there is a twofold signification in the Angel of God: He who is, and He whose He is): and He speaks not things according to the name of His office; for He says: Multiplying I will multiply thy seed, and it shall not be numbered for multitude.

The power of multiplying nations exceeds the ministry of an angel. But what, then, does Scripture testify concerning Him who, as the Angel of God, was speaking things proper to God alone? And she called the name of the Lord who spoke with her, Thou art the God who hast looked upon me. First He is the Angel of God, second the Lord; for she called the name of the Lord who spoke with her; then third, God, for Thou art the God who hast looked upon me. He who was called the Angel of God is the same who is Lord and God. But according to the prophet, the Son of God is the angel of great counsel. That the distinction of persons might be absolute, He is named the Angel of God; for He who is God of God is Himself also the Angel of God. But that the honor due to Him might be rendered, He is proclaimed both Lord and God.

Why the same one speaking to Agar is called an angel, while to Abraham He is called God.—And here indeed He is first called angel, then afterward the same is called both Lord and God: but to Abraham He is called only God. For now, safely, the distinction of persons having already been set forth, lest the error of a solitary person should lurk beneath, His absolute and true name is declared. For it is written: And God said to Abraham, Behold Sara thy wife shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name Isaac: and I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his seed after him. But as for Ismael, behold I have heard thee, and blessed him, and I will greatly increase him: he shall beget twelve nations, and I will make him a great nation. Is it doubted that He who was called the Angel of God is again the same who is called God?

And the discourse concerning Ismael is the same, and he is to be multiplied now, as before, by the same One. And lest perhaps it should be believed that it was not the same One who had spoken to Agar who was now speaking: the divine word attests the meaning of the same person, saying, And I have blessed him, and I will multiply him. The blessing is from the past; for the word had already been spoken to Agar: but the increase is for the future; for now for the first time God speaks to Abraham concerning Ismael. And God speaks to Abraham; but to Agar the Angel of God spoke. He is therefore God, who is also an angel: because He who is also the Angel of God is God born of God. He is called the Angel of God for this reason, that He is the angel of great counsel: but He is afterward shown to be God, lest He who is God should be believed to be merely an angel.

Let the discourse follow the order of the matters. The Angel of the Lord spoke to Agar; the same speaks to Abraham as God; the discourse to each proceeds from the same One. Ismael is blessed, and it is promised that he is to be increased into a great nation.

Other things seen, said, and done are recounted.—Scripture also, through Abraham, shows that it is God who was speaking. Isaac too is promised to Abraham as a son. Then afterward three men stand by. Abraham, having beheld the three, adores one, and confesses Him as Lord. Scripture has recorded that three men stood by: but the patriarch is not ignorant as to who is to be adored and confessed. The appearance of those standing by is indistinguishable; but he recognized his Lord with the eyes of faith and the sight of the mind. Then follows: And He said to him, Returning I will come to thee at this time in the future, and Sara thy wife shall have a son. And after this the Lord said to him, I will not hide from Abraham my servant the things which I am about to do. And again: But the Lord said, The cry of Sodom and Gomorrha is fulfilled, and their sins are exceedingly great.

And again, after much other discourse, which for brevity's sake we pass over, when Abraham was anxious about the just being destroyed together with the unjust, He says: By no means wilt thou, who judgest the earth, do this judgment. And the Lord said, If I shall find in Sodom fifty just men in the city, I will spare the whole place for their sake. And again, when the discourse was concluded, Scripture says concerning Lot, the brother of Abraham, And the Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrha brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven. And again: And the Lord visited Sara, as He had said, and God did unto Sara as He had spoken, and Sara conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the time which the Lord had spoken to him.

Then, when the handmaid had been expelled from Abraham's house with her son, and in the desert, fearing the death of the child from lack of water, the same Scripture says, And the Lord God heard the voice of the child where he was, and the Angel of God called Agar from heaven, and said to her, What is it, Agar? Fear not; for God has heard the voice of the child from the place where he is. Rise, and take the child, and hold his hand; for I will make him into a great nation.

Each point is weighed. The Son is both the angel of great counsel, and the Lord, and God.—What blindness of perfidy is this, what dullness of an unbelieving heart, what rashness of irreligion, either to be ignorant of these things, or, knowing them, to neglect them? Surely these things were recorded and spoken thus, lest any error or obscurity should hinder the understanding of the truth. If we show that these things cannot be unknown, then it is necessarily the crime of impiety that they be denied. The Angel of God began to speak to Agar, about to increase Ismael into a great nation, and about to grant him an innumerable progeny of a nation. The confession of the one who heard teaches that He is both Lord and God. For the beginning of the discourse started from the Angel of God, but ended in the confession of God. Thus He who, under the ministry of announcing great counsel, is the Angel of God, is Himself both by nature and by name God.

For the name conforms to the nature, not the nature to the name. Concerning the same matters, God also speaks to Abraham: it is taught that Ismael has already been blessed, and that he is to be multiplied into a nation: I have blessed him, He says. He has not, therefore, changed the signification of His person: for He shows that He had already blessed him. Scripture has indeed preserved the order of the mystery and the manner of true proclamation, beginning from the Angel of God, and afterward confessing the same One, speaking of the same matters, to be God.

The man whom Abraham adores out of the three is Lord, God, and judge.—The divine discourse proceeds, however, with a fuller advance of doctrine; here God speaks to Abraham, and promises that Sara shall bear a child. After this, three men stand by him as he sits; he adores one, and confesses Him as Lord. And the same One, both adored and confessed by him, promises that He will return at that same time in the future, and God has spoken to Abraham that Sara shall have a son. The same man, seen by him, afterward addresses him about these same matters. Only a change of names occurs, yet nothing is lost from the confession. For although Abraham beheld a man, yet he adored Him as Lord: recognizing, that is, the mystery of the future incarnation. Nor did this testimony of so great a faith lack witness; for the Lord says in the Gospels, Abraham your father rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad.

The man who was seen, therefore, promises that he will return at the same time. Consider the effect of the promise: yet remember that it is a man who makes the promise. What then does Scripture say? And the Lord visited Sara. This man, then, is the Lord, accomplishing what He had promised. What follows next? And God did unto Sara as He had spoken. He is named "man" in speaking, signified as "Lord" in the visitation, proclaimed as "God" in the deed. You do not fail to know that it was a man who spoke, who both was seen by Abraham and spoke to him. How will you fail to know that He is God, when the same Scripture, which had called Him a man, confesses Him as God? For it itself says, And Sara conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the time which the Lord had spoken to him. But the man had spoken of his own coming.

Believe him to be merely a man, unless he who came is both God and Lord. Compare the cause. The man, surely, is to come for this reason, that Sara might conceive and bear. Learn the faith. The Lord and God came for this, that Sara might conceive and bear. In the power of God the man spoke: in the effect of God, God performed. Thus He signifies Himself to be God both in speaking and in doing. Then, of the three who had been seen, two depart: but He who remains seated is both Lord and God. Nor is He only Lord and God, but He is also judge. For standing before the Lord, Abraham said, By no means wilt thou do this thing, to slay the just with the wicked, so that the just should be as the wicked. By no means, thou who judgest all the earth, wilt thou do this judgment.

By his whole discourse, therefore, Abraham teaches the faith by which he was justified, having recognized his Lord out of the three, and having adored Him alone, and confessed Him as Lord and judge.

Abraham adores one of the three, not three in one. The difference between what Lot saw and what Abraham saw.—And lest perhaps you should think that in the confession of the one, the honor of all three men, who were seen together, is contained; consider what Lot said when he saw the two who had departed: And when Lot saw them, he rose up to meet them, and adored with his face to the ground: and said, Behold, my lords, turn in to the house of your servant. Here the simple sight of angels retained a plural signification, there the faith of the patriarch confesses a singular honor. Here the account of divine Scripture signifies that only two of the three were angels, there it proclaims Him Lord and God. For it says: And the Lord said to Abraham, Why did Sara laugh, saying, Shall I then indeed bring forth? For I am old. Is anything impossible with God? At this time I will return to thee in the future, and Sara shall have a son.

Scripture, therefore, keeps to the order of truth, neither mingling a plural signification into Him who was acknowledged as both God and Lord, nor imparting to the two angels the honor that had been paid to God alone. Lot indeed calls them "lords," but Scripture names them "angels." There it is the office of a man, here the confession of truth.

The Lord from the Lord, the Son.—Then follows the just punishment of judgment upon Sodom and Gomorrha. And what, then, is the weight of this? The Lord rained brimstone and fire from the Lord. As Lord from Lord; thus He did not distinguish by the name of nature those whom He had distinguished by signification (not of one person). For we read in the Gospel, The Father judges no man, but has given all judgment to the Son. The Lord, therefore, gave what the Lord received from the Lord.

Jacob saw him as God, and not solitary.—But you who have received in the Lord and in the Lord judge, the knowledge, recognize the fellowship of the same name in God and with God. Jacob, departing from fear of his brother, had seen in a dream a ladder set upon the earth and touching heaven, and upon it the angels of God ascending and descending, and the Lord leaning upon it, imparting to him all the blessings which he had given to Abraham and Isaac. To him afterward such a word of God came: But God said to Jacob, Arise, go up to the place Bethel, and dwell there, and make there an altar to God, who appeared to thee when thou fleddest from the face of thy brother. God demands honor for God, and demands it with the signification of another person: Who, he says, appeared to thee when thou fleddest; lest any confusion of the same person should arise.

God, therefore, is he who speaks, and God is he of whom he speaks: the confession of honor does not distinguish them by the name of nature, whom the signification distinguishes as subsisting.

Synopsis and scope of the foregoing from number 23.—And I recall that certain things are necessary at this point for a fuller resolution; but according to the order of the proposition, the order of the response also must be kept. Therefore what remains for it we shall pursue in its own place in another book. Only this now had to be shown, in God who demands honor for God, that the angel of God, who spoke with Hagar, is both God and Lord, since he spoke of the same things to Abraham; and that the man who appeared to Abraham is both God and Lord; but that the two angels, who were seen with the Lord and sent by him to Lot, are declared by the prophet to be nothing other than angels. Not only, moreover, was God present to Abraham in a man, but God came to Jacob also in the form of a man. Nor did he only come, but is shown wrestling; nor only wrestling, but even weakened against him with whom he wrestled.

Now it is not our task to treat anything concerning the mystery of the wrestling, either as to time or as to matter. He is certainly God; because Jacob prevailed against God, and Israel saw God.

He who appeared to Moses in the bush is Lord and God.—Let us see, however, whether elsewhere also, besides in the case of Hagar, this angel of God was known to be God. He is plainly known to be so. And not only God, but also found to be the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. For the angel of the Lord appeared to Moses from the bush, and the Lord speaks from the bush: whose voice do you think is to be understood, that of him who was seen, or of some other? Here there is no room for falsehood. For Scripture says, And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the bush. And again, The Lord called to him out of the bush, Moses, Moses. And he answered, What is it? And the Lord said, Do not come near hither; loose the sandal from thy feet; for the place on which thou standest is holy ground.

And he said to him, I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. He who appeared in the bush speaks from the bush: and the place of the vision and of the voice is one; nor is any other heard than he who was seen. He who is the angel of God when seen, is again the same, when heard, the Lord; and this same Lord who is heard is then known to be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. When he is called the angel of God, he is not shown to be his own and solitary; for he is the angel of God: when he is named Lord and God, he is proclaimed in the honor and name of his own nature. You have, therefore, the angel who appeared from the bush, being both Lord and God.

Moses more than once proclaims God and Lord. Yet each is one God. Honor is demanded for the Son as God by nature. The Son is both Angel of God and God.—Run through further the testimonies of Moses; and see whether he neglects any occasion of proclaiming God and Lord. You have, indeed, from his words: Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one. Hold now the words of that divine song of his: for he says, See, see that I am the Lord, and there is no God besides me. And when the whole discourse to the end of the song had been from the person of God, he says, Rejoice, ye heavens, together with him, and let all the sons of God worship him. Rejoice, ye nations, with his people, and let all the angels of God honor him. God is to be honored by the angels of God, he saying: For I am the Lord, and there is no God besides me.

For he is the Only-begotten God; nor does the name of the Only-begotten admit a sharer (just as the unbegotten does not admit a partaker, in that very respect in which it is unbegotten); for he is one from one. Nor is there any other unbegotten God besides the unbegotten God, nor is there any other only-begotten God besides the only-begotten God. Each, therefore, is one and alone, by reason of the property, namely, in each, both of unbegottenness and of origin. And thus each is one God; since between one and one, that is, between the one from whom and the one who is from him, there is not a second nature of the eternal Godhead. He is, therefore, to be worshipped by the sons of God, and to be honored by the angels of God. Thus both honor and veneration are demanded for God by the sons of God and by the angels.

Understand the signification of the honoring, and of those through whom he is to be honored, namely, through the angels and sons of God—God. And lest perhaps you think that the honor of God demanded here is not that of nature, and suppose that Moses in this passage meant the honoring of God the Father, whereas the Father is to be honored in the Son; nevertheless, observe the blessing which, under the same discourse, he pronounces upon Joseph. For he says: And the things that were accepted of him who appeared in the bush, may they come upon the head of Joseph and upon the crown of his head. God, therefore, is to be worshipped by the sons of God, but he is the God who is also the Son of God.

And God is to be honored by the angels of God, but he is the God who is also the angel of God as God: because the angel of God who is God appeared from the bush, and the things that pleased him are prayed for when Joseph is blessed. He is not, therefore, not God because he is the angel of God; nor again is he not the angel of God because he is God: but by the meaning of the persons being signified, and the sense of unbegottenness and of birth being distinguished, and by the dispensation of the heavenly mysteries being made manifest, he has taught that God is not to be thought solitary, since the angel and Son of God, being God, will be worshipped by the sons and angels of God.

And let these things be our reply concerning the books of Moses, or rather let Moses himself have replied: because the heretics, using him as their authority, think that through the confession of one God it can be persuaded that the Son of God is not to be proclaimed God; contrary to the testimony of their own impious authority, since he, while confessing one God, never ceased to teach concerning the Son of God that he is God. But it follows to bring forward the manifold testimonies of the prophets on the same subject.

What prophet teaches the Son to be God, and distinguishes him from the Father. Why the Father of the Son is God.—You hold the saying: Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one: and would that you held it rightly. But according to your understanding I ask the reason of the prophetic saying. For he says in the psalms: God, thy God hath anointed thee. Distinguish, for the understanding of the reader, the anointed and the anointer; distinguish "thee" and "thy": show to whom, and of whom, the discourse is. For this order of confession follows upon the preceding words. For he had said: Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever; the sceptre of thy uprightness is the sceptre of thy kingdom; thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity. Now to this he adds: Therefore, God, thy God hath anointed thee. The God of an eternal kingdom, therefore, on account of the merit of righteousness loved and iniquity hated, has been anointed by his God.

Does the interval of the names in any way confuse our understanding? For the distinction of person only is placed in "thee" and "thy," in no way distinguished by a confession of nature. For "thy" is referred to the author, but "thee" to the signification of him who is from the author. For he is God from God, the prophet confessing in the same order: God, thy God hath anointed thee. But there is no God before the unbegotten God, he himself saying: Be ye my witnesses, and I am witness, saith the Lord God, and my servant whom I have chosen, that ye may know and believe and understand that I am he, and before me there is no other God, and after me there shall be none. The dignity, therefore, of him who is without beginning has been shown; and the honor of him who is from the unbegotten has been preserved: for God, thy God, hath anointed thee. For that which he says, "thy," refers to the birth, but does not destroy the nature.

And therefore he is his God, because he who was born is born into God. Yet it is not the case that, because the Father is God, the Son therefore is not God: For God, thy God, hath anointed thee: the signification both of the author and of him who is begotten from him being designated, in one and the same saying he established both of them in the naming of the same nature and dignity.

What kind of Son of the Father Isaiah proclaims.—But lest perchance an occasion of impious assertion be seized from what has been said, For I am he, and before me there is no other God, and after me there shall be none; as though by this the Son also were not God, because he says afterward, and shortly after, that he is read to be born from God, that is, born from him. The very God before whom there is no God, and after whom there shall likewise be no God afterward; the whole reasoning of the saying on this account must be treated. God himself is witness of his own word, but also his chosen servant is witness together with him, that there is no God before him, nor shall there be one after him. He is indeed sufficient witness for himself; but to the testimony he gives of himself he has joined the testimony of the servant whom he chose.

The testimony of the two, therefore, is one: that no God exists before him—for all things are from him; nor shall any God exist after him—not indeed meaning that this one was not from him. For he was already the servant, in the testimony of the Father, speaking these things, the servant chosen from the tribe from which he was to be begotten. This same thing he shows likewise in the Gospels: Behold my servant whom I have chosen, my beloved, in whom my soul is well pleased. There is not, therefore, another God before me, and after me there shall be none: showing therein the infinity of the eternal and unchangeable power, in that before and after there is no God besides himself; his own servant, however, being set both in his testimony and in his name.

A passage of Hosea for the deity of the Son. To the Father there is no God, to the Son the Father is God, to us both Father and Son are God.—And this same thing it is easy to discern from his own person. For he says to Hosea the prophet, I will not again have mercy upon the house of Israel, but I will indeed set myself against them as an adversary: but I will have mercy upon the children of Judah, and will save them by the Lord their God (Hosea, 6, 7). Therefore absolutely the Father names the Son God, in whom also he chose us before the times of the ages. He says "their," therefore, because the unbegotten God is from none, and we are given by God the Father as an inheritance to the Son. For we read, Ask of me, and I will give thee the nations as thy inheritance. For to God, from whom all things are, there is no God, since he is eternal without beginning.

But to the Son, God is the Father; for from him the Son, being God, is born. To us, however, both the Father is God and the Son is God: the Father confessing of the Son that he is our God, the Son teaching of the Father that he is God to us: yet the Son being named God by the Father, that is, by the very name of his own unbegotten power. And these things indeed concerning Hosea.

A clear testimony from Isaiah. The adoration of the Magi foretold. Who the Magi were.—Through Isaiah, moreover, how full a profession is made by God the Father concerning our Lord. For he says: For thus says the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, who made the things that are to come: Ask me concerning my sons and my daughters, and concerning the works of my hands give me commandment. I made the earth, and man upon it; I have given command to all the stars; I have raised up a king with justice, and all his ways are right. He shall build my city, and shall turn back the captivity of my people, not for reward, nor for gifts, says the Lord of Sabaoth. Egypt shall labor, and the merchandise of the Ethiopians, and of Saba.

Tall men shall pass over to you, and shall be your servants, and after you they shall follow bound in chains, and shall worship you, and shall make supplication to you; because God is in you, and there is no God besides you. For you are God, and we knew it not. God of Israel, the Savior. All who are adversaries to him shall be ashamed and confounded, and shall go with confusion (Isaiah 45:11). Is there still any room for rashness? Or has any occasion for ignorance been left, save this alone remaining, that impiety should betray itself as professed? God, from whom all things are, who made all things by commanding, taking to himself the works that were made—not indeed to be brought about unless he had said that they should be made—testifies that a king was raised up by himself, just, and building for himself, for God, a city, and turning away the captivity of the people, not for reward nor for gifts; for by grace we are all saved.

Then he speaks thus, that after the labor of Egypt, that is, the calamity of the world, and the merchandise of the Ethiopians and of Saba, tall men shall pass over to him. And what, after all, is to be reckoned the labor of Egypt, and the merchandise of the Ethiopians and Saba? Let us recall the Magi of the East worshiping the Lord and bringing gifts, and let us measure the labor of coming all the way to Bethlehem of Judah, so long a journey. For in the beginning, in the labor, the labor of all Egypt was shown forth. For to the Magi, who lied about the workings of divine power under a false appearance of things, the chief honor of an impious religion was rendered by the whole age. To these same Magi, and by the merchandise of the Ethiopians and Saba, bringing gifts of gold, and frankincense, and myrrh: which indeed the same thing another prophet also foretold, saying: Before him the Ethiopians shall fall down, and his enemies shall lick the dust.

The kings of Tharsis shall offer gifts, the kings of the Arabians and of Saba shall bring gifts, and there shall be given to him of the gold of Arabia. In the Magi, therefore, and in the gifts, the labor of Egypt and the merchandise of the Ethiopians and Saba is shown, namely, the error of the world in the Magi worshiping, and the chosen gifts of the nations offered by them to the Lord whom they worshiped.

The Apostles the tall men.—But who, in the end, are these tall men who are to pass over to him, and who shall follow him bound, is not obscure. Look to the Gospels; Peter is girded, about to follow his Lord. Behold the Apostles: Paul, servant of Christ, glories in his chains (Philemon 1). And let us see whether the one bound in Christ Jesus fulfilled what God had spoken concerning his Son, God. They shall make supplication, he says, because God is in you (Isaiah 45:14). Recognize, then, what was said by the Apostle, and understanding it, recognize it: God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself. Then follows: And there is no God besides you. To which the same Apostle continually says, for there is one Lord our Jesus Christ, through whom are all things: and no other besides him seems to be, because he is one. Thirdly also he says, You are God, and we knew it not.

But from being a persecutor of the Church he said: Of whom are the fathers, of whom is Christ, who is over all things, God. These bound ones, therefore, shall preach these things: namely, being tall, and about to judge, sitting on twelve thrones, the tribes of Israel, and about to follow their Lord in the martyrdom of his doctrine and passion.

The Father says of himself, There is no God besides me, and of the Son, There is no God besides you. The Son distinguished from the Father in person, not in kind.—God, therefore, is in God: and in whom God is, is God. And how is there no God besides you, when God is in the same? You seize upon, O heretic, for the confession of a solitary God the Father, "There is no God besides me": how will you interpret, from the declaration of God the Father saying, "There is no God besides you," what is said, if by that which is said, "There is no God besides me", you strive to affirm, lest the Son of God be God? And to whom, then, did God (the Father) say, "There is no God besides you"? For here you may not attach to it the person of one who is solitary.

For the Lord said to the king whom he raised up, from the person of the tall men adoring and beseeching, "Because God is in you." A solitary being does not admit of this. For "in you" signifies one present, as one to whom the speech is addressed. But what follows, "God is in you," shows not only him who is present, but also him who remains present: distinguishing the one dwelling from him in whom he dwells, yet only by distinction of person, not of kind: for God is in him, and in whom God is, is God. For God is not in the dwelling-place of a nature diverse and foreign to himself, but abides in his own and self-begotten one. God in God, because he is God from God. For you are God, and we knew it not, God of Israel, the Savior (Isaiah 45:15).

Those who oppose the Son shall be ashamed. He who denies the Son dishonors the Father.—You, denying that God is in God, are refuted by the following speech: for it says, "They shall be ashamed, and confounded, all who are adversaries to him, and shall go with confusion": this is God's decree against your impiety. For you are adversary to Christ, of whom the profession of the paternal voice reproaches you. For he is God, whom you deny to be God. But you deny it under the appearance of honoring God (the Father), who says, "There is no other God besides me". But be confounded and ashamed: the unbegotten God does not need honor conferred by you; he does not demand this glory of his solitude from you, he does not desire this understanding of your opinion; that because he said, "There is no God besides me," you should deny that he whom he begot of himself is God.

And lest you should claim this as peculiar to him, for the destroying of the divinity of the Son, he filled the glory of his Only-begotten with the honor of perfect divinity, saying, "And there is no God besides you." Why do you make distinctions where things are made equal? Why do you separate what is joined together? It is proper to the Son of God that there be no God besides him; it is proper to God the Father that there be no God apart from him: use the words of God concerning God. Confess it thus, and pray to the king: "Because God is in you, and there is no God besides you. For you are God, and we knew it not, God of Israel, the Savior." The office of honor lacks reproach, nor does the example of confession carry offense; especially since opposition to it is full of confusion and shame. Dwell upon the words of God, confess by the utterances of God; and flee the declaration of confusion.

For by denying that the Son of God is God, you will not so much honor God as solitary with the glory due, as you will despise the Father by dishonoring the Son. Confess the faith of honor to the unbegotten God, that besides him there is no God: proclaim of the only-begotten God, that without him there is no God. 42. Jeremiah confirms the divinity of the Son. What God was seen upon the earth. The Son one Mediator both in the giving of the Law and in the assumption of the flesh. The Father and the Son are one.—Hear, then, besides Moses and Isaiah, thirdly also Jeremiah teaching this same thing, when he says: This is our God, and none other shall be accounted beside him. Who found out all the way of knowledge, and gave it to Jacob his servant, and to Israel his beloved.

Afterward he was seen upon earth, and conversed among men For he had already said above, "And he is a man, and who shall know him?" You have, then, God seen upon earth and conversing among men: and I ask how you think it is to be understood, "No man has ever seen God, except the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father"; when Jeremiah proclaims a God who was both seen on earth and conversed among men? The Father, certainly, is visible only to the Son alone. Who, then, is this who was seen and conversed among men? Certainly he is our God, and a God visible in man and touchable. And understand the prophet speaking: "None other shall be accounted beside him." If you ask, how? Hear what follows: lest by this you should think that what is said is not also proper to the Father: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one".

For these things cohere together: "None other shall be accounted beside him: who found out all the way of knowledge, and gave it to Jacob his servant, and to Israel his beloved: afterward he was seen upon earth, and conversed among men." For there is one Mediator of God and men, God and man: mediator both in the giving of the Law and in the assumption of the body. Another, therefore, is not accounted beside him. For this is the one born God from God, through whom all things were created in heaven and on earth, through whom times and ages were made. For everything whatsoever exists, subsists by his operation. There, then, he is one, disposing toward Abraham, speaking to Moses, testifying to Israel, abiding in the prophets, born of a virgin by the Holy Spirit, fastening to the wood of the passion the opposing and hostile powers against us, destroying death in hell, confirming the faith of our hope by his resurrection, destroying the corruption of human flesh by the glory of his own body.

To him, therefore, no other is accounted equal. For these things are proper to the only-begotten God alone, and this one alone is born of God in this peculiar blessedness of his powers. No other God is accounted beside him: for he is God not from another substance, but God from God. Nothing in him, therefore, is new, nothing foreign, nothing recent. For when Israel hears that God is one to itself, and that to the Son of God, being God, no other God is accounted, so that he is God; absolutely the Father is God and the Son is God, one—not by union of person, but by unity of substance: because the prophet does not allow the Son of God, being God, to be accounted toward another God, since he is God.

It is dangerous either to assent to or to oppose heretics preaching one God.—In responding to the impious and insane teachings of the heretics in the preceding books, we were not unaware that we had been brought into such a necessity of contradiction, that our reply would stir up no less danger for our hearers than silence would. For since profane and unbelieving assertion urged one God, and again sound faith could not religiously deny one God; the matter could not be treated without the consciousness of a two-edged danger, since it could be no less impiously affirmed than denied. And indeed it will perhaps seem to human judgment absurd and contrary to reason, that what it is irreligious to deny should itself be irreligious to confess: since the piety of confessing condemns the impiety of denying; nor does it accord with reason that what is usefully destroyed should be usefully affirmed.

But the human sense, imprudent as regards the understanding of divine wisdom, and foolish according to heavenly prudence, judges according to its own weaknesses, and is wise according to the feebleness of its own nature; it is destined to become a fool to itself, that it may be wise unto God—that is, understanding the poverty of its own sense, and pursuing the wisdom of God, it should not be prudent according to human wisdom, but should be wise according to what profits it toward God, about to pass over into the wisdom of God from the recognized folly of the world.

Fitting the sense of this foolish wisdom to an occasion of deceit, heretical subtlety has professed one God, using the authority of the Law and of the Gospels, in which it is said: Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one: not unaware of how much danger there was in it, whether of response or of silence, and awaiting from either an opportunity for impiety: so that, if the silence of one conniving should confirm the sanctity of a saying unfaithfully seized upon, then, by the fact that God is one, the Son of God nevertheless would not be God, God alone remaining one as He is; but if, on the other hand, there should arise contradiction of this presumed impious profession, then a response not confessing one God would not preserve the truth of the evangelical faith, since the profession of our faith is according to one God; and the confession, professing God the Father and the Son as one God, would fall back into the impiety of another heresy.

And thus the wisdom of the world, which is foolishness with God, would mock us under the appearance of a flattering and pestilent simplicity, since it would establish this as the starting point of its faith, in which we would impiously either assent or oppose it: and through this danger of either course, it would obtain that the Son of God is not God, because God is one; or it would extort the necessity of heresy, if, confessing both the Father as God and the Son as God, we should be thought to preach one God according to the impious opinion of Sabellius: and thus by this manner of its preaching, the one God would either exclude another, or would not exist through another (understand: be one), or would be one only in name: because both unity would know no other, and the other would not permit union, and two could not be one.

By what balance Hilary avoided every danger. The aim of the preceding book.—But we, having followed the wisdom of God, which is foolishness to the world, and being about to expose the fraudulence of the viper's doctrine through the salutary and sincere confession of the Lord's faith, began this order of our response, which would both gain for itself an approach to demonstrating the truth, and would not entangle itself in the danger of an impious profession: with a moderation tempered between the two; not denying one God, but preaching God and God, by the very same authority by which one God has been proclaimed; and teaching one God not through a fusion, nor again cutting Him down into a number of diversity, nor on the other hand confessing Him only in names; but showing God and God, the question of unity being set aside and postponed for fuller treatment.

For the Gospels bear witness that one God was rightly proclaimed by Moses; and again, that God and God are faithfully taught in the Gospels, Moses himself, who proclaims one God, is the author. And thus authority was not opposed, but the response was made from authority itself, lest it should thereby be permitted to deny that the Son of God is God, because for Israel God is one: since the same author who is the author of proclaiming one God is also the author of confessing the Son of God as God.

The aim of this second book. From what the truth of the matter consists.—The order of the following little book, connected with the former, follows accordingly the order of the question. For since this following statement of impious flattery has been set forth: We know one true God: hence also the whole discourse of this second book turns on this: whether the Son of God is true God. For without doubt the subtlety of heretical ingenuity fitted itself into this order, first saying one God, then confessing one true God: so that by this it might turn the Son of God away from the nature and truth of God, since truth, remaining in the nature of the one, would not exceed the natural truth of the one.

Therefore, since there is no room for ambiguity but that Moses, preaching one God, is understood to have signified concerning the Son of God that He is God, let us return to those very authorities of his signification: and let us inquire whether he has also taught that He whom he signified as God is to be understood as true God. But no one doubts that truth comes from nature and from power: so that, for example, it may be said that true wheat is that which, built up into an ear and hedged about with awns, and threshed out of its husks, and ground into flour, and formed into bread, and taken as food, has given back from itself both the nature and function of bread.

Therefore, since the power of nature furnishes truth, let us see whether He whom Moses signifies to be God is true God: we are to speak later concerning the one God, and the same true God; lest, without the pledge having been interposed concerning the confirmation of the one and true God subsisting in Father and Son, a dangerous suspicion should wear down the anxiety of a hanging expectation.

The Son is proved true God from the power of creating.—Since, then, the creation of the world, after the knowledge of God has been received, signifies that the Son of God is God, I ask in what respect it could possibly deny that He is true God. For it is not doubted that all things are through the Son. For all things, according to the Apostle, are through Him, and in Him. If all things are through Him, and all things from nothing, and nothing is not through Him; I ask in what He lacks the truth of God, to whom neither the nature nor the power of God is lacking. For He made use of the power of His own nature, both that things which were not should be, and that things which pleased Him should come to be. For God saw that they were good.

The Law, in God speaking and God doing, distinguishes only the persons. There is one nature of the one speaking and the one doing. The Son of God is not a false or adoptive God.—For the Law introduced no other signification than that of person, when it says: And God said, Let there be a firmament; and again added: And God made the firmament. Otherwise it neither distinguished power, nor separated nature, nor changed the name, in that in which it merely furnished the understanding of the one speaking, so as to bring in the signification of the one effecting. But the signification of one speaking does not exclude the truth of nature and of power; rather it commends that very truth with what propriety! For to bring efficacy to a word belongs to that nature which, as effecting, can furnish that which it does as speaking. In what respect then will He who effects not be true, since He who speaks is true; when indeed the truth of the deed follows upon the truth of the word?

God is He who spoke, God is He who made. If in the word (in Him who spoke) there is truth, I ask why it should be denied in the deed (in Him who made). Unless perhaps He is true in speaking, and He is not true in making. We have, then, in the Son of God the truth of nature belonging to God. He is God, He is creator, He is the Son of God, He is able to do all things. It is a small thing that the work—of which it is permitted to view the first three as it were preludes, which could easily be detached even from the rest—can do what it wills, since will is always of power; nay more, it can even do what is said to it. For it belongs to perfect power, that the nature of the one acting can do that which the word of the one speaking can signify.

And thus, since whatever can be said can also itself be effected, that operation which is made equal to the words holds the nature of truth. Therefore the Son of God is not a false God, nor an adoptive God, nor a God so-called, but the true God. And it is not necessary to demonstrate anything from the opposite side by which He might not be true God: for it suffices for me that in Him is the name and the nature of God. For He is God, through whom all things were made. This the creation of the world has spoken to me concerning Him. God is made equal to God in name, truth is made equal to truth in work. As there is signification of the potent God in the word, so there is understanding of the potent God in the deed.

And after these things I ask, by what authority, in the confession of the Father and the Son, the truth of nature is denied, which both the power of the name and the name of the power have fulfilled.

The objections brought from the Gospels will be dissolved elsewhere. Why the Truth is not understood, unless the objections are proven to be false.—The reader ought to remember that I am not forgetful or diffident of those questions which are commonly raised, in now being silent about them. For that saying which is customarily brought forward: The Father is greater than I, and other similar things of this kind, are neither unknown nor unrecognized, so that through these very things the nature of the true God in the Son might not be taught: but it is fitting that the order of our response be that which was the order of the adverse proposition; so that, tracing here in the footsteps of impious teaching the steps of pious preaching, it might erase those very first signs of the deceitful doctrine escaping onto this profane and irreligious path.

Therefore, the evangelical and apostolic proclamations being postponed and reserved for the last, let all our struggle for now against the impious be from the Law and the Prophets, their feigned and deceitful perversity being refuted meanwhile by these very sayings by which they attempt to deceive. For truth cannot otherwise be understood, than if those things which have been set against the truth are exposed as false; and indeed this is a becoming acquittal of those who lie, if the lies themselves work to the profit of truth. And indeed it is a common judgment of human opinion, that falsehoods are by no means joined with truths, nor are these kinds of things held together by mutual assent: because, through the difference of kind, with nature opposing, things at variance never come together, nor do diverse things agree, nor are things alien to one another held in common.

The Father, saying "Let us make," signifies one equal to Himself, to whom He says it.—Since these things are so, I ask, between true and false God, how this saying is to be understood: Let us make man to our image and likeness. Words announce sense, sense is the movement of reason, the movement of reason is roused by truth. Let us follow, then, the sense from the words, let us understand the reason from the sense, and let us grasp the truth from the reason. For to whom it is said, Let us make man to our image and likeness, I ask in what respect He is not true according to Him to whom He speaks: for without doubt this saying comes from the affection and sense of the one speaking. Therefore He who says "Let us make" signifies one who, in making, does not dissent from Him, is not alien, is not weak, but who is powerful for that which the word concerns, to make.

This, then, without doubt, is to be understood as the sense of the one speaking, because He spoke it.

By saying "to our image" he indicates one nature for himself with the Son.—But that the fuller truth of nature and of operation might be taught, he who was uttering his meaning through words subjected also the reasoning of that meaning to nature, in agreement with truth, saying, to our image and likeness. Where now is this false god, to whom the true God says, to our image and likeness? "Our" admits no union, admits no diversity, admits no distinction. For man is made, according to the truth of the utterance, to a common image. But commonality does not suit the false and the true together. God, who speaks, speaks to God: man is fashioned to the image of the Father and the Son. The name does not differ, the nature does not differ. For there is one form of the image to which man was created. And amid these things, where does truth perish, since there remains, between the two, both the communion of the deed and the truth of the common image?

It is not yet time for me to resolve this question fully: for later we shall show to what image of God the Father and God the Son man was fashioned. For now, meanwhile, we hold to this, whether he is not the true God to whom the true God said: Let us make man to our image and likeness. Distinguish, if you can, in this communion of image, the true from the false: and in heretical madness sever these things which cannot be sundered. For they are one, of whose image and likeness man was made one exemplar.

Man, to be made to the image of the Father and the Son, is made to the image of God.—But let us follow the order of the reading, so that the truth, always coherent with itself, may not be altered by the stumbling-block of falsehood. And God made man; to the image of God he made him. The image is common: God made man to the image of God. He who denies that the true God is the Son of God, I ask, to the image of which God does he understand man to have been made by God? Let him remember, however, always that all things are through the Son; lest by some heretical understanding he assign the operation to God the Father alone. If therefore man is fashioned to the image of God the Father through God the Son, he is fashioned also to the image of the Son: because no one denies that it was said to the Son, to our image and likeness.

The divine word therefore held the reasoning of truth in its sayings, which the work fulfilled in its deeds: so that God might fashion man to the image of God, that he might signify God, and not take away truth from God: since in the communion of the image there was the true God, who in the accomplishing of the work was understood to be God the Son.

The heretics are rebuked from these sayings.—O desperate madness of a ruined mind! O foolish rashness of blind impiety! You hear God and God, you hear "our image": why do you insert true and not-true? Why do you introduce natural and false? Why under the name of religion do you overturn religion? Why, through one God, and one true God, do you attempt to make it so that the true God is not one? I do not yet suffocate your insane spirits with the sayings of the Gospels and the Apostles, in which the Father and the Son are, not in person, but in nature, each one and true God: meanwhile the law alone destroys you. Does it say true God and not true God? Has it used any other term for either save that of nature? It said God and God, when it said one God. But why do I say it said so much only? It proclaimed true God and true God through the truth of the image.

It used first, in naming them, the name of nature: it goes on to use, in general, the truth of nature. For since he who is made is created according to the image of both, it cannot but follow truly that each is true God.

The Son, as a person other than the Father, is called the angel of God; but as being the same in nature, God. Why he was called angel.—But let us proceed even now along that road of our preaching by which the holy law has taught us concerning God. The angel of God speaks to Hagar, and the same angel is God. But perhaps he is not for that reason true God, because he is the angel of God. For this name seems to belong to a lower nature: and where there is a designation of another kind, there it is thought that the truth of that same kind is not present. And indeed the preceding book has already shown the emptiness of this question. For in "angel" there is rather an understanding of office than of nature. And the prophet is my witness, saying: Who makes his angels spirits, and his ministers a burning fire. That burning fire, then, are his ministers: and the coming spirit, are his angels.

For through these terms—of messengers, who are called angels, and of ministers—either nature or power is shown. This spirit thus becomes an angel, or this burning fire a minister of God: and this nature of theirs takes on the office of messenger and minister. The law therefore, or rather God through the law, wishing to intimate the person of the paternal name, spoke of God the Son as the angel of God, that is, the messenger of God. For it attests the meaning of office in "messenger": but it confirmed the truth of nature in the name, when it said God. But this now is an order of dispensation, not of kind. For we preach nothing other than Father and Son: and thus we equate the nature of the names, so that the nativity of the only-begotten God of the unbegotten God may hold the truth of God.

But the signification of the one sent and the one sending here teaches nothing other than Father and Son, yet it does not take away the truth of the nature, nor does it destroy in the Son the property of native divinity: because no one can doubt that the nature of the author is co-natal in the nativity of the Son, so that from one it stands in one, in such a way that it is not distinguished from the one through the one: and thus they are one through which the one is from the one.

Hilary exceeds his aim through the ardor of faith.—O impatient warmth of faith, and impatient silence of desired speech! For already in the preceding book we exceeded the measure of the intended preaching, when, refuting the heretics for impiously saying one God, and showing that God and God were proclaimed by Moses, we descended, in pious though inconsiderate haste, to the true and religious confession of the one God: and now too, lingering over the business of another question, we have not kept the order established; and while speaking of the true God the Son of God, we have burst forth, in the ardor of a fervent spirit, all the way to the confession of the true God in the Father and the Son. But let the truth of our faith be reserved for its own treatise: which, though begun for the reader's assurance, must yet be treated and completed more fully for the confounding of the gainsayer.

13. The angel of Hagar shows himself to be God by words and deeds.—The name of office, then, brings no change of nature: for he who is the angel of God, is God. He would surely not be true God, if he had not both spoken and done the things of God. For he increases Ishmael into a great nation, and promises multiplications of nations to his name: and I ask, is this the work of an angel? But if it is the power of God; why do you take away truth from the nature, from which you do not take away the power of truth? The power of nature, therefore, holds fast the faith of truth: and among the saving mysteries of his dispensation to the world, he who is true God does not know how ever not to be true God.

He who is God, is true God.—And first I ask, what meaning does "God" have, and "not true God"? For I do not grasp the sense of this word, if it be said to me, It is fire, but it is not true fire; or it is water, but it is not true water: and I ask, in what does the truth of the same kind differ from the truth of that same kind? For that which is fire cannot fail to be true; nor, while the nature remains, can it lack being true. Take away from water that it is water: and by this you may destroy that it is true. But if the water remains, it is also necessary that in this it persist, that it be true. Thus nature at last can perish, if it does not exist: but the true cannot fail to be true, if it remains.

Either the Son of God is true God, so that he is God; or, if he is not true God, he cannot even be that which God is: because if there be no nature, the name of nature does not belong to it; but if the name of nature is in it, the truth of the nature cannot be absent from it.

He whom Hagar called God in the form of an angel, Abraham adored in the form of a man. By adoring he was justified. He adored the true God.—But perhaps, in this case, when the angel of God is called God, the name of adoption is being granted, and it is a designation of God rather than the truth. If it has taught but little that the nature of God was in him when he was called the angel of God, understand still, in the name of a nature lower than an angel, whether he has shown from himself the truth of God. For a man spoke to Abraham; but Abraham adored God. But O pestilent heretic, Abraham confessed as God him whom you deny to be God. What promised blessings to Abraham do you impiously await? He is not to you, as he is, the father of the nations; nor do you come forth reborn into the family of his seed through the blessings of his faith.

You are not raised up as sons of Abraham from stones; but you exist as a brood of vipers, the enemy of your own confession. You are not Israel of God, you are not the succession of Abraham, you are not justified from faith: for you have not believed God. For by that faith he was justified, and Abraham was established as father of the nations, by which he adored the God in whom he had believed. For that blessed and faithful patriarch adored God; and understand how true a God, to whom, as he himself says of himself, no word is impossible. Or is it not to God alone that every word is possible? Or to whomever every word is possible, I ask, what is lacking to him of being true God?

He acknowledged the just judge. God alone is the just judge, even by the heretics' own admission.—And I ask, who is this God, the overthrower of Sodom and Gomorrah? For the Lord rained from the Lord: is it not the true Lord from the true Lord? Or what else than Lord from Lord? Or what, besides the signification of person, will you fit into Lord and Lord? And remember that him whom you know as the sole true God, you have professed to be also this same sole just judge. And understand that the Lord, who rains from the Lord, not slaying the just with the impious, judging all the earth, is both Lord and just judge, and rains from the Lord. And amid these things, whom you would call the sole just judge, I ask. For the Lord rains from the Lord: and you will not deny that he who rains from the Lord is this just judge.

For Abraham said, father of nations—not, surely, of unbelievers: By no means will you do this thing, to slay the just with the impious, and the just shall be as the impious. By no means, you who judge the earth, will you do this judgment. This God, then, the just judge, must necessarily also be true God. I hold you, impious one, by your own lie. I do not yet bring forward God the judge from the Gospels: the law has spoken to me of God the judge. Take from the Son that he is judge, so as to take away that he is true God. For him alone whom you have professed to be true God, you have professed also to be the sole just judge: and him whom you teach to be the just judge, you cannot, by your own reckoning, deny to be true God.

He who is judge, is Lord, is powerful for every word, is the surety of eternal blessings, is the judge of the pious and the impious, is the God of Abraham, was adored by him: fabricate, at least, by this impious and foolish shamelessness of your speech, some reason why he is not true.

The Son appeared to the Fathers in this way, that he was born without harm to his nature.—The sacraments of heavenly mercy do not destroy the truth of nature; nor do the visible forms, which are adapted to the vision of faith, mock the faith of the saints. For the sacraments of the law prefigure the mystery of the evangelical dispensation, so that the patriarch may see and believe what the Apostle contemplates and preaches. For since the law is the shadow of things to come, the appearance of the shadow expressed the truth of the body. And God is both seen and believed and adored in man, who according to the fullness of time was to be begotten in man. For the visible appearance of the prefigured truth is assumed for sight. But then (under the law) God was seen only in man, he was not born; soon, however, that which had been seen was also born. To the truth of being born, indeed, the familiarity of the form assumed for contemplation contributes.

There man is assumed to be seen through God according to the weakness of our nature; here, on account of the weakness of our nature, that is born which had been seen. The shadow receives a body (in evangelical times), and the appearance receives truth, and the vision receives nature. Yet God is not changed from himself, when he is either seen or born in man for us, by a mutual propriety between birth and sight: so that what was born was seen, and what was seen was to be born. And since there is not yet for us a place for the comparison of the Gospel and the prophetic writing, let us for the present follow the order established from the law. For being about to prove afterward from the Gospels that the true Son of God was born in man, we now teach for the present from the law that the Son of God, true God, was seen by the patriarchs in the form of man.

For when a man was seen by Abraham, and God was adored, and a judge was proclaimed; and when the Lord rained from the Lord, it is not doubted that when the Lord rains from the Lord, the law speaks to signify the Father and the Son: nor again is it to be thought that the patriarch was ignorant that he was adoring the true God, whom, understanding him to be God, he adored.

The heretics do not grasp the faith of the incarnate Word. Why. The Gospels are from the Law.—The impiety of unbelief has no small difficulty in understanding the true faith. For the instruction of religious doctrine does not reach a sense made proud by irreligion. From this it comes about that the irreligious mind does not grasp what God did, in being born in man, for the sacrament of human salvation; since it does not understand the work of its own salvation to be the power of God.

And in contemplating the bringing forth of the birth, the weakness of infancy, the growth of childhood, the age of youth, the sufferings of the body, and the cross of the sufferings, and the death of the cross, through these things they do not perceive the true God; whereas he engendered these things in himself according to nature, which were not previously his in the truth of nature; in such a way that he did not lose the truth of his nature, nor did God, having been made man, cease to be God, when he who is God had begun to be man: not understanding that it is only from the power of the true God that what was not, should be; and yet that what was, should not cease to be: since the assumption would not be for the weakness of nature, unless from the power of a mighty nature, which, while remaining in what it was, could nevertheless be what it was not.

O heretical imprudence, and foolish wisdom of the world, not understanding that the reproach of Christ is the power of God, and not perceiving that the foolishness of faith is the wisdom of God! Is Christ therefore not God to you, because he who was, is born; because he who is unchangeable grows in age; because he who is impassible suffers; because he who is living dies; because he who is dead lives; because in him all things are contrary to nature? I ask, what else is this than that, being God, he is omnipotent? I do not yet touch upon the sacred and venerable Gospels with you, so that from them Christ Jesus in these sufferings should be God. For you are from the law; and it is fitting that it should teach that God, through the weakness he assumed, does not lose being God, who is God. For the sacrament of your faith has been attested by the power of its own mysteries.

Jacob in the wrestling saw God, not with the eyes of the body but of faith.—Be present, be present now with me in the spirit of your faith against the venomous hissings of unbelief, holy and blessed patriarch Jacob, and, prevailing in the struggle of a man, beg to be blessed by him, being the stronger. What is this, that you pray to the weak one, that you expect from the infirm one? This one whose blessings you ask, you overpower with your embrace, being the stronger. From the acts of your body, the work of your mind differs: for you perceive something other than what you do. In the act of your wrestling you hold a weak man: but this man is to you the true God, not by designation, but by nature. For you are not asking to be blessed with adoptive blessings, patriarch, but with true ones. You wrestle with a man: but you see God face to face.

This you do not perceive with the eyes of your body, but with the sight of your faith. According to yourself, he is a weak man: but according to what you saw, your soul was saved by God. In the wrestling you are Jacob; after the faith of the blessing you sought, you are Israel. Man is made subject to you according to the flesh, unto the mystery of the passion in the flesh: you are not ignorant of God in the weakness of the flesh, unto the sacrament of blessing in the Spirit. Nor does the outward appearance hinder that faith should remain; nor does the weakness call you away from asking for the blessing. Nor does being man cause him who is man to be God; nor does he who is God fail to be true God; because he who is God cannot fail to be true God, both in blessing and in transferring and in naming.

The Son is shown to be true God, Jacob having seen him through another. God is understood only through God.—The shadow of the law still holds the order of the evangelical sacrament, and prefigures in its mysteries, as a rival of the truth, the truth of the apostolic doctrine. In the vision of a dream blessed Jacob had seen God: in the dream there is a revelation of a mystery, not a bodily beholding. For both by the ladder the descent and ascent of angels to heaven is shown, and God is shown reclining above the ladder, and the interpretation of the vision prophesied the revelation of the dream. For by the words of the patriarch it is shown that this place of vision is the house of God and the gate of heaven. And after much narration of his deeds it follows: But God said to Jacob, arise and go up to the place of Bethel, and dwell there, and make there a sacrifice to God, who appeared to you when you fled from the face of Esau.

If the evangelical faith has access to God the Father through God the Son, and God cannot be understood except through God, now teach how this God, who demands honor for God reclining upon the ladder to heaven, is not true. Or what diversity of nature is there in the two, when there is one and the same name for the same nature? God was seen, God speaks concerning God who was seen. God cannot be understood except through God, just as God does not receive honor from us except through God. For he will not be understood to be one who ought to be honored, unless the other teaches that he ought to be honored; nor will God be known, unless this one is known as God. The dispensation of the sacraments has its own order. We are led to the honor of God through God. Nature keeps its own name: each is nothing other than God.

And since between the Father and the Son the name of the one nature is one, I ask how the Son, who is God, could degenerate from himself, so as not to be true.

For this, secular learning or innocence of life do not suffice.—We must not think about God according to human judgments. For our nature is not such that it can raise itself by its own powers to heavenly knowledge. We must learn from God what is to be understood about God: because he is known only by his own authorship. Though the elaborate training of secular learning be present, though innocence of life be present: these indeed will profit toward the self-congratulation of conscience, yet they will not attain the knowledge of God. Moses, adopted as the son of the queen, and instructed in all the learning of the Egyptians, though indeed, out of a natural affection for the Hebrew, he had avenged the injury of the Egyptian by death (Exodus 2:12), yet he did not know the God of the paternal blessings.

For, leaving Egypt out of fear of a betrayed heart, when he was a shepherd of sheep in the land of Midian, seeing fire in the bush without the bush being consumed, he heard God, and asked his name, and knew his nature (Exodus 3:1 ff. For these things could not have been known concerning God except through God. Therefore one must not speak of God otherwise than as he himself has spoken of himself for our understanding.

That the Son spoke from the bush, and that he is true God.—It is the Angel of God who appeared in the fire from the bush: and from the bush, in the fire, God speaks. You have a dispensation in the angel, because in the angel there is an office, not a nature: you have God in the name of nature, because the Angel of God is God. But perhaps he is not true. Is he not the true God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? For the angel of these, speaking from the bush, is God forever. And lest you should seize an occasion for an adoptive name, that God, who is, speaks to Moses. For thus it is written: And the Lord said to Moses: I am who am. And he said: Thus you shall say to the children of Israel: He who is, has sent me to you (Exodus 3:14).

The discourse begun by the Angel of God is so that the mystery of human salvation in the Son may be understood: the same is the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; so that this may be the name of his own nature: then God, who is, sends to Israel; so that it might truly be understood that he is what God is.

Nor is he who gave the law false.—What do you, ineffectual foolishness of heretical impiety, lie about these things with a mad spirit, and against the knowledge of such great patriarchs, sow, as a nocturnal sower, the tares to be burned amid the wheat of a noble seed? But if you believed Moses, you would also believe God the Son of God: unless perhaps you will deny that Moses spoke of him. When you wish to deny this, you will hear in the words of God: For if you believed Moses, you would perhaps believe me also; for he wrote of me. He will plainly convict you, he will convict you throughout the whole volume of the law, which he received arranged by the hand of the Mediator through angels. And why—is not he who gave the law true God, since indeed the one who gave it was the Mediator? Or did not Moses lead the people out to meet God at the mountain (Exodus 19:17)? Or did not God descend upon the mountain?

Or is this perhaps false, and rather an adoptive name than the name of his own nature? Understand the resounding trumpets, and the flames of the lamps, and the smoke boiling up from the mountain like a furnace, and the trembling, conscious of human weakness, at the coming of God, and the death confessed under the voice of God by the people, when Moses was besought to speak (Exodus 20:19). Is he not, to you, heretic, the true God, at whose voice alone Israel feared to die, and whose voice human weakness could not bear? Is he for this reason not God to you, because, that you might hear and see, he spoke through the weakness of man?

Moses went up to the mountain; he attained the knowledge of divine and heavenly mysteries over a time of forty days and nights, he arranged all things according to the pattern shown to him on the mountain of truth, through the familiarity of God speaking to him he received the glory of an inconceivable brightness, and the intolerable light of the neighboring majesty filled the corruptible appearance of his countenance; he attests God, he speaks of God, he calls the angels of God to adore this one with the joy of the nations, he invokes upon the head of Joseph the pleasing blessings of this one: and after these things, with only the name granted to him, does anyone dare to deny that he is true?

The sum of those things which have been proved thus far in this book.—Now since we consider it to have been demonstrated by this whole discourse of ours, that no interposed reasoning of understanding was such that a true God and a false God should fall into the perception of the human mind, since the law spoke of God and God, and Lord and Lord; nor was diversity signified in the names and natures, lest He could not be understood according to the nature of the name and the name of the nature; since the power of God, the might of God, the reality of God, the name of God were in Him whom the law proclaimed to be God:

which, according to the distribution of the evangelical sacrament, in signification of person, showed both God obedient to the words of God in creating the world, and God the creator in fashioning man in common with Himself and in the image of God, and the Lord as judge from the Lord in judging the Sodomites, and the Angel of God as God in bestowing blessings and in decreeing the mysteries of the law: so that, unto salutary confession in God the Father and God the Son, God being always shown forth, He might teach the truth of nature by the very name of nature, since the law, signifying both as God, left no ambiguity of the truth.

An answer is made to the heretics who deny that the Son is true God. The Son is truly that which He was born.—It is now time that we should not allow what the law taught piously and religiously to be proclaimed impiously through the theft of heretical folly, which began thus, being about to deny the Son of God: Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one. And because his impiety would be endangered in the name, since the law had spoken of God and God; in order to deny the nature of the name by the authority of the prophetic saying, he added, And they shall bless the true God: so that the law would have spoken of one God through this word, and there would be in the Son of God the name of God rather than the truth, only one true God being understood. And perhaps, O fool, you think that we contradict your words, so that we deny one true God.

We do not at all deny according to you (that is, as you do) in confessing. For this is our faith, this our conscience, this our speech. But we understand one God, and the same God as true. Nor is our confession endangered in the name, which proclaims in the nature of the Son the one and true God. Learn the understanding of your own confession, and know the one and true God, so that you may piously proclaim the one and true God. For you snatch to your impiety the profession of our religion: and you deny what is, while you do not deny what is not. Thus you deceive foolish wisdom, so as to destroy the truth by the appearance of truth. You confess one God, so as to deny the one true God. For your profession is thought pious, when it is rather impious; thought true, when it is false. Thus the one and true God is proclaimed by you, so that He is not.

For you deny that the Son of God is true God, though you do not deny God; yet confessing God not by nature, but by name. If His nativity is a matter of name rather than of truth, you can take away the truth from the name: but if He was truly born God, I ask how what was born cannot truly be? Either deny that He is, that He may not be; or if He is, how shall what is not be, since what is cannot be so as not to be? Concerning His nativity indeed there will presently be discourse. Meanwhile, however, concerning the truth of the nature of God, I will convict the impiety of your lie by prophetic confession; yet in such a way that the one and true God is proclaimed by us, neither let the heresy of Sabellius presume that the Father Himself is the same as the Son professed to Himself, nor let you lie in proclaiming, concerning the Son of God, only one true God as the truth.

The heretics are refuted for craftily quoting an interpolated Scripture.—Impiety plainly has nothing of wisdom in itself: and the fear of God, which is the beginning of wisdom, where it is absent, takes away with it every beginning of prudence. For to weaken the faith in the true God in the Son, the prophetic saying is brought forward, in which it is said, And they shall bless thee, the true God. First, this was the folly of impiety, that the things above were either not understood; or, though understood, were passed over in silence. Then thereafter, by what fraud he equipped himself by the addition of a syllable which does not exist in the books: using in this the falsehood of his own folly, as though such credit were to be given to his own sayings that he did not think the authority itself of the prophetic sayings needed to be examined. For it is not thus written, They shall bless thee, the true God: but They shall bless the true God.

For there is no small weight of ambiguity between "thee, the true God," and "the true God." For the pronoun seems to belong to another person, where "thee" appears: but where there is no syllable of the pronoun, there the name is referred to the author of the saying.

Thence the Son is shown to be true God, whence they were hinting at falsehood. Scripture here, proclaiming the Son to be God, adds "true" contrary to custom, because there were to be those to whom this would be hidden.—And that there may be a complete reckoning for understanding the truth, those very sayings shall be added entire from the prophecy. Therefore thus saith the Lord: Behold, they that serve me shall eat; but ye shall be hungry: behold, they that serve me shall drink; but ye shall be thirsty: behold, they that serve me shall rejoice with gladness; but ye shall cry out for the sorrow of your heart, and shall howl for the vexation of your spirit. For ye shall leave your name for a loathing to my chosen, but the Lord shall slay you. But to them that serve me shall be called a new name, which shall be blessed upon the earth: and they shall bless the true God, and they that swear upon the earth shall swear by the true God.

It is never without cause when the custom of proclamation is departed from: and the reason for the novelty introduces the reason for the seeming falsity. For since such great prophecies concerning God had existed before, and to demonstrate the dignity and nature of God the simple and sole name of God had been mentioned; it must be asked, for what reason now, through Isaiah, the Spirit of prophecy foretells that the true God is to be blessed, and that men shall swear upon the earth by the true God. And first it must be known that this speech announces things of a future time. And I ask whether He was not true God, who then, according to the opinion of the Jews, was both blessed and sworn by. For the Jews, not knowing the sacrament of the mystery of God, and through this being ignorant of the Son of God, worshipped God only, not also the Father. For assuredly, worshipping the Father, they would also worship the Son. These, then, blessed God, and swore by Him.

But the prophet testifies that the true God is to be blessed: pronouncing Him true God for this reason, because through the mystery of the assumed body the truth of God in Him was not to be understood by all. And there was need of a confirmation of the truth, where an assertion of falsehood was about to break forth. And let us review each of the statements of these same sayings.

This prophecy signifies one thing present, and another future. What is present pertains to the carnal Israel; what is future, to the spiritual.—Therefore thus saith the Lord: Behold, they that serve me shall eat; but ye shall be hungry: behold, they that serve me shall drink; but ye shall be thirsty. Recognize under the same saying the signification of both times, that you may grasp the sacrament of the age. For they that serve me shall eat. That is, present religion is rewarded with future rewards; so that the impiety of the present is consummated by the punishment of future thirst and hunger. Then he added, Behold, they that serve me shall rejoice with gladness; but ye shall cry out for the sorrow of your heart, and shall howl for the vexation of your spirit.

According to the sense above, here too is a demonstration of future and present time: so that those who serve are to rejoice with gladness; but those who do not serve are to remain in crying and howling through sorrow of heart and vexation of spirit. Thereafter he subjoined, For ye shall leave your name for a loathing to my chosen, but the Lord shall slay you. The speech is to the carnal Israel with the signification of a future time, to whom it is reproached that he is to leave his name to the chosen of God. I ask, what is this name? Surely Israel, to whom the speech was then addressed. Then I ask, who is Israel today? And indeed the Apostle testifies, They who in spirit, not in the letter, who proceeding in the rule of Christ, are the Israel of God.

The Son is shown by Isaiah to be true God under a threefold title. The Christian name is new.—Then furthermore, since it was said above, Therefore thus saith the Lord; it must be understood why this follows thus, But the Lord shall slay you: then afterward what this saying means, But to them that serve me shall be called a new name, which shall be blessed upon the earth. Is it in any doubt, in what is said, Therefore thus saith the Lord, and in what follows, But the Lord shall slay you, that this was shown, that He who was speaking, and He who was about to slay, was understood to be none other than the Lord; who also afterward was to reward those serving Him with a new name, and was not unknown to have spoken also in the prophets, and to be the future judge of the pious and the impious?

Thus the remaining discourse unfolded the mystery of the evangelical sacrament, lest anything be doubted in the Lord speaking and the Lord slaying: But to them that serve me shall be called a new name, which shall be blessed upon the earth. This whole saying is of future time. And what is this new name of religion, which shall be blessed upon the earth? If from ages past there was ever before a blessedness of the Christian name, then it is now a new name. But if this sanctified new name of our piety toward God is new, this newness of profession is assuredly, upon the earth, the reward of heavenly blessings.

What is to be understood of Christ, and "they shall bless the true God."—Now indeed the following discourse confirms the whole consciousness of our faith, saying, And they shall bless the true God, and they that swear upon the earth shall swear by the true God. Surely these shall bless the true God, in whose service of God the new name consists: then further, He who shall be the God to be sworn by is the true God. Is it doubted who is sworn by, who is blessed, through whom there is a new name and a blessed name to those serving Him? The absolute faith of ecclesiastical discourse stands with me against your impious proclamation, O heretic: of the new name through you, O Christ, and through the profession of service the appellation blessed by you upon the earth, swearing you to be the true God. For every mouth of believers speaks you, O Christ, as God.

Every faith of believers swears you as God, confessing you to be the true God, proclaiming you to be the true God, being conscious that you are the true God.

The same is illustrated from the prophet's earlier words.—Although then this whole prophetic discourse has left no difficulty as to its being understood to signify God, both him to whom service is rendered under a new name, and him by whom the newness of that same name has been blessed on the earth, and him who is called the true God when blessed, and him who is called the true God when sworn by—all of which the pious faith of the Church, according to the fulness of the times, professes in religion concerning the Lord Christ (and thus the prophetic word so fitted itself, that it did not renew the signification of another person by the addition of a pronoun.

For if it had added, "thee, the true God," the discourse might have been referred to another as the speaker: but when it says, "the true God," it left the understanding of the signification with the speaker himself): and although it be not doubtful whom the present discourse signifies; yet the words connected above show whose profession this is to be understood as being. For it says: I was manifest to them that asked not for me, and I was found of them that sought me not. I said, Behold, I am to a nation that called not upon my name. I have spread out my hands all the day to a people that doth not believe, and contradicteth. Is the impious falsehood of stolen preaching in the dark, and shall the true God who speaks these things be unknown? I ask, who was manifest to them that asked not, and who was found of them that sought not? And what nation is there that had not before called upon his name?

And who spread out his hands all the day to a people that doth not believe and contradicteth? Compare with these that sacred and divine Canticle of Deuteronomy, in which God, provoked over them that are no gods, provokes the unbelievers to jealousy over a foolish nation that is no nation; and understand who becomes manifest to the ignorant, and who is appropriated by aliens as their own, and who, nailing to the cross the handwriting of the former decree, spread out his hands before a people that doth not believe and contradicteth. For here the Spirit of the prophet said, by discourse continuing and connected in its own order, But to them that serve me shall be called a new name, which shall be blessed upon the earth, and they shall bless the true God: and they that swear upon the earth shall swear by the true God.

Paul interprets the words of Isaiah as spoken of the Son.—If heretical folly and impiety shall falsely pretend that these things, in order to deceive the ignorant and the more simple, were spoken from the person of God the Father, lest the understanding of this saying should be taken up in reference to God the Son: let it hear the charge of its own lie from the Apostle and teacher of the Gentiles; who preaches all these things as pertaining to the mystery of the Lord's passion and to the times of the evangelic faith, at the very point where he reproaches the unbelief of Israel, which did not understand the coming of the Lord in the flesh. For he speaks thus: For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call upon him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they be sent?

As it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, of them that bring glad tidings of good things: But all do not obey the gospel. For Isaiah saith, Lord, who hath believed our report? So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word. But I say, Have they not heard? Yea, verily, their sound went into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world. But I say, Did not Israel know? First Moses saith, I will provoke you to jealousy by them that are no nation, and by a foolish nation I will anger you. But Isaiah is bold, and saith, I was found of them that sought me not; I was made manifest to them that asked not after me. But to Israel he saith, All day long have I stretched forth my hands unto a people that believeth not (after).

Who, having passed beyond the circles of heaven, whether incorporeal or corporeal is uncertain, hast proved thyself a more faithful interpreter of the prophetic sayings than Paul? Who, hearing the unutterable mysteries of the heavenly sacraments and keeping silence, hast preached these things with greater confidence, as revealed to thee by God of knowledge? Who, to be reserved for the fulness of the Lord's passion upon the cross, having before been caught up into paradise and having escaped, hast taught the vessel of election better out of the divine Scriptures, he not knowing these things to have been said and done by the true God, and to have been preached by his true and elect apostle for the understanding of the true God?

The Apostle interprets Isaiah out of Isaiah's own words. Isaiah saw God, and saw none other but the Son.—Unless perhaps the Apostle, not using the prophetic sayings out of the spirit of prophecy, is a rash interpreter of another's discourse. Indeed the Apostle speaks all things by the revelation of Christ: but he knows the sayings of Isaiah from the sayings of Isaiah himself. For at the beginning of that discourse of his, in which the true God is to be blessed and sworn by those who serve him, this word of the prophet is read: From the age we have not heard, neither have our eyes seen a God besides thee, and thy works which thou wilt do to them that wait for thy mercy. Isaiah says that he has seen no God besides this one. For he saw the glory of God, whose mystery of incarnation from a virgin he had foretold.

And if thou, heretic, art ignorant that in that glory he saw the only-begotten God; hear John the evangelist saying: These things said Isaiah, when he saw his glory, and spake of him. Hence from apostolic, hence from evangelic, hence from prophetic sayings, impious heretic, thou art convicted. For Isaiah saw God; and although it is written: No man hath seen God at any time, but the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him; yet the prophet saw God, and beheld his glory even to the envy shown against the prophetic dignity. For on this account he was brought by the Jews to the judgment of death. 54. It is shown more closely that the Son was preached by Isaiah as the true God. The deceit of heretics who deny this.—God then, whom no man hath seen, the only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father hath declared.

Either dissolve the declaration of the only-begotten, or believe that he was seen who appeared to them that did not understand him, and was made manifest to nations that did not call upon him, and spread out his hands before a people that contradicted; yet in such wise that both to them that serve him a new name is called, and on earth the true God is blessed and sworn by. Prophecy speaks, the Gospel bears witness, the Apostle interprets, the Church confesses, that he who was seen is the true God; though no man confesses that God the Father was seen: and the madness of heretical fury has broken out to such a point, that while it pretends to confess, it denies. For it denies by a new and impious counsel of confession; and by a crafty art, while it feigns faith, it eludes it.

For when one God, the same true and only just, only wise, only unchangeable, only immortal, only powerful, is confessed, and the Son is subjected in diversity of substance, not born of God into God, but received by creation into sonship, having not the name of nature but allotted the appellation of adoption; it is necessary that the Son should lack all those things which are predicated as the privilege of the Father's solitary majesty.—Heretical perversity knows not how to know and confess the one true God; and outside the sense of its impiety lies both the faith and the understanding of this confession. First the Father and the Son must be confessed, that the one true God may be understood: and when the mysteries of human salvation are known, which in us through the power of regeneration in the Father and the Son are consummated unto life, then the mysteries of the law and the prophets are to be pursued. Impiety, ignorant of the evangelic and apostolic preaching, does not grasp the one true God.

Though we shall furnish the understanding of this, up to the most complete profession of true piety, out of their own teachings; so that the only-begotten, subsisting from the Father, undivided and inseparable, not by person but by nature, may be understood; and that by this he is one God, because by nature of God he is God: yet the faith of this perfect unity is to be built up out of the prophetic sayings, and hence the foundations of the evangelic house are to be laid; so that through the same nature of the one divinity, one God may be understood by this, that the only-begotten God is not referred to another God. For we have kept, throughout this whole book of our discourse, this order, that in those things wherein in the preceding book we had taught that the Son is God, in these same things we might now show faith to be built, not only from prophetic, evangelic, and apostolic testimonies, but also from the confession of the Church. That he is the true God.

And, as I hope, the resolution of all these sayings has been such, that he should be understood as the true God, who was not denied to be God. But all the remaining discourse will now serve to this end, that he who is understood to be the true God may not be reckoned as another God; and that what does not tend to another may be understood as tending to one: yet that oneness does not destroy a subsisting nature in the Son, but preserves in God and God the nature of the one God.

And lest perchance heretical impiety should refer the force of this saying to the unbegotten Father God; both the very reason of the saying, and the Apostle as its author, meet us, who, from the person of the only-begotten God, as we have shown above, is the interpreter of the understanding of this whole discourse; and he has shown that what was said, Rejoice, ye Gentiles, with his people, is proper to him, adding to confirm the saying: And there shall be a root of Jesse, and he that shall rise to rule the Gentiles, in him shall the Gentiles hope.

Since then it has been shown through Moses that he who had said, There is no God beside me, is the same of whom it is said, Rejoice, ye Gentiles, together with him; and the Apostle understands this very thing of our Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten God, in whom, rising according to the flesh from the root of Jesse, the Gentiles hope in the king; the very reasoning of the saying is now to be treated, so that, since it is not doubted that it was said, it may be understood in what sense it was said…extension or derivation from God is God, but subsists by the power of nature into the same nature by birth. The following book, interpreter of the evangelic and apostolic sayings, will speak of these matters more plainly: but meanwhile, from the law and the prophets, this must be taught, which we both speak and believe. The birth of God, then, cannot but hold that nature from which it proceeded.

For nothing else subsists as God, which does not subsist otherwise than from God. Yet it holds the same nature in such wise, not that he who begot is himself born (for how shall he be himself, since he is begotten?), but that he who is begotten subsists in these very things which he who begot is wholly: because that which is begotten is not from elsewhere. And by this it is not referred to another thing, since it subsists as one out of one: nor is that new in itself which lives from the living: nor is that absent from itself which the living begot into the living. And so in the generation of the Son the incorporeal and unchangeable God follows his own nature, begetting an incorporeal and unchangeable God: nor does the perfect nativity of the incorporeal and unchangeable God from the incorporeal and unchangeable God forsake its nature, this being indeed the mystery of the God subsisting from God.

These things the only-begotten God testifies thus through holy Moses: See ye, see, that I am the Lord, and there is no God beside me. For the nature of divinity is not other, so that there should be any God beside himself. For though he himself is God, yet also through the power of nature God is in him. And by this, that he himself is God and God is in him, there is no God beside him: since that which is God does not exist from elsewhere, and God is in him, having in himself both that which he himself is, and that from which he himself subsists.

The undivided divinity of the Father and the Son from Isaiah.—Now the same and one Spirit of prophecy, through the successions and intervals of time not changing the proclamation of religious doctrine, confirms the true and salutary profession of our faith in many places. For just as the words spoken through Moses in the person of the only-begotten God were confirmed with a fuller advance for understanding, so again, in the speech of God the Father, in the person of exalted men, the same Spirit of prophecy speaks through Isaiah: Because in thee is God, and there is no God besides thee. For thou art God, and we knew it not, God, the Savior of Israel. Let the desperate fury of heretical impiety exert itself against this inseparable profession both of nature and of name; and let it, if it can, tear apart these things, joined together in word and reality, with the rabid mouth of its madness.

In God is God, and besides him there is no God; let it separate the one who is within from the one in whom he is; and let it divide the understanding of this mystery by a variety of kinds. For in that he says, In thee is God, he taught the truth of the nature of God the Father in God the Son, since he was understood to be God in whom God was. But in that he added: And besides thee there is no God: he showed that there is no God besides him, because God was in himself, in God.

But this third statement, Thou art God, and we knew it not, testifies to the pious and faithful profession of human understanding, which, once the mysteries of the birth were known, and the name (Emmanuel) had been announced to Joseph by the angel, would confess: For thou art God, and we knew it not, God, the Savior of Israel: understanding the nature of God subsisting in him, since in God is God, and there is no other God besides him who is God: because he himself is God, and in him is God, leaving us no error of any other God. And this indeed Isaiah, testifying to the undivided and inseparable divinity of the Father and the Son, thus prophesied.

The same thing is proved from Jeremiah.—Jeremiah, indeed, with no unequal power of prophecy, thus taught that the only-begotten is God, of a nature not distinct from God the Father, saying: This is our God, and there shall be no other accounted beside him. Who found out all the way of knowledge, and gave it to Jacob his servant, and to Israel his beloved. Afterward he was seen upon earth, and conversed among men. Why do you heretically suppose another God in the Son of God, God? Learn to understand and confess the one true God. No other God is accounted unto Christ so that he might be God. He is God by nature, by birth, from God. For that he is God, he is from God, not that he is also another God. For no other is accounted unto him; because there is in him no other truth than that which is God's. Why do you compose true and not-true, degenerate and noble, diverse and diverse, under the false religion of one God?

The Father is God, the Son is also God. In God is God; besides him there is no God, no other is accounted unto him so that he might be God. If in these things you understand one God rather than a solitary God, you profess the religion of the Church, which confesses the Father in the Son. But if you set forth one God in the sense of solitary, ignorant of the heavenly mystery, you are outside the knowledge of God, not confessing that God is in God.

The Arian heresy, creeping widely, can scarcely be driven out.—I am not unaware that it is in a most difficult and harsh time that I have undertaken to write these things against the insane heresy of the impious, affirming that the Son of God is a creature; since already, through almost all the provinces of the Roman empire, many churches have been infected with the disease of this pestilential preaching, and, as it were, imbued through long habit of teaching and a falsely assumed name of true religion with a wrongly usurped persuasion of this pious faith—not being ignorant how difficult it is to advance toward correction the will which the authority of already public opinion holds fast in the pursuit of its error, through the assent of very many.

For error is grave and dangerous when found in many; and the fall of many, even if a man understands it himself, nevertheless assumes to itself an authority through shame of rising up, having this from mere numbers as a matter of impudence, that it wishes what is erroneous to be reckoned prudence; and asserts that, because it errs along with many, this constitutes the understanding of truth, since error is thought to be less when found in many.

2. What moves Hilary to refute it.—And indeed, for my part, apart from the necessity of my zeal and office, by which as a bishop of the Church I owe this ministry of evangelical preaching, yet my care for writing was the more inclined, the more many were held fast in the peril of unfaithful understanding; pursuing a richer joy from the salvation of many, if, the mysteries of a perfect faith in God being known, they should forsake the impious institutions of human folly, and, the heretics repudiated, restore themselves to God, and, from the food of death, by which birds are wont to be lured into a snare, should rise up into the flight of free security; and should follow Christ as leader, the prophets as heralds, the Apostles as forerunners, the faith made complete, and salvation perfected in the confession of the Father and the Son; and, remembering it said by the mouth of the Lord:

He who does not honor the Son, does not honor the Father who sent him, should refer themselves to honoring the Father through the honor of the Son.

The plague of the Arian heresy.—For there has emerged a pestilent and deadly plague upon the peoples close at hand, which, having raged with immense contagion, has brought about the ruin of pitiable death. For not so much either the sudden devastation of cities settling (or: collapsing) into chaos along with their peoples, or the frequent deaths of wars and funerals, or the populous contagions of incurable sickness, have raged so fiercely as this deadly heresy has raged unto the destruction of the human race. For to God, for whom all things live even among the dead, only this perishes which perishes to itself. For he himself, who is to judge concerning all things, and, out of the mercy of his majesty, to moderate the merited penalty for one erring in ignorance, will certainly not so much judge those who deny him, but will deny them.

How subtly it pours forth its venom.—For it denies, the raging heresy denies, the sacrament of the true faith, using the principles of religion for the doctrine of its impiety, since it began the exposition of its unbelief, as is contained in the preceding books, thus: "We know one God alone unbegotten, alone everlasting, alone without beginning, alone true, alone having immortality, alone the best, alone powerful." For this serves the purpose it has usurped, this pious-seeming beginning of confession, where it says: "One God, and alone unbegotten, and alone without beginning:" so that, through these things which are religiously displayed in words, the rest might be impiously insinuated.

For after many other things, which it had also put forth concerning the Son under the same pretense of professed religion, it added: "A perfect creature of God, but not as one of the creatures; a work made, but not as the other works made." And after many other things, by which, with confessions of truth interposed, the intent of heretical impiety was overshadowed, so as to defend, by the subtlety of a cunning interpretation, that he subsists out of things not existing, it says: "And created and founded before the ages, he did not exist before he was born." Finally, as though all things had now been most strongly fortified for the defense of impiety, lest he be understood to be either Son or God, it added: "For if what is from him, and what is from the womb, and what 'I went forth and came from the Father,' is understood as it were as a part of the one substance of him, and as a kind of extension put forth; the Father will be composite, and divisible, and convertible, and a body according to them, and, as far as lies in them, a God sustaining the consequences of a body without a body." And because it will now be our task to deal from the beginning with an evangelical discourse against this exposition of a most impious doctrine, we have thought it fitting to insert here also, in this sixth book, the whole edition of this heresy which was written down, though already in the first book; so that a fresh reading, and a comparison of the response subjoined to each point, may, through the evangelical and apostolic teachings, elicit the sense of truth, even against the will and in spite of the contradiction of its adherents.

They say, then.

The letter of Arius and his followers to Alexander.—"We know one God, alone unbegotten, alone everlasting, alone without beginning, alone having immortality, alone the best, alone powerful, the creator, orderer, and disposer of all things, unchangeable, immutable, just and good, of the law and the prophets and the new Testament. This God begot an only-begotten Son before all ages, through whom he made both the age and all things.

Born, moreover, not putatively, but truly submitting to his will, unchangeable and unconvertible, a perfect creature of God, but not as one of the creatures; a work made, but not as the other works made; nor, as Valentinus contrived, an emanation of the Father as begotten; nor, as Manichaeus set forth, a part of one substance of the Father as begotten; nor, as Sabellius, who divides the union, calling him the Son whom he also called the Father; but not, as Hieracas, a lamp from a lamp, or a torch divided into two parts; nor one who existed before, and afterward was born or over-created into a Son, as you yourself, most blessed Pope, in the midst of the church and in council have often refused to allow those who introduce such things: but, as we have said, created by the will of God before times and ages, and receiving life and being from the Father, and glories, the Father co-subsisting with him.

For the Father, in giving him the inheritance of all things, did not defraud himself of those things which are held as not made by him; for he is the fountain of all things. 6. "Wherefore there are three substances, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. And indeed God is the cause of all things, altogether without beginning, solitary. But the Son, brought forth by the Father without time, and created and founded before the ages, did not exist before he was born: but, born without time before all things, he alone subsisted from the Father alone. For he is neither eternal nor coeternal, nor unmade together with the Father, nor does he have being together with the Father, as some say, or certain persons, introducing two unbegun principles: but as the union and beginning of all things, so also God is before all things. For which reason he is also before the Son, as we have learned from you also preaching in the midst of the church.

According therefore as he has being from God, and glories, and life, and all things have been handed over to him; according to this, his principle is God. And God is his ruling principle, inasmuch as he is his God, since he is before him. For if what is from him, and what is from the womb, and what 'I went forth and came from the Father' is understood as it were a part of the one substance of him, and as a kind of extension put forth; the Father will be composite, and divisible, and convertible, and a body according to them, and, as far as lies in them, a God sustaining the consequences of a body without a body.

The venom lurking in this letter.—Who does not perceive in these things the slippery twists of a serpentine path, or fail to understand the viperous knots in its winding coils, by which the power of the principal poisonous mouth is enclosed within the gathered circle of its bent body? But once all things are extended and unfolded, the whole venom of the hidden head will lie open. For first the names of truth are heaped upon us, so that the venom of falsehood may enter in. The good is in the mouth, so that evil may steal in from the heart. And amid all this I never hear it said by these men that the Son of God is God: nowhere do I find the Son proclaimed to be such that he is a Son. The name of Son is heaped up, so that the nature may be passed over in silence; the nature is taken away, so that the name may be alien to him.

Other heresies are put forward as a screen, so that heresy may lie about itself (Athanasius notes the same thing, Orat. 1, p. 313). One only God and alone true is heaped up, lest it be left to the Son that what is true and proper to God—namely, being God—should be his.

What Hilary now proposes to treat.—Although therefore in the previous books (namely the fourth and fifth) we have taught, from the preachings of the law and the prophets, concerning God and God, and true God and true God, and that in the true God the Father and in the true God the Son there is understood one true God according to unity of nature, not according to union of person; nevertheless the perfect demonstration of this faith must be furnished from the evangelical and apostolic teachings, so that the true Son of God, being God not of a nature alien and diverse from the Father, but of the same divinity, existing through the truth of birth, may be understood. Nor indeed do I think anyone can be so mad as either not to understand God's own professions concerning Himself, or, having understood them, to be unwilling to understand them as He would have them understood, or to think them to be amended by the opinion of human prudence.

But before we begin to speak of the very substance of the saving mysteries, lest the profession of heresy flatter itself in some point, once the names of the heretics have been set forth, the whole veiling of this crafty malice must be shown: so that through that very thing by which the hidden poison covers itself, it may be betrayed and revealed, and the sense of public conscience may enter into the understanding of the flattering venom.

The inventions of Valentinus. The Church is a stranger to these. Under the name of "prolation" the heretics strive to abolish birth.—The heretics, therefore, wishing that the Son of God be not of God, nor born God of God from the nature and in the nature of God, since they had already mentioned above the one only true God, and had not added "and the Father"; so that, the propriety of birth being excluded, they might deny that the Father and the Son were of one truth, said: "Nor as Valentinus devised a prolation, the Begotten of the Father": so that under the appearance of the Valentinian heresy, by disapproving the name "prolation," they might disapprove the birth of God from God. For Valentinus, devising certain ridiculous and foul things, having introduced besides the sovereign God a family of gods and numerous powers of aeons, then proclaimed our Lord Jesus Christ as having been "put forth" by the mystery of a hidden will, to be preached by his teachings.

Him he asserted to have been "put forth." This empty "putting forth," therefore, sought out by the fury of a rash and foolish author, the evangelical and apostolic faith of the Church does not know. For it is ignorant of Valentinus's Bythos, and Silence, and the thirty aeons: but it knows nothing else than one God the Father from whom are all things, and one Lord our Jesus Christ through whom are all things, God born of God.

But because God born of God neither by His birth took away from God the being that God is, nor is He Himself in His birth not God; and that which He is, God, He did not begin to be, but was born of God; and that which is born, according to the perception of human nature, seems to be "put forth," so that the putting forth itself might be thought to be the birth: therefore it was attempted, through the heresy of Valentinus, to exclude the name "prolation," lest the truth of the birth should remain; because the understanding of "prolation," in earthly opinion, would not be much different from the nature of earthly birth.

The slow and difficult perception of human nature toward divine things requires that we be reminded more frequently of what we have once said, lest examples of human comparison be believed to satisfy the mysteries of the divine power; but only that, for the imbuing of a spiritual sense concerning heavenly things, a likeness drawn from the earthly kind may be brought forward, so that through this step of our own nature we may be raised to the understanding of the divine magnificence.

But the birth of God is not to be judged (or: reckoned) according to the manner of human births' "putting forth." For where one is from one, and God is born of God, earthly birth supplies only an understanding by way of signification: but the origin of things born does not satisfy as an example of comparison, since it involves in itself both intercourse, and conception, and time, and bringing forth; whereas God born of God is to be understood as nothing else than "born." And indeed, concerning the truth of the divine birth, according to the evangelical and apostolic faith, we shall treat in its own place; meanwhile, however, the ingenuity of the heretical art had to be shown, which, in order to abolish the truth of the birth, sought to extinguish the name "prolation."

They condemn Mani, so as to remove the ὁμοούσιον. The Church knows not a portion of God in the Son, but the fullness.—The malicious fraudulence of this same art holds also in the rest, saying: "Nor as Mani expounded the Begotten as a part of the one substance of the Father." Above, "prolation" was denied, so that birth might be denied: now too, under the name of Mani, a portion of one substance is to be denied, lest God be believed to be from God. For Mani, of an abrupt fury in disapproving the Law and the Prophets, and a professed champion of the devil as far as in him lay, and an unwitting worshipper of his own sun, proclaimed that which was in the Virgin to be a portion of the one substance, and wished that to be understood as the Son which appeared in the flesh as drawn off by some part from the substance of God.

That therefore the birth of the only-begotten Son, and the name of "one substance," might be taken away, a portion of one substance is pretended in the birth of the Son: so that, because a profane birth is proclaimed, asserted as being from a portion of one substance, first the birth itself might not be, which in Mani was condemned by the profession of a portion; then next the name and faith of one substance might be taken away, because among the heretics it would fit as belonging to a portion; and through this, God would not be from God, because in Him the propriety of the divine nature would not be present. What does impious fury feign, in mad anxieties under the appearance of a counterfeited religion? Mani, according to the preachers of heretical madness, the pious faith of the Church condemns.

For it knows not a portion in the Son: but it knows the whole God from the whole God: it knows one from one; not cut off, but born: it knows that the birth of God is neither a diminishing of the begetter, nor a weakness of the one being born. If you know this of yourself, bring the charge of a rashly usurped knowledge: but if you have learned it from your Lord, permit the one being born the knowledge of His own birth. For these things have thus been made known to Him by the only-begotten God, that the Father and the Son are one, that the fullness of the Godhead is in the Son: by which He both hates a portion of one substance as applied to the Son, and through the truth of the birth venerates in the Son the propriety of true divinity. But, reserving a fuller resolution of each of these answers, let us run through the rest.

For this follows: "Nor as Sabellius, who divides the union, said that the Son Himself was the same as the Father." Sabellius, believing thus, is ignorant of the evangelical and apostolic mysteries. But this is not simply condemned by the heretics in a heretic. For, wishing that there be nothing one between the Father and the Son, they reproach the crime of a union divided by Sabellius: whose division of union did not introduce birth, but divided the same one in the Virgin. But for us there is birth in our confession: and, detesting union, we hold the unity of divinity; namely so that God from God may be one in kind of nature, since that which through the truth of birth has come forth from God into God has subsisted from nowhere else than from God.

But that which abides from nowhere else than from God must needs abide in that truth by which He is God: and by this they are one, since He who is God from God is neither something else Himself, nor is that which He is, God, from anywhere else. Therefore the impiety of "union" is charged upon Sabellius, so that the religion of unity of the Church's faith may be taken away. I shall next pursue also the other artifices of the heretical ingenuity, lest perhaps I be reckoned a suspicious rather than a truly concerned, malevolent interpreter of another's simplicity: intending to show, by the conclusion of the whole profession, to what outcome the preamble of so subtle a discourse leads.

Hieracas wrongly understands the Son as light from light. Let the Church understand who He is.—For this follows: "But not as Hieracas, a lamp from a lamp, or a torch divided into two parts. Nor Him who existed before, afterward born or 'super-created' into a son." Hieracas, not knowing the birth of the Only-Begotten, nor having attained the power of the evangelical mysteries, proclaimed two lights of one lamp, so that the two-part division of lamps might rival the substance of the Father and the Son, as though it were kindled into light from the oil of one vessel: as though there were some exterior substance, like the oil in the lamp, containing the nature of both lights; or else as though the wick were woven through, alike a torch, and shone at both ends, and the material in the middle were the light extending both of itself. This error human folly introduced, while men savor what they savor rather from themselves than from God.

But because it is the profession of the true faith that God is thus born of God as light from light, which without loss to itself furnishes its nature from itself, so as to give what it has, and to have what it has given, and to be born that which it is; since nothing else than what it is, is born; and the birth has received what it was; nor has it taken away what it received; and both are one, since it is born from that which it is, and that which is born is neither from elsewhere, nor is it something else; for it is light from light: therefore, in order to avert the understanding of this faith, the torch or lamp of Hieracas was set up as a charge against confessing "light from light"; lest what has been impiously said, and is now and was before condemned, be thought to be piously said. Away, away, most vain fear of the heretics, nor feign the patronage of ecclesiastical faith with the false opinion of an anxious assertion.

Nothing corporeal, according to us, nothing inanimate is in the things of God: what God is, He is wholly God. In Him there is nothing but power, nothing but life, nothing but light, nothing but blessedness, nothing but spirit. That nature does not admit dull matter, nor does it consist of diverse parts so as to abide: God, as He is God, abides that which He is: and, abiding, God has begotten God. They are not contained, like lamp and lamp, or torch and torch, by an exterior nature. The birth of the Only-Begotten God from God is not a series, but an offspring; it is not a drawing out, but light from light. There is a unity of the nature of light, not an extension by connection.

The birth of God from God, having been attacked, is asserted.—Now indeed how great was the heretical cunning, and how crafty the profession, in this: "Nor Him who existed before, afterward born or super-created into a son." God, who is born of God, is by no means born of nothing, nor born of things not existing; but had a living nature of His birth. Nor is the same God who was; but God from God, who was, has been born: and the birth has had, in its very birth, the nature of its own origin. If we speak from our own resources, we are presumptuous; but if we shall teach that we have been taught to speak by God, the birth of God is to be confessed according to the teaching of God.

This unity of nature, therefore, in the Father and the Son, and this ineffable mystery of a living birth, heretical fury, attempting to exclude, says: "Not Him who existed before, afterward born or super-created into a son." For who will be so mad as to think that the Father failed from Himself; so that the same One who had been, was afterward born or super-created into a son; and there would be an abolition of God, so that from the abolition a birth might follow, when birth testifies to an abiding author? Or who is so foolish as not to confess the Son to have subsisted except from birth? Who, further, is so senseless as to dare proclaim that God did not exist from the fact that God is born? For it is not that God who was abiding was born, but from the abiding God, God was born, holding in Himself the nature of the begetter in the birth of His nature.

But the birth of God, which came forth from God into God, holds not things that were not, but has obtained, by the truth of being born, the things that were and remain God's. Not, therefore, was He who was, born; but from these things and in these things which were God's, God came forth born. All this preceding heretical discourse of fraudulence, therefore, prepared this way for its most impious doctrine: that, being about to deny the Only-Begotten God, as though upon a reasoning of truth premised beforehand, it might proclaim Him born rather of nothing than of God, referring His birth to the will of creation out of things not existing.

By what art they hint that the Son is from nothing.—Finally, after many words, as though from a prepared approach, he burst out to this effect, saying: The Son was brought forth without time, and created and founded before the ages, He was not before He was born.

The heretical speech tempered itself, as far as it thought, both for the confirmation of impiety, and for the excuse of calumny, should the question be pressed, saying: He was not before He was born: so that, in the fact that He was not before He is born, it might deny to Him the nature of a subsisting origin, and He should have begun to be from nothing, to whom, existing before His birth, no authority would be granted: then again, if this saying were thought irreligious, a ready defense would be at hand for him, namely that He who existed could not be born; nor could He who existed before have had a cause of being born through which He might be, since a birth serves for this, that he who is born may come to subsist. O foolish and impious man, who would look for a birth in Him who subsists without birth? Or how is He who exists to be thought to be born, since birth is by nature a matter of coming-to-be?

But cunningly striving to deny the birth of the only-begotten God from God the Father, you wished to escape by this, that He was not before He was born; whereas God, from whom the Son of God was born, existed; and the nature of God remained, from which the Son, God, subsists by birth. If therefore He was born of God, the birth of an abiding nature must be confessed; not that God who already existed was born, but that from God who existed, the birth of God is to be understood.

A bold heresy, but an imprudent one. In which cases it is cured with difficulty, in which more easily.—But heretical heat does not contain its irreligious surges; and through what he said—He was not before He was born—laboring to this end, that He might be born from things not existing, that is, that He might not have been born of God the Father into God the Son by a true and perfect birth, in the very conclusion of his whole exposition he burst forth at last into the utmost and most profane heat of his irreligious fury, saying: "For if what is from Him, and what is from the womb, and what 'I went forth and came from the Father,' is understood as though extending a part of that one substance, or a kind of prolation; the Father will be composite, and divisible, and convertible, and, according to them, a body, and, as far as lies in them, He will be a God sustaining the consequences of a body without a body." It would be a heavy and most difficult labor to defend the truth of religion against the falsehood of impiety, if impiety, in daring so much, took as much prudent counsel.

But it is well that the will to irreligion springs from a lack of prudence. And therefore, though the answer to folly is easy, yet the correction of fools is difficult: through which, first, the reason of understanding is not sought, and then, when made known by one who understands, it is not grasped. But if any are held in error not by a will to impiety but by fear of God and ignorance of understanding, through the disposition of folly, I hope that they are inclined to correction; since the folly of impiety is bound to bring forth, absolutely, a demonstration of the truth.

The Son, as being from God Himself, is neither the Father Himself, nor something else, nor from nothing.—You have said, O fools, who say the same thing even today, not knowing how to think rightly of God: For if what is from Him, and what is from the womb, and what "I went forth and came from the Father." I ask of you: was this whole saying spoken by God, or was it not spoken? It was indeed spoken: and since it was spoken by God about Himself, it must necessarily be understood in no other way than as it was spoken. We shall treat of the sayings in their proper place, once the force of each has been shown. Meanwhile, however, I ask the understanding of each person, what he thinks in this matter, when it is said "from Him": whether it should be understood as from another, or from nothing, or whether He Himself is to be believed the same?

It is not from another: because it is "from Him," that is (so that not), lest God be God from anywhere else than from God. It is not from nothing: because it is "from Him"; for the nature is shown, whence the birth is. He is not Himself: because where it is "from Him," the Son's birth is referred back to the Father. Then, when it is signified "from the womb," I ask whether it can be believed that He was born from nothing, since the truth of birth is revealed through terms of bodily generation?

For God, not consisting of bodily members, when He recalled the begetting of the Son, said: From the womb, before the daystar, I begot Thee; but confirming that ineffable birth of the only-begotten Son from Himself, out of the truth of His own divinity, He spoke to the faith of the understanding; so that, concerning His divine matters, He might, according to human nature, instruct the sense of human nature to the knowledge of faith: so that when He says "from the womb," it might be taught not that creation subsisted from nothing, but that there was a natural birth of His Only-begotten from Himself. Finally, as to what He said: I went forth from the Father, and came, did this leave any ambiguity, that He should be understood to be God from nowhere else than from the Father? For going forth from the Father, He had neither another nature of birth, nor none at all: but He testifies that He has as His author the One from whom He professes to have gone forth.

But of these matters, to be demonstrated and understood, my further discourse comes later.

It is wicked not to believe God concerning Himself.—Meanwhile, however, let us see this: with what confidence of man are things forbidden to be understood of God, which are not denied to have been said by God about Himself. O most grievous disgrace of human folly and insolence, not only to refuse to believe God's own profession concerning Himself, but to condemn it by amending it; and to contaminate and assail with human doctrines that ineffable secret of His nature and power, and to dare to say these things: "If," he says, "the Son is from God, then God is mutable and corporeal, who has brought forth or extended from Himself something to be His Son!" Why are you anxious lest God be mutable? We confess a birth, we proclaim an only-begotten Son, taught by God: you, so that a birth may not stand, so that an only-begotten God may not be in the faith of the Church, oppose the nature of the unchangeable God, which can be neither extended nor stretched out.

I would bring to you, unhappy error, even from the things of the world an example of certain natures which are begotten, lest you should think birth to be an extension, lest you should believe the natures of the begotten to be diminutions of the begetters, since even many souls are begotten, without any bodily admixture, from the living into the living: were it not wicked not to have believed God concerning Himself; and were it not to be judged the madness of the utmost fury, to take away the authority to faith from Him to whom you profess veneration unto life. For if there is no life except through Him, how is there not faith in life through Him? But how is there faith in life in Him, who is held to be an untrustworthy witness of Himself concerning Himself?

The titles of the Son, as understood by the heretics.—For you, most impious heretic, wrest the birth of the Son to the will of creation; so that He was not born of God, but, by the will of Him who created, subsisted from creation.

And with you, therefore, He is not God, because, while the one God remains, the Son does not retain in His birth the nature of His origin; but by a condition into another substance, He Himself, as though only-begotten, is more excellent than the other conditions and creatures: yet substituted, so that He may have the substitution of a creation granted to Him, He has not brought the nature of God from generation; and you say He was "born," meaning that He subsisted from nothing: but you call Him "Son," not because He was born of God, but because He was created through God; since you recall that religious men too were held worthy by God of the appellation of this name: then further you grant Him the name "God" on no other condition than that by which it was said: I have said, ye are gods: and all of you sons of the Most High, so that He may use the honor in the term of one so styled, not the truth of nature in the name; and with you He may be Son by adoption, God by appellation, only-begotten by privilege, first-born by order, wholly a creature, God from nothing; because His generation is not a natural birth from God, but the substance of a creature.

What Hilary has been taught by the Scriptures concerning God.—And first, having begged pardon from You for my most impatient grief, allow me, O almighty God, to speak in Your presence, and permit me, earth and ashes though I am, yet bound by the religion of Your charity, to be free in these words. I, unhappy one, was formerly nothing, and devoid of the sense of life, without understanding of myself, I lacked that which I now am. But Your mercy is the cause to me of living: and I do not doubt that You, being good, have determined it good for me that I should be born. For You, who need nothing of mine, would not have begun me unto the origin of evil. But when You had made me alive, endowed also with understanding of reason, You instructed me, I believe, to the knowledge of Yourself through the sacred books of Your servants Moses and the prophets, from which You have shown Yourself worthy of veneration not in Your solitude alone.

There I came to know You together with God, not another in nature, but one in the mystery of Your substance. I came to know You as God in God, not confused by intermixture, but by force of nature, in that You, being God, were within Him who is from You: not that You were the same and were within Him; but that the truth of a perfect birth taught that You were within Him who was from You. This the evangelic and apostolic voices tell me again, and the very words established by the sacred mouth of Your Only-begotten, contained in books (var. In books), testify: that Your Son, only-begotten God from You the unbegotten God, became man, born of the Virgin for the mystery of my salvation: in whom the truth of generation from You was contained, and whom the nature of a birth abiding in You from You retained.

A commendation of those whom he has believed.—Into what abyss of despaired return, I ask, have You plunged me? For these things I have so learned, so believed, and so hold with a mind confirmed in faith, that I can neither believe otherwise, nor wish to. Why have You, unhappy that I am, deceived me concerning Yourself, and destroyed my wretched flesh and soul by a doctrine of knowledge alien from You? I was deceived, after the dividing of the Red Sea, by the glory of Moses descending from the mountain, of him who beheld with You all the secrets of heavenly mysteries. I believed him concerning You by Your own words.

I was undone by David found after Your own heart, and by Solomon worthy of the gift of divine wisdom, and by Isaiah who saw the Lord of Sabaoth and prophesied, and by Jeremiah, sanctified in the womb before his forming, prophet of the uprooting and planting of nations, and by Ezekiel, witness of the mystery of the resurrection, and by Daniel, man of desires, knower of the times, and by the consecrated choir of the prophets, and by the whole sacrament of evangelical preaching, by Matthew, chosen from a publican into an Apostle, and by John, worthy through familiarity with the Lord of the revelation of heavenly mysteries, and by blessed Simon, after the confession of the mystery, set beneath the building of the Church and receiving the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and by all the rest preaching by the Holy Spirit, and by Paul, from a persecutor made an apostle, a vessel of Your election, living in the depth of the sea, a man in the third heaven, in paradise before his martyrdom, and in his martyrdom the consummated libation of a perfect faith.

How firm his faith concerning the equality of the Son with the Father is; and whence it is firm.—By these things I hold, taught by these I am incurably imbued. And forgive me, almighty God, that in these matters I can neither be corrected, nor can I die with them. Late did this age of our present world bring forth to me these most impious teachers, as I judge them. Late did my faith, which thou hast instructed, have these as masters. With these names unheard of, I have thus believed in thee, through thee have I thus been born again; and from thence I am thus thine. I know thee to be omnipotent, nor do I look for the explanation of that unutterable nativity, which is known only to thee and to thy Only-begotten. For nothing is impossible to thee, and I do not doubt that the Son, begotten of thee, is by the power of thy omnipotence. For if I doubt, I shall already deny thee to be omnipotent.

I have learned also that thou art good, even from my own birth: and for that reason I trust that thou art not envious of thy own goods in the nativity of thy Only-begotten. For I believe that what is thine is his; and what is his is thine. That thou art wise, even the creation of the world itself has shown me: I am conscious that thou hast begotten of thyself thy Wisdom, not unlike unto thee. Truly thou art to me one God: but I will not believe that there is in him who is God from thee anything other than what is thine. And judge me in this, if it be a crime in me, that I have believed too much, through thy Son, in the law, and the prophets, and the apostles.

If Christ is the true Son of God, he is also true God. That he is truly the Son of God is known in many ways.—But let rash speech cease, and let it withdraw from those matters into which it had burst forth by the necessity of demonstrating heretical folly, into the ministry of rendering reason instead: so that, if any can still be saved, they may hold to the faith of evangelical doctrine and the path of apostolic teaching, and may understand the true Son of God to be so not by adoption, but by nature. For it is fitting that this be the order of our response: that we first teach that he is the Son of God, so that the nature of divinity in him, through which he is Son, may be established absolutely. For this is especially what the heresy now under discussion labors toward: that our Lord Jesus Christ might not truly be the Son of God, true God.

That our Lord Jesus Christ is truly the only-begotten Son of God, God, and is so taught, is known in many ways: while the Father bears witness of him, while he himself professes it of himself, while the apostles preach it, while the religious believe it, while the demons confess it, while the Jews deny it, while the Gentiles recognize it in his passion. For what is said concerning the belief in his proper nature does not come from a mere community of appellation. And since all things which Christ the Lord either did or taught are beyond all those things which belong to those who are called sons; and since among all those things which are most excellent in Christ, this above all is taught to be so, that he is the Son of God—the name of "son" in him is not from a general familiarity.

That it is not adoptive, but proper, the Father testifies.—I do not defile the faith of truth, so as to establish this by my own words. Let the Father speak, as he was often accustomed, of his Only-begotten, lest under the sacrament of the consummating baptism Jesus Christ might be unrecognizable through the body: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. I ask, in what does the truth fail, and in what is the faith of this profession weak? Neither the birth from the Virgin by the Holy Spirit announced by the angel, nor the star that pointed the way, nor the honor of being adored in the cradle, nor the power of being baptized under the profession of the Baptist, are judged sufficient to demonstrate his majesty: the Father speaks from heaven, and speaks thus: This is my Son. What does the faith of pronouns, not of surnames, mean to convey? For surnames are added to names, but pronouns hold within themselves the force of the names.

But it is a signification of proper nature, where it is heard both that "this is" was said, and "mine is." And understand what is the truth and reason of these words. Thou hast read: I have begotten sons, and exalted them: but thou hast not read, my sons; for he had begotten them to himself through the division of the nations, and made a people of inheritance into sons. Lest, therefore, through the community of an adoptive inheritance, the surname of son should be added to the only-begotten God, the truth of nature was shown through the signification of what is proper. Let this name of communion in Christ indeed be assigned, that he be a son, if it can be found said of anyone else: This is my son. But if, on the other hand, it is proper and singular to him: This is my Son; why do we bring against God the Father, professing concerning the Son the charge of impropriety?

Does it not seem to you that in what is said, "this is," this is signified: Others indeed have been named by me as sons, but this one is my Son; I have given the name of adoption to many, but this one is Son to me; do not seek another, do not fail to believe that it is this one; this one I touch, as it were, with a pointing finger and by the signification of the word, whereby I say both "mine is," and "this is," and "he is son"? What further understanding could there be, so that it might not be believed? And this indeed was the signification of the paternal voice, that he who was to be baptized to fulfill all justice might not be unknown as to what he was: but that he who, for the sacrament of our salvation, appeared as man, might be recognized by the voice of God as the Son of God.

The same declares it again. He gives authority to the sayings of the Son.—And because in the confession of this faith lay the life of believers (for there is no other life of eternity, unless we know Jesus Christ, the only-begotten God, to be the Son of God): the voice from heaven is heard again by the Apostles, repeating this same signification, so that what it would have been death not to believe might be believed more firmly unto life. For when the Lord stood on the mountain in the guise of his majesty, with Moses and Elijah standing by, and with three pillars of the churches taken as witnesses to the vision and to the voice, this paternal voice came from heaven: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased, hear him. The glory that was seen had not been sufficient for the confirmation of honor; it is designated by voice: This is my Son.

The apostles cannot bear the glory of God, and mortal eyes are dulled at the sight, and the faith of Peter and James and John, struck with fear, falls down: yet the profession of paternal authority is present, and the Son is shown here through the signification of what is proper to him. Nor is the truth of the Son intimated only through the fact that he is both "this" and "mine"; but it is added, Hear him. The testimony indeed of the Father is from heaven: but the testimony of the Son is confirmed on earth, for he is shown to be one who must be heard. And although ambiguity is not left by the paternal profession, yet the Son's own profession of himself is also decreed to be believed, and the truth of sonship in him is taught to such an extent, that the confirmation of the paternal voice demands from us the obedience of hearing.

Therefore, since this is the voice of the paternal will, that the Son be heard; let us hear the Son professing of himself what he himself is.

Christ rightly calls God his Father, and himself His Son.—I think no one is so alien to common sense, that while, in all the books of the Gospels, from the profession of the Son, he understands the assumption of corporeal humility, when he says: Father, glorify me; and again very frequently: You shall see the Son of man; and this: The Father is greater than I; but also this: Now my soul is troubled exceedingly; or even this: God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

And many other things of this kind, of which there will be discourse in its proper order—that nevertheless, amid this so constant testimony of humility, he should be charged with insolence, because he calls God his Father, when he says: Every plant which my Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up; or this: You have made my Father's house a house of merchandise; and wherever he always names God as his Father, this should rather be a matter of rash presumption, than of a confident nature which, conscious of its own nativity, holds to the truth of the name in the Father. The frequent profession of humility, therefore, does not have this fault of insolence, that it should claim for itself things that belong to another, and not defend its own, and presume to be properly equated with God.

Nor with equal rashness by which he calls him Father, does he also profess himself Son, saying: For God sent not his Son into this world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him; or again: Do you believe in the Son of God? What are we doing now, granting to Jesus Christ only the name of adoption? Through which we also charge him with rash presumption in calling God his Father. The paternal voice from heaven is: Hear him. I hear: Father, I give thee thanks: I hear, You say that I have blasphemed, because I said, I am the Son of God: if I do not believe the names, if I do not understand nature by the words, I ask what is to be believed and understood. No other suspicion is left to me. The paternal authority is from heaven: This is my Son. The profession of the Son concerning himself is: My Father's house, and My Father.

The profession of the name is salvation, when the question demands faith, saying: Do you believe in the Son of God? The names of propriety follow, where it is "mine." I ask you, heretic, whence comes another presumption. You take away from the Father his testimony, from the Son his profession, from the names their nature: you do violence to the words of God, so that they are not what they declare. It is only the impudence of your impiety, that you accuse God of having lied about himself.

The properties of the Son attached to the name. The works testify that he is the Son.—Although, therefore, the simple confession alone of the names of nature shows that he of whom it is said, This is my Son, and he to whom it is said, My Father, are what they are called: nevertheless, lest there be either a name of adoption in the Son, or of honor in the Father, let us see what properties have been added to the name of Son through the Son. He says: All things have been delivered to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son but the Father, neither does anyone know the Father but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal him. Does this agree with what was said: This is my son, and my Father: No one knows the Son but the Father, neither does anyone know the Father but the Son? For neither could the Son be known through the Father, nor the Father through the Son, except by mutual testification.

The voice is from heaven: the word is also that of the Son. The Son is as unknowable as the Father. All things have been delivered to him: and in all things nothing is understood to be excepted. If the power is equalized, if the secret of knowledge is equal, if nature is in the names: I ask how it is that they are not what they are called, whose force in power and difficulty in knowledge do not differ. Therefore God does not deceive in his words, nor does the Father lie, nor the Son: and understand what is the faith of the names in these matters. 27. The works testify that he is the Son. The Father's testimony asserts nothing else. Christ is set apart from the adoptive sons.—For he says: For the works which the Father gave me, that I should perfect them, the very works which I do, bear witness of me, that the Father sent me: and the Father who sent me, he has testified of me.

The only-begotten God teaches that he is the Son not only by the testimony of the name, but also by that of power: for his works, which he does, testify that he was sent by the Father. I ask, what fact do the works testify? That he was sent, namely. Therefore both the Son's obedience and the Father's authority are taught in the one sent, since the works which he does cannot belong to another than to him who was sent by the Father. But works do not suffice for unbelievers as testimony that the Father sent him. For it follows: And the Father who sent me, he has testified of me; you have neither heard his voice, nor seen his form. I ask what testimony of the Father concerning him there was. Unroll the volumes of the Gospels, and review the whole of their work. Give the testimony of the Father, besides what was heard: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased, and: You are my Son.

Though John was not ignorant of this, he nonetheless heard the testimony of the paternal voice sent forth for our instruction: nor is this enough. John indeed in the desert was worthy of this voice, but the apostles too were not to be deprived of the authority of this testimony. The same voice comes to them from heaven: but they receive more thanFor John, already prophesying from the womb, did not need this voice: Hear him. I will certainly hear; nor will I hear anyone besides him, except one who has heard in order to teach. If no other testimony of the Father concerning the Son exists in the books than that this is his Son: the truth of this testimony is that the very works of the Father, which he performs, affirm the truth of this testimony. What calumny is brought forth today, that it should be an adoption of a name, that God should be a liar, that the names should be empty?

The Father has testified of the Son, the Son by his works makes himself equal to the Father's testimony: why should it not be seen that in him, that is, the truth of "son" which is spoken is also proved? The name of son in Christ is not from God the Father by an adoption of goodness: nor did he merit this name by holiness, as many after the confession of faith are sons of God. For in these there is no signification of propriety: for only of the name, as is worthy of God, is dignity granted. It is one thing, "this is," and "this is mine," and "hear him": in this is truth, in this is nature, in this is faith.

The Son's birth from God, and his coming to us, is shown. He alone who knows the Father because he is from him, is not created.—Nor indeed does the Son testify anything less of himself by this property of the paternal signification. For as in that which the Father says, This is my Son, there is a demonstration of nature, and in what he added, Hear him, there is a hearing of the mystery and of the faith on account of which he came from heaven, since we are admonished to hear him for the saving doctrine of confession: so in this the Son taught both the truth of his birth and of his coming, saying: You know neither me, nor whence I am: for I have not come of myself, but he who sent me is true, whom you do not know; but I know him, because I am from him, and he sent me. No one knows the Father, and hence there is frequent profession of the Son.

Therefore he says that he alone is known to himself, because he is from him. I ask, however, whether that which is from him shows the work of creation in him or the nature of generation. If it is the work of creation, then all things too, which are created, are from God. And how do not all things know the Father, since the Son, because he is from him, does not fail to know him? But if he seems rather to be created than born, in that he is from God; since all things are from God, how does he not, like the rest, not know the Father, seeing that they too are from him? But if it is proper to him to know him for this reason, that he is from him; how will it not be proper to him that he is from him? Namely, that he is a true Son by nature of God; since he alone knows God for this reason, that he alone is from him.

You have, therefore, the propriety of knowledge from the propriety of generation: and that he is from him is not, in him, the power of a creature (for all things exist from him through the power of creation), but the truth of birth, through which alone he knows the Father, while the rest, which are from him, do not know him.

That "I am from him" cannot be referred to the flesh. Nor is he created, who is not known whence he is.—Yet lest perhaps that "I am from him" should be seized upon by heresy as referring to the time of his coming, he immediately added: Because I am from him, and he sent me. He kept the order of the evangelical mystery, professing himself both born and sent: so that both who he was, and whence he was, might be understood according to the preceding statement to be by birth. For "I am from him" and "he sent me" are not the same thing: just as "you know neither me, nor whence I am" are not the same. Is not every man, though born in the flesh, according to the sense of common opinion, from God?

And how does he deny that either himself or whence he is can be known by them, unless he referred that "whence he is" to the author of his nature?—who would therefore be unknowable, because he himself, being the Son of God, would be unknown. Examine, wretched in your folly, what this means: You know neither me, nor whence I am. All things indeed are from nothing, and to such a degree from nothing, that you have even dared to lie that the only-begotten God subsisted from nothing. What then is it, that the impious neither know Christ, nor know whence he is? For that whence a thing is unknown shows the nature from which it is, while its origin is unknown.

For it cannot be unknown whence anything is, that has subsisted from nothing: because this very fact, that it is not unknown to be from nothing, does not carry with it an ignorance of whence it is. But he who came is not from himself; but he who sent him is true, whom the impious do not know. Now therefore he who sent is the very one whose having sent is unknown. From him, therefore, who sent, is he who was sent: and it is from him that it is unknown whence he is; and for this reason he himself is unknown, since it is unknown from whom he is. He does not know Christ, who does not know whence Christ is; nor does he confess the Son, who denies that he was born; nor does he understand the "born," who supposed him from nothing. But he is so far from being from nothing, that the impious do not know whence he is.

God is Father only to those who honor the Son, not as adoptive. What it means to go out from God. The reason for loving the Son, the manner of his being born.—They plainly do not know, they do not know, who take away nature from the name, who, not knowing, do not love to know. And let them hear the Son reproaching the impious for this ignorance of knowledge, at the time when the Jews said God was their father; for he says: If God were your father, you would surely love me; for I went forth from God, and have come: nor have I come of myself, but he sent me.

The Son of God did not disapprove of the assumption of the religious name of God in those who, confessing themselves sons of God, would say God was their father; but he rebukes the rash usurpation of the Jews, who presumed God was their father, by the fact that they did not love him: If God were your father, you would surely love me; for I went forth from God. To all to whom God is Father through faith, he is Father through that faith by which we confess Jesus Christ to be the Son of God. But confessing the Son according to the general name of the saints, what warrant of faith does it have, that we should say, "He is one of the sons"? But are not the rest, in this weakness of their created state, not also sons? In what then does faith's confessed excellence of Jesus Christ as Son of God surpass, if the name "son" belongs to him according to the sons, not by nature, but only in name?

That perfidy does not love Christ, nor does this impious profession piously take to itself God as Father: because if God were their Father, they would love Christ on this account, that he went forth from God. I ask what it is to go forth from God. It cannot indeed be said that going forth from God is the very same as coming, for it signifies both: Because I went forth from God, and have come. And showing what "I went forth from God" was, and what "and have come" was, he immediately added, For I have not come of myself, but he sent me. He did not teach that he was his own origin, when he said: For I have not come of myself, and again he testifies that he went forth from God, and was sent by him. But when he says that he ought to be loved by those who called God their Father, for the reason that he went forth from God; he taught that the cause of love comes from the cause of birth.

For he referred "going forth" to the name of an incorporeal birth: because the religion of professing God as one's Father is to be earned by love of Christ, who was begotten from him. For when he says: He who hates me, hates my Father also: in saying "my," he excluded, by the signification of propriety, a communion of the name. But he condemns one who professes God as his Father while not loving him, in the usurpation of the paternal name: because he who hates him hates the Father also; nor is one religious toward God the Father who does not love the Son; since there is no other cause for loving the Son than that he is from God. From God, therefore, is the Son, not by coming, but by birth: and love toward the Father will only be whole in this, if the Son is believed to be from him.

The merit of perfect faith concerning the Son. He who distinguishes both birth from the Father and coming to us.—The Lord testifies to this, saying: I do not say to you that I will ask the Father for you: for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me, and have believed that I went forth from God, and came from the Father into this world. Perfect faith concerning the Son is free, before the Father, of the necessity of intercession, since it believes and loves that he went forth from God: and by itself it already deserves both to be heard and to be loved, having confessed the Son born of God and sent. Thus both his birth and his coming are shown with the most complete truth of a signifying propriety. I went forth, he says, from God; lest it should be thought that there was in him any nature other than that of birth; since to go forth from God, that is, to subsist from birth, what else could it be but God?

And from the Father, he says, I came into this world. So that that going forth from God might be understood to signify birth from the Father, he professed that he came from the Father into this world. The one, then, belongs to the dispensation, the other to nature. Nor does he allow the going forth to be reckoned as the same as the coming, since after the going forth from God, he mentions a coming from the Father. For to have come from the Father, and to have gone forth from God, are not of the same signification: and as great as the difference is between being born and being present, so great is the distinction between the two statements. Since it is one thing to have gone forth from God into the substance of birth, another to have come from the Father into this world to accomplish the mysteries of our salvation.

Christ believed by the apostles to be Son by nature, not by adoption.—And indeed, according to the order of the response we have proposed, this is a most fitting place for us now to teach, thirdly, that the Son of God our Lord Jesus Christ was believed by the apostles not from a mere designation, but from nature; not from adoption, but from birth. For although there exist yet more and even greater professions of the Only-begotten concerning himself, by which he testifies to the truth of his generation without the slightest occasion even for the calumny of deceit: nevertheless, because the understanding of readers must not be burdened by an accumulation of sayings for the sake of abundance, and since some things concerning the property of the birth have already been shown, all the rest must be reserved for other inquiries.

But now, since this is the order established for our discourse, that after the Father's attestation, after the Son's own profession, we should also be taught by the faith of the Apostles concerning the true Son of God confessed according to birth; we must see whether, in that which the Lord says, "I went out from God," they understood anything else rather than the nature of the birth.

What it is that they first believed, that he had gone out from God.—For after many obscurities of proverbs, in which he had spoken in parables—he whom they already knew beforehand to be the Christ announced by Moses and the prophets, confessed also by Nathanael to be both the Son of God and the King of Israel, and even after Philip had been rebuked, when he asked concerning the Father, why he did not know that the Father was in him through the power of his works, and he in the Father, and though he had already taught by frequent sayings that he was sent by the Father—nevertheless, when they heard him professing that he had gone out from God, this was their response (for the discourse here is connected): "His disciples say to him, Behold, now you speak plainly, and speak no proverb. Now we know that you know all things, and need not that anyone should ask you: by this we believe that you came out from God".

What, I ask, is this wonder at this word, that he professed he had gone out from God? Such great and such properly divine things, O holy and blessed men—and by the merit of your faith having received the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and having obtained the right of binding and loosing in heaven and on earth—you had seen done through our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God: and is it now, at the saying that he had gone out from God, that you first attest that you attain to the understanding of the truth? Surely you had seen the wedding waters, and the same become wedding wine, and either a transformation of nature into nature, or an advancement, or a creation. You had also broken five loaves for the food of so great a multitude, and when all were satisfied, the fragments of loaves had grown into the fullness of twelve baskets, and the smallness of nature, driving away hunger, had advanced into an abundance of that same nature.

You had beheld withered hands made green again, and the tongues of the mute loosed into speech, and the feet of the lame made swift for running, and the eyes of the blind made to see, and the lives of the dead returning. Lazarus, already reeking, had stood forth at the voice, and, called from the tomb, with no interval between the voice and life, had swiftly come out, and, while the spirit still carried the odor of death into the sense of the nostrils, he himself already stood there alive. I say nothing of the other great powers and divine workings. Do you then now for the first time understand who this one is who was sent from the heavens, after hearing: "I went out from the Father"?

And is this the first thing said to you now without a proverb, and do you understand through the power of nature that it is true that he went out from God, when he silently beholds the thoughts of your wills, when he asks about nothing as though ignorant, when he is the knower of all things? For through all these things, which he does by the power and nature of God, he is to be believed to have gone out from God.

They had known beforehand that he was sent from God: but they had not received the account of the birth.—The holy apostles did not here understand "gone out from God" as meaning "sent by God"; for throughout the whole preceding discourse they had frequently heard him professing that he was sent: but hearing that he had gone out from God, and perceiving in him the nature of God from his works, they recognize the truth of the nature through the fact that he went out from God, when they say: "Now we know that you know all things, and need not that anyone should ask you: by this we believe that you came out from God". For they believe by this, that he went out from God, through which he is able to do, and does, the things that are God's. For it does not establish merely that the nature of God came from the Father, but that it went out from God. Finally, this thing that they now hear for the first time is confirmed unto faith.

For when the Lord had said both: "I went out from God, and I came from the Father into this world", they had no wonder at the part they had frequently heard, "and I came from the Father into this world." But their response attested faith and understanding of this saying, "I went out from God." For only to this was the response made, when they say, "By this we believe that you came out from God"; nor do they add, "And you came from the Father into this world." And since the one is in profession, the other in silence; the novelty of the saying required the cause of the profession, but the understanding of the truth drew forth the attestation of confession. They knew indeed that he, as God, was able to do all things, but they had not yet received the account of the birth: and those who knew he was sent from God did not yet know that he had gone out from God.

Understanding, through the power of this saying, that ineffable and perfect birth of the Son, they now profess among themselves that he had spoken without proverbs.

How fittingly "going out" expresses the birth of the Son.—For God is not born from God according to the custom of human birth, nor is he brought forth as man from man through the elements of our origin. That birth is entire and perfect and undefiled, whose "going out" from God is rather than a "birth." For he is one from one. There is no portion, no failing, no diminishment, no derivation, no extension, no passion; but it is the birth of a living nature from one who lives. He is God going out from God, not a creature chosen into the name of God; he did not begin to be from nothing, but went out from one who remains: and "to have gone out" has the meaning of birth, not of a beginning. For it is not the same thing to have begun a substance, and for God to have gone out from God.

And though the consciousness of this birth is not subject to words, since it is ineffable, yet it has, in the teaching of the Son, the security of faith, of him declaring that he went out from God.

Peter, confessing the Son of God, believed him true. Then for the first time he acknowledged him as God. Whence he learned it.—It is not the evangelical and apostolic faith to have believed the Son of God by name rather than by nature. For if this is a designation of adoption, and he is not therefore Son because he went out from God, I ask whence blessed Simon Bar-Jona made this confession: "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God"? Is it because it is possible for all, through the sacrament of regeneration, to be born as sons of God? If according to this designation Christ is the Son of God, I ask what that is which flesh and blood did not reveal to Peter, but the Father who is in heaven? What merit has a general profession? Or what glory of revelation is there in a public consciousness? If he is Son by adoption, whence is this blessed confession in Peter, the Son conferring upon him what is common to the saints?

But the apostolic faith extends itself beyond human understanding. He had indeed frequently heard, "He who receives you receives me; and he who receives me receives him who sent me". Therefore he was not ignorant that he was sent; and he whom he knew to be sent, he had heard professing, "All things have been delivered to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, neither does anyone know the Father except the Son". What is this then that the Father now reveals to Peter, which takes on the glory of a blessed confession? Did he not know the names of Father and Son? And yet he had heard them frequently. But he speaks what human voice had not yet uttered: "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." For although, while remaining in the body, he had professed himself to be the Son of God, yet apostolic faith now for the first time acknowledged in him the nature of divinity.

For praise was rendered to Peter not merely from the honor of confession, but from the acknowledgment of the mystery: because he confessed not only Christ, but Christ the Son of God. For indeed it would have sufficed for the confession of honor to have said: "You are the Christ." But it would have been empty for Christ to have been confessed by him, unless he confessed the Son of God. For in that he says, "You are," he set forth the power and property of natural truth. And the Father, by saying, "This is my beloved Son", revealed to Peter that he should say, "You are the Son of God": because in that which is said, "This is," there is the sign of the one revealing; but in that which is answered, "You are," there is the acknowledgment of the one confessing. Upon this rock of confession, therefore, is the building of the Church. But the sense of flesh and blood does not reveal the understanding of this confession.

This is the sacrament of divine revelation, not merely to name Christ the Son of God, but to believe it. Or was it rather the designation than the nature that was revealed to Peter? If the designation, he had already frequently heard this from the Lord, confessing himself to be the Son of God. In what, then, is the glory of the revelation? Of the nature, surely, not of the name; since the profession of the name had already been frequent.

Peter's faith is commended.—This faith is the foundation of the Church: through this faith the gates of hell are weak (var. Weak) against it. This faith has the keys of the heavenly kingdom. This faith—whatever it shall have loosed or bound on earth, these things are bound and loosed also in heaven. This faith is the gift of the Father's revelation, that Christ is not falsely a creature out of nothing, but is to be confessed, according to the property of nature, the Son of God.

O impious frenzy of wretched folly, not understanding the martyr of blessed old age and faith, and the martyr Peter, for whom the Father was asked that his faith should not fail in temptation: who, having repeated the profession of the love toward God demanded of him, groaned at being tempted still, as though doubtful and uncertain, at the third questioning; through which also, from the Lord, after the third purging of the temptation of his weaknesses, he deserved to hear three times, "Feed my sheep": who, in the silence of all the apostles, understanding the Son of God by the revelation of the Father, beyond the measure of human weakness, earned by the confession of his blessed faith a surpassing glory! To what necessity of interpreting his own words are we now brought? He confessed Christ the Son of God: but you today thrust upon me, a lying priesthood of a new apostolate, Christ as a creature out of nothing. What violence do you do to these glorious words?

Having confessed the Son of God, he is blessed on this account. This is the revelation of the Father, this is the foundation of the Church, this is the security of eternity. Hence he has the keys of the kingdom of heaven, hence his earthly judgments are heavenly judgments. He learned the mystery hidden (var. Concealed) from the ages through revelation, he spoke faith, he declared nature, he confessed the Son of God. Whoever, confessing rather a creature, denies this, must first deny Peter's apostolate, faith, blessedness, priesthood, martyrdom: and after this let him understand that he is a stranger to Christ, because Peter, by confessing the Son, earned these things.

The heretics' opinion was unknown to Peter. There is no faith but Peter's.—Or do you think, O wretch, whoever you are today, heretic, that Peter would have been more blessed if he had said: Thou art the Christ, the perfect creature of God, and a creature preeminent above all things made, and thou who didst begin to be out of nothing, and who through the goodness of God, who alone is good, hast merited the name of son by adoption, and who art not born of God? And I ask of you, what would he have heard, saying these things, who, answering when he heard of the passion, and saying, Be it far from thee, Lord, this shall not be unto thee, heard it said to him: Get thee behind me, satan, thou art a scandal unto me? Yet human ignorance did not turn to Peter's crime; for the Father had not yet revealed to him the whole mystery of the passion: but it was a small faith that incurred the sentence of condemnation.

Why then did the Father not reveal to Peter this faith of confession, namely a creature and an adoption? God, I suppose, begrudged this to Peter, so that, concealing it for later times, he might now reserve these things for you, new preachers. Let there indeed be another faith, if there are other keys of the kingdom of heaven. Let there be another faith, if there is to be another Church, against which the gates of hell shall not prevail. Let there be another faith, if there is to be another apostolate, binding and loosing on earth by itself, binding in heaven and loosing.

Let there be another faith, if another Christ, the Son of God, is to be preached besides him who is. But if this faith alone, which confessed Christ the Son of God, merited the glory of every beatitude in Peter, it must needs be that the faith which confesses him rather to be a creature out of nothing has not obtained the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and, being set outside the apostolic faith and power, is neither that Church, nor Christ's.

John, professing the only-begotten Son, denied the adoptive.—Let us then bring forward all the professions of the apostolic faith, in which, confessing the Son of God, they confess not the name of adoption in him, but the propriety of nature; nor do they declare in him the lowliness of creation, but the glory of nativity. Let John speak thus, who remained until the coming of the Lord, and was left and appointed under the sacrament of the divine will, since it is said of him neither that he should not die nor that he should remain. Let him then speak in his own voice, as is his custom: No man hath seen God at any time, save the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father. The faith of nature did not seem sufficiently set forth from the name of "Son," unless the force of propriety were added from without through the significance of an exception.

For, by calling him Son, and moreover the only-begotten, he utterly cut off any suspicion of adoption: since the nature of the only-begotten furnished the truth of the name.

The only-begotten Son is not for John a perfect creature.—I do not yet ask what he is, who is in the bosom of the Father; that question has its own order: I ask what the meaning of "only-begotten" demands for itself. And let us see whether this be what you profess him to be, that is, a perfect creature of God; so that "perfect" pertains to the only-begotten, but "creature" is referred to the Son. But John called him God the only-begotten Son, not a perfect creature.

He was not unaware of these names of blasphemy, saying: Who is in the bosom of the Father; and hearing from his Lord: For God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have life everlasting. God, loving the world, brought forth this testimony of his love toward it, that he gave his only-begotten Son. If the faith of love consists in this, that a creature was bestowed upon creatures, and that what belonged to the world was given for the world, and that he who subsisted out of nothing was offered for the redeeming of those substituted things which are out of nothing—then a cheap and contemptible cast-off makes no faith of great merit. But precious are the things that commend love, and great things are reckoned by great measures. God, loving the world, gave not an adoptive son, but his own, the only-begotten. Here is propriety, here is nativity, here is truth: not creation, not adoption, not falsehood.

Hence is the faith of love and charity, that for the salvation of the world he bestowed both his Son and his own and his only-begotten. 41. Faith in Christ as the Son of God necessary for salvation.—I pass over all the other appellations of the Son. There is no harmful omission where there is a choice from abundance. The progress of a matter always proceeds from a cause, and every work has manifest the necessity of the undertaking assumed. Writing his Gospel, he surely had to give a reason for the writing: and let us see what reason he showed, saying: But these are written, that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. Therefore he set forth no other cause for writing the Gospel than that all might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. If it suffices for salvation to believe Christ, why did he add "the Son of God"?

But if to believe Christ is at last this faith, not merely to have believed Christ, but to have believed Christ the Son of God—then the name "Son" in Christ, the only-begotten God, is not from the custom of adoption, but is proper to salvation. If then salvation lies in the confession of the name, I ask why truth should not be in the name. But if truth is in the name, by what authority shall it be called creation, since it is not the confession of creation that shall bestow salvation, but of the Son?

The Son born of the Father. Those who deny the Son are antichrists.—This then is true salvation, this the merit of perfect faith, to have believed Jesus Christ the Son of God. For there is no love in us toward God the Father, except through faith in the Son. And let us hear him speaking through his epistle: Whosoever loveth him that begot, loveth him also who is born of him. What, I ask, is it to be born of him? Is it the same thing as to be created through him? Or why does the Evangelist lie, in saying he is born of him, whom the heretic teaches rather to have been created through him? And let us all hear what this teacher says further. For it is said: This is antichrist, who denieth the Father and the Son. What are you doing, you assertor of a creature, and new founder of Christ out of things not existing? If you hold the profession, recognize the name of the one professing.

Or when you preach Creator and creature as Father and Son, do you believe you can, by feigned similarities of names, exclude yourself from being understood as antichrist? If in your faith the father is father by nature, and the son is son by nature, then I am a slanderer, casting upon you the reproach of a name not your own. But if all these things are feigned, and merely designated rather than proper, then learn from the apostle the name for your faith, and hear what the faith of the believed Son is. For it follows: Whosoever denieth the Son, hath not the Father: he that confesseth the Son, hath both the Son and the Father. Denying the Son, he lacks the Father; confessing and having the Son, he has the Father. I ask here what place adoptive names have. Is not all this a matter of nature? And that it is of nature, receive the proof.

John and the heretics compared together.—For he says: Because we know that the Son of God is come, and was made flesh for us, and suffered, and rising from the dead took us up, and gave us the best understanding, that we might know the true one, and be in his true Son Jesus Christ: this is the true God, and life eternal, and our resurrection. O unhappy understanding, lacking the Spirit of God, and advancing into the spirit and name of antichrist, and not knowing that the Son of God came for the sacrament of our salvation (being thus unworthy of the sense of this best understanding), having confessed rather the adoptive name of a creature than the true Son of God, Jesus Christ—by what secrets of these hidden mysteries have you been taught this? Or who today is the new author of this your knowledge? Was it perhaps secretly shown to you, reclining upon his breast through the intimacy of love, by the Lord?

Or did you, alone following to the cross, among the other precepts given to you—to receive Mary as your mother—also learn this in that special testimony of his love toward you? Or did you, running ahead even of Peter to the sepulchre, attain to it there? Or was it within the assembly of angels, and the unbreakable bonds of the sealed books, and the manifold powers of the heavenly signs, and the everlasting hymns of new and incomprehensible songs, that this teaching was so piously revealed to you by the Lamb its leader—that the Father should not be Father, that the Son should not be Son, that nature should not be nature, that truth should not be truth? For with you all these things are changed into falsehoods. The apostle, granted this best understanding, calls him the true Son of God: you affirm creation, you preach adoption, you deny nativity.

And since he is to us the true Son of God, and life eternal, and resurrection—yet he has neither life eternal nor resurrection for him to whom he is not true. And these things indeed John, the disciple beloved by the Lord, has spoken.

Paul everywhere preaches Christ the true Son of God.—But nothing unlike these things did the apostle, once a persecutor and now a vessel of election, preach. For what saying of his is not under the confession of the Son? What epistle has not begun from the sacrament of this truth? For when it is said: We are reconciled to God through the death of his Son; and again: God sent his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh; and again: God is faithful, by whom you were called unto the fellowship of his Son—what place is here left for the theft of the heretics? He is his own Son, he is his Son: not his adoption, not his creature. The name speaks nature, propriety declares truth, confession attests faith: I do not understand what can be added to the nature of sonship.

For that he is the son of him who is believed to be the father—this the vessel of election spoke not uncertainly and weakly; nor did the Teacher of the Gentiles and Apostle of Christ leave the error of ambiguous doctrine in his teaching. He knows who are sons by adoption, and who have merited to be this and to be called so by faith. For he says: For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For you have not received the spirit of bondage again unto fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. This name belongs to our faith through the sacrament of regeneration: and our profession bestows adoption upon us.

For deeds done according to the Spirit of God cause us to be called sons of God together; and it is rather from this that we cry Abba, Father, than that it remains from the propriety of nature; because the office of the word lies outside the propriety of nature, and to be called and to be are not the same thing.

The Son is expressly asserted as proper. The Epistle to the Romans was written in Greek.—But let us understand what is the Apostle's faith concerning the Son of God. For although in all the discourse which he employed for the teaching of the Church he never spoke of the Father without confession of the Son; yet that he might show the truth of this name with as much significance of human speech as he could, he says: What then shall we say to these things? If God be for us, who is against us? He that spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us. Will there now be any appellation of adoption in him in whom there is the name of propriety?

For the Apostle, wishing to show the love of God toward us, so that the magnificence of God's love might be known by a kind of comparison, taught that God did not spare his own son: not indeed one adopted for those to be adopted, nor a creature for creatures, but his own for those who were strangers, his proper one for those to be joined in name with him. Seek the force of the word, that you may understand the greatness of the love. Weigh what "proper" means, lest you be ignorant of the truth.

For now the Apostle says "proper son," though in many places he had often said "his" or "his own." And although many manuscripts, through the plain understanding of translators, have in this place written "his son" instead of "proper son," yet the Greek, in which language the Apostle spoke, calls him now "proper" rather than merely "his own." And although in the sense of common understanding there is not much difference between "proper" and "his own," yet the Apostle, when in other sayings he had mentioned "his own son," which in Greek is τὸν ἑαυτοῦ υἱὸν, nevertheless in this place, according to what he says, ὅς γε τοῦ ἰδίου υἱοῦ οὐκ ἐφείσατο, "who spared not his proper son," significantly expressed the truth of nature: so that he who had above shown many sons through the spirit of adoption, might now show the only-begotten God the Son of propriety.

He who denies Christ to be the Son of God is inexcusable. He will receive Antichrist in place of Christ.—This is not a human error, nor is there any vice of ignorance in denying the Son of God, where it is not permitted to be ignorant of what is denied. A creature subsisting out of nothing is called the son of God. If neither the Father has spoken this, nor the Son testified it, nor the Apostle preached it, yet to dare to utter it is not merely to be ignorant of Christ, but to hate him. For since the Father says of his Son, This is he; and the Son says of himself, He that speaketh with thee, the same is he; and Peter confesses, Thou art he; and John testifies, This is the true one; and Paul does not cease to preach concerning his own—I understand nothing else than that it is hatred of denial, where the error of ignorance is not excused in this crime.

Meanwhile he speaks these things, he plainly speaks through the prophets and forerunners of his coming, he who afterward will speak in antichrist: disturbing the saving confession of faith with these new temptations, so that first he may tear away from our conscience the understanding of the natural Son, because we so believe; then that he may exclude that very name which will remain, that of adoption. For with those in whose opinion Christ is a creature, it is necessary that antichrist himself be Christ to them; because a creature does not have the propriety of sonship, and he will falsely claim to be the Son of God: and thus by those by whom the Son of God is now denied, by these Christ will then be believed.

Faith in the Son of God is required beforehand to merit health.—What hopes, I ask, vain fury, do you seek? And with what confidence of your salvation do you contend with blasphemous mouth that Christ is a creature rather than a son? You ought to have known and held from the Gospels the sacrament of this faith. For although the Lord could do all things, yet in each of those who prayed he willed that the merit of confession should be the cause of his working. For the confession of the one praying did not add power to him who is the Power of God: but it was the reward of faith to merit this. For when he asked Martha, praying for Lazarus, whether she believed that those who had believed in him would not die forever, she declared to him the faith of her conscience, saying, Yea, Lord, I have believed that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, who hast come into this world; this confession is eternity, and this faith does not die.

Martha, beseeching for the life of her brother, being asked if she so believed, so believed. From whom, I ask, or from what does she who denies this expect life, since to believe thus is the only life? Great indeed is the sacrament of this faith, and perfect is the blessedness of this confession.

The same is required for the salvation of the soul from the blind man now seeing.—The Lord had granted sight to a man blind from birth, and the Lord of nature had removed the harm of nature. And because this blind man had been born for the glory of God, that in the work of Christ the work of God might be understood, faith of confession was not expected from him: but he who, having received his eyes, did not know the author of so great a gift, deserved afterward to learn faith. For the removal of blindness did not bring eternal life. Wherefore the Lord, when he was now healed and cast out of the synagogue, asks him, saying: Dost thou believe in the Son of God? Lest he should think it a loss to himself to be without the synagogue, since this faith, once confessed, would restore to him immortality. And when he, still uncertain, had answered, Who is he, Lord, that I may believe in him?

The Lord, unwilling that his ignorance should remain—he who after the recovery of his eyes was to be endowed with the understanding of so great a faith—said thus: Thou hast both seen him, and it is he that talketh with thee. Does the Lord, as in the case of the others who prayed for healing, demand from this man the confession of faith to merit his health? Not at all. For these words were now spoken to a blind man who saw; but only for this purpose, that he should answer: I believe, Lord; because the faith of his answer was not to bring healing to blindness, but life. And let us carefully weigh the force of this saying. The Lord asks, Dost thou believe in the Son of God? If indeed some kind of confession of Christ alone were the consummation of faith, it would have been said, Dost thou believe in Christ?

But because this name was to be on the lips of almost all heretics, so that they would confess Christ and yet deny the Son, that which is proper to Christ is required for faith, that is, that one believe in the Son of God. But what does it profit to have believed in the Son of God, if one believes in a creature; since faith in Christ is required of us not in a creature of God, but in the Son?

The demons did not fail to know the Son of God.—Or were the demons ignorant of the propriety of this name? For it is fitting that heretics should be convicted no longer by apostolic teachings, but by the mouth of demons. For they cry out, and often cry out: What have I to do with thee, Jesus, Son of the most high God? Truth wrung a confession from unwilling lips, and the pain of obeying testifies to the power of nature. They are conquered by power, when they abandon bodies long possessed: they render honor while they confess nature. Christ, amid these things, testifies himself to be the Son of God both by work and by name. Whence then, O heretic, amid these voices of confessing demons, do you get your name of creature and your indulgence of adoption?

The Jews knew Christ to be the Son of God, although they did not know who Christ was. The Arians are more insulting toward Christ than the Jews.—Learn what Christ is, at least from those who did not know; that the very necessary profession of the ignorant may convict your impiety. For although the Jews did not know Christ in the flesh, yet they knew that whoever was the Christ was the Son of God; when they used false witnesses against him without any assertion of truth, the priest asks him thus: Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed? Ignorant of the mystery, they are nevertheless not ignorant of the nature. Nor do they ask whether the Christ is the Son of God, but whether this man is the Christ, the Son of God. The error is in the man, not in the Son of God.

For it is not doubted that Christ is the Son of God: and thus, while it is asked whether this be he, yet it is not denied that Christ is the Son of God. And by what faith, I ask, do you deny that which not even those who are ignorant deny? For although it is perfect knowledge to know that Christ, the Son of God, remaining before the ages, was also born of a virgin, yet even those who do not know that he was born of Mary are not ignorant that he is the Son of God. And see into what fellowship of Jewish impiety you have mingled yourself by denying the Son of God. For what cause of condemnation they brought against him they themselves testify, saying: And according to the law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God. Is this not also the reproach of your impious voice—why does he call himself Son, whom you assert to be a creature?

He, by confessing himself to be the Son of God, is judged by them guilty of death: you, by denying the Son of God, I ask what do you judge? For his profession displeases the Jews just as it displeases you. I ask whether you remain of a different opinion from theirs, from whom you are not different in will? For with the same impiety you deny that he is the Son of God. Yet they are of a lesser crime in this, because they do not know. For they do not know that Christ was of Mary, but they do not doubt that Christ is the Son of God. You, because you cannot be ignorant that Christ was of Mary, yet do not preach that Christ is the Son of God. For them, in that which they do not know, salvation can still be safe if they believe: for you all things are already closed to salvation, who deny what you can no longer be ignorant of.

For you are not ignorant that he is the Son of God; so much so that you grant the name of adoption, so that you falsely call a creature joined in name with him "son." But as for nature, as much as is in you, you take it away, and you would take away the name too, if it were permitted you. But because that is not permitted, you do not leave nature to the name: lest, being called son, he should be the true Son of God.

The Apostles confess Christ to be truly the Son of God.—You had, in the confession of those for whom, when the wind raged and the sea was troubled, tranquility was restored at his word, an example that you too might confess the true Son of God, and use their voice: Truly he is the Son of God. But a raging spirit drags you into the shipwreck of your life, and the storm, resting upon the motions of your mind as upon a wave-tossed sea, holds dominion.

Even the Centurion who had crucified him confesses.—If this faith of the sailors seems to you uncertain, because it will be thought to be that of the Apostles, yet to me, though it affords less admiration, it nevertheless brings more authority. But take also the faith of the Gentiles in him; for hear, amid the fierce guards of the cross, a soldier of the Roman cohort subdued to faith. For the centurion, having beheld the workings of such great power, speaks: Truly this was the Son of God. This, after the spirit was given up, the veil of the temple rent, the earth shaken, the rocks split, the tombs opened, and the dead rising, testify; and a man of Gentile unbelief confesses it: he recognizes the nature of power in the deeds, he professes the truth of nature in the name.

So great is the reason of truth, and so great the force of faith, that the necessity of the truth overcomes the will, and not even he who had crucified him denied that Christ the Lord of eternal glory was truly the Son of God.

the same unity, while he does what the Father does, while he does all the same things, while there is one and the same power of both in raising the dead, one honor, one injury, while finally he holds all judgment; but the birth is shown, while he does not cease to call himself Son, while he so acts as the Father acts, yet not of himself, so does the same things, yet in like manner, so holds all judgment, yet as received from the Father. This indeed is confirmed both from the understanding of the Jews, who understood that Christ by these words proclaimed himself truly the Son of God and truly God, and from the very responses of Christ, by which he did not report himself as having been misunderstood, but as unjustly not believed, since the works produced faith in his words.

Finally, from those things which Christ, having been asked by Philip to show him the Father, expounded, he himself is shown expressly to teach that he was born of the Father, and of one and the same nature with him. 3. Confuting one heresy, one scarcely escapes the suspicion of another. Sabellius, Arius, Ebion, Photinus.—Nothing is more burdensome to human nature than the consciousness of danger (for those things which are either unknown or sudden do indeed have a wretched security, but they do not have fear of what is to come): because to one not ignorant of what may happen, the very anxiety is a punishment of suffering. I am not now casting off a ship from harbor unaware of shipwreck, nor entering upon a way through passes infested with brigands in ignorance of them, nor crossing the sands of Libya heedless that scorpions and asps and basilisks are everywhere present: nothing is free from my solicitude, nothing from my consciousness of danger.

For I speak as though under the watchtower of all the heretics, with them hanging upon my mouth for the occasion of each single word, and every path of my discourse is either cut off by narrow defiles, or scored with pitfalls, or spread over with snares. Now that it is arduous and difficult I complain the less; for it is not by my own steps, but by the apostolic steps, that I climb. But for me, to be forced either to withdraw from the narrow way, or to fall into a pit, or to be ensnared in nets, is always a danger, always a fear. For when I am about to preach, according to the Law and the Prophets and the Apostles, one God, Sabellius is at hand to me, devouring me entirely, as though I were a desired morsel, with the most savage bite, under the profession of this word.

When, again, I deny, against Sabellius, that there is one God, and confess the true Son of God to be true God, a new heresy awaits, so as to charge me with preaching two gods. When I am about to say that the Son of God was also born of Mary, Ebion, who is Photinus, stands by, ready to take the authority for his own lie from the truth of my profession. Of the rest I am silent, since it is not unknown to all that they are outside the Church. But this evil, though often condemned and cast out, is nevertheless still today an internal evil. Impiously has Galatia nourished many toward the profession of one God. Wickedly has Alexandria brought forth, for almost the whole world, those who deny that there are two gods. Perniciously does Pannonia defend that Jesus Christ was born of Mary. And amid these things the Church is in peril of not holding the truth through truths, while things are thrust upon her toward irreligion by which religion is both confirmed and lost.

For we cannot piously preach one God, if we preach Him only (understand: as solitary): because the Son will not exist in the faith of one who is solitary. But indeed, preaching the Son of God to be God, as He is, we are in peril (in the estimation of men) of not holding the faith of the one God: and it is a matter of the same danger to deny one, as it is to confess Him solitary. And these things indeed the foolish of the world do not perceive, since for them neither, where there is not "alone," does "one" seem to be signified, nor, in "one," is "not alone" understood.

The power of truth. The Church desires greatly to hold all within her bosom. She is known from the very heresies. She is one. She holds a triumph over the heresies as they overcome one another. But this light of her doctrine, as I hope, the Church will bring even to the imprudence of the age, so that, though it does not receive the sacrament of the faith, it may nevertheless understand, against the heretics, that the truth of the sacrament is preached by us. For great is the power of truth, which, though it can be understood through itself, nevertheless shines forth through the very things that oppose it: so that, remaining immovable in its own nature, it acquires the firmness of its own nature daily while it is being assailed. For this is proper to the Church, that she conquers when she is injured, is understood when she is accused, and prevails when she is forsaken.

She would indeed wish that all remain with her and within her, nor to cast off or lose any from her most tranquil bosom, while they become unworthy of the dwelling of so great a mother: but as heretics depart from her, or are cast out, as much as she loses of the occasion of bestowing salvation from herself, so much does she gain toward the faith that seeks blessedness concerning herself. For this is most readily known from the very pursuits of the heretics themselves.

For since the Church, instituted by the Lord and confirmed by the Apostles, is one for all, from which the raging error of diverse impieties has cut itself off; nor can it be denied that, from the fault of a bad understanding, a dissension of faith has arisen, since what is read is fitted rather to the sense than the sense made to obey the reading: yet while the several parties are opposed to one another, she is to be understood not only through her own but through the doctrines of those who oppose her; so that, while all are against her alone, she nevertheless refutes the most impious error of them all through the very fact that she alone is one. All heretics therefore come against the Church: but while all heretics conquer one another, they gain nothing for themselves.

For their victory is the Church's triumph over all, since one heresy fights against another for this reason, that in the other heresy the faith of the Church condemns a matter of danger (for there is nothing that is common to heretics): and amid these things, while they oppose one another, they affirm our faith.

The error of Sabellius and its confutation.—Sabellius preaches one God with the nativity of the Son taken away, while he does not doubt that the Power of nature, which operated in man, is God. For, being ignorant of the sacrament of the Son, through admiration of the deeds performed he lost the faith of the true generation: and when he hears, "He who has seen me has seen the Father also", he impiously seized upon a union of undiscriminated and not-dissimilar nature in the Father and the Son, not understanding that a natural unity is shown under the signification of the nativity: since, through the fact that the Father is seen in the Son, there is a confirmation of divinity, not an abolition of nativity. The knowledge, then, of the one in the other is because one does not differ from the other in nature: and in that in which they do not differ, there is an undivided contemplation concerning the property of nature.

Nor indeed can it be doubted that He who remained in the form of God showed from Himself the appearance of the form of God. There also comes, to the foolish frenzy of this depraved opinion, this saying of the Lord: "I and the Father are one". For the unity of a not-dissimilar nature has irreligiously advanced to the error of union: and the power of the saying, understood alone, has not held to the reasoning. For "I and the Father are one" does not signify a solitary being. For the conjunction which signifies "and the Father" does not admit the understanding of "one" alone. And that word "we are" does not permit a singular; but this, that "we are one," does not take away nativity, but does not discriminate nature in kind; since neither is "one" a matter of diversity, nor is "we are" a matter of oneness.

That Sabellius and Arius, fighting one another, work for the cause of the Church.—Join to this frenzy of Sabellius the frenzy of the present heretics (the Arians), so that they may be at hand against Sabellius. They will assert that they have read, "The Father is greater than I": and understanding nothing either of the sacrament of the nativity, or of the mystery of the emptying of God and the assumption of flesh, they will make a diminution of nature by the profession of "greater." For they will contend, against Sabellius, that the Son so far is less than the Father as also to demand back the honor once his, and to fear death: and to have died. But he (Sabellius), on the other hand, defends the nature of God in the deeds: and while this new heresy will not now deny one God, lest it believe the Son to be God, Sabellius, nevertheless, will retain in his profession one God, lest the Son exist at all.

This one (Arius) will urge the Son as operating; this one (Sabellius) will contend that God is in the works. This one will say "one"; that one will deny one God. Sabellius will defend himself thus, saying: The works which have been done, apart from the fact that the nature of God does not perform them: the remission of sins, the healing of infirmities, the walking of the lame, the sight of the blind, the life of the dead, are from God alone. No other nature than that which is conscious of itself would say, "I and the Father are one". Why do you drag me into another substance? Why do you draw me anxiously toward another God? The deeds which are proper to God, the one God has performed.

But they, on the other hand, preaching the Son unlike God the Father, will cry out against these things no less with a viper's mouth: You do not know the sacrament of your salvation; the Son is to be believed, through whom the ages were made, through whom man was formed, who gave the law through angels, who was born of Mary, who was sent by the Father, who was crucified, died and was buried, who, rising from the dead, is at the right hand of God, who is judge of the living and the dead. Into Him one must be reborn, Him one must confess, His kingdom must be merited. Each enemy of the Church works for the cause of the Church: while Sabellius preaches God from nature in the works, but these confess the Son of God from the sacrament of faith.

The discord of Photinus with Arius and Sabellius accomplishes the same thing. The faith of the Church against the aforesaid heretics.—Now then, by what victory of our faith does Ebion, who is Photinus, either conquer or is conquered: while he charges Sabellius, why he denies that man is the Son of God; while he is confuted by the Ariomaniacs, why he does not know the Son of God in the man. Against Sabellius he defends for himself the Gospels from the Son of Mary: Arius does not leave him the Gospels through the Son of Mary alone. Against this one (Sabellius), who denies the Son, man is claimed by him (Photinus) for the Son. From this one, who does not know the Son before the ages, the Son of God is denied only from the man.

Let them conquer, as they wish, since by conquering one another they are conquered: while both these (that is, the Arians), who now exist, are confuted concerning the nature of God, and Sabellius is refuted concerning the sacrament of the Son, and Photinus is convicted of either not knowing or denying that the Son of God was born before the ages. But amid these things the faith of the Church, founded upon the evangelical and apostolic doctrines, holds, against Sabellius, the profession of the Son; against Arius, the nature of God; against Photinus, the Creator of the ages: and this is the more true, because these things are not mutually denied by these heretics themselves. For Sabellius preaches the nature of God in the works, but does not know the Son as operating. But these call Him Son, but do not confess the truth in the nature of God. Photinus, however, claims the man, but in the man claimed for himself he is ignorant of the nativity of God before the ages.

Thus, while each defends or condemns something, these very things, as they are, religiously show the truth of our faith both to him who defends and to him who condemns.

The reason for the foregoing. The argument of what is to be said.—These things, then, had to be demonstrated by me in a few words, not out of a zeal for abundance, but by reason of caution: first, that it might be known that all the things of the heretics are uncertain and erratic, since they disagree with one another for our benefit; then, next, lest anyone, seeing me resisting the blasphemous professions of those who now exist (that is, the Arians), and preaching God the Father and God the Son of God, and then professing that the Father and the Son are of one name and nature, of a not-dissimilar kind of divinity, should hold me either in the error of two gods, or, on the contrary, in the error of a unique and solitary God; since neither would union be found in the God the Father and God the Son who are preached, nor would a diversity of gods agree with the demonstration of an undiscriminated nature.

Now, since in the previous book, according to the Gospels, an answer was given to those who deny that the Son of God subsists from God by the truth of nativity, it must now be demonstrated that He who is truly the Son of God by nature is also truly God by nature: yet in such a way that our faith perish neither into a singular God, nor into another God; since it will neither preach one God as though He were alone, nor confess Him, as though He were not one, to be not alone.

By what ways we know Christ to be God. The name of God simply given to Him is an indication of His nature.—We know, then, our Lord Jesus Christ to be God by these ways: by name, by nativity, by nature, by power, by profession. And concerning the name I think there is no ambiguity. For we read: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God". What calumny is there, why He should not be what He is called? Or is not a name a signification of nature? And since every contradiction has a cause, I now ask here the cause for denying it to be God. For the appellation is simple, and lacks the offense of an extraneous addition. For the Word, which was made flesh, is nothing other than God. Here there is no suspicion left of an appellation assigned or assumed, such that to Him who is God the name should not be from nature.

The name of God added to Moses. The other gods are so from the will of the one who calls them.—Look to the other appellations, either those bestowed by office or those assumed. To Moses it was said, I have given thee as a god to Pharaoh. But surely the reason for the name is added, when it is said, to Pharaoh? Or did it bring upon him the nature of God, rather than the terror of one to be feared, since the magicians' dragons were soon devoured by Moses' rod remaining a dragon, since he drove away the dog-fly which he had sent, since he turned away the hail by the power by which he had called it forth, since he repelled the locusts by that same power by which he had brought them, since in his works the magicians confessed it to be the finger of God? Thus Moses was given as a god to Pharaoh, in that he was feared, entreated, that he punished, that he healed.

And it is one thing for a god to be given, another for one to be God. For a god was given as regards Pharaoh: but he does not have both the nature and the name, so as to be God. I recall also another naming, where it is said, I have said, ye are gods, but in that there is the meaning of a name granted. And where it is reported, I have said, it is rather the speech of the one speaking than the name of the thing: because the name of a thing brings the understanding of the thing, but the will of an appellation is from another source. And where the author of the naming shows himself, there the naming is through the speech of the author, not a natural name by kind.

Why the Son is called Word, Wisdom and Power. The Son is, as it is said, God.—But here the Word is God: the thing subsists in the Word, the thing of the Word is declared in the name. For the appellation of Word in the Son of God is from the mystery of his birth, just as the name of Wisdom and Power is: which, though they have come to be in God the Son with the substance of true birth, are nevertheless not lacking to God as his own properties, although they are born from him into God. For, as has often been said by us, we proclaim not division in the Son, but the mystery of birth. Nor was the separation imperfect, but the offspring perfect: because birth has no diminution of begetting, since it holds the advancement of being born. And therefore names have been fitted to the only-begotten God of those things which, while they perfect him subsisting from birth, are nevertheless present in the Father from the power of his unchangeable nature.

For the only-begotten God is Word, but the unborn Father is never altogether without the Word: not that the uttering of a voice is the nature of the Son; but God from God, subsisting with the truth of birth, is signified in the Word, so that he might be taught to be proper to the Father and, through the sameness of nature, inseparable. As Christ is the Wisdom and Power of God, not as that is usually understood, an effective inward movement of power or feeling, but holding by nature, through birth, the truth of substance, he is signified by these names of inward things. For that which subsists by being born cannot be seen to be the very thing which is always inward to anyone. But the only-begotten Son, born from the eternal God the Father into subsisting God, so that he could not be understood to be foreign to the nature of the paternal Godhead, has been shown subsisting through these names of properties, which he did not lack from the moment he subsisted.

God therefore who is, is nothing other than God. For when I hear, And the Word was God, I do not hear only that the Word is said to be God, but I understand it demonstrated that he is that which God is: because, just as above, in Moses as god and in those named gods, the name was added by appellation; here, however, the thing signified is of substance, when it is said, was God. For "to be" is not an accidental name, but a subsisting truth, and an abiding cause, and the natural property of a kind.

Thomas confesses him God, the faith of the one God being unharmed. Let him be the Son.

Thomas confesses him God by nature. Nor does Christ refuse this name.—And let us see whether the confession of the apostle Thomas follows upon this preaching of the Evangelist, when he says, My Lord and my God. God, therefore, is his own whom he confesses to be God. And surely he was not ignorant of what had been said by the Lord: Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one: and how has the principal apostolic faith become forgetful of the commandment, so as to confess Christ as God, when it was necessary to live in the confession of the one God?

But the Apostle, understanding the faith of the whole mystery through the power of the resurrection, having often heard: I and the Father are one; and: All things that are the Father's are mine; and: I am in the Father, and the Father in me, now without peril to the faith confessed the name of nature: because religion would not fall away from the profession of the one God the Father by confessing the Son of God to be God, since in the Son of God nothing but the truth of the paternal nature was believed; nor would the faith of the one nature be endangered by an impious confession of another God, because the perfect birth of God would not have brought about the nature of another God. Thomas, therefore, understanding the truth of the evangelical mystery, confessed that his Lord and his God existed. This is not the name of honor, but the confession of nature: for by the very deeds and powers he believed him to be God.

And the Lord taught that the religion of this profession was not one of honor, but of faith, saying, Because thou hast seen, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed. For Thomas, seeing, believed. But what, you ask, did he believe? And what else did he believe than what he professed: My Lord and my God? For to have risen by himself from the dead into life could not have been except by the nature of God: and the faith of the religion believed professed this, that he is God. Shall the name of God then not be judged a matter of nature, when the faith of the profession of the name has followed upon the nature believed?

For surely the dutiful Son, who did not do his own will but that of him who sent him, and who sought not his own honor but that of him from whom he had come, would have refused the honor of this name in himself, lest what he himself had preached—one God—should be undone. But truly, both confirming the mystery of apostolic faith, and acknowledging in himself the name of the paternal nature, he taught that they are blessed who, although they had not seen him rising from the dead, nevertheless believed him to be God through the understanding of the resurrection.

The Father and the Son are only one God.—The name of nature, therefore, does not abandon the profession of our faith. For the name, which signifies each thing, also shows the thing to be of the same kind: and now there are not two things, but a thing of the same kind. For the Son of God is God; this indeed is signified by the name. One name does not number two gods; because the name God is one, of one and undivided nature. For since both the Father is God and the Son is God, and the proper name of the divine nature is in both, both are one: because although the Son subsists from the birth of nature, he yet preserves unity in name: nor does the birth of the Son compel the faith of believers to the profession of two gods, which professes the Father and Son to be, as of one nature, so also of one name. To the Son of God, therefore, belongs a name from his birth.

For this is for us the second step toward demonstration, that he is God from birth. Although there still remains for me on the propriety of the name the authority of the Apostle; but meanwhile it is pleasing to treat the evangelical discourse.

The Son, as born of God, has the nature of God. To be born and to have begun are not the same.—And first I ask, what novelty of nature could the birth of the Son introduce, such that he should not be God? Human understanding excludes this notion, that anything by being born should be diverse from the nature of its origin: unless perhaps something conceived from a diversity of natures should come into life as something new in itself (and so be of both kinds, being neither), which is customary among cattle and beasts. But that very novelty is not present, except from connate properties under a diversity of nature: and the birth did not introduce their diversity, but received it, while it holds what is one to it from both.

And since these things are so in bodily causes and passions, what madness, I ask, is it to refer the birth of the only-begotten God to a degenerate nature from God: since birth is nothing but from the property of nature; and it will no longer be birth, if the property of nature be not in the birth? Hence comes all that heat and madness, that in the Son of God there should not be birth, but creation; that he should not hold, subsisting, the origin of his own nature, but should take, from things not existing, a nature alien to God: because, according to what he says: That which is born of flesh, is flesh; and that which is born of spirit, is spirit, since God is spirit, it is not doubtful that nothing diverse and alien from that from which he was born is present in the one born.

The birth of God, therefore, perfects God, so that God is understood not to have begun to be, but to have been born: because to have begun to be can be not the same thing as to be born, since everything that has begun either comes into existence out of nothing into something, or advances and ceases from one thing into another; as gold from earth, as liquids from solids, as hot things from cold, as scarlet from white, as living creatures from waters, as living things from lifeless things: but the Son of God neither began to be God out of nothing, but was born; nor was he anything else before he was God. And thus he who was born into God neither began to be what God is, nor advanced. Birth, therefore, holds the nature from which he subsisted, and the Son of God subsists as nothing other than that which God is.

He is truly born of God, to whom God is Father, and to whom there is equality with God. Equality belongs neither to one alone nor to things that are diverse.—Or if anyone doubts this, let him learn the understanding of nature from the Jews, or rather let him know from the Gospel the truth of the birth, in which it is written, For this cause therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only broke the sabbath, but said also that God was his own father, making himself equal with God. Here it is not, as is usual elsewhere, that the speech of the Jews is reported as spoken by them: rather this is the exposition of the Evangelist, showing the cause why the Jews wished to kill the Lord. Let the vicious understanding of blaspheming impiety cease its excuse, then; since through the authority of the Evangelist, under the signification of birth, the property of nature has been shown: He called God his own Father, making himself equal with God.

Is it not natural birth, where through the name of one's own father, the equality of nature is demonstrated? For it is not doubted that equality differs in nothing. Who further will doubt that an undivided nature follows upon birth? For hence alone is that equality which can truly be; because only birth can furnish equality of nature. But equality will never be believed to exist where there is union: nor yet will it be found where there is difference. Thus the equality of likeness has neither solitariness nor diversity: because all equality is neither diverse nor alone.

The Son's nativity and equality with the Father from His own words. Various proofs of the divinity of Christ are treated together.—Although, then, the judgments of this understanding of ours agree with the common opinion of human sense, so that nativity has equality of nature, and where there is equality, nothing alien to it can exist, nor can it be solitary; nevertheless the faith of this our discourse must also be confirmed from the Lord's own words, lest the rashness of contradiction, under the pretext of a different understanding in names, should dare to oppose itself to the professions of the divine testimony concerning Himself. For the Lord answered: The Son cannot do anything of Himself, but what He seeth the Father doing: for whatsoever things He doeth, these also the Son doeth in like manner. For the Father loveth the Son, and sheweth Him all things which Himself doeth: and greater works than these will He shew Him, that ye may marvel.

For as the Father raiseth the dead and giveth life, so also the Son giveth life to whom He will. For neither doth the Father judge any man, but hath given all judgment to the Son, that all men may honor the Son even as they honor the Father. He that honoreth not the Son, honoreth not the Father who sent Him. The order of our undertaking indeed required that each several kind of each several cause be treated separately; so that, since we had learned that our Lord Jesus Christ is God, the Son of God, by name, by nativity, by nature, by power, by profession, our demonstration should proceed through each several step of the proposed arrangement: but the nature of nativity does not allow this, since it alone comprises in itself name, and nature, and power, and profession. For without these there will be no nativity; since by being born it contains all these in itself.

Treating this, therefore, we have fallen into the necessity of not being permitted to defer what has been mentioned above to the order proper to its own treatment.

Christ, accused by the Jews, sets forth both His nature and His nativity. Christ's power derived from knowledge. What this knowledge is.—For the Lord, answering the Jews, because they wished the more to kill Him for this, that saying God was His Father, He had made Himself equal to God, set forth the whole mystery of our faith, while contradicting their impious agitation. For He had said before, when, after the paralytic was healed, He was even held liable to the judgment of death as guilty of violating the Sabbath: My Father worketh even until now, and I work. And hence all their envy was kindled, because He had made Himself equal to God by the assumption of the paternal name. Wishing therefore both to confirm His nativity and to profess the power of His nature, He said: The Son cannot do anything of Himself, but what He seeth the Father doing.

The beginning of the response was fitted to the impious agitation of the Jews, by which they were stirred up even to the will of inflicting death. For to the charge of guilt laid upon Him for violating the Sabbath He had said, My Father worketh even until now, and I work: so that it might be understood that He had assumed this by the authority of example; signifying nevertheless that what He Himself did was to be understood as the Father's work, because He Himself operated in Himself while the Father operated. And again, against that envy by which He had made Himself equal to God through the paternal name, He added this: Amen, amen, I say unto you, the Son cannot do anything of Himself, but what He seeth the Father doing. Lest, therefore, that equalization through the name and nature of Son should take away the faith of the nativity, He said that the Son could do nothing of Himself, except what He had seen the Father doing.

And that the saving order of our confession in the Father and the Son might remain, He showed the nature of the nativity, which does not derive its power of effecting by increments of strength granted for each individual work, but presumes it from knowledge: and presumes it not from some example of bodily work, as though the Father did something first toward that which the Son would afterward do; but since the nature of God had subsisted in the nature of God, that is, since the Son had been born of the Father; through the consciousness in Himself of the Father's power and nature, He testified that the Son could do nothing of Himself, except what He had seen the Father doing: and although the only-begotten God worked by the operations of the paternal power, He presumed for Himself to do only so much as was in His own consciousness, namely, that the nature of God the Father, inseparable from Himself, which He possessed through lawful nativity, was capable of this.

For God does not see by bodily means, but all His seeing consists in the power of His nature.

While he does all the same things, He is not another; while He does so in like manner, He is another.—Finally He added: For whatsoever things the Father doeth, these also the Son doeth in like manner. He added the word "likewise" to signify the nativity: but "all" and "the same" He spoke to show the truth of the nature. For in things which are "whatsoever" and "the same," there can be neither diversity nor remainder. And thus He is the same in nature, to whom it belongs to be able to do all the same things by nature. But where all things are done in like manner through the Son, the likeness of the works excludes the solitariness of the one operating: so that all things which the Father does, the Son also does all the same things in like manner.

This is the understanding of true nativity, and of our faith, which, from the unity of the divine nature, confesses in the Father and the Son the truth of one and undivided divinity—the most absolute mystery, that by doing the same things the Son does so in like manner, and by doing so in like manner, the very things which He does are the same: because under this one signification the things done in like manner attest the nativity, and the things done the same attest the nature.

The demonstration of works brings in nativity, not ignorance. It is the instruction of our faith. What "to will" means.—The order of the Lord's response, therefore, maintains the whole order of the Church's faith, so that it neither discerns the nature apart, nor fails to signify the nativity. For this follows: For the Father loveth the Son, and sheweth Him all things which He Himself doeth; and greater works than these will He shew Him, that ye may marvel. For as the Father raiseth the dead and giveth life, so also the Son giveth life to whom He will. Does the demonstration of works bring anything else to us here than the faith of the nativity, that we should believe the subsisting Son to be from the subsisting God the Father? Unless perhaps the only-begotten God is to be believed, through ignorance, to have needed the teaching of a demonstration; but the rashness of this impious estimation is not admitted. For he needs not to be taught who knows whatever he would need to be taught.

For after He said: The Father loveth the Son, and sheweth Him all things which He Himself doeth: in order to show that this whole demonstration of the Father is the teaching of our faith, namely, that both the Father and the Son should be for us an object of confession, and lest any ignorance should here be understood in the Son, to whom the Father shows all the works which He Himself does; He immediately added: And greater works than these will He shew Him, that ye may marvel. The demonstration, therefore, of the future work is not unknown to the Son, to whom this must be shown, that after the example of the Father's nature He may give life to the dead. For He says that the Father will show the Son those things which men shall marvel at: and what these same things are, He soon taught: For as the Father raiseth the dead and giveth life, so also the Son giveth life to whom He will.

The power is made equal through the unity of a nature not unlike. And the demonstration of works is not the instruction of ignorance, but of our faith: which brought in, not knowledge of unknown things to the Son, but confession of the nativity for us, confirming it by the fact that all things which He was able to do had been shown to Him. For the heavenly discourse was not lacking in circumspection, lest perchance the signification of a different nature might creep in under the occasion of an ambiguous saying. For He says rather that the works of the Father were shown to Him, than that a nature of power was added to their operation: so that the demonstration itself might be taught to belong to the nativity, to which, through the Father's love, there was connatural knowledge of the paternal works which He willed to be effected through Him.

Furthermore, lest through the profession of demonstration a diversity of nature ignorant in Him should be believed; He does not fail to know those very things which He professes are to be demonstrated. So far is He from being about to act by the authority of an example only, that He gives life to whom He wills. For to will is the freedom of nature, which subsists, together with the will of choice, unto the blessedness of perfect power.

All judgment given proves both nature and nativity. Judgment given, that there be equality of honor.—And lest, after this, the fact that He gives life to whom He wills should seem not to have in itself the nature of nativity, but rather to subsist by the right of an unborn power; He immediately added: For neither doth the Father judge any man, but hath given all judgment to the Son. And in the fact that all judgment is given, both nature and nativity are demonstrated: because nature alone, being undivided, can have all things, and nativity can have nothing unless it is given. Now all judgment is given; because He gives life to whom He wills. Nor can judgment seem to be taken away from the Father, since He Himself does not judge: because the judgment of the Son is from the judgment of the Father; for all judgment has been given by Him. But the reason for the judgment given is not left unspoken.

For there follows: But hath given all judgment to the Son, that all men may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. He that honoreth not the Son, honoreth not the Father who sent Him. What, I ask, is left of suspicion, or what remains as an occasion for impiety? The Father judges no man, but has given all judgment to the Son. And the reason for the judgment given is this, that the Son might be of equal honor with the Father, and that whoever is dishonoring to the Son is dishonoring also to the Father. And how, after this, can the nature of the nativity be understood to differ, which not only operation, power, honor, but even the insult of honor denied, makes equal? Nothing else, therefore, than the mystery of the nativity does the discourse of the divine response now show. Nor could or should the Son be distinguished from the Father in any other way than that He should be shown both to have been born, and yet not to differ.

The whole faith concerning the Son is drawn out from the aforesaid words of Christ.—The Father, therefore, works even until now, and the Son works. You have the names of nature, since both the Father works and the Son. Understand also the nature of God, through which God works, as working. And lest perchance you should think two operations of dissimilar natures are to be understood, remember that it was said concerning the blind man: But that the works of God might be made manifest in him: I must work the works of him who sent me. In this, then, that the Son works, it is the Father's work: and the Son's work is God's work. And concerning works the discourse still continues further on.

Meanwhile the answer here aimed at nothing else than to refer every work to both; but the nature of both would not differ in operating, since in that which the Father works even until now, the Son also works: lest he who is Lord of the sabbath (for the Son of man is Lord of the sabbath) should be believed to work impiously on the sabbath, whose work, through the nature of his birth, was the authority of the Father's work in himself. Nature therefore is not confounded nor abolished, lest he not be Son: nor yet again is nature taken away, lest he not be God. Nor are they distinguished by diversity, lest they not be one: nor can the fact that they are one bring it about that either should not be. And first know the Son, when it is said: The Son cannot do anything of himself, except what he sees the Father doing. You have the birth of the Son, which can do nothing of itself unless it sees.

But in the fact that of itself it can do nothing, it removes the error of unbegottenness; for birth cannot have power of itself: but that which it sees, signifies the recognition of a nature conscious within itself. And in this now recognize the true nature of God: For whatsoever things he does, these also the Son does likewise. After the power of nature, understand through this the unity of a nature not dissimilar: That all may honor the Son, as they honor the Father who sent him. And lest the unity of nature confine you to the union of a solitary being, learn herein the mystery of the faith: He who honors not the Son, honors not the Father who sent him. All the devices of heretical madness are shut out.

He is Son, because of himself he can do nothing: he is God, because whatsoever the Father does, he too does the same: they are one, because he is made equal in honor, and does the same things, not other things: he is not the Father himself, because he was sent. Birth alone, therefore, has this mystery, that it embraces in itself both name, and nature, and power, and profession: because all birth cannot but be in that nature from which it is born. It does not bring in the substance of a foreign kind: because from one thing nothing alien subsists. But that which is not alien to itself is one in kind of nature: and whatever is one through birth has no solitariness; because solitariness pertains to what is singular, whereas the unity of birth pertains to both.

The Arians' faith is contrary to their own knowledge. Christ's power, birth from God, divine nature and existence in the Father; the hand.—And upon this, let the testimony of the divine sentence concerning himself assist us. For he says: Those who are of my sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, and I give them eternal life, and they shall not perish forever, nor shall anyone snatch them out of my hand. What my Father has given me is greater than all, no one is able to snatch it out of my Father's hand. I and the Father are one. Who, I ask, is so blunted by dullness of mind that these things, spoken so absolutely, do not enter our understanding? Or whom does the swelling of an insolent mind so mock in human weakness, that having gained the knowledge of God from these words, they should think God is not to be understood in those very things by which he is known?

For either other Gospels must be produced which teach otherwise; or, if these Gospels alone have taught concerning God, why do we not believe as we are taught? But if knowledge is derived only from these words, why should not faith come from the same source as knowledge? But when faith is discovered to be contrary to knowledge, it is then no longer the faith of knowledge, but of crime, taking to itself an irreligious faith against the religion of a confessed knowledge.

The Only-begotten God, therefore, conscious in himself of his own nature, signifies, for the confession of our faith, the ineffable mystery of his own birth with as much fullness of words as is possible: so that he may be understood both to be born, and to be believed to be in the nature of God, and to be one with the Father; and though professing himself one with the Father, yet not in such a way that, being understood as alone and as the Father himself, he should lose being what the Son is. For he first attests the power of nature, when he says of his sheep: Nor shall anyone snatch them out of my hand. This is the voice of one conscious of power, confessing, through the fact that no one snatches the sheep from his hand, the freedom of an undisturbed power. But that, though it is lawful within the nature of God, birth from God should nevertheless be understood as belonging to nature, he added: What my Father has given me is greater than all.

He does not conceal that he is born of the Father: for what he received from the Father is greater than all. And he who received is, in that which he received, so by birth, not afterward; and yet he is from another, in that he received. But lest he who received from another should be understood as existing rather in some other nature, and not in that of him from whom he received; he says: No one is able to snatch it out of my Father's hand. No one snatches from his hand: because he received from the Father what is greater than all. What does so diverse a profession mean, that again no one should snatch out of his Father's hand? It is the Son's hand which received from the Father; it is the Father's hand which gave to the Son: and how is it that what is not snatched from the Son's hand is not snatched from the Father's hand? If you ask how, understand: I and the Father are one.

The Son's hand is the Father's hand. For nature does not degenerate through birth, so as not to be the same: nor again, because it is the same, does it offend the understanding of birth, since birth admits nothing alien into itself. But that you might know the power of the same nature through a bodily signification, the Son's hand is mentioned as the Father's hand; because the nature and power of the Father would be in the Son. Finally, that through the mystery of birth you might recognize the truth of an undifferentiated nature, it is said: I and the Father are one: so that what they are as one might be believed neither diverse nor solitary, no other nature existing in either through the property of birth and generation.

The Arians are more unjust toward Christ than the Jews.—There remains, as far as it can be understood, the will of insane minds, although the effect of the will ceases: and the malicious spirit does not abandon its zeal for ill-will, though the occasion for evil deeds be absent. For now the fury of the heretics, since the Lord already sits in the heavens, because they cannot, after the example of the Jews, drive him to the cross, yet with equal unbelief deny this—that he is: and since they cannot deny the things that were said, yet, not obeying what was said, they exercise the hatred of impiety, they hurl the stones of words, and if they could, they would drag him down from his throne to the cross. And concerning the Jews indeed, moved at the novelty of this saying, it is thus written: The Jews therefore took up stones to stone him. He answered them: Many good works have I shown you from the Father; for which of these works do you stone me?

The Jews answered him: For a good work we do not stone you, but for blasphemy; and because you, being a man, make yourself God. But you, heretic, recognize what you are doing and professing; and understand that you are a partaker with those whose example of unbelief you reproduce in yourself. For at the saying, I and the Father are one, the Jews lifted up stones, and their impious grief, impatient of the mystery of saving faith, broke out even to the attempt of inflicting death. What less do you accomplish, who, having no stones to lift, accomplish it by denial? The will does not differ: but the heavenly throne renders your will ineffectual. How much more irreligious are you than the Jew? He lifts stones against the body, you against the Spirit; he against a man, as he supposed, you against God; he against one sojourning on earth, you against one seated on the throne of power; he against one unknown, you against one confessed; he against one about to die, you against the judge of the ages.

He says: Since you are a man; you say: Since you are a creature; yet both of you say, you make yourself God; this is the common reproach of your impious mouth against him. For you deny God from the generation of God, you deny the Son from the truth of birth, you deny that this—I and the Father are one—is the confession of one and like nature in both. You subject God to a new and external and alien substance: so that either God is of another kind, or he is not God at all, because he does not subsist by birth from God.

Christ's answer to the Jews, fitting also for the Arians. The reason and purpose of the answer.—But since you are moved at the mystery of this saying: I and the Father are one; so that, whereas the Jew says: Since you are a man, you make yourself God, you say with equal impiety: Since you are a creature, you make yourself God (for you say: you are not Son by birth, you are not God in truth; you are a creature more excellent than all others: but you were not born into God, because I do not admit that a birth of nature comes from an incorporeal God; not only are you and the Father not one, but you are not even Son, nor like, nor God). The Lord indeed answered the Jews, but this whole answer is even more fitted to your impiety: Is it not written in the law, I said, you are gods?

If then he called them gods, to whom the word of God came, and the Scripture cannot be broken; do you say of him whom the Father sanctified and sent into this world, that I have blasphemed, because I said, I am the Son of God? If I do not do the works of my Father, do not believe me: but if I do, and you will not believe me, believe the works; that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in him. The cause objected against him—the blasphemy—brought about the cause of his answer. For this was reckoned as a crime, that being a man he should make himself God. But he was accused of making himself God through having said: I and the Father are one.

Wishing therefore to demonstrate that this—that he and the Father are one—was claimed from the nature of birth, he first refutes the absurdity of the ridiculous reproach, as to why he should be called into guilt for this, that being a man he made himself God. For since the law decreed the appellation of this name to holy men, and the indissoluble word of God confirmed this profession of an imparted name; how could this one, whom the Father had sanctified, and whom he had sent into this world, be a blasphemer for confessing himself the Son of God; since the indissoluble word of God had established that men be surnamed gods through the law? It is, then, no longer a crime, that being a man he makes himself God; since the law has called those who are men, gods.

And if from other men the usurpation of this name is not irreligious; from that man whom the Father sanctified (for this whole answer concerns the man, since the Son of God is also the son of man), it does not seem shameless that he should have said he was the Son of God; since he surpasses the others, who can not irreligiously surname themselves gods, in that he is sanctified unto sonship: blessed Paul making known to us the knowledge of this sanctification, when he says: Which he promised before through his prophets in the holy Scriptures concerning his Son, who was made of the seed of David—so it reads at. And shortly after, "is reckoned" instead of "was reckoned." according to the flesh, who was foreordained the Son of God in power, according to the spirit of sanctification.

The charge of blasphemy ceases, then, that being a man he makes himself God; since the word of God has conferred this name on many, and, sanctified and sent by the Father, he professed himself to be nothing other than the Son of God.

I and the Father are one, shows the nature of the birth.—There is left, I think, no room for doubt that it was said of the nature of the birth: I and the Father are one. For when the Jews had charged him with making himself God through this saying, since he was a man: his response confirms that he showed himself to be the Son of God through this, that I and the Father are one, first by name, then by nature, lastly by birth. For "I" and "the Father" are names of persons; but "one" is a profession of nature, because in that which each is, they do not differ; while "we are" does not admit of union. And where that "we are one" is not union, it is birth that makes them to be one.

For this whole matter arises from this, that being sanctified by the Father he professes himself to be the Son of God, and the profession of the Son of God is confirmed by this, that I and the Father are one: because birth can bring no other nature than that from which it subsists.

The nature of God in the Son is proved from his deeds. What is outside him cannot be made equal to God.—Now the word of the only-begotten God has completed the whole mystery of our faith. For when the response had been given as to why he made himself God, though he was a man; so that the saying, I and the Father are one, might take on the order of an absolute and perfect understanding, he consequently added this: You say that I have blasphemed, because I said, I am the Son of God. If I do not do the works of my Father, do not believe me; but if I do, and you are not willing to believe me, believe the works; that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in him. It is the mark of unbridled boldness when salvation is already despaired of through conscience, and it is beyond shame when all impiety is openly professed.

For now there is one who is not even ashamed of folly, where he has lost religion: for to contradict these things is madness rather than ignorance. The Lord had said, I and the Father are one: this is the mystery of the birth, that the Father and the Son are in unity of nature. And because the assumption of nature would be called into accusation, the reason for the assumption is taught from the cause. For he says: If I do not do the works of the Father, do not believe me. If he does not do the works of the Father, he is not to be believed when he professes himself to be the Son of God. Therefore the birth has no new and external nature; because he is to be believed to be the Son by this, that he accomplishes the works of the Father.

What place here finds adoption, what place the indulgence of a name, so that he should not be Son by nature of God; when the Son of God is to be believed from the works of the paternal nature? A creature is not made equal to God nor similar to him, nor is the power of an alien nature compared to him: only the birth of the Son is believed, not impiously, to be equal to him through likeness. For whatever is outside him would be made equal to him, to the dishonor of his honored virtue. For if anything which is not from him could be found similar to him and of the same virtue, he would have lost the privilege of being God under the fellowship of an equal: and then there would no longer be one God, from whom another god would not differ.

But the equality of what is proper to him carries no dishonor: because that which is like him is his own; and that which is compared to him in likeness is from him; nor is that which can do what is his own outside of him: and it is an advancement of dignity to have begotten power, not to have alienated nature. The Son does the works of the Father; and by this he requires to be believed the Son of God. It is not arrogant presumption which asks to be proved only from the things it does. But he testifies that he does not do his own things, but those which are the Father's; lest through the magnificence of the deeds the nature of the birth be taken away.

And because under the mystery of the assumed body, and of the man born of Mary, the Son of God was not understood, the faith in the name is made known from the deeds, when he says: But if I do, and you are not willing to believe me, believe the works. He does not wish to be believed first to be the Son of God, except from the works of the Father which he himself performs. But if he does the works, and through the humility of the body is judged unworthy of the faith of the profession, he asks for the faith of the works. For why should the mystery of the man born impede the understanding of the divine birth; since the divine birth carries out all its work under the ministry of the assumed man?

If therefore the man is not believed, through the works, to be the Son of God; let it be believed by the works that they are the works of the Son of God, because it cannot be denied that they are of God. For the Son of God has in himself by birth everything that is of God: and therefore the work of the Son is the work of the Father, because the birth is not outside that nature from which it remains, and has in itself that nature from which it subsists.

The Son in the Father, and vice versa. Whatever is in God is one. The Son is life from life, and therefore not from nothing.—Doing therefore the works of the Father, and demanding that if he were not believed, at least the works themselves should be believed, he had to demonstrate what was to be believed from the works, namely what follows: But if I do, and you are not willing to believe me, believe the works; that you may know, and understand, that the Father is in me, and I in him. This is that saying, I am the Son of God; this is that saying, I and the Father are one. This is the nature of the birth: this is the mystery of saving faith, not to divide what is one, nor to take away the nature from the birth, and to confess the truth of the living God from the living God.

For God, who is life, does not subsist from composite and inanimate things: nor is he, who is virtue, contained from weak things: nor is he, who is light, put together from dark things: nor is he, who is spirit, formable from unlike parts. The whole in that which he is, is one: so that what is spirit is also light and virtue and life; and what is life is also light and virtue and spirit. For he who says, I am, and I am not changed (Malachi iii, 6): is not changed from parts, nor made diverse in kind. For these things, which have been signified above, are not in him from parts; but this whole in him is one and perfect, God living is all things. Therefore the living God is also the eternal power of a living nature: and that which is born from him with the mystery of his own knowledge could not have been born other than living.

For when he says, As the living Father sent me, and I live through the Father; he taught that life is in him through the living Father. Then when he says, For as the Father has life in himself, so has he given to the Son also to have life in himself; he testified that all his living things are from the living One. But that which is born living from the living, has the advancement of birth without novelty of nature. For it is not new, that which is begotten from the living into the living; because life was not sought for birth from nothing, and life, which takes its birth from life, must, through the unity of nature, and the mystery of a perfect and ineffable birth, both live in the living One and have in itself living life.

Who is in the Father. A comparison with human birth. The difference between the two births.—We remember that we admonished at the beginning of our discourse (Book, n. 19; book iv, n. 2; and book vi, n. 9) that human comparisons do not suffice for divine examples; yet for part of our understanding the sense is instructed by bodily forms. I consult the consciousness of human birth, whether the origin of those being born does not remain within the fathers. For although those inanimate and base elements, by which the causes of birth are begun, flow off into another man, yet by the power of nature they remain within one another: while both, through the given origin of the same nature, he who begets follows the one being born; and through the received birth, whose power, though it be derived, is nevertheless not taken away, he who is born remains in the one begetting.

And let this indeed be recalled by us only for the understanding of human birth, not also as a perfect example of birth in the only-begotten God: because the weakness of human nature is compared from unlike things, and is sustained from inanimate things unto life. Nor does that which is begotten live at once in it, nor does it wholly live from life; since in it there are many things which, when they have grown out, are cut off without the sense of their own nature. But in God the whole that he is, lives. For God is life: and from life nothing can be except what is living. Nor is the birth from derivation, but from power.

And thus, while the whole that he is lives, and while the whole that is born from him is power; it has birth, it does not have change; and it imparts advancement, yet does not lose nature: while it both follows the birth it gave through the likeness of an undivided nature, and the birth, being living from the living, does not desert that nature in being born.

Another comparison, of fire.—It offers, for part of this faith, a signification: fire having fire in itself, and fire remaining in fire. For although there is in it the splendor of light, the heat of nature, the power of burning, the mobility of blazing; yet the whole is fire, and all these are one nature. It has indeed, from weakness, that it subsists and lives through matter, and fails together with that through which it had lived. But let us come to know by comparison, in part, that which is incomparable in God. So that it may not be incredible in God, what is found, for some part, in earthly elements. I ask, therefore, now whether there is division and separation when fire is from fire. Or is nature cut off so as not to remain, or does nature not follow so as not to be present, when, by the kindling of light from light, through a certain advancement as it were of birth, there is no cutting off of nature, and yet there is light from light?

Or does this not remain in that which subsists from itself without any cutting off? Or is this not present in that from which it was not cut off, but went forth with the unity of natural substance? And I ask whether they are not one, since light from light can be separated neither by division, nor by kind of nature?

What use these comparisons have.—And these, as I have said, are brought forward only for the understanding of the faith, not also for the dignity of God, so that we might rather take the understanding of invisible things from bodily things, not indeed so that any example of comparison should satisfy the nature of God: since it would be right and just to believe God testifying of himself. But because heretical madness disturbed the faith of the simpler, so that it was not thought proper to believe this of God, which could hardly be understood except through a bodily comparison: therefore, according to that saying of the Lord already recalled by us above: That which is born of flesh, is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit, is spirit, because God is spirit, we thought it useful to insert these examples of comparison for part of the matter: lest he should be thought to lie about his own profession, since the natural examples of creatures might afford us some understanding of the divine profession.

The divine nature is in the Son by the power of birth. Through this he himself is in the Father and the Father in him. In saying "Father" he says also "Son."—Therefore the Son of God, living from the living, and God from God, showing the unity and mystery of an inseparable and undissimilar nature by birth, says, I and the Father are one. And because a calumny of the saying would arise as though it were insolent; so that he might show rather the consciousness of nature in the saying, he added, You say that I have blasphemed, because I said, I am the Son of God, testifying that the unity of nature is from the birth.

But indeed, in order that the profession of the confessed nativity might confirm the faith, and yet the nativity so professed might not bring discord to the nature; he maintained this as the complete resolution of his whole answer: Believe the works, because the Father is in me, and I am in the Father. What here has not been shown, under the sacrament of the nativity, to be natural and proper? They are in each other, since there is no nativity except from the Father, since He does not subsist as of another God, either external or dissimilar in nature, since God, abiding from God, is not from elsewhere that which He is as God. Bring in, if occasion allows, two gods for the faith of the Church: or else falsely proclaim, at least by a false reasoning, a solitary God. Distinguish the Son from the Father, if you can, without confessing merely the truth of the nativity.

The Son is in the Father, and the Father in the Son, not by mutual transfusion and re-pouring, but by the perfect nativity of a living nature. So in God the Father and in God the Son you will not count two gods, because each is one; nor will you proclaim a solitary one, because each is not one alone. The apostolic faith therefore does not have two gods, because it does not have two fathers, nor two sons. In confessing the Father, it has confessed the Son; believing in the Son, it has believed also in the Father: because the name of the Father has in itself the name of the Son. For He is not Father except through the Son; and the signifying of the Son is the demonstration of the Father: because the Son is not except from the Father. Therefore in the confession of one He is not one alone: since the Son consummates the Father, and the nativity of the Son is from the Father.

But the nature is not changed through the nativity, lest it be the same only according to the likeness of its kind. But it is the same in such a way that, through nativity and generation, each is rather to be confessed to be one, not one alone.

Epilogue. The Father and the Son, who are one God and not alone, are in each other.—Let him therefore proclaim two gods, who can proclaim one without one; or let him teach a solitary God, who can deny that one is present in one both through the power of nature and through the sacrament of generation and nativity. Let him also attribute a diverse nature to each, who does not know that the Father and the Son are proclaimed to be one. Let the heretics erase the Son's evangelical profession concerning Himself, I am in the Father, and the Father in me, so that they may proclaim either two gods, or one alone. The significations of natures are not in the property of a single nature; nor does the truth of God from God bring about two gods, nor does the nativity of God suffer a solitary God, nor are they not one who are in each other.

But they are in each other, since one is from one: because neither does the one give to the one anything other through generation than what is His own, nor does the one obtain from the one anything through nativity other than that of the one. Therefore the apostolic faith, whether it shall proclaim the Father, will proclaim one God; or whether it shall confess the Son, it will confess one God: because the nature of God is the same and undissimilar in each, and because, while the Father is God and the Son is God, the name of nature is one for both, one signifies both. For God from God, or God in God, does not make two gods, since the one from the one remains in the nature and name of the one; nor does it fall short into a solitary God, since the one and the one in signification is not alone.

The way to the Father through the Son: how this is to be understood.—The Lord did not leave the doctrine of so great a sacrament uncertain or doubtful, nor has He left us in the error of ambiguous understanding. Let us hear Him revealing to the Apostles all the knowledge of this faith: for He says: I am the way and the truth and the life: no one comes to the Father, except through me. If you know me, you know my Father also: and from now you shall know him, and you have seen him. Philip said to him: Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us. Jesus says to him: So long a time am I with you, and you have not known me? Philip, he who has seen me, has seen the Father also. How do you say, Show us the Father? Do you not believe me, that I am in the Father, and the Father is in me?

The words that I speak to you, I do not speak of myself; but the Father, who abides in me, he does his own works. Believe me, that I am in the Father, and the Father in me. But if not, believe at least for the sake of the works themselves. He who is the way does not lead us into wandering and pathless places, nor does he who is the truth deceive us with falsehoods, nor does he who is the life leave us in the error of death. And because he himself established these benign names of his dispensation for our salvation, so that as the way he might lead us into the truth, and as the truth might establish us in life; it must be recognized what this demonstrates to be the sacrament of obtaining life. No one comes to the Father except through me. The way to the Father is through the Son.

And it must be asked whether this is by an admonition of doctrine, or by the faith of nature: because we might seem to come to the Father rather through the Son's teaching, than through the confession of the paternal divinity in him. Let us therefore seek the sense of understanding in what follows. For faith is not to be entered upon by our own judgment, but by the powers of the words spoken.

He who knows the Son knows the Father also.—For this follows: If you know me, you know my Father also. The man Jesus Christ is perceived: and how, if He himself is known, will the Father be known; since the Apostles recognize the state of His nature, that is, of man, in Him, and the God who is free from bodily flesh is not to be known in this infirmity of bodily flesh? But the Lord, confirming in Himself, under the sacrament of the assumed body, the nature of the paternal divinity, maintained this order: If you know me, you know my Father also: and from now you shall know him, and you have seen him. He separated the time of seeing from the time of knowing. For He said that the one to be known had already been seen, so that they might now receive, from the time of this revelation, the knowledge of a nature already seen in Him beforehand.

Philip does not grasp this; why. He, with faith unimpaired, asks that the Father be shown to him.—But the novelty of the words moved the apostle Philip. A man is perceived, he confesses himself to be the Son of God, he declares that, once He is known, the Father is to be known. He says that the Father has been seen, and that for this reason He is to be known, because He has been seen. The infirmity of the human mind does not grasp this, nor does the profession of things so diverse admit of faith; that he who was then seen should now be known, when to have seen is knowledge; that if the Son is known, the Father also is known: since He himself, according to the man, bodily and seen and touched, has conveyed the knowledge of the Son, but the knowledge of the Father from this the very nature of the man perceived, differing from Him, does not furnish, and the Son has often testified that the Father has been seen by no one.

Philip therefore broke forth, with apostolic familiarity and boldness, questioning the Lord: Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us. Faith is not now imperiled: but this is the error of ignorance. For the Lord had said that the Father was already seen, and was to be known from now on: but the Apostle had not understood that He had been seen. In the end, he did not deny that He had been seen; but he asked that He be shown to him: nor did he desire a showing as it were of bodily contemplation, but he requested a demonstration for understanding of Him who had been seen. For he had seen the Son in the guise of man: but he does not know how through this he saw the Father. For to what he had said, Lord, show us the Father, so that that showing might be a demonstration for understanding rather than for seeing, he added, and it is enough for us.

Faith in the saying was not taken away; but a demonstration of knowing was requested, which would suffice for faith in the saying: because through the Lord's profession the authority for believing would not be uncertain. From this arose the request to show the Father, because He had been said to be seen, and thereby to be known, because He had been seen. Nor was it shameless to ask for a showing of Him who had been seen.

It is argued that he did not yet know the nature of God in Christ.—The Lord therefore returned this answer to Philip's words: So long a time am I with you; and you have not known me, Philip? He charges the Apostle with ignorance in knowing Him: because He had said above that, He being known, the Father also would be known. But what is this, that He complains that He had not been known for so long a time?

Namely, because, He being known, the divinity of the paternal nature in Him was to be understood. For since the things that He performed were proper to God—to tread upon the waves, to command the winds, to work, along with the confidence of what was done, the imperceptible transformation of wine and the increase of loaves, to put demons to flight, to drive away diseases, to make good the losses of bodies, to correct the defects of birth, to forgive sins, to restore life to the dead; and to do these things while carnal, and while professing Himself amid these things to be the Son of God: hence arose the whole accumulation of the complaint, that in the sacrament of human birth, He had done these things in the man assumed, the nature of God not being understood.

He exhibits the Father as His living image.—And therefore, charging Him with why, though He had done these things for so long a time, He had not been recognized; when they asked that He show them the Father, He says: He who has seen me, has seen the Father also. Here He does not signify bodily contemplation and the sight of fleshly eyes, but of those things concerning which He had said, Do you not say, that there are yet four months, and the harvest comes? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes, and look upon the regions, for they are white unto harvest. Neither does the time allow, nor does the signification of the regions white unto harvest permit, anything earthly and bodily to be understood here: but He commanded the eyes of understanding to be lifted up to behold the blessedness of perfect fruits, as now He says: He who has seen me, has seen the Father also.

For that which is fleshly from the birth of the virgin does not avail for contemplating in Him the form and image of God: nor does the appearance of the man assumed serve as an example for seeing the nature of the incorporeal God. But God is recognized in Him, if by any indeed He Himself is recognized, from the power of nature: and the Son, understood as God, brings this about, that the Father too is understood; while He is an image in such a way that He does not differ in kind, but signifies the author. For other images, from various metals or dyes or kinds or arts, render the likenesses of those things of which they are images; but can they, so that they may be true images, be made equal—the inanimate to the living, whether painted or sculpted or cast, to those born?

But the Son is not an image to the Father according to these things (after the manner of these); because He is the living image of the Living One, and, born from Him, He does not have a diversity of nature, and in nothing does He, being not diverse, hold a diverse power of that nature from which He is not diverse. That He is an image, therefore, avails for this, that the nativity of the only-begotten God may signify God the Father; but let it signify in such a way that He Himself is the form and image of the invisible God: and through this He does not lose the united likeness of nature, since He does not lack the power of nature either.

By the words of God neither is God solitary, nor the Son unlike.—And hence comes this: So long a time am I with you, and you have not known me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father also. How do you say, Show us the Father? Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? No other means has been left to human speech for the things of God besides the speech of God: all else is narrow and closed and hindered and obscure. If anyone should wish to demonstrate this by other words than those spoken by God, he either does not understand it himself, or leaves it not to be understood by his readers. The Lord said, when asked to show the Father, He who has seen me has seen the Father also. To alter this is the work of antichrists, to deny it is the work of Jews, to be ignorant of it is the way of the Gentile. But perhaps the fault lies in our understanding.

Let the defect be in our faith, if obscurity has settled upon the words of God. For neither does the speech signify a solitary being, and yet the profession teaches an undivided nature. For the Father seen in the Son can be neither solitary nor unlike: because through him that one is seen, they are neither not one in the profession of the mystery, nor one only. And I ask what the Lord is believed to have signified by this, when he says: He who has seen me has seen the Father also? Do you not grasp the union, where by the very conjunction the addition of the paternal name is signified? For when it is said, and the Father, the notion of a solitary and singular being is excluded. And what remains, except that through the united likeness of nature the Father has been seen through the Son? And lest this be left uncertain to our faith, the Lord added: How do you say, Show us the Father?

For what necessity remained of being ignorant of the Father, or of showing him to the ignorant, when the Father had been seen in the Son?

The Father seen in the Son out of the property of nature. Against Sabellius. Against Arius. How they are, each in the other, Father and Son.—He was seen, moreover, out of the property of nature, insofar as, out of undividedness and in the kind of truth, the one begotten and the one begetting are one, so that this saying of the Lord follows: Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? We cannot teach by any other words than the Son's own that the Father and the Son are inseparable through natural likeness. For it is not here by an alteration of names and appearances that the Son, who is the way and the truth and the life, plays theatrical mimicry: as though, having assumed a man, he should call himself the son of God, while in nature he is God the father, and one and the same, by a change of person, should now feign himself to be another in himself.

He does not, therefore, being solitary, become at one time a son to himself, and at another time profess himself to himself as father, applying the names of nature while nature itself is absent. Here there is a different simplicity of words: for the Father is Father, and the Son is Son. But in these names and realities there is nothing new in itself, nothing diverse, nothing foreign. For the truth of nature holds its property; so that what is of God is God, and the nativity is neither a diminishment nor a difference: since the Son does not subsist in a nature external to and unlike God the Father, nor does the Father acquire anything alien to himself by the nativity of the Only-begotten, but rather has bestowed, without loss to the giver, the whole of what is his own.

And thus he neither lacks the nature of God, since God is God from nowhere but from God; nor does he differ from God, since he himself is nothing other than God: because the nativity of God consists in the Son, and through the nativity the nature of God has not lost from itself what makes it God.

The Father, therefore, is in the Son, and the Son in the Father, God in God: not through a double conjunction of concurring kinds, nor through an inserted nature of a more capacious substance; because by bodily necessity, the exterior cannot become that by which the interior is contained: but through the nativity of a living nature from a living one; while the reality does not differ, while the nativity does not degenerate from the nature of God, while nothing other than God is born of God into God, while nothing in these is new, nothing foreign, nothing separable; while it is impious to believe in two gods in the Father and the Son; while it is sacrilege to proclaim the Father and the Son as a solitary God; while it is blasphemy to deny that God from God, in the likeness of kind, are one.

They are neither different, nor one alone: since the Son speaks, but not of himself: since the Father acts, but through the Son, in whom also he remains.—And lest evangelical faith should receive this mystery as doubtful and ambiguous, the Lord maintained this order of his teaching: Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? The words that I speak to you, I do not speak of myself; but the Father, who abides in me, he does his own works. By what other words, I ask, could the property of nature in the Father and the Son have been shown, or can it be shown, than by these very words, with the signification of nativity yet placed foremost in all things? For when he says: The words that I speak to you, I do not speak of myself; he did not remove the person, nor did he deny himself to be the Son, nor did he hide in himself the nature of the paternal power.

For while he himself speaks (marked by the pronoun I), he speaks while remaining in his substance: but while he does not speak of himself, he testifies to the nativity in himself of God from God the Father. He himself is inseparable from him and unlike-less, by the unity of nature: because although he speaks from him, yet he himself speaks. For he who does not speak of himself, and yet speaks, cannot fail to exist while he speaks: and while he does not speak of himself, he shows that what he speaks is not solely his own. For he added: But the Father, who abides in me, he does his own works. That the Father abides in the Son is not the mark of a solitary and singular being: but that the Father works through the Son is not the mark of one differing or external.

Just as it is not the property of one alone, not to speak of himself while yet speaking what he speaks; nor again is it the property of one alien and separable, to speak through him who speaks: but this is the mystery of those who are one. And both are not something other, they who by the property of nature are in each other: whose unity consists in this, that the speaker does not speak of himself; nor does he who does not speak of himself fail to speak. And because he had taught that the Father both speaks and works in him, he established the faith of this perfect unity, saying: But the Father, who abides in me, he does his own works. Believe me, that I am in the Father, and the Father in me. But if not, believe at least because of the works themselves. The Father works in the Son; but the Son also works the work of the Father.

Christ demands faith in his nativity and in his own divine nature. It is proper to the Only-begotten both to be within and to subsist at once.—Lest, therefore, it should be believed that the Father is in the Son and both works and speaks by the efficacy of power, and not by the property of nature which is according to nativity, he says: Believe me, that I am in the Father, and the Father in me. What, I ask, is this: Believe me? Certainly it refers to what was said: Show us the Father. Faith is confirmed by the precept of believing, and this is the faith which had asked that the Father be shown to it.

For it had not sufficed to say: He who has seen me has seen the Father also, unless he extended our understanding so far that, while we recognized the Father in the Son, we should still remember the Son to be in the Father: lest it should be thought a transfusion, as it were, of one into the other, rather than the unity of the same nature in both through generation and nativity. The Lord therefore wishes to be believed, lest perchance, through the dispensation of the assumed man, the consciousness of faith should be endangered. Certainly, if flesh, and body, and passion bring any ambiguity: yet by the works it is believed that God is in God, and that God is from God, that they are one: since by the power of nature each is in the other, and neither is without the other: since the Father loses nothing of his own in the Son, and the Son takes the whole of what makes him Son from the Father.

This is not the condition of bodily natures, that they should be in each other, that they should have the perfect unity of a subsisting nature, that the abiding nativity of the Only-begotten should be inseparable from the truth of the paternal divinity. This is proper to God the Only-begotten alone, and in the mystery of true nativity this is the faith, and this is the work of spiritual power, that to be and to be-within should not differ: to be-within, moreover, not as one thing in another, as body in body; but so to be and to subsist, that he is within the subsisting one; and so to be within, that he himself also subsists. For each, subsisting, is by this not without the other, since according to generation and nativity the nature of the subsisting one is not other.

Hence comes this: I and the Father are one, and: He who has seen me has seen the Father also, and: I am in the Father, and the Father in me: because nativity neither differs nor degenerates, because the nature of the nativity accomplishes the mystery of the one divinity in Father and Son, since the Son of God is nothing other than God. And therefore the generation of the Only-begotten is not reckoned as two gods: because the Son of God, being born into God, has exhibited in himself the nature of God who begot him.

one soul and one heart; and, He that plants and he that waters are one; and, That all may be one, as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee: he maintains that they are one—the faithful indeed by the single nature of one faith, but the planter and the waterer, inasmuch as, being made one thing by one baptism, they are also ministers of one regeneration: finally, that it was altogether unskillful to hold that Christ said "that they may be one" in the sense of "that they may will one thing," as if he had wished to ask of his own only a bare agreement of will.

Hence he explains by what reasoning, through Christ as mediator, we are naturally one with the Father: and this he maintains is granted to us both through the eternal glory, whereby we receive the honor given to him by the Father, and through the mystery of the Incarnation, by which he retains the very nature of our flesh most closely joined to himself, and most of all through the sacrament of the Eucharist, whereby we receive his true flesh and blood. Nor is there here passed over in silence the incredible calumny of the heretics, who commonly boast that the Father and the Son are declared to be at variance by those who do not accept that bare agreement of will. He then demonstrates at greater length the natural unity of the two: First, because the Holy Spirit, though he proceeds from the Father, is nevertheless both sent by the Son and receives from him; and this indeed because all things that are the Father's are his.

Second, because the Spirit of the Father and of the Son is one in such a way that the Spirit of Christ dwells in us when the Spirit of God is in us. Third, because those who render worship to Christ are free from anathema; whereas the religion of a creature is under a curse. Fourth, because he speaks in the Spirit of God who confesses that Jesus is truly Lord. Fifth, because the Apostle believed him to be Lord not merely in name but in nature, since he attributes the spiritual gifts of the Church, on account of the unity of the Spirit, now to the Father, now to the Lord. Sixth, because he is truly Lord who is one Lord: or certainly, if Christ, being one Lord, is not God, since there is one God, then by equal right the Father must be denied to be Lord. Seventh, because he is called not only Lord but also God over all.

Eighth, because although this—"God, from whom are all things," and "the Lord, through whom are all things"—sounds a distinction of persons, yet it signifies a unity of efficacy, power, and nature; so much so that elsewhere the Apostle also says of Christ that all things are from him and through him and in him. Ninth, because since he bestows eternal life for the reason that the Father has sealed him, it is necessary that he be the living and full seal of the Father, in whom every form of the Father is unfolded, and every power of the Father is contained. And indeed, tenthly, he so fully unfolds every form of the Father that the Apostle proclaims him to be in the form of God, in which he is equal to God. Eleventh, because he is the image of the invisible God, and is therefore neither visible, nor corporeal, nor finite.

Nor can it be said that this reason of image is situated in some invisible quality and not in nature; which Paul confirms is to be placed in the power and unity of nature, when he adds that through Christ and in Christ all things were created and reconciled; and this indeed in such a way that in him, as reconciler, the Father reconciles. Finally, in him in whom the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily, that is, truly and substantially, he cannot fail to have what God is, and accordingly is one God with him. Thus indeed in all these things he demonstrates the natural unity of the Son with the Father in such a way that he equally establishes the distinction of persons.

A bishop ought to be both pious and learned. Why a bishop ought to be both good and learned. Paul foresaw what things a bishop would need to contradict.—The blessed apostle Paul, fashioning a pattern for the establishing of a bishop, and framing by his precepts an altogether new man for the Church, taught that this is, as it were, the sum of the virtues perfected in him, saying: Holding fast the faithful word as he hath been taught, that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince the gainsayers. For there are many, and unruly, vain talkers and seducers.

For thus he signifies that what belongs to discipline and morals is useful for the merit of the priesthood only if those things also which are necessary for the knowledge of teaching and defending the faith are not lacking among the rest; because it is not immediately the mark of a good and useful priest either merely to act innocently, or merely to preach knowledgeably: since the innocent man profits only himself, unless he be learned; and the learned man is without authority of doctrine, unless he be innocent. For the apostolic word does not merely conform a man to life in this world by precepts of probity and honesty, nor again does it, through the knowledge of doctrine, instruct a scribe of the Synagogue in the law: but it instructs the perfect leader of the Church with the perfect goods of the greatest virtues, so that his life may be adorned by teaching, and his doctrine by living.

Finally, he instructed the very one to whom he was speaking, Titus, with a decree of this sort for the perfecting of religion: In all things showing thyself an example of good works, in doctrine, in integrity, gravity, sound speech that cannot be condemned; that he who is on the contrary part may be afraid, having no evil thing to say of us. This teacher of the Gentiles, and, from the consciousness of one speaking and having Christ dwelling in him, the chosen master of the Church, was not ignorant that there would be contagions of diseased eloquence rampant, and that against the soundness of the faithful's words a pestilent corruption of doctrine would rage fiercely, which, plunging the plague of its impious understanding down even to the very seat of the soul, would creep with deep-seated evil. Of these he says: Whose word spreadeth like a cancer, infecting with an ever-latent and stealthily creeping contagion the soundness of the mind it has invaded.

On this account he wished the bishop to possess soundness of doctrine, a conscience of faith, and a knowledge of exhortation, holding fast against impious and lying and insane contradictions. For many there are who, feigning faith, are not subject to the faith, and rather establish a faith for themselves than receive one, puffed up with the sense of human vanity, savoring what they wish and unwilling to savor what is true: whereas this is the truth of wisdom, at times to savor what one does not wish. But there follows upon this wisdom of the will a discourse of folly: because that which is foolishly conceived must needs also be foolishly preached. Now how great an evil is foolish preaching for its hearers, when they are seduced into an opinion of folly under the guise of wisdom? And for this reason the Apostle kept this order concerning these things, saying: For there are many, and unruly, vain talkers and seducers.

It is therefore necessary to contradict both insolent impiety, and vain-talking insolence, and seducing vain talk: and to contradict them through soundness of doctrine, through truth of faith, through sincerity of words; so that there may be both sincerity of truth, and truth of soundness.

Hilary perceives that this time has come upon him. What he has already accomplished in this matter. What path he holds against the heretics.—And indeed this was now my reason for calling to mind this apostolic sentence, because men perverse in mind, false in profession, empty of hope, and viperous in speech, impose upon me the necessity of contradiction: while they insinuate deadly doctrines, and diseased understandings, and corrupted wills, into the simplicity of their hearers under the appearance of religion: doing this among them, having set aside the sincerity of apostolic preaching, so that the Father may not be Father, the Son may not be Son, God may not be God, the faith may not be faith.

Resisting their insane lies, I have now stretched forth the discourse of our reply to this point, that whereas we showed God and God, and true God in true God, from the Law; then next we showed the perfect and true nativity of the only-begotten God from the evangelical and apostolic teachings; finally we taught, in the same course of our preaching, that the Son of God is true God and of a nature not different from the Father: so that the faith of the Church might confess neither a solitary God, nor two gods; since neither did the nativity of God allow a solitary God, nor did the perfect nativity admit the names of two different natures in two gods.

But a twofold care is ours in refuting their vain talkings: first, that we teach those things which are holy and perfect and sound, and that our discourse, not wandering through certain deflections and windings, and emerging from devious and erratic byways, seek the truth rather than display it; and then, that we lay open, for the conscience of all to see, that those very things which are fitted by them, with the subtleties of empty and deceitful opinions, to a semblance of flattering truth, are ridiculous and inept. For it is not enough for us to have taught what is pious, unless it be understood to be most pious through this, that what is impious is refuted.

Heretics devote more care to insinuating falsehoods than Catholics to the truth. Questions by which they lay snares for the faith of the simple.—For as it is the nature and pursuit of good and prudent men to prepare themselves wholly, whether in matter or in time, for the attaining of some blessed hope, lest their preparation be in any way less than their expectation; so it is a matter of the greatest anxiety for these men, maddened with heretical fury, to labor with the whole ingenuity of their impiety against the truth of the pious faith: that against those who are religious they may win the victory of being irreligious; and that, beyond the hope of our life, they may be more powerful through the despair of their own life; and that they may expend more thought upon falsehoods, than we apply of doctrine to truths.

For against the pious professions of our faith they have contrived these contradictions of their impious perfidy: that first they ask whether God is one in our faith; then they add, whether Christ also is God; finally, whether the Father is greater than the Son: so that when they have heard, in our profession, "one God," they may use this to the end that Christ may not be God. For they do not ask concerning the Son, whether he is God: but they wish only this, by asking about Christ, that he may not be the Son; that, catching the man of simple faith, they may drive him away, through the faith in one God, from the confession of Christ as God, since God would no longer be one, if Christ too must be confessed as God.

Now here with what subtlety of worldly ingenuity they contend, when they say: If he is one, whoever that other shall seem to be, he will no longer be one. But if he is another, then this one will no longer be one: since nature does not allow that where another is, there one should be: or where one is, there another should be.

Then, when by the cunning art of this assertion they have deceived the readiness of the believer and hearer, they fit in this—as though obtaining it now by an easier path—that Christ is God from the name rather than from nature; because this general name in him destroys in no way that faith of the one God which alone is true: and by this the Father is greater than the Son, because, the natures differing, since there is none but the one God, the Father is greater by the property of nature; and this one is called Son, and a creation subsisting from the will of God, because he is also less than the Father; and he is not God, because the one God does not suffer another God to be, and he who is less must necessarily be of a nature foreign to him who is greater than himself.

And how ridiculous indeed they are in this, prescribing to God, when they assert that from one nothing can be born, because the birth of all things is from the conjunction of two: but that God, being unchangeable, can bestow no birth from himself upon one being born; because that which is not changed is not liable to increase, nor does the nature of the solitary and single have in itself that condition, that it should beget.

The catholic faith, thus far asserted, is confirmed both by common sense and by the sayings of the Lord.—But we, having attained the evangelical and apostolic faith through spiritual doctrines, and pursuing the hope of blessed eternity in the confession of the Father and the Son, having demonstrated the mystery of God and of God from God according to the law, neither exceeding the faith of the one God, nor failing to proclaim Christ also as God, have taken up this order of answer from the Gospels, so that we might teach the true birth of the only-begotten God from God the Father; because through it he would both be true God, and not be a stranger to the nature of the one true God; and thus he could neither be denied to be God, nor yet be called another God; because both his birth would furnish that he is God, and the nature in him of the one God from God would not separate him into another God.

And although the sense of common understanding would impel us to this conclusion—lest in the same nature the names of natures should agree, and yet the things be not one, whose being would not differ in kind—nevertheless it pleased to show this by the very professions of our Lord, who, having frequently made known the one God of our faith and hope, in order to confirm the mystery of the one God, while also confessing and proving himself God, said: I and the Father are one; and, If you know me, you know my Father also; and, He who has seen me has seen the Father also; and, The Father who abides in me does his own works; and, Believe me, that the Father is in me, and I in the Father; but if not, believe at least because of the works themselves. He expressed his birth in the name of the Father; he teaches that the Father is known when he himself is known.

He confesses the unity of nature, when the Father is seen in him being seen. He testifies that he is inseparable from the Father, when in the Father remaining he himself remains. He holds the confidence of his own consciousness, when he demands that these his sayings be believed on the ground of the power shown. And thus, in this most blessed faith of a perfect birth, every vice is extinguished—both that of two gods, and that of a solitary God—since they who are one are not one single being, and he who is not a single being does not so differ from him who is, by some distinction, that the two would not be one.

They interpret I and the father are one as referring to unity of agreement; by what arguments.—These things, therefore, because the heretics cannot deny them, since they are said and understood so absolutely, they nevertheless corrupt, seeking to deny them by the most foolish lie of their impiety. For what he says, "I and the Father are one," they attempt to refer to a consensus of unanimity; so that there is unity of will in these words, not of nature—that is, that they are one not through what they are, but through what they will alike. And they fit to this defense of theirs that passage which is in the Acts of the Apostles: "Now of the multitude of believers there was one heart and soul," so that the diversity of souls and hearts is made into one heart and one soul through the agreement of the same will.

Or that passage written to the Corinthians: "He who plants and he who waters are one"—so that, since the ministry to salvation and to the progress of the same sacrament does not differ, there is unity of will in the two. Or this, which the Lord, asking of the Father the salvation of the nations who would believe in him, says: "I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they all may be one, as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us"—so that, since men cannot be poured back into God, or themselves coalesce mutually into one and undivided mass, that they are one arises from unity of will, since all do what is pleasing to God, and they themselves come together with the movements of their minds not at variance with one another; and thus it is not nature that makes them one, but will.

The folly of the Arians.—He plainly does not know how to be wise, who does not know God. And since Christ is wisdom, it is necessary that he who either is ignorant of Christ, or merely hears of him, is outside wisdom: as are these men, who would rather have the Lord of majesty, and the King of the ages, and the only-begotten God be a creature of God than a son; and though they lie foolishly, they are yet more foolish in the wisdom of their defense of their lie. For let the property of that unity which is in God the Father and in God the Son be for a little while now set aside, and they are to be refuted from these very things which they use.

The unity of the faithful is natural, through the nature of the one faith. The faithful are one from the unity of the sacraments.—For of those whose soul and heart were one, I ask whether it was one through faith in God. Certainly through faith: for it was through it that the soul and heart of all were one. And I ask whether the faith is one, or another? Certainly one, even on the authority of the Apostle himself, who proclaims one faith, just as one Lord, and one baptism, and one hope, and one God. If, then, all were one through faith, that is, through the nature of the one faith, how do you not understand a natural unity in these, who are one through the nature of the one faith? For all had been reborn to innocence, to immortality, to the knowledge of God, to the faith of hope.

And if these things cannot be diverse from one another—since hope is one, and God is one, just as the Lord is one, and the baptism of regeneration is one—if these things are one rather by assent than by nature, then ascribe unity of will also to those who have been reborn into these things. But if those regenerated are into the nature of one life and eternity, through which their soul and heart is one, then the unity of assent ceases to apply in the case of those who are one in the regeneration of the same nature.

Paul's judgment on this matter.—We do not speak our own words, nor do we, by corrupting the sense of these sayings, fabricate anything falsified from them to deceive the ears of hearers; but holding the form of sound doctrine, we are wise in, and preach, what is sincere. For the Apostle teaches that this unity of the faithful is from the nature of the sacraments, writing to the Galatians: "For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus." That they are one amid such diversity of peoples, conditions, and sexes—is that from the assent of will, or from the unity of the sacrament, because for them baptism is one, and all have put on the one Christ?

What, then, will concord of minds accomplish here, when they are one through this, that they are clothed with the one Christ through the nature of the one baptism?

He who plants and he who waters are one by nature.—Or when he who plants and he who waters are one, is it not through this that they are one, that they themselves, reborn in one baptism, are one dispensation of the one regenerating baptism? Do they not do the same thing? Are they not one in the one? And so, those who are one through the same thing are also one by nature, not only by will: because they themselves have been made the same thing, and are ministers of the same thing and the same effecting.

Folly betrays itself, while it opposes the truth. There is no hope for a perverse faith. The merit of simplicity.—But the contradiction of fools always serves to demonstrate their folly: because whatever is fitted by the ingenuity of an unwise or perverse understanding against the truth, while the truth is unshaken and immovable, it is necessary that what is contrary to it be understood as both false and foolish.

For the heretics, laboring to deceive by that which was said, "I and the Father are one," lest a unity of nature and an undivided substance of divinity should be believed in these words, but rather that they were one from mutual love and from concord of wills, brought forth, as an example of this unity, as we have shown above, even from the Lord's own words: "That all may be one, as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us." Whoever is outside their faith is outside the evangelical promises: and the crime of an impious understanding has destroyed simple hope. For it has, not so much pardon, as reward, to be ignorant of what you believe: because the greatest wage of faith is to hope for what you do not know. But indeed it is the fury of the ultimate impiety, either not to believe what is understood, or to have corrupted the understanding of what is to be believed.

Christ would have improperly said "That they may be one" if speaking of unanimity.—But although impiety may change the very sense of its own understanding, yet the understanding of the words cannot fail to exist. The Lord prays to the Father that those who are to believe in him may be one, and that just as he himself is in the Father, and the Father in him, so all may be one in these. Why do you introduce here equanimity, why unity of soul and heart through assent of will? For it would have been within the abundance and propriety of words, that if will made them one, the Lord would have prayed thus: Father, as we will to be one, so let them also will to be one, that we may all be one through concord. Or perhaps he who is the Word did not know the meaning of a word? And he who is Truth did not know how to speak true things? And he who is Wisdom erred in foolish speech?

And he who is Power was in such weakness that he could not utter what he wished to be understood? Plainly he spoke the true and sincere mysteries of the evangelical faith. Nor did he only speak for the sake of signification, but he also taught for the sake of faith, saying thus: "That all may be one, as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us." First there is a prayer for those of whom it is said, "That all may be one"; then the progress of the unity is shown by the example of the unity, when he says, "As thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us"—so that, just as the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father, so through the form of this unity, all might be one in the Father and the Son.

Honor received from the Father, and given by the Son to believers, brings it about that they may be one.—But since it is proper to the Father and the Son alone by nature that they be one, because God is from God, and the only-begotten is from the unbegotten and cannot exist except in the nature of his own origin; so that he who was begotten exists also in the substance of his begetting, nor does the birth of his divinity have any other or different truth than that from which it proceeded: the Lord, leaving nothing ambiguous to us for faith, taught the nature of this absolute unity throughout the whole remaining discourse. For there follows: That the world also may believe that thou hast sent me. By this, therefore, the world is to believe that the Son was sent by the Father: that all who are to believe in him will be one in the Father and the Son.

And in what way they will be one, we are at once taught: And the glory which thou gavest me, I have given them. And now I ask, whether the same thing is honor as is will; since will is a movement of the mind, but honor is rather of nature, or form, or dignity. The honor, therefore, received from the Father, the Son gave to all who were to believe in him—not, surely, will; for if will had been given, faith would have no reward, since necessity of an attached will would impose faith upon us. But what the giving of the received honor would accomplish, he shows: That they may be one, as we are one. For this cause, then, the received honor was given, that all might be one. Now, therefore, all are one in honor; because no other honor than the one received was given; nor was it given for any other purpose than that all might be one.

And since, through the honor given to the Son, and bestowed by the Son upon believers, all are one; I ask how the Son can be of a different honor from the Father, since the honor of the Son gathers all believers into the unity of the paternal honor? And perhaps this discourse will seem presumptuous to human hope, but it will not be faithless: because although it is rash to hope this, yet it is irreligious not to have believed it, since the same and one is for us both the author of hope and of faith. Concerning this indeed we shall treat more plainly and more fully, as befits it, in its proper place. Meanwhile, however, even from the present discourse it is understood that this our hope is neither empty nor rash. Through the honor received and given, therefore, all are one. I hold the faith, and I accept the cause of unity: but I do not yet grasp the reason how the given honor brings it about that all are one.

I ask now of those who introduce a unity of will between the Father and the Son, whether Christ is in us today through the truth of nature, or through a concord of will? For if the Word truly was made flesh, and we truly receive the flesh of the Word in the Lord's food; how is he not to be thought to remain in us naturally, who, having been born man, has assumed the nature of our flesh now inseparable from himself, and has mingled the nature of his flesh with the nature of eternity under the sacrament of the flesh to be communicated to us? For thus we are all one, because the Father is in Christ, and Christ is in us. Whoever, therefore, will deny that the Father is in Christ naturally, let him first deny that he himself is in Christ, or that Christ is in him, not naturally; because the Father in Christ, and Christ in us, make us to be one in these things.

If, therefore, Christ truly assumed the flesh of our body, and that man who was born of Mary is truly Christ, and we truly receive the flesh of his body under the mystery (and by this we shall be one, because the Father is in him, and he is in us); how can a unity of will be asserted, when the natural propriety through the sacrament is the sacrament of a perfect unity?.pine tree.—One must not speak in the things of God according to human or worldly sense: nor through violent and imprudent preaching is the perversity of an alien and impious understanding to be wrenched from the soundness of heavenly sayings. Let us read what has been written, and understand what we have read; and then we shall perform the office of perfect faith. For what we say concerning the natural truth of Christ in us, unless we have learned it from him, we say foolishly and impiously. For he himself says, My flesh is truly food, and my blood is truly drink.

He who eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, abides in me, and I in him. No place has been left for doubting concerning the truth of the flesh and blood. For now, both by the Lord's own profession and by our faith, it is truly flesh, and truly blood. And these things, received and drunk, bring it about that we are in Christ, and Christ in us. Is this not truth? Let it happen, plainly, that this be not true for those who deny that Christ Jesus is truly God. He is, therefore, in us through the flesh, and we are in him: while that which we are is with him in God.

A perfect unity with God is ours, Christ mediating.—But how we are in him through the sacrament of the communicated flesh and blood, he himself testifies, saying, And the world now sees me no more; but you shall see me, because I live, and you shall live; because I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.

If he wished only a unity of will to be understood, why did he set forth a certain degree and order for the consummation of unity—unless it was that, as he was in the Father through the nature of divinity, so we, on the contrary, might be believed to be in him through his bodily birth, and he in turn in us through the mystery of the sacraments; and thus a perfect unity through the Mediator might be taught, since, while we remained in him, he himself would remain in the Father, and remaining in the Father would remain in us; and thus we might advance to the unity of the Father, since he who is in the Father naturally according to birth, we too might be naturally in him, he himself remaining naturally in us?

How natural this unity is. The unity of the Son with the Father.—But how natural this unity is in us, he himself has testified thus: He who eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, abides in me, and I in him. For no one will be in him, except one in whom he himself has been; having assumed into himself only the flesh of him who has taken his. But the sacrament of this perfect unity he had already taught above, saying: As the living Father sent me, and I live by the Father: and he who eats my flesh, he also shall live by me. He lives, therefore, by the Father; and in the same manner as he lives by the Father, in that same manner we live by his flesh. For every comparison is set forth for the sake of a form of understanding, so that we may attain to the matter under discussion according to the example proposed.

This, then, is the cause of our life, that we have Christ, remaining in us who are carnal, through the flesh: we being about to live through him, on that same condition on which he lives through the Father. If, therefore, we live naturally according to the flesh through him, that is, having obtained the nature of his flesh; how does he not have the Father in himself naturally according to the Spirit, since he himself lives through the Father? But he lives through the Father in this way, that birth has brought upon him no alien and different nature, in that what he is, he is also from him, and yet is not separated from him by any intervening dissimilarity of nature; while he has the Father in himself through birth, in the power of nature. 9, 10, 12).

This a creature does not provide, but birth does; will does not effect it, but power does; agreement does not speak it, but nature does: because to be created and to be born are not one and the same; nor is willing the same thing as being able; nor is agreeing the same thing as abiding. But you cannot bear them now. When that Spirit of truth shall come, he will guide you into all truth. For he shall not speak from himself, but whatsoever he shall hear, he shall speak, and he will announce to you the things to come. He shall glorify me; because he shall receive of mine, and shall announce it to you. All things whatsoever the Father has are mine: therefore I said, He shall receive of mine, and shall announce it to you. From the Son, therefore, he receives, who is both sent by him and proceeds from the Father. And I ask, whether to receive from the Son is the same thing as to proceed from the Father.

But if it be believed that there is a difference between receiving from the Son and proceeding from the Father, certainly it will be reckoned the same and one thing, to receive from the Son, as to receive from the Father. For the Lord himself says: For he shall receive of mine, and shall announce it to you. This which he shall receive (whether it be power, or virtue, or teaching), the Son said was to be received from himself; and again this same thing signifies that it is to be received from the Father. For when he says that all things which the Father has are his, and that therefore he said it was to be received from what is his own—he teaches that the very things to be received from the Father are yet received from himself; because all things which are the Father's are his. This unity has no diversity: nor does it differ, from whom it was received, that what was given by the Father should be reported as given by the Son.

Will any unity of will be alleged here too? All things which the Father has are the Son's; and all things which are the Son's are the Father's. For he himself says: And all mine are thine, and thine are mine. It is not yet the place for me to show why he said thus: For he shall receive of mine—for it is a signification of future time, where he is shown as about to receive. Now, certainly, he says he will receive from himself for this reason, that all things of the Father are his own. Dissect, if you can, the unity of this nature, and bring in some necessity of dissimilarity, by which the Son should not be in the unity of nature. For the Spirit of truth proceeds from the Father: but he is sent by the Father from the Son.

All things which are the Father's are the Son's; and therefore whatsoever he shall receive, he who is to be sent shall receive from the Son, because the things which are the Father's are all the Son's. Nature, therefore, in all things holds its own law, and the fact that both are one is a signification of the same divinity in each, through generation and birth: since that which the Spirit of truth shall receive from the Father, the Son confesses is to be given by himself. Heretical perversity, therefore, is not to be permitted the license of impious understanding: so that this saying of the Lord—that because all things which are the Father's are his, therefore the Spirit of truth shall receive from himself—should not be confessed as referring to the unity of nature.

The Spirit of God and of Christ is one Spirit.—Let him speak, who is the chosen vessel and teacher of the Gentiles, according to the understanding of truth, in the faith of the Roman people praised above. For wishing to teach the unity of nature in the Father and the Son, he speaks thus: But you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. And if Christ be in you, the body indeed is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you; he that raised up Christ from the dead shall quicken also your mortal bodies, because of his Spirit that dwelleth in you. We are all spiritual, if the Spirit of God is in us. But this Spirit of God is also the Spirit of Christ.

And though the Spirit of Christ is in us, yet his Spirit is in us, who raised up Christ from the dead: and he who raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken our mortal bodies because of his Spirit dwelling in us. We are quickened, therefore, because of the Spirit of Christ dwelling in us, through him who raised up Christ from the dead. And though the Spirit of him who raised up Christ from the dead is in us; yet the Spirit of Christ is also in us, nor is the Spirit that is in us any other than the Spirit of God. Distinguish then, O heretic, the Spirit of Christ from the Spirit of God, and the Spirit of him raised from the dead from the Spirit of God who raised Christ from the dead; since the Spirit of Christ dwelling in us is the Spirit of God; and since the Spirit of Christ raised from the dead is nonetheless the Spirit of God who raised Christ from the dead.

Whether the Spirit of God signifies nature, or a thing of nature.—And I ask now whether you think that in "the Spirit of God" you understand nature to be signified, or a thing belonging to nature. For nature is not the same thing as that which belongs to nature: just as man is not the same as that which belongs to man, nor is fire the same as that which belongs to fire itself: and according to this, God is not the same as that which belongs to God.

Now it signifies the Father, now the Son.—For I recall that in "the Spirit of God" the Son of God is so signified, that in him God the Father is understood to be shown forth, and that the signified Spirit of God can pertain to the demonstration of either: and that this is shown not only from prophetic, but also from evangelical authority, when it is said: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, wherefore he hath anointed me; and again: Behold my servant whom I have chosen, my beloved in whom my soul is well pleased, I will put my Spirit upon him; and by the Lord himself testifying of himself: But if I by the Spirit of God cast out devils, then the kingdom of God is come nigh unto you: for these words seem, without ambiguity, to signify either the Father or the Son, while yet manifesting the power of the one nature.

Why each is called Spirit.—For I judge that "Spirit of God" was said in reference to each for this reason, lest we should believe the Son to be in the Father, or the Father in the Son, according to bodily modes: namely, lest God, remaining in a place, should seem never to exist elsewhere apart from himself. For man, or anything else like him, when he is somewhere, will nevertheless not be elsewhere: because that which is there is contained where it has been; his nature being too weak for this, that he who is fixed somewhere should be everywhere. But God, the living power of immeasurable might, who is nowhere absent, and lacking nowhere, teaches that he is wholly present through what is his own, and signifies that what is his own is nothing other than himself: so that where his own things are, he himself is understood to be.

Not, however, in a bodily manner, such that, being in one place, he should not be believed to be everywhere as well: since through what is his own he does not cease to be in all things; and yet what is his own is nothing other than what he himself is. And these things have been said for the understanding of nature.

In the Spirit of God the Father is signified. The Son is signified. And the Holy Spirit also is signified.—Now I think it ought to be understood in this way, that in "the Spirit of God" God the Father is signified, because the Lord Jesus Christ professed that the Spirit of the Lord was upon him, for which reason he anoints him and sends him to preach the gospel. For the power of the Father's own nature is manifested in him; showing the communion of his nature with the Son, even the Son born in the flesh, through the sacrament of this spiritual anointing, when after the birth accomplished in baptism this same signification of proper relationship was heard, with the voice testifying from heaven: Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee.

For he is not to be understood as saying that the Spirit was upon himself of himself, or that he was present to himself from the heavens, or that he named himself Son to himself: but this whole thing was a demonstration for our faith, that under the sacrament of a perfect and true nativity we might know the unity of the nature abiding in the Son, who had also begun to be man. And thus the Father has been found to be signified in the Spirit of God. But we understand the Son to be shown in this manner, when he says: But if I by the Spirit of God cast out devils, then the kingdom of God is come nigh unto you: showing that he himself, that is, by the power of his own nature, casts out devils, which can be cast out by nothing but the Spirit of God.

There is also in "the Spirit of God" the signification of the Spirit the Paraclete; and this is shown not only by prophetic, but also by apostolic authority, when it is said: But this is that which was spoken by the prophet: It shall come to pass in the last days, saith the Lord, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh, and their sons and their daughters shall prophesy. And this is taught to have been wholly fulfilled in the Apostles, when, the Holy Spirit having been sent, all spoke in the tongues of the nations.

God is in us, with Christ; the Spirit of Christ, with the Spirit of God. The nature of the Son and of the Father is one.—Now these things had necessarily to be shown, so that into whatever part heretical falsehood might have betaken itself, it would nonetheless be enclosed within the bounds and prescription of evangelical truth. For Christ dwells in us: and with Christ dwelling, God dwells. And when the Spirit of Christ dwells in us; yet, while the Spirit of Christ dwells in us, it is no other spirit that dwells than the Spirit of God. But if through the Holy Spirit Christ is understood to be in us, yet this same Spirit must be known to be the Spirit of God in such a way as also to be the Spirit of Christ.

And since, through the nature of the thing, the nature itself dwells in us; the nature of the Son will be believed not to differ from that of the Father, since the Holy Spirit, who is both the Spirit of Christ and the Spirit of God, is shown to be a thing of one nature. I ask, then, how are they not one by nature? From the Father proceeds the Spirit of truth: he is sent by the Son, and receives from the Son. But all things which the Father has are the Son's: and therefore he who receives from him is the Spirit of God, but the same is also the Spirit of Christ. He is a thing of the nature of the Son, but the same thing is also of the nature of the Father. He is the Spirit of him who raised up Christ from the dead; but the same is the Spirit of Christ who was raised from the dead.

Let the nature of Christ and of God differ in some respect, so that it not be the same; if it can be shown that the Spirit which is of God is not also of Christ.

The Son's and the Father's dwelling with us is one.—But you, heretic, raging and driven about by a spirit of deadly doctrine, are held and constrained by the Apostle, who lays down Christ for us as the foundation of faith, not unaware also of this saying of the Lord: If any man love me, he will keep my word; and my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and will make our abode with him. By this he testified that, the Spirit of Christ abiding in us, the Spirit of God abides in us, and that the Spirit of him raised from the dead is not different from the Spirit of him who raised from the dead. For they come, and dwell in us: and I ask whether they will come and make their abode in the company of diverse beings, or in unity of nature?

But the teacher of the Gentiles insists that not two spirits, namely of God and of Christ, but the Spirit of Christ, who is also the Spirit of God, dwells in believers. It is not a co-habitation, but a habitation: yet a habitation under the sacrament, as it were, of co-habitation, since neither do two dwell, nor is the inhabitant different from the other. For the Spirit of God is in us, but the Spirit of Christ is in us: and when the Spirit of Christ is present, the Spirit of God is present. Thus, since what is of God is also of Christ; and since what is of Christ is also of God: Christ cannot be anything different from what God is. Therefore God is Christ, one Spirit with God.

The Arians, being strangers to the Holy Spirit, deny that Christ is God, and yet worship him.—And that saying of the Gospel: I and the Father are one, the Apostle teaches to be a unity of nature, not a solitary union, writing to the Corinthians: Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man speaking in the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed. Do you know now, heretic, in what spirit you say that Christ is a creature? For since those are under a curse who have served the creature rather than the Creator; understand what you are, confessing Christ to be a creature, you who are not ignorant that the worship of a creature is under a curse. And mark what follows: And no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Spirit. Do you perceive what is lacking to you, in denying to Christ what is properly his?

If Christ is your Lord by the nature of God, you have the Holy Spirit: but if he is Lord here by an adoptive title, then, lacking the Holy Spirit, you are animated by a spirit of error: because no one, except by the Holy Spirit, can say that Jesus is Lord. And you, calling him rather a creature than God, though naming him lord, do not thereby say that he is Lord; because for you he is lord rather by a common kind and a familiar title, than by nature. But learn nature from Paul.

The divisions of graces.—For it follows: Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are diversities of ministries, but the same Lord; and there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God, who worketh all in all. And to every one is given the manifestation of the Spirit, unto that which is profitable. In this present passage a fourfold signification is understood, since in the division of gifts it is the same Spirit, and in the division of ministries it is the same Lord, and in the division of operations it is the same God, and in the giving of what is profitable, the manifestation of the Spirit.

And that the giving of what is profitable might be known in the manifestation of the Spirit, it is immediately added: To one indeed is given, through the Spirit, the word of wisdom; and to another the word of knowledge, according to the same Spirit; to another faith, in the same Spirit; to another the gift of healing, in the one Spirit; to another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another the discerning of spirits; to another divers kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues.

The manifestation of the Spirit.—And indeed that which we said was the fourth point, that is, the manifestation of the Spirit in the giving of the benefit, has a complete understanding. For it has been noted through which benefits of the gifts this manifestation of the Spirit consists. For in these powers of distributions there is no uncertain showing of this gift, concerning which the Lord had spoken to the Apostles, instructing them not to depart from Jerusalem; but, he says, wait for the promise of the Father, which you have heard from my mouth, because John baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit, and you shall receive it not many days from now. And again: But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the end of the earth. He commands that the promise of the Father, which was heard from his mouth, be awaited.

Surely even now this is the utterance of that paternal promise. Through these efficacies of powers, then, is the manifestation of the Spirit.

For the gift of the Spirit is not hidden where there is the word of wisdom and the words of life are heard; or where there is the knowledge of divine understanding, lest, like cattle, through ignorance of God we remain ignorant of the author of our life; or through faith in God, lest, not believing the Gospel of God, we be outside the Gospel of God; or through the gift of healings, that we may bear witness to the grace of him who grants these things by the healing of infirmities; or through the working of powers, that what we do may be understood to be the power of God; or through prophecy, that through the understanding of doctrine we may be understood to be taught by God; or through the discernment of spirits, lest we be ignorant whether one speaks by a holy or a perverse spirit; or through kinds of tongues, that as a sign of the Spirit given, the speech of tongues may be granted; or in the interpretation of tongues, lest, through ignorance, the faith of the hearers be endangered, when the interpreter of tongues explains for those who do not know the tongue.

In all these things, then, distributed to each for benefit, is the manifestation of the Spirit, namely through these wonders of the benefit given to each, the gift of the Spirit not lying hidden.

These gifts are bestowed by one and another, and yet it is one Spirit.—The blessed apostle held afterward, let it be resolved. Then further below, the wonders of the benefit.

Paul, in this mystery of heavenly sacraments most difficult for human understanding, both maintained a full demonstration and an anxious caution, so as to show that these gifts of distribution are given through the Spirit and in the Spirit (for it is not the same thing to be given through the Spirit and in the Spirit): because the giving of the gift, which is obtained in the Spirit, is nevertheless granted through the Spirit. He completes these distributions of gifts in this way: But all these things one and the same Spirit works, dividing to each as he wills. Now, therefore, I ask, who is it that the Spirit works these things, dividing to each as he wills: whether it is through whom, or in whom, the division of gifts takes place. But if anyone should dare to say that this itself is meant, the Apostle will contradict him, so that the reader may understand himself to be mistaken; for he says above: And there are divisions of workings, but the same God who works all things in all.

There is, therefore, one who divides, and another in whom the division granted resides. And understand that God is always working all these things, yet in such a way that Christ works, so that the Son, working the Father's work, discharges it. And if you confess Jesus the Lord in the Holy Spirit, understand the force of the threefold signification in the Apostle (that is, in the place of the Apostle), since in the distributions of gifts it is the same Spirit, and in the distributions of ministries it is the same Lord, and in the distributions of workings it is the same God: and again, one Spirit working all things, dividing to each as he wills. And grasp, if you can, that the Lord in the distribution of ministries, and God in the distribution of workings, is this same one Spirit, both working and dividing as he wills: because in the distributions of gifts there is one Spirit, and the same Spirit works and divides.

Christ distributes the charisms.—But if it displeases you that in God and Lord this same Spirit of divinity, through the mystery of the nativity, is one: show what spirit, and in what spirit these distributions are worked and divided for us. But you will show nothing else than what belongs to our faith; because the Apostle showed who was to be understood, saying: For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members, though they are many, are one body, since they are of one body: so also is Christ. He signifies, therefore, that the distributions of the charisms are from the one Lord Jesus Christ, who is the body of all: because, having shown the Lord in ministry, and having shown also God in workings, he demonstrates that it is one and the same Spirit who works and divides all these things…shows, dividing these members of the graces in the perfection (or, the perfecting) of one body.

God established the workings and ministries. Christ also established them.—Unless perhaps the Apostle is thought not to have held the reasoning of unity in this, that he said: And there are distributions of ministries, but the same Lord; and there are distributions of workings, but the same God: so that, because he referred ministries to the Lord, and workings to God, it might seem that one and the same thing is not to be understood in ministries and in workings. Perceive how these members of the ministries are members of the workings, when he says: You are the body of Christ and members. And God has placed certain ones in the Church, first apostles, among whom is the word of wisdom; second, prophets, among whom is the gift of knowledge; third, teachers, among whom is the doctrine of faith; then powers, among whom are the healings of infirmities, the powers of helps, prophetic governances, and gifts of kinds of tongues, whether of speaking or of interpreting.

Surely these are the ministries and the workings of the Church, in which is the body of Christ; and these God established. Or else declare that they were not established through Christ, because God established them. But you will hear him himself saying: But to each of us grace has been given according to the measure of the gift of Christ. And again: He who descended, he it is who also ascended above all the heavens, that he might fulfill all things. And he himself gave some to be apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints, unto the work of ministry. Are not the gifts of ministries then Christ's, even though they are also God's gifts?

Paul, saying GOD of the Father, LORD of the Son, did not distinguish them in nature.—But if impiety should so usurp this to itself, that because he says, the same Lord and the same God, they should not be in unity of nature: I shall add to this understanding of yours, what you think are firmer supports. For the Apostle himself says: But to us there is one God the Father, from whom are all things, and we in him, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him. And again: One Lord, one faith, one baptism. One God and Father of all, and through all and in all of us. For by this, that it is said one God and one Lord, it seems that being God is deemed proper to God alone, as to one God: since the property of one does not admit the partnership of another. O plainly rare and difficult gifts of the charisms, and truly in this giving of benefits the manifestation of the Spirit is established!

And rightly this order of the graces to be distributed has been kept, that the word of wisdom should be principal; for truly it is so, that No one can say "Lord Jesus" except in the Holy Spirit, because unless through this word of wisdom, Christ could not be understood as Lord; then next would follow the word of knowledge, that we may speak knowingly what we understand wisely, so that we may savor the word of wisdom; and the third gift would be faith, because those principal and higher gifts would lose the benefit of the gift, unless God were believed: so that now, in the sacrament of this greatest and most beautiful apostolic saying, for all heretics there is neither the word of wisdom, nor the word of knowledge, nor the faith of religion; because impiety, which does not grasp understanding, is outside the knowledge of speech and outside the simplicity of faith. For no one speaks what he does not understand: nor can he believe what he cannot speak.

And so the Apostle, preaching one God, and coming from the Law, and called into the Gospel of Christ, held the confession of perfect faith. And lest the simplicity of an unguarded expression should give heretics some occasion to deny the nativity of the Son through the preaching of one God, he confessed one God under the signification of properhood, saying thus: One God the Father, from whom are all things, and we in him: so that he who is God might also be believed to be Father. Then, because this bare belief in one God the Father would not by itself profit unto salvation, he added: And one Lord our Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him; showing the sincerity of saving faith in the preaching of one God and one Lord; so that for us there might be both one God the Father, and one Lord Jesus Christ in faith.

For he was not ignorant of what was said by the Lord: For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life. But, setting forth the order of the Church's faith, and establishing our faith in the Father and the Son, he spoke the sacrament of that inseparable and indissoluble unity and faith, saying: One God, and one Lord.

If Christ is denied to be God, because the Father is one God; then neither is the Father Lord, because Christ is one Lord.—And first of all, living outside the apostolic spirit, understand your folly, heretic. For if you make use of the profession of one God to this end, that Christ may not be God; because where there is one, he must be understood as solitary, and that which is one must be proper and singular to him who is one: what will you profess concerning this, that Jesus Christ is one Lord? For if, according to you, the fact that the Father is one God does not leave to Christ that he be God: it is necessary that, likewise according to you, the fact that Christ is one Lord does not leave to God that he be Lord; because you would have it that what is one must be proper to him who is one.

If therefore you shall deny that the one Lord Christ is also God, you will also deny that the one God the Father is Lord: and what will there be in the power of God, if he is not Lord, and in the power of the Lord, if he is not God; since it is precisely being God that makes him to be Lord, and being Lord that constitutes him to be God?

Both are one in spirit, not in person.—But the Apostle, holding fast the mystery of the Lord's saying, which is: I and the Father are one, while he professes both to be one, so signifies the two as one not with reference to solitude of a single person, but to unity of spirit: because the one God is the Father and the one Christ is Lord, though each is both Lord and God, yet our faith does not allow that there are two gods or two lords. Therefore each is one: and though each is one, he is not alone in being one. Nor shall we be able to speak the mystery of the faith except in the Apostle's own words. For there is one God, and one Lord; and by the fact that there is one God and one Lord, the Lord is shown to be in God, just as God is shown to be in the Lord.

You do not hold to a union such that God is a solitary being, yet you do not divide the spirit so that either is not one. Nor will you be able to distinguish power in the one God and in the one Lord, lest he who is Lord should not also be God, or he who is God should not also be Lord. For the Apostle took care, through the choice of names, not to preach either two gods or two lords. And therefore he used this kind of teaching, that in the one Lord Christ he might signify one who is also God, and in the one God the Father he might signify one who is also Lord; yet without bringing upon us an impious union that would destroy the nativity of the Only-begotten God, while confessing both the Father and Christ.

Paul taught that Christ is not only Lord, but also God.—Unless perhaps the fury of the utmost desperation should dare break forth so far, that because the Apostle called Christ Lord, no one should confess him to be anything other than Lord, and, possessing the property of Lord, he should not possess the truth of God. But Paul is not ignorant that Christ is God, saying: Whose are the fathers, and of whom is Christ, who is over all, God. Here the creature is not reckoned into God; but he is the God of the creatures, who is God over all.

He distinguished him from the Father, he did not divide him from the Father.—But learn also, from this very saying of the Apostle now under discussion, how truly he is God over all and inseparable from the Father in spirit. For having confessed one God the Father, of whom are all things, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things: I ask what diversity he introduced, in saying that all things are of God, and all things through Christ? Can it be that a nature and spirit separable from itself be understood in "of whom" and "through whom" are all things? For all things through the Son subsisted out of nothing, and the Apostle referred all things to God, of whom are all things, but to the Son, through whom are all things. And I do not find what the difference is, since through both the work is of the same power.

For if it were proper and sufficient for the substance of the universe that creatures be of God; what necessity was there to mention that those things which are of God should also be through Christ, unless it be that to be through Christ and to be of God are one and the same thing? But just as "Lord" and "God" were ascribed to each of them, so as to be mutual, so "of whom" and "through whom" is referred to both, and serves to demonstrate the unity of both, not to convey the understanding of a single person. This speech does not lie open to an occasion of impiety, and apostolic faith is not lacking in careful preaching.

For he tempered himself with these proprieties of words, by which he might be understood to signify neither two gods, nor a solitary one: while he detests union, he does not separate unity, for "of whom are all things" and "through whom are all things," though it did not establish him as singular in the power of might, yet it did not show diversity in efficacy; since "of whom are all things" and "through whom are all things" would show the author to be of the same nature for that purpose. But he declares that each is properly of the same nature.

For after that confession of the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God, and the acknowledged incomprehensibility of his inscrutable judgments, and the demonstrated unknowability of his untraceable ways, yet using the office of human faith, he rendered this honor to the depth of the untraceable and inscrutable heavenly mysteries, saying: For of him, and through him, and in him, are all things: to him be glory forever, amen: referring this now to the signification of one nature, which could not be the work of any but one nature.

Epilogue: what has been established from the aforesaid passages of Paul.—For since he specially ascribed to God that of him are all things, and attributed to Christ as his own that through him are all things; and since it is now the honor of God, that of him and through him and in him are all things; and since the Spirit of God is the same as the Spirit of Christ; or since in the ministry of the Lord and in the working of God the one Spirit works and distributes, those things whose properties belong to one cannot fail to be one; since in the same Lord the Son, and in the same God the Father, one and the same Spirit in the same Holy Spirit, distributing, accomplishes all things.

O worthy sharer in the consciousness of great and heavenly secrets, and one assumed and chosen to partake of divine mysteries, of necessity keeping silence on those very things by the silence of forbidden speech, and truly the Apostle of Christ, with what skill of human perversity did he close, by the preaching of his own unqualified speech, confessing one God the Father, and one Lord Jesus Christ; so that between these no one could preach either two, nor a solitary one: since nevertheless he who is not solitary would not advance into two; nor could he who is not two be understood as a solitary; and between these the Father, shown forth, displayed the perfect nativity of Christ!

For heretics there is neither faith, nor hope, nor baptism.—Now stretch forth your tongues quivering with hissing, you serpent heretics, whether of Sabellius, or of Photinus, or whoever now preach the Only-begotten God to be a creature. Whoever denies the Son shall hear "one God the Father": because since the Father is Father only through the Son, the Son is thereby signified in the Father. But he who takes away from the Son the unity of an undifferentiated nature, let him acknowledge one Lord Jesus Christ. For unless the Lord is one through unity of Spirit, it will not be left to God the Father to be Lord. But he who reckons the Son to be from time and from the flesh, let him acknowledge that through him are all things, and we through him; and that the immensity beyond time, founding all things, is itself without time. And let him meanwhile reflect that there is one hope of the calling, and one baptism, and one faith.

And after this, being set as anathema for opposing the Apostle's preaching, since he thinks otherwise according to his own sense, he is neither called, nor baptized, nor faithful: because in the one God the Father, and in the one Lord Jesus Christ, the faith of one hope and one baptism is one. Nor can diversity of doctrines glory in these things which are of one God and one Lord and one hope and one baptism and one faith.

The faith concerning the Father and the Son.—One faith, then, is to confess the Father in the Son and the Son in the Father through the unity of an inseparable nature, not confused, but undivided; not intermingled, but undifferentiated; not merely conjoined, but truly existing; not incomplete, but perfect. For it is a nativity, not a division; and he is a Son, not an adoption; and he is God, not a creation. Nor is God of another kind, but the Father and the Son are one: for the nature was not made new in being born, so as to be alien from the property of its own origin.

The Apostle, therefore, holds to this faith of the Son abiding in the Father and the Father in the Son, preaching for himself one God the Father and one Lord Christ: since in the Lord Christ there was also God, and in God the Father there was also Lord; and each was one in that he is God, and each was one in that he is Lord; because it is imperfect for God, unless he is Lord, and for the Lord to be understood, unless he is God. And thus, since each is one, and one is signified in each, and neither is without the one; the Apostle, in teaching, does not go beyond the evangelical preaching, nor is Christ speaking in Paul different from him (after the ascension into heaven) who, remaining bodily in the world, spoke these things.

The Son of man gives eternal life, because he was sealed by the Father.—For the Lord had said in the Gospels: Labor for the food which does not perish, but for the food which endures unto eternal life, which the Son of man will give you. For him has God the Father sealed. They said therefore to him: What shall we do, that we may work the works of God? And he said to them: This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.

The Lord, expounding the mystery both of his incarnation and of his divinity, also spoke a teaching of our faith and hope: that we should labor for the food that does not perish, but endures unto eternity, so that we might remember that this food of eternity is given to us by the Son of man, that we might know the Son of man to be sealed by God the Father, that we might recognize this to be the work of God, to believe in him whom he had sent. And who is he whom the Father sent? Surely he whom God sealed. And who is he whom God sealed? Certainly the Son of man, namely he who offers the food of eternal life. And who, finally, are they to whom he offers it? Those, namely, who will labor for the food that does not perish. And thus, whatever is the work of the food, the same is the working of God, namely, to have believed in him whom he sent.

But it is the Son of man who says these things. And how will the Son of man give the food of eternal life? But he does not know the mystery of his own salvation, who does not know that the Son of man, giving food unto eternal life, was sealed by God the Father. Here now I ask, what, finally, is the sense of understanding, that the Son of man was sealed by the Father as God?

God accommodates his speech to our understanding. The Son is equal to the Father. God is uncomposite.—And first it must be recognized that God has spoken not for himself, but for us, and that he has so tempered his speech to our understanding, as far as the weakness of our nature can grasp for perceiving. For when he had earlier been rebuked by the Jews, because, by professing himself the Son of God, he had made himself equal to God; he had answered that he does all things that the Father does; and that all judgment had been given to him by the Father; and that he too, as the Father, should be honored. And in all these things, having professed the Son before himself, he had made him equal to the Father in honor, in power, in nature.

Then he had said that, just as the Father has life in himself, so he had given to the Son to have life in himself: in which he signified the unity of the same nature through the mystery of the nativity. For by that which the Father has, he signified him in the having: because God is not, in a human manner, composed of parts, such that in him one thing is what is possessed, and another is he who possesses; but the whole that he is, is life, namely a nature perfect and absolute and infinite, and not constituted out of disparate parts, but itself living through the whole. And this, since as it is possessed, so also it has been given, even though it is understood to signify the nativity of him to whom it was given, yet it does not bring diversity of kind, since it was given such as it is possessed.

In what sense the Son of man was sealed by the Father.—After, then, this so manifold and proper signification of showing the paternal nature in himself, he used this saying: For him the Father God has sealed. The nature of seals is such, that they display the whole form of the figure impressed upon them, and have in themselves nothing less of it than that whereby they are sealed: and while they receive the whole of what is impressed, they exhibit from themselves the whole of whatever was impressed. But this (refer this "this" to what follows) does not serve as an example for the divine birth, because in seals there is both matter and diversity and impression, through which the forms of stronger kinds are impressed upon softer natures.

But the Only-begotten God, and, through the mystery of our salvation, the son of man, wishing to signify in himself the appearance of the paternal property, said that he was sealed by God: and this for the reason, that the son of man was about to give the food of eternal life; so that through this the power in him of giving food unto eternity might be understood, because he contained in himself the whole fullness of the paternal form of the God who sealed him; that what God had sealed should exhibit from itself nothing other than the form of the sealing God. These things indeed the Lord spoke to the Jews, who, because of their unbelief, were incapable of this saying.

Paul explains "sealed by God," saying "in the form of God."—But to us the preacher of the Gospel, the Spirit of Christ speaking through him, conveys the understanding of this property, saying: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant. For he whom God had sealed could not have been anything other than the form of God: and that which is sealed in the form of God must necessarily have in itself, wholly co-imaged, that which is God's. And therefore the Apostle proclaimed him, whom God sealed, as God remaining in the form of God. For, about to speak of the mystery of the body assumed and born together with him, he said, He thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant. For that which was in the form of God remained God through the God who sealed himself.

But because the form of a servant had to be taken up, and he was to be obedient unto death; not snatching at being equal with God for himself, he emptied himself through obedience for the assumption of the servile form. But he emptied himself out of the form of God, that is, out of that whereby he was equal to God: yet not accounting himself equal to God by robbery, although he stood forth in the form of God, and equal to God, sealed as God by God.

Christ is true God, even after the assumption of man: how much more before.—I ask here now, whether the God who remains God in the form of God is of another kind, as we see according to sealed and sealing appearances in seals, when iron impressed on lead, or a gem on wax, either shapes in itself the appearance of a concave image, or expresses from itself the form of one standing out? But if anyone should be so foolish and senseless as to think that God forms in himself, toward God, anything other than God; and that he who is in the form of God is, in his whole self, something other than God, after the mysteries of the man assumed, and of the humility completed through obedience even unto the death of the cross: he will hear, by the confession of the heavenly, the earthly, and the infernal, and of every tongue, Jesus in the glory of God the Father.

In this glory, then, if, when he was already in the servile form, he remains; then, I ask, when he was in the form of God, what did he remain? Whether, in the nature of God, which is signified in glory, Christ was a spirit; since in the glory of God the Father, Christ Jesus, that is, the man born, will stand forth?

God one, not sole.—The blessed Apostle holds throughout the unchangeable preaching of the evangelical faith, so that neither may the apostolic faith perish into two gods, through a God of another kind, nor may the Son, God, inseparable from the Father, afford an impious occasion for preaching one sole and singular God. For, saying "in the form of God," and "in the glory of God the Father," he taught neither that they differ, nor did he allow us to think him non-existent. For he who is in the form of God neither advances into another God, nor is he himself not God: because neither can he be separated from the form of God, since he is in it; nor is he who is in the form of God not God.

Just as he who is in the glory of God cannot be anything other than what God is; and while he is God in the glory of God, he has no predication of another God, diverse from God; because, through the fact that he is in the glory of God, he has in himself, from him in whose glory he is, that which is natural, namely, that he is God.

Christ, as the image of God, is not of another nature.—The one faith is not endangered, through several predications, so as not to be one. For the Evangelist had taught that it was said by the Lord, He who has seen me has seen also the Father. But did the teacher of the Gentiles, Paul, either not know, or keep silent, the force of the Lord's saying, when he said: Who is the image of the invisible God? I ask whether a visible image is of the invisible God: and whether the infinite God can be co-imaged, unto an appearance, through the image of a circumscribed form? For an image must render the form of that of which it is also the image. But let those who wish there to be a nature of another kind in the Son determine of what sort they wish the Son to be as image of the invisible God. Is it corporeal, and observable, and roaming from place to place by motion and going?

Let them remember, however, that according to the Gospels and the prophets, both Christ is spirit and God is spirit. If they circumscribe this spirit, Christ, in a formable and corporeal manner, then the image of the invisible God will not be corporeal, nor will the definite measure be the appearance of the indefinite.

He is the image of God insofar as the power of the divine nature is his.—But neither did the Lord leave uncertain, He who has seen me has seen also the Father; nor did the Apostle keep silent as to what he was who is the image of the invisible God.

For the Lord had said, If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not, teaching thereby that the Father is seen in him, because he was accomplishing his works; so that the understood power of nature might show the nature of the power understood, through which the Apostle, signifying that this is the image of God, says, Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature; for in him all things were established, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether Thrones, or Principalities, or Powers, or Dominations, all things were created through him and in him, and he is before all, and all things hold together in him, and he is the head of the body, the Church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that he might hold the primacy in all things; because it pleased that all fullness should dwell in him, and that through him all things should be reconciled unto him. Through the power of these works, then, he is the image of God.

For surely the Creator of invisible things is not under such a necessity of nature that the image of the invisible God should be visible. And lest he be understood to be the image of form rather than of nature, therefore he is the image of the invisible God, the nature of God in him being understood through the power of his nature, not through an invisible quality.

Who is the firstborn, who holds the primacy in all things.—He is therefore the firstborn of every creature, because all things were created in him. And lest anyone should dare not to refer to him the fact that all things were created in him, he says, All things were created through him and in him, and he is before all, and all things hold together in him. All things, then, hold together in him who is before all things, and in whom all things are. And these things indeed pertain to the beginnings of creatures. But on account of the dispensation of our body, he says: And he is the head of the body, the Church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that he might hold the primacy in all things; because it pleased that all fullness should dwell in him, and that through him all things should be reconciled unto him. The Apostle rendered corporeal operations to spiritual mysteries.

For he who is the image of the invisible God is himself also the head of the body, the Church: and he who is the firstborn of every creature is the same one who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead: so that he might hold the primacy in all things, since, for us, he who is the image of God is a body; since he who is firstborn of creation is the same one who is firstborn unto eternity, so that to whom spiritual things owe it—created in the firstborn—that they remain, to him human things too should owe it, that in the firstborn from the dead eternal things should be reborn. For he himself is the beginning, who, since he is Son, is image; since he is image, he is of God. He is also the firstborn of every creature, containing in himself the beginning of the universe.

And again he himself is the head of the body, the Church, and the firstborn from the dead, that he himself might hold the primacy in all things. And because all things hold together in him, the fullness pleased to be established consists in him; while in him, through himself, all things are reconciled unto him, in whom, through himself, in himself all things were created.

He is the image of God insofar as all things are created in him. Creation, like reconciliation, belongs both to the Father and to the Son.—Do you now perceive what it is to be the image of God? It is, of course, that all things are created in him through him. When all things are created in him, understand also that he whose image he is creates all things in him. But since the things which are created in him are created through him, know also, in him who is the image, that the nature of him whose image he is, is present. For through himself he creates the things which are created in him: just as through himself all things are reconciled in him. When they are reconciled in him, apprehend the paternal nature of unity in him, reconciling all things to himself in him. When all things are reconciled through him, understand him as reconciling to the Father in himself all the things which he was reconciling through himself.

For the same Apostle says: But all things are of God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and gave to us the ministry of reconciliation; for indeed God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. Compare with these the whole mystery of the evangelical faith. For he who is seen in the one seen, who works in the one working, who speaks in the one speaking, the same one reconciles in the one reconciling. And therefore in him and through him is the reconciliation, because, through an undivided nature, the Father remaining in him, was rendering the world reconciled to himself through him and in him.

Christ declared his oneness with the Father in the manner most fitting he could.—Providing therefore for human weakness, God taught the faith not by an uncertain bareness of words. For although the sole authority of the Lord's saying would suffice to impose the necessity of believing, yet he instructed our understanding through the intelligence of a stated reason: so that what he had said, "I and the Father are one", we might know through the very ground of the unity set forth.

For saying that he speaks through the one speaking, and works through the one working, and judges through the one judging, and is seen through the one seen, and reconciles through the one reconciling, and abides in him in whom he himself abides: I ask what other, more fitting speech he could have used for our understanding's sense of his explanation, that they might understand him to be one, than this, whereby, through the truth of birth and the unity of nature, whatever the Son did or said, the Father in the Son both spoke and wrought it? This therefore is not of a nature alien to himself, nor of one compared to God through creation, nor born from a portion of God into God; but of a divinity begotten by perfect birth into perfect God, whose natural confidence of consciousness is this, that he says: "I am in the Father, and the Father in me": and again: "All things that are the Father's are mine".

For nothing of God is lacking to him, by whose working and speaking and being seen, God both works and speaks and is seen. They are not two (understand: distinct in natures) in the working, or speech, or seeing of one. Nor is God solitary, who in the working and speaking and seen God, has himself worked and spoken and been seen as God. This the Church understands, this the Synagogue does not believe, this philosophy does not know how to think: one from one, and whole from whole, God and the Son, neither by birth having taken from the Father what is whole, nor himself not having held, by being born, this very whole together with him. And whoever shall be held by this folly of unbelief is either a follower of the Jews or of the Gentiles.

Human wisdom. The difference between the elements of the world and Christ.—But that you may understand the Lord's saying where he says, "All things that are the Father's are mine," learn also the teaching and faith of the Apostle who says: "See that no one deceive you through philosophy and empty deceit according to the tradition of men, according to the elements of the world, and not according to Christ: for in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily". Of the world he is, and savors the teachings of men, and is the prey of philosophy, whoever does not know Christ as true God, whoever is ignorant of the fullness of the Godhead in him. The human mind knows only what it understands, and the world believes only what it can, judging possible, according to the natures of the elements, only that which it might see or do.

For the elements of the world came into existence out of nothing: but Christ does not abide out of things not existing, nor did he begin as to origin, but took an eternal origin from an origin. For the elements of the world are either without soul, or advanced to soul: but Christ is life, born from the living God into the living God. The elements of the world were instituted by God, they are not God: Christ from God is God, this whole being wholly what God is. The elements of the world, being within, cannot exist of themselves so as not to be within: Christ, having God in himself under mystery, is in God. The elements of the world, when from themselves they generate their own kind unto life, furnish, indeed through corporeal passions, the beginnings of birth from themselves; but they themselves as living do not remain in those born: but the whole fullness of the Godhead bodily is in Christ.

Whose fullness of Godhead dwells bodily in Christ.—And I ask, whose fullness of Godhead is this in him? If it is not the Father's, what other God do you, a deceitful preacher of one God, impose upon me, whose fullness of Godhead dwells in Christ? But if it is the Father's, teach how this fullness dwells in him bodily. For if you believe the Father to be in the Son in a bodily manner, the Father dwelling in the Son will not exist in himself.

But if, rather, what is more fitting, the Godhead remaining bodily in him signifies the truth of the nature of God from God in him; while God is in him, not by condescension nor by will, but by generation true and whole, remaining according to itself with bodily fullness; while what he himself is, this also by birth is born of God into God; nor is there anything diverse or differing in God than that which dwells bodily in Christ; and whatever dwells bodily, that itself is according to the fullness of the Godhead: why do you follow human things? Why do you cling to the doctrines of empty deceptions? Why do you offer me unanimity, concord, creature? The fullness of the Godhead is in Christ bodily.

One is he who dwells, another the dwelling; each is perfect God.—The Apostle, moreover, held even here to the law of his faith; so that he taught the fullness of the Godhead to dwell in Christ bodily: lest the word of faith should fall into an impious union, nor irreligious madness break forth into the understanding of another nature. For the fullness of the Godhead dwelling in Christ bodily is neither singular nor separable: since neither does the bodily fullness suffer itself to be discerned from the bodily fullness, nor can the indwelling Godhead itself be understood to be the dwelling of the Godhead. And thus Christ is such that the fullness of the Godhead is in Christ bodily; but the Godhead is in Christ bodily fullness in such a way, that the fullness dwelling in him is understood to be nothing other than Christ. Steal what occasions of words you will, and stir up the stings of your irreligious wit. Lie, at least, about whose fullness of Godhead dwells bodily in Christ.

For Christ exists, and there exists too the fullness of the Godhead dwelling in him bodily.

What the bodily dwelling is. Whose it is.—And if you ask what the bodily dwelling is, understand what it is to speak in the one speaking, and to be seen in the one seen, and to work in the one working, and God in God, and whole from whole, and one from one: and thus recognize the fullness of the bodily Godhead. And whose this fullness of Godhead dwelling bodily is, remember that the Apostle does not remain silent, saying: "For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power also and Godhead".

Of this One, therefore, is the bodily Godhead in Christ, not in part, but whole; nor is it a portion, but the fullness: so remaining bodily that they are one; so are they one, that God does not differ from God; so undifferentiated is God from God, that perfect birth has established perfect God; but perfect birth thus subsists, because in God born from God there dwells bodily the fullness of the Godhead.

1. What was accomplished in the previous book. What was refuted.—Treating in the previous book of the undifferentiated nature of God the Father and God the Son, and of that which was said, "I and the Father are one", showing that this does not tend to a solitary God, but to the unity of an undivided divinity according to generation; since God is not born from any source other than from God, and God from God cannot fail to be that which God is: and having run through, though not all, yet testimonies of the divine and apostolic sayings sufficient for understanding, whereby the inseparable nature and power of the Father and the Son were taught, we have come now to this point of the apostolic faith, where he says: "See that no one deceive you through philosophy and empty deceit according to the tradition of men, according to the elements of the world, and not according to Christ: for in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily".

In this we have taught that, through the fullness of the Godhead dwelling in him bodily, he is shown to be true and perfect God of the Father's nature; so that the indwelling fullness might be understood to signify neither something diverse, nor something unique: since both the bodily dwelling of the incorporeal God taught the property of the natural unity in the God who subsisted from God; and God dwelling in Christ, by being the indweller, showed the birth of the subsisting Christ.

By which, I think, more than sufficient answer has been given to the impiety of those who would refer that which was said by the Lord: "He who has seen me has seen the Father"; and "the Father in me, and I in the Father"; and "I and the Father are one"; and "All things that are the Father's are mine", to a unity and concord merely of will: so that, while the faith of the saying remained, the false religion of a deceptive teaching would nonetheless corrupt the understanding of the saying; and since the assent of wills could not be denied in these cases, in which the unity of nature is preached, yet merely a fellowship of concord would be believed, so as to abolish that unity which is according to birth.

But when the blessed Apostle, after many unambiguous heraldings of natural truth, taught the fullness of the Godhead dwelling bodily in Christ, all assertion of impious rashness was cut off, since the bodily dwelling of the incorporeal Godhead effected a natural unity: so that what is not the Son alone, but that the Father abides in him; and not only abides, but also works and speaks; and not only works and speaks, but also is seen—these are not merely nominal, but true, since he has in himself, through the mystery of birth, both power power, and authority authority, and nature nature; holding through birth that which is his own, and from himself referring by image that which is in himself, since he is both the image of the author and the truth; because perfect birth affords a perfect image, and the fullness of the Godhead dwelling bodily obtains natural truth.

Scriptures which the Arians abuse. Why they do not attain their sense.—And though these things are indeed as they are, because the God from God by nature cannot but be in that nature of his birth by which he is God, and the undifferentiated unity of a living nature is inseparable from itself under the birth of a living nature: nevertheless, through the salutary confession of the evangelical faith, the heretics creep in to the destruction of the truth, so as to detract from the Son the natural unity, while composing sayings otherwise than they were spoken and to another purpose, and to be understood otherwise than what they are meant for. Denying, therefore, the Son of God, they use that authority whereby he said: "Why do you call me good? No one is good but one, God": so that, because his profession spoke of one God, whatever thereafter shall be in the name of God should no longer remain in the nature of God, because God is one.

And so that what he himself is called God should be by title rather than by truth, they strive to confirm this from the fact that he said: "Now this is eternal life, that they may know thee the only true God". And that he might be outside the property of the true God, they add this: "The Son cannot do anything of himself, but what he sees the Father doing". They try also this: "The Father is greater than I". Finally, they now boast, as though by an indissoluble profession of denied divinity, to have overturned the faith of the Church, when they read: "But of that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone".

For it does not seem that a nature can be equal through birth, which is diverse by the necessity of ignorance; and the Father by knowing and the Son by not knowing manifest a dissimilarity of Godhead: because God ought to be ignorant of nothing, and one who is ignorant cannot be compared to one who knows. But all these things, neither understanding by reason, nor discerning by the times, nor grasping by the evangelical mysteries, nor perceiving by the force of the sayings, they speak with a foolish and unskilled fury against the nature of the Godhead, recalling only these bare things to fill the ears of the ignorant, either with the resolutions of them passed over in silence, or with the causes: whereas the understanding of the sayings ought to be sought either from what precedes or from what follows.

Christ is both God and man. Let Nestorius and Eutyches take heed.—And having above set forth, as we intend, the reasoning of these matters already mentioned, drawn from the very declarations of the Gospels and the Apostles, we think that all must be admonished with the common faith: that in the confession in which eternal life consists, in that same confession there should be understanding of eternity. He plainly does not know his own life, does not know it, who is ignorant that Christ Jesus is true God just as He is also true man. And it is a peril of the same kind, to deny that Christ Jesus is either Spirit and God, or the flesh of our body. Everyone therefore who shall confess me before men, I also will confess him before my Father who is in heaven. But whoever shall deny me before men, I also will deny him before my Father who is in heaven.

These things the Word made flesh was speaking, and the man Jesus Christ, the Lord of majesty, was teaching: He Himself the Mediator established in Himself for the salvation of the Church, and by that very sacrament of mediatorship between God and men, existing as one out of both, while He Himself, from natures united into the same, is the very reality of both natures; yet in such a way that He lacked neither in either, lest perchance God should cease to be by being born man, and man in turn should not be God by remaining God. This, then, is the true faith of human blessedness: to proclaim God and man, to confess the Word and the flesh; neither God being ignorant that He is man, nor the flesh being unaware that it is the Word.

That He who was born man remains God, our sense no longer shrinks from.—But since, contrary to the nature of our sense, God remaining God is born man; it is now not contrary to the nature of our hope, that man having been born should remain God: since the more excellent nature, being born into the lower, gives faith that the lower nature can be born into the more excellent. And indeed, according to the law and custom of the world, the effect is more ready for our hope than for the divine sacrament. For the world, in those things which are born, has the power of increase, not the power of diminution. Behold the trees, the crops, the cattle. Behold also man himself, partaker of reason: he always progresses by growth, never is he contracted by diminution; nor does that which has grown in him ever fail to be in him.

For although he may wither with age, or perish by death, he has indeed either a change in time, or an end in the constitution of living; but he does not have this, that what he is should not be in power, so that he should refashion himself anew through diminution out of the same thing, that is, so that from an old man he should pass into an infant. The necessity of our nature, therefore, ever advancing by the law of the world into increase, does not without reason expect the advancement of a more excellent nature: for that nature has increase according to its nature, and diminution contrary to its nature. It was, then, proper to God, to be something other than He remained, and yet not to cease to be what He had remained; to be born as God in man, and yet not to cease being God; to contract Himself even to conception, and cradle, and infancy, and yet not to depart from the power of God.

This is a sacrament not for Himself, but for us. Nor was our assumption an advancement for God: but the will of His own humiliation is our advancement; while He neither loses what He is as God, and He gains for man that he should be as God.

Christ showed by words and deeds that He is Son both of God and of man.

Whence the occasion of heresy.—The only-begotten God, therefore, being born man of the Virgin, and, according to the fulness of time, about to advance in Himself into God-man, maintained throughout this manner of evangelic speech, that He might teach Himself to be believed the Son of God, and admonish that He be proclaimed the Son of man: as man speaking and doing all things that are God's, then as God speaking and doing all things that are man's; yet in such a way that in that very speech of each kind He never spoke except with signification both of man and of God; one God the Father, however, always being shown forth, and He Himself professing Himself, through the truth of His nativity, to be in the nature of the one God; yet not withholding Himself from subjection to God the Father, both in the honor of Sonship and in the condition of manhood: since every nativity refers itself to its author, and all flesh, in relation to God, professes itself weak.

Hence, therefore, is occasion given to heretics for deceiving the simple and ignorant, so that they falsely claim the things said by Him according to manhood to have been said according to the weakness of the divine nature: and, because it is one and the same who speaks all things which He speaks, they contend that He spoke all things concerning Himself alone. 6. Some things were said by Christ before He was born, others in Him Himself, once born and about to die, others as the Eternal One.—Nor indeed do we deny that all that remains of Him belongs to the speech of His own nature. But if Jesus Christ is both man and God; and neither, when He is man, is He then first God; nor is it the case that when He is also man, He is then not also God; nor after manhood, is He, in God, not wholly man and wholly God: it is necessary that the sacrament of His sayings be one and the same as that of His kind.

And when you distinguish in Him, according to time, man from God, distinguish then also the speech of God and of man. And when you shall confess God and man in time, judge the sayings of God and of man in time. But when, from man and God, you understand in turn the time of the whole man now made whole God, if anything has been said for the demonstration of that time, understand that what was said was fitted to its time: so that, since it is one thing for God to exist before manhood, another thing to be man and God, another thing after manhood and God to be wholly man wholly God, you should not confound with times and kinds the sacrament of the dispensation, since, according to the quality of the kinds and natures, it was necessary that there be for Him, in the sacrament of manhood, one manner of speech not yet born, another still about to die, another now eternal.

What Christ, acting as man, acting as God, has shown. Why He willed to be born, why to suffer, why to die.—For our sake, therefore, Jesus Christ, remaining all these things, and born man of our body, spoke according to the custom of our nature: yet not omitting that it belongs to His nature that He is God. For although in birth and passion and death He accomplished the realities of our nature; yet He accomplished all these very realities by the power of His own nature, while He is Himself the origin of His own birth, while He wills to suffer what it is not lawful for Him to suffer, while He dies who lives. And yet then God does these things through man, born of Himself, having suffered through Himself, and having died of Himself; nor did He fail to act as man also, while He was both born, and suffered, and died.

But these are sacraments of heavenly mysteries established even before the founding of the world, that the only-begotten God should will to be born man, in order to remain forever God-man: that God should will to suffer, lest the devil, raging with the sufferings of human weakness, should retain in us the law of sin, while God took upon Himself our weakness: that God should will to die, lest any insolent power should exist against God, nor could the creature usurp for itself the nature of authority over Him, since the immortal God had placed Himself within the law of death. God, therefore, is born for our assumption, but suffers for innocence, and finally dies for vengeance: while our manhood remains in God, and the sufferings of our weaknesses are made allies with God, and the spiritual powers of wickedness and malice are subdued by the triumph of the flesh, God dying through the flesh.

The faithful are filled with God in Christ.—Conscious, therefore, of this sacrament, and having attained the knowledge of faith through the Lord Himself, the Apostle, since he was not unaware that the world and men and philosophy were incapable of it, says: See lest anyone deceive you through philosophy and vain deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elements of the world, and not according to Jesus Christ: for in Him dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, and you are filled in Him, who is the head of every principality and power. Having thus set forth the fulness of the Godhead dwelling bodily in Him, he immediately subjoined the sacrament of our assumption, saying: You are filled in Him. For as in Him is the fulness of the Godhead, so we are filled in Him.

Nor indeed does he say, you are filled, but, in Him you are filled: because through the hope of faith, regenerated unto eternal life, and yet to be regenerated, all now remain in the body of Christ; to be filled afterwards, themselves, no longer in Him, but in themselves, according to that time of which the Apostle says, Who shall transfigure the body of our lowliness, made conformable to the body of His glory. Now, therefore, we are filled in Him, that is, through the assumption of His flesh, in whom the fulness of the Godhead dwells bodily. And of this our hope there is no small power in Him. For that we are filled in Him, this is the head and beginning of all power, according to that: That in His name every knee should bow, of things heavenly, and things earthly, and things under the earth; and every tongue should confess, that the Lord Jesus is in the glory of God the Father.

This, therefore, will be the confession: that Jesus, in the glory of God the Father, and born in man, now remains no longer in the weakness of our body, but in the glory of God. And this every tongue will confess. And when things heavenly and things earthly shall bend the knee: this is the head of all principality and power, that all things, by bending the knee, should be subject to Him, in whom we are filled, and who, through the fulness of the Godhead dwelling bodily in Him, is to be confessed in the glory of God the Father.

God is the same author of our regeneration and of Christ's resurrection.—Having shown, however, both the sacrament of His own nature and that of our assumption, since, while the fulness of the Godhead remains in Him, we are filled in Him through that by which He was born man: he pursues the remaining dispensation of human salvation, saying, In whom also you are circumcised with a circumcision not made with hand, in the stripping off of the body of the flesh, but in the circumcision of Christ, buried together with Him in baptism, in whom also you rose together with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. We are circumcised, therefore, not with carnal circumcision, but with the circumcision of Christ, that is, being reborn into the new man. For when we are buried together with Him in His baptism, it is necessary that we die out of the old man; because the regeneration of baptism is the power of resurrection.

And this is the circumcision of Christ, not to be stripped of the flesh of the foreskin, but wholly to die together with Him, and through that afterwards wholly to live for Him. For in Him we rise again through faith in that God who raised Him from the dead. God, therefore, is to be believed, by whose working Christ was raised from the dead: because this faith rises together with Him in Christ.

The same Christ dies as man, raises himself as God.—Then the whole sacrament of the assumed man is thus completed: And you, when you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he made alive together with him, forgiving you all trespasses, blotting out the handwriting that was against us in decrees, which was contrary to us; and he took it out of the way, nailing it to the cross: having stripped off the flesh, he made a show of the powers openly, triumphing over them in himself. The man of this age does not grasp the apostolic faith, and no discourse other than his own explains the meaning of his own sense. God raises Christ from the dead, and Christ in whom the fullness of divinity dwells bodily.

But he made us alive together with him, forgiving us our sins, and blotting out the handwriting of the law of sin, which by former decrees was contrary to us, taking this out of the way, and nailing it to the cross, stripping himself of flesh by the law of death, making a show of the powers, triumphing over them in himself. And concerning the powers triumphed over in himself, and made a show of, and the handwriting blotted out, and ourselves made alive, we have already treated above. But who shall grasp or utter this sacrament? The operation of God raises Christ from the dead, and this same operation of God makes us alive with Christ, and this same operation forgives sins, blots out the handwriting, and nails it to the cross: he strips himself of flesh, makes a show of the powers, and triumphs over them in himself. You have the operation of God raising Christ from the dead: you have also Christ performing in himself these very things which God performs.

For Christ died, stripping himself of flesh. Hold fast then Christ the man raised from the dead by God; hold fast God, Christ, performing the operation of our salvation when he was about to die: so that when God performs these things in Christ, God performing them, yet Christ, stripping himself of flesh, is about to die: and when Christ died, God performing before death, yet the operation of God raises up the dead Christ; since he is (the same is) the one raising Christ from the dead, who before death was the Christ performing, and the same is the one stripping himself of flesh who was about to die.

The flesh stripped off and the one stripping himself of flesh are one Christ.—Do you now understand the sacrament of the apostolic faith? Do you now know Christ? For I ask of you, who is the one stripping himself of flesh, and what is that flesh stripped off? For I hold from the Apostle a twofold meaning signified, of the flesh stripped off, and of the one stripping himself of flesh: and between these I hear that Christ was raised from the dead by the operation of God. And since it is God who raises Christ from the dead, and it is also Christ who is raised from the dead: I ask, who is the one stripping himself of flesh, and who is the one raising Christ from the dead, and making us alive with Christ? For if the dead Christ is not the same as the flesh stripped off, show me the name of the flesh stripped off: and again explain the nature of him who stripped himself of flesh.

For I find that the same God is the Christ raised from the dead who stripped himself of flesh, and again that the flesh stripped off is the Christ raised from the dead: then I find him making a show of principalities and powers and triumphing over them in himself. Do you understand this one triumphing over the powers in himself? Do you perceive that the flesh stripped off and the one stripping himself of flesh do not differ from himself? For he triumphs in himself, that is, in that flesh of which he stripped himself. Do you see how God and man are thus proclaimed: so that death is attributed to the man, but the raising up of the flesh to God; yet not so that one is he who died, and another he by whom the dead one rises again? For it was as flesh stripped off that Christ died: and again, the one raising Christ from the dead is the same Christ stripping himself of flesh.

Understand the nature of God in the power of the resurrection: recognize the dispensation of the man in death. And though both things were accomplished according to their own natures, remember nevertheless that it is one Christ Jesus who is both.

Christ is raised by his own power: why Paul attributes this work to the Father.—For although I remember that it is frequently referred by the Apostle to God the Father, that Christ was raised from the dead: yet the Apostle is not, outside the evangelical faith, contrary to himself in his own sayings, especially since the Lord says, For this the Father loves me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment I have received from my Father. Or when it was demanded of him that he show a sign for faith concerning himself, he said of the temple of his body, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.

For since he teaches, both by the power of taking again his soul and by the power of raising up the temple, that he himself is God of his own resurrection, yet referring all this to the authority of the Father's command, the Apostle is not understood contrarily, in proclaiming Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God, that he referred all the magnificence of his work through this to the glory of the Father, because whatever Christ does, the power of God and wisdom does; and whatever the power of God and wisdom does, without doubt God does, whose wisdom and power Christ is. Finally, Christ is now raised from the dead through the operation of God: because he himself performed the works of God the Father by a nature not differing from God. And in that God is the faith of the resurrection, who raised Christ from the dead.

Two natures in Christ according to Paul.—The blessed Apostle therefore maintained this proclamation of a twofold signification in Christ, so as to teach both the weakness of the man in him and the power and nature of God, according to that saying to the Corinthians: For though he was crucified out of weakness, yet he lives by the power of God, showing the death as belonging to human weakness, but the life to the power of God: and that saying to the Romans, For in that he died, he died to sin once: but in that he lives, he lives to God.

So do you also reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus: ascribing death to sin, that is, to our body, but life to God, to whom it is natural to live, and by this we ought to die to our body, that we may live to God in Christ Jesus, who, taking on the body of our sin, now lives wholly to God, the fellowship of our nature having been united into communion with divine immortality.

One is the form of God, another the form of a servant: it is the same Christ. The form of God was hidden, not lost.—These things therefore I had to show in a few words, that we might remember that the person of both natures is treated in the Lord Jesus Christ; because he who remained in the form of God, received the form of a servant, through which he was obedient unto death. For the obedience of death is not in the form of God, just as the form of God is not in the form of a servant.

But by the sacrament of the evangelical dispensation, he who is in the form of a servant is no other than he who is in the form of God: although to receive the form of a servant, and to remain in the form of God, is not the same thing; and since he who remained in the form of God could not receive the form of a servant except through his own emptying, there being no concourse suited to himself of both forms. But he who emptied himself, and he who received the form of a servant, are not other and different. For that which has received cannot belong to one who does not exist; because it belongs to one who subsists, to receive. Therefore the emptying of the form is not the abolition of the nature: because he who empties himself does not lack himself; and he who receives, remains.

And since he himself is the same one emptying and receiving, he has indeed in this a sacrament, that he empties himself and receives; yet he does not have destruction, lest the one emptying should not exist, and the one receiving should not be. Thus the emptying serves this end, that the form of a servant may profit, not that Christ, who was in the form of God, should cease to remain Christ; since none but Christ received the form of a servant. And when he emptied himself, so that, the Spirit remaining Christ, the same Christ was man; in the body the change of condition and the assumption of nature does not destroy the nature of the remaining divinity: because one and the same Christ both changes his condition and assumes.

The objections of the heretics are weighed. Christ does not object to being called good.—Having shown, then, the dispensation of the sacraments, by which the heretics, through ignorance, deceive whomever they can, so that they ascribe to the weakness of divinity all things that were said and done through the nature of the assumed man, and attribute to the form of God whatever is properly suited to the form of a servant: now we must answer their own propositions themselves. For by this whole discussion the kinds of individual sayings will be judged, since it is faith alone that confesses the Word and the flesh, that is, God and man, Jesus Christ. The heretics therefore think that our Lord Jesus Christ must be denied by nature, from the fact that he said: Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. Every rationale of answers must necessarily proceed from the causes of the questions. For the answer will be given to that from which the question arose.

And first I ask of the slanderer of this saying, whether he thinks that the Lord is objecting to why he was called good, and would rather have been called evil. For this seems to be signified by this saying, Why do you call me good? I do not think anyone will be so senseless as to wish to ascribe a profession of malice to him who said: Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you shall find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. He professes himself meek and humble: and shall he be believed to be angry that he was called good? This diversity of professions is at odds, that the witness to his own goodness should accuse the name of goodness in himself. It is not understood, then, that he is angry at being called good.

And it must be asked what other profession concerning himself he is objecting to, since he must not be believed to be objecting to the name of goodness in himself.

He objects to the faith of the questioner, not to the words.—Let us see, then, what the questioner said besides good: for he says, Good Master, what good thing shall I do? He named, then, two things: both good and master. And since he does not object to being called good, this necessarily is what he objects to, that he was called good master. But he objects to being called good master in such a way that he objected rather to the faith of the questioner than to the name of master or of good in himself.

For the insolent youth, through observance of the law, and not knowing the end of the law which is Christ, and thinking himself justified by works, and not understanding that he had come to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and that it is impossible for the law to save believers through the justification of faith, questions the Lord of the law and the only-begotten God as though he were a master of common precepts and things written in the law. The Lord therefore, detesting this profession of irreligious faith concerning himself, that he should be questioned as a master of the law, answered, Why do you call me good? And to signify to what extent he should be understood and professed good, he added, No one is good, but God alone; not rejecting the name of goodness, if it were attributed to him as to God.

He shows himself to be both good and master.—Finally, showing that the title of good master belongs to himself, through the faith of him who was questioning him as a man, after the young man's boasting and his glorying in the fulfilled law, he answered thus: One thing is lacking to thee: go, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me. He does not shrink from the name of goodness applied to himself, he who promises a heavenly treasure; nor does he refuse to be seen as master, he who offers himself as the guide to this perfect blessedness. But he refutes the earthly opinion held of him, teaching that goodness is in God alone. And that he might signify that he himself was both God and good, he made use of the offices of goodness, disclosing heavenly treasures and granting himself as their guide.

Thus he both rejects what was being offered to him merely as a man, and yet has not professed himself a stranger to those things which he attributed to God: since, confessing one God to be good, he himself spoke and did those very things which belong to the power, goodness, and nature of the one God.

He received the name of master together with faith.—That he did not therefore shrink from the name of goodness, but neither refused the honor of being called master, but rather refuted the faith of one who had understood nothing in him but what was bodily and carnal, is understood from this: that he spoke otherwise to the apostles when they confessed him master, saying: You call me Master and Lord, and you say well; for so I am, whereas elsewhere he had said: Be not called masters, for your master is Christ. Where he is master together with faith, there he approves it so far as even to profess this name; but here he does not acknowledge the name of good master, where he was understood to be neither Lord nor Christ: proclaiming the one God alone to be good, yet by no means separating himself from God, he who, having professed himself Lord and Christ, shows himself the guide to the heavenly treasure.

Everywhere the Lord professes himself neither the same as the Father nor different from him. By the honor of faith, he made himself equal to the Father, and thus also by nature.—The Lord always maintained this rule of ecclesiastical faith: that while proclaiming God the Father to be one, he did not separate himself from the mystery of the one God, while through the nature of his birth he professed himself to be neither another God nor the same God: because the nature in him does not allow him to be a God of a different kind from the one God, nor does his birth admit that what he is as Son should not be perfect. Thus he can neither be separable from God, nor is he himself God separately. By this he so tempers the whole significance of his speech, that whatever honor he professed toward God the Father, he showed by a most modest confession to be his own as well.

For when he says, Believe in God, and believe in me, I ask in what he has distinguished himself in nature, who did not distinguish himself in honor? For in saying, And believe in me, after having said, And believe in God—is it not understood that by what he says, in me, he signified also his own nature? Separate the nature plainly, if you separate the faith. If it is life to have believed in God without Christ, then tear Christ away from both the name and the property of God. But if believing in Christ perfects the life of those who believe in God, let the diligent reader weigh the force of the words: Believe in God, and believe in me.

For when he says, Believe in God, and believe in me, uniting himself to faith in God, he also united his nature with that God in whom it was necessary to believe, and taught that belief in himself was likewise necessary: teaching himself thereby to be God, since belief in him is required of those who believe in God. Yet he excluded any occasion for an irreligious union: because, having professed that belief was owed both to God and to himself, he did not leave faith in himself to stand solitary.

What the Father testified concerning the Son, and was not heard.

The Father's testimony among the Jews; the works of Christ.—Although, therefore, in most, indeed almost all his sayings, he preserved the completeness of this mystery, lest, having confessed God the Father, he should separate himself from union with him; and although, while placing himself in union with him, he yet did not profess him to be one and solitary: nevertheless it is understood also, and especially, from this passage that the mystery both of unity and of nativity is taught, when he says: But I have a testimony greater than John's. For the works which the Father has given me to accomplish, these very works which I do, bear witness of me, that the Father has sent me. And he who sent me, the Father, he has borne witness of me. And you have never heard his voice, nor seen his shape, and you do not have his word abiding in you: for whom he has sent, him you do not believe.

How is it truly to be understood that the Father bore witness of the Son, when neither was he himself seen, nor was his voice heard? I recall indeed that a voice was heard from heaven, saying: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased: hear him. And how is it that the voice of God was not heard, when the voice that was heard contains within it the significance of the paternal voice? But perhaps those remaining in Jerusalem did not hear it, because John alone heard it in the desert. It must be asked, then, how the Father testified in Jerusalem? For he does not now use the testimony of John who heard the voice from heaven, but he has a testimony greater than John's, and what this was he immediately added: For the works which the Father has given me to accomplish, these very works which I do, bear witness of me, that the Father has sent me.

I acknowledge the authority of this testimony: for no one but the Son sent by the Father would do these things. His work, therefore, is his testimony. But what, then, follows? You have never heard his voice, nor seen his shape, and you do not have his word abiding in you. Are those then free from blame who are ignorant of the Father's testimony, since he was never heard or seen among them, and his word does not abide in them? But they are not excused from ignorance of a testimony unknown to them: because he professes that the testimony of the Father concerning himself is the testimony of his own works. The works, therefore, testify of him that he was sent by the Father; but this testimony of the works is the Father's testimony. And since the operation of the Son is the Father's testimony, it is necessary that the nature operating in Christ be understood as that through which the Father also bears witness.

And thus, Christ operating, and the Father bearing witness in his work, are shown to be of an inseparable nature according to birth; since God's testimony concerning Christ is shown to be that very operation of Christ.

The Jews neither saw nor heard the Father, because they did not believe Christ. Hence the nature of both is one.—They are not, then, free from guilt for a testimony unknown to them; since the work of Christ is the Father's testimony concerning him. Nor, because they did not hear the voice of him who testifies, nor see his shape, nor have his word abiding, are they therefore without awareness of the testimony.

For to what was said—You have neither heard his voice, nor seen his shape, and you do not have his word abiding in you—so that although the Father had testified of him, yet the reason neither for the voice not being heard, nor the shape not seen, nor the word not abiding in them could be understood, he immediately added: Because him whom he has sent, you do not believe: showing that, upon belief in himself, the voice of God is to be heard, the shape of God is to be seen, and his word is present in those who believe; since through the unity of nature the Father both spoke, and was seen, and was possessed in him. Does he not also signify the Father, when he is sent by him? Does he distinguish himself from the Father by any difference of nature, when for this reason the Father, testifying of him, was neither heard, nor seen, nor understood, because he who was sent by the Father was not believed in?

The only-begotten God, therefore, does not separate himself from God in confessing God the Father: but through the signifying of the Father, with God the Father thus shown forth, he establishes also himself in the honor of God.

Honor is to be sought from God. Those who do not receive Christ in the name of God lack the love of God.—For in this very same discourse, in which he teaches that he himself is proven by his works to have been sent by the Father, and signifies the Father as testifying that he was sent by him, when he had said: And the honor which is of him who alone is God, you do not seek, he did not leave this statement bare and unprepared beforehand for the faith in unity. For above he says thus: You will not come to me, that you may have life. I do not receive honor from men; but I have known you, that you do not have the love of God in you. I have come in the name of my Father, and you have not received me: if another shall come in his own name, him you will receive.

How can you believe, who receive honor from one another, and do not seek the honor which is of him who alone is God? He disapproves of honor from men: because honor is rather to be sought from God, and it belongs to unbelievers to receive honor from one another. For what honor shall man bestow on man? He says, then, that he knows that the love of God is not in them: and he teaches this to be the cause of the love of God not abiding in them, that they do not receive him who comes in the name of his Father. What, I ask, is it to come in the name of the Father? Is it anything other than to come in the name of God? Or is it not for this reason that the love of God is not in them, because he who comes in the name of God was not received?

Or did he not also signify the nature of God in himself, saying: You will not come to me, that you may have life? For in this same discourse he had already said: Amen, amen I say to you, that the hour is coming, and now is, in which the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they who hear shall live. When he comes in the name of the Father, he is not the Father himself, and yet he is not without that nature of divinity by which the Father is God: because it is proper both to the Son and to God to come in the name of God the Father. Then another is to be received, coming in the same name. But this one is a man, from whom men will hope for honor for themselves, and to whom they will render honor in turn; while he himself will falsely claim to have come in the name of the Father.

And here it is not obscure that the antichrist is signified, glorying in the false claim of the paternal name. And when they shall honor him, and shall be honored by him (for they shall receive this spirit of error), they will not seek the honor which is of him who alone is God.

The honor of God and of Christ is inseparable.—Can it be understood that Christ separates himself from the honor of the one God, on the ground that they do not have the love of God because they did not receive him who came in the Father's name, and again, receiving another coming in the same name and accepting honor from that other one, do not seek the honor of him who alone is God; since it is on this account that the honor of the one God alone is not sought, because in receiving the antichrist that one was not received? For whoever is repudiated, in that repudiation the honor of God alone is passed over; in the honor of him, in whose reception, had they remained, they would have sought the honor of God alone, the honor of God alone must necessarily be present. And this very same discourse is a witness for us, in whose opening is contained: That all may honor the Son, as they honor the Father.

He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. Never are things equalized in honor except natural things; nor does an equalized honor separate those to be honored. Yet an equality of honor is demanded together with the mystery of the birth. Since the Son is thus to be honored as the Father is, and since the honor of him who alone is God is not sought apart from this, it is not outside the honor of God alone, whose honor is the same and one with God's; because as one who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father either, so also one who does not seek the honor of God alone does not seek that of Christ either. Therefore the honor of Christ is inseparable from the honor of God.

And how one and the same is the honor of both, he teaches also from this, when, upon the report of Lazarus's illness, he says: This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it. Lazarus dies for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through Lazarus. Is it doubted that in the glory of the Son of God is the glory of God, since the death of Lazarus, which is glorious to God, is to bring forth glory to the Son of God?

And thus both the natural unity of God the Father with Christ through birth is taught, since the sickness of Lazarus is for the glory of God; and the mystery of faith is upheld, since through Lazarus the Son of God is to be glorified: by understanding, through this, God as the Son of God, and yet not so understanding God as not also to confess him Son of God; since, by God being glorified through Lazarus, the Son of God is glorious.

Christ there professes himself God, where he professes there to be but one. God is one. The scribe assents.—The birth of one living being from another living being is inseparable from the mystery of the divine nature, and the Son of God does not undergo a change of kind, lest the truth of the paternal nature not remain in him. For even by these very statements, by which, having confessed one God only, he seems to have denied the nature of God in himself under the demonstration of "alone," he nevertheless placed himself in the unity of the paternal nature, without overturning the faith in the one God. For, being asked by a scribe what was the chief commandment in the law, he replied: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord: and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your inward parts, and with all your strength. This is the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

There is no commandment greater than these. He is thought to have alienated himself from the nature and religion of the one God, since this is the profession of the chief commandment: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord; and then (understand: since) he does not even establish himself in the religion of the following commandment, since the law calls us to the love of neighbor just as to faith in the one Lord. And indeed the scribe's response is not to be overlooked, who says: You have said well, Master, in truth, that God is one, and there is no other besides him: and that he is to be loved with all the heart and with all the strength and with all the soul: and to love one's neighbor as oneself. This is greater than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.

The scribe's response seems to agree with the Lord's words, professing the innermost and interior love of the one God, but promising love of neighbor according to the truth of one's own self-love, and understanding love toward God and toward man to be above the whole burnt offerings of sacrifices. But what follows must be seen.

This man is not far from the kingdom of God, while he strives toward love.—But Jesus, seeing that he had answered wisely, said to him: You are not far from the kingdom of God. What is meant by the profession of so moderate a response (understand: how is it) that, whereas this faith brings a man to consummation for the kingdom of heaven—to believe in one God, and to love him with all the soul and all the strength and all the heart, and likewise to love one's neighbor as oneself—this scribe is not yet in the kingdom of God, but only not far from the kingdom of God? Another meaning of this is given to those clothing the naked, and feeding the hungry, and giving drink to the thirsty, and visiting the sick, and frequenting those shut in prison: Come, you blessed of my Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

Or to those for whom this is the reward of poverty of spirit: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Here the fruit is perfect, and the possession absolute, and the handing over of the prepared kingdom not uncertain. Or did the young man confess anything less than these things? For, having equated love of neighbor to love of self, what had he not accomplished of the consummation of the good work? For sometimes to be indulgent and dutiful is not the mark of perfect love; but perfect love has fulfilled every duty of indulgence of whatever kind, since he who renders to another as much as to himself leaves nothing that he owes to another. But the Lord, praising the scribe's profession of faith while yet held back by ignorance of the consummated mystery, and replying that he was not far from the kingdom of God, nevertheless did not yet establish him in the very possession of that blessed hope.

For he was holding, indeed, to a happy course, even though in ignorance, both in preferring the love of God above all things, and in equating love of neighbor to love of himself. Yet since he had preferred love of God even to that very love of neighbor, he was no longer confined within the precepts of whole burnt offerings and sacrifices. This was not far from the evangelical mystery.

He is not yet in the kingdom of God, because not yet in the faith of Christ as God.—And why he is not far from the kingdom of God, rather than already in the kingdom of God, must be understood from the Lord's own words. For there follows: And no one dared any more to question him. And Jesus answering said, teaching in the temple: How do the scribes say that the Christ is the son of David? For David himself says by the Holy Spirit: The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool. David himself calls him Lord; and how is he his son? So the scribe confessing the one God, whom he ought to love above all things, is not far from the kingdom of God.

But he is admonished by his own profession, as to why he is ignorant of the mystery of the law, and does not know that Christ the Lord, the Son of God, is to be confessed, through the nature of his birth, in the faith of the one Lord. And because, through the profession of the one Lord according to the law, it did not seem to be left open for the Son of God to remain within the mystery of the one Lord; he admonishes the scribe as to how he could say that Christ is the son of David, since David had professed him to be his Lord; nor would nature allow that one who was the son of so great a patriarch should also be his Lord.

This is so that the scribe, understanding him only according to the flesh and the birth from Mary who was of David, might rather recall, according to the Spirit, that David had called him Lord rather than son; and that the saying, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, should not separate Christ from the mystery of the one Lord, since so great a patriarch and prophet professed as his Lord the one who had been begotten from the womb of the Lord before the daystar; not indeed forgetful of the law, nor ignorant that no other Lord is to be confessed, but understanding that he who, by the mystery of natural birth, had subsisted from the womb of the incorporeal God, is to be understood as Lord without violating the faith of the law; since one from one, through the nature of the one Lord, had within himself, by nature, that he is Lord.

Summary.—What place, then, is now left for doubt? The Lord himself, teaching that the chief commandment of the law consists in the confession and love of the one Lord, used not his own testimony to the scribe, but that of the Prophet, that he himself is Lord: yet always signifying that he is Lord through this, that he is the Son of God. For through this he remains within the mystery of the one God by birth, because the birth of God, holding the nature of God in himself, does not depart into another God by diversity of nature; and the truth of the generation neither takes away from the Father that he be Lord, nor fails to bring it about in the Son that he too be Lord.

And thus neither does the Father lose his authority, nor does the Son fail to hold the nature; through which neither is God the Father not the one Lord, nor is the only-begotten God-Lord separated from the One; since from the one Lord he himself, one, subsists as Lord: thus teaching from the law that the Lord is one, in such a way as also to confirm himself as Lord by the testimony of the Prophet (avid).

From the very objections of the heretics the divine nature in Christ is confirmed. The heretics' objection.—Let the response of the evangelical faith proceed through the remaining propositions of impious fury, and let it resist by these very things by which it is attacked: and, conquering by the weapons of its own destruction, let it show that the sayings of the one Spirit are the doctrine of one faith also. For Christ is no other than he who has been preached, namely true God, and abiding in the glory of the one true God: and just as he professed himself Lord from the law, while seeming to deny it; so also in the Gospels he shows himself true God, while it is thought he does not confess it. For they excuse themselves by this saying of his, so that the heretics may not confess him to be true God: And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

For in that he says, "you, the only true God," he is thought to separate himself from the truth of God by the exception implied in "only"; since the only true God cannot be understood except as him alone, solitary God. And indeed the apostolic faith does not allow this, that two true gods be believed; because nothing alien to the nature of the one God is to be equated with the truth of that same nature. For God will not be one in the truth of the one God, if outside the nature of the one true God there should exist another true God of a different kind and not natural to him according to birth.

It is resolved from the adjoining words. The Apostles recognize Christ as God from God by nature.—But so that from this very same saying it may be understood, without ambiguity, that he professed himself true God within the nature of the one true God, let the discourse of our response descend from the preceding statements, which are nevertheless continued and joined to this saying: so that, through the steps of the demonstrated faith, the confidence of our freedom may now come to rest at the very summit of Christ the true God. After the mystery of his discourse, then, in which he had said: He who has seen me has seen the Father also; and: Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak of myself; but the Father who abides in me, he does the works. Believe me, that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: but if not, believe for the sake of the works themselves.

After, then, this manifold discourse of immense mysteries, there follows this saying of the disciples in response: Now we know that you know all things, and you do not need that anyone should ask you; by this we believe that you came forth from God. By the powers of God in him, they also understood the nature of God: for to know all things, and to know the thoughts of hearts, could belong rather to one born of God than to one merely sent by God. In this, then, they profess that they believe he came forth from God, because in him was the power of the nature of God.

By the name of "going forth" they aptly signify this. By that going forth he means his nativity, not an alienation from the Father.—But the Lord, commending their understanding, replied not that he had been sent, but that he had gone forth from God, the origin of his birth from the incorporeal God being attested under the signification of "going forth". For he himself had also spoken of his own nativity under the demonstration of "going forth," saying: You love me, and believe that I went forth from God, and came from the Father into this world. For he had come from the Father into this world, because he had gone forth from God. For that his nativity might be understood to be signified in the "going forth," he added that he had come from the Father. And since by this he came from the Father—because he had gone forth from God—his going forth from God is a nativity free from all restriction, which the confession of the paternal name accompanied.

So then, the Apostles understanding this mystery of the "going forth," he spoke these words: Now you believe. Behold, the hour comes, and now is come, that each of you shall be scattered to his own, and you shall leave me alone: but I am not alone, because the Father is with me. So that, retaining that "going forth" as no alienation from God the Father in his being born, he added that he was not alone, but that the Father was with him—indeed by the power and unity of nature: since the Father, abiding in him, was with him, and in his speaking and working was himself both working and speaking. Then, in order to show the cause of this whole discourse of his, he added: These things I have spoken to you, that in me you may have peace. In this world you shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer, because I have overcome the world.

He spoke these things, then, so that they might remain peaceable in him, and not be divided by a zeal for dissension over disputes of faith; since he who was left alone was not alone, and he who had gone forth from God had with him the God from whom he had gone forth; and further, that they, being troubled in the world, might be patient in the promises of him who, by going forth from God and having God with him, had overcome the world.

The request for glory does not prove the Son weak, nor does the receiving of power. All power is connatural to the Son.—Finally, about to speak the faith of the whole mystery, having lifted up his eyes to heaven, he said: Father, the hour is come, glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you: as you have given him power over all flesh, that all that you have given him, he should give them eternal life. Does he seem weak to you, when he asks to be glorified? Let him indeed be weak, unless he asks to be glorified precisely so that he himself may glorify the one who honors him. Concerning the receiving and rendering of honor we have treated in another book, and it is quite superfluous to go over the same matter again. Certainly there is no doubt that glory is asked for the purpose that the one bestowing it may be glorified. But perhaps he is weak in this, that he received power over all flesh.

Let the receiving of power too be weak, unless he is powerful enough to bestow eternal life on those over whom he has received it. But in this very fact of having received it, some weakness of nature is also alleged. Let the receiving indeed be weakness, unless Christ is true God rather by nativity than by unbegottenness.

But if the receiving of power is only the signification of nativity, in which he received that which he is, then it is not to be reckoned as a bestowal upon weakness, since it constitutes the one being born as wholly that which God is. For since the unbegotten God is the author, for the only-begotten God, of the perfect nativity of divine blessedness, it is a paternal mystery to be the author of a nativity. Moreover, it is no reproach for a nativity to consummate its being the image of its author by genuine birth. For to have given power over all flesh, and to have given it for the purpose that he should give eternal life, implies both, in the giver, that he is father, and in the receiver, that he is God: since it is signified both that the Father is such, in that he gave; and that the Son remains God, in that he received the power of giving eternal life.

All power, therefore, is natural and connatural to the Son of God; and though it has been given, it does not by this alienate him from the author, because it is given, since that which is given is precisely what belongs to the author—namely, to give eternal life, and to change corruption into incorruption. The Father, then, gave all things, and the Son received all things; nor is it doubtful, since he said: All things that are the Father's are mine. And here indeed the present discourse signifies neither varieties of creations, nor diverse substitutions of elements; but, unfolding to us the glory of blessed and absolute divinity, it shows that God is to be understood in those things which are his own—in power, in eternity, in providence, in authority: not that God possesses these as though he were to be believed something else besides these, but that in these, to the small measure of our understanding's conception, he himself is signified as to what he possesses.

The Only-begotten, then, teaching that he consists in those things which are the Father's, when he had said that the Holy Spirit would take from him, added: All things that are the Father's are mine; therefore I said, he shall receive of mine. All things that are the Father's are his own—given, of course, and received. But the things given do not weaken the divinity which constitutes him to be in those things in which the Father is.

He is inseparable from the Father.—By these steps, then, he now made use of the understanding concerning himself premised above, so that, having taught that he had gone forth from God, and having professed that the Father was with him, and having testified that he had overcome the world, and being about to honor the Father who was to honor him, and being about to use the power received to give eternal life to all flesh, then finally he concluded all these things with this absolution: And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. Learn, heretic, either to speak or to believe the faith of eternal life. And separate Christ from God if you can, the Son from the Father, the God who is true above all from God, the one from the sole one (for one Lord is Jesus Christ); if eternal life consists in believing in the only true God without Christ.

But if, with Christ separated from the only true God, eternal life is not comprised in the confession of the only true God alone, I do not understand how he who cannot be separated for salvation should be separated from the true God for faith.

From the passage objected, Christ is implied to be true God.—Although, then, I know that painstaking resolutions of difficult questions are burdensome to the desires of readers, nevertheless, having deferred for a little while the demonstration of the whole truth, I reckon it granted to me, not without some profit to faith, to wrestle with you, heretic, over these very evangelical words. You hear the profession of the Lord saying: And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I ask, what is it that moves your judgment, that Christ should not be true God? For no other alternative signification here is set before you to determine what you should believe about Christ. You have nothing other than "Jesus Christ"—not "son of man," as he is accustomed to say of himself; not "son of God," as it is usual for him to profess of himself; not "the living bread coming down from heaven," which he frequently says of himself, to the scandal of many.

But saying: you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent, he has passed over every usage of his former names and titles, whether natural or assumed: so that, since the only true God to be confessed, and Christ Jesus, should together confer eternity, without doubt Jesus Christ would be comprised in that signification whereby he is God.

Nor is it contrary that the Father is called the only true one.—But perhaps, in saying "you alone," he separates his own communion and unity from God. Let him separate it indeed, if he had not immediately added, after saying "you, the only true God," "and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." And I ask the understanding of the hearer, what is Christ to be believed, since together with the belief that the Father alone is the true God, Christ also is to be believed? But perhaps the Father alone being true God does not leave to Christ that he be God. Let it not leave it indeed, if the one God the Father did not leave to Christ that he be one Lord.

But if the one God the Father does not take away from Christ that he is one Lord, so the Father alone being true God does not take away from Christ Jesus that he is true God: since it conduces to the merit of eternal life, that, when the only true God is believed, Christ also should be believed.

Nor is there room for Christ to be believed something other than God.—What now, I ask, do you, heretic, by the sense of your folly, ascribe to Christ so that he may be believed to be; and to Christ, who bestows eternal life, who, being honored by the Father, has honored the Father, who has overcome the world, who, being left alone, is not alone, but has the Father with him, who went forth from God and came from the Father? What of nature and truth do you impart to him, born amid such great powers of God? For we believe the only true God the Father in vain, unless we believe also Jesus Christ whom he sent. Why do you hesitate, heretic? Teach what Christ is to be confessed. For you who deny what is written, what remains, but that you should believe what is not written? O unhappy will, and falsehood resisting the truth!

Since Christ is united in the faith and confession of the true God the Father, I ask, by what faith shall he, denied to be true God, be said to be a creature, when there is no faith in believing in the only true God without Christ? But you, heretic, narrow and incapable of the divine Spirit, are not approached by the sense of heavenly words; and, inspired by viperous error, you do not know that Christ is true God, to be confessed, in the faith of the only true God, unto eternal life.

Because the Father alone is the true God, Christ also is true God. To say otherwise of him is injurious to the Father.—But the faith of the Church, having confessed the Father to be the only true God, confesses Christ also. Nor, in confessing Christ true God, does it fail to confess also the Father to be the only true God; nor again, having confessed the Father to be the only true God, does it fail to confess Christ also. For it is by this that the Church has confessed Christ true God—that it has confessed the Father to be the only true God. Thus, that the Father alone is true God confirms Christ also to be true God. For the natural nativity has not brought upon the only-begotten God any change of nature; nor is he, who subsists as God from the subsisting God according to the nature of divine generation, separable in truth of nature from him who alone is true God.

But the nature of his truth kept its own order, so that natural truth might convey the truth of nativity, and God, being one, might not produce from himself God of another kind. And thus the mystery of God consists neither in solitude nor in diversity: since neither is he to be reckoned another God who subsists from God with the propriety of his own nature; nor does he remain in mere union who by the truth of nativity is to be confessed Father.

The God who was born, therefore, has not abandoned the propriety of his own nature; and there is in him natural power, since he retains in himself, by natural nativity, the nature of him whose nativity it is. For in him God is neither changed nor degenerate; since, if the nativity had introduced any defect, it would rather have brought reproach upon the very nature through which the nativity subsisted, in that what is of itself would cease to be what is properly its own: and thus it would not be change that would corrupt him who subsisted, by nativity, into a new substance, but rather him who, powerless in the nativity of a son to retain the constancy of his own nature, had begotten something external to himself and alien.

The unity of the Father and the Son is not to be thought of in a human manner. The nativity of the Son.—Now there is not, as we have often already noted, in the unity of God the Father and God the Son, the vice of human opinions: as that there should be either extension, or a series, or a flowing forth; as that either a spring should pour out a stream from its source, or a tree should hold a branch by its root, or a fire should send forth heat into space. For these things remain rather detained by an inseparable extension from themselves, than are their own selves: since heat is in the fire, and the branch is in the tree, and the stream is in the spring. And this very thing is rather one and the same with itself, than a thing substituted from another thing: because the tree is nothing other than the branch, nor is fire other than heat, nor could a spring be anything other than a stream.

But indeed the only-begotten God, subsisting from a perfect and ineffable nativity, is God, and is the true offspring of the unbegotten God, and the generation of an incorporeal nature is incorporeal, and is living and true God from the living true God, and is God inseparable from the nature of God: since the subsisting nativity did not make him God of another nature, nor did the generation, which brought forth the substance, change the nature of the substance in kind.

The unity of the paternal nature denied to Christ as man. It is restored to him through glory.—But by the dispensation of the flesh assumed, and through the obedience of him who emptied himself from the form of God, Christ, born man, had brought upon himself a novelty of nature, not to the detriment of his power and nature, but by a change of state. Emptying himself, therefore, from the form of God, he had been born taking the form of a servant: but this assumption of flesh, that nature of the Father with which he had a natural unity, did not experience: and the temporal novelty, though it remained in the power of nature, had nevertheless lost, along with the form of God, the unity with the nature of God according to the man he had assumed.

But the sum of the dispensation was this: that the whole Son now, that is, man and God, through the indulgence of the paternal will, should be present in the unity of the paternal nature: and that he who remained in the power of nature should also remain in the kind of nature. For this was being acquired for man, that he should be God. But the man who had been assumed could in no way remain in the unity of God, unless through the unity of God he should pass into a natural unity with God: so that, through this—that the Word God was in the nature of God—the Word made flesh also should again be present in the nature of God: and thus the man Jesus Christ should remain in the glory of God the Father, if the flesh were united to the glory of the Word: and he should then return, even according to the man, to the unity of the paternal nature.

Unity—the Word made flesh, since the flesh assumed had held the glory of the Word. His unity, therefore, had to be rendered back with himself to the Father, so that the nativity of his nature might again come to reside, glorified, in himself: because the novelty of the dispensation had brought an offense to the unity; and the unity, as it had been perfect before, could now be nothing, unless the assumption of the flesh had been glorified in himself.

The glory of the Father is the glory of the Son, and this is what it means with you. This was not granted to the man assumed; it is asked for once the dispensation has been accomplished.—And therefore, the sense having been prepared long beforehand for the understanding of this faith, when he had said: Now this is eternal life, that they may know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent; he added, according to the obedience of his dispensation, I have glorified thee upon the earth, I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. After which, that we might understand the merit of his obedience and the mystery of the whole dispensation, he added, And now glorify thou me, Father, with thyself, with the glory which I had, before the world was, with thee.

Let him who denies that Christ remains in the nature of God, and who does not believe him to be inseparable and undifferentiated from the one true God, answer what the reason of this petition is: And now glorify thou me, Father, with thyself. For what reason is there that the Father should glorify him with himself? Or what is the meaning of this word? Or what is the effect of that meaning? For the Father does not need glory, nor had he emptied himself of the form of his glory. But how is he going to glorify the Son with himself, and with that glory which he had with him before the constitution of the world? But what sense is there in "having with him"? For he does not say, the glory which I had before the world was, when I was with thee; but the glory which I had with thee. For "to be with thee" signifies subsisting; but "to have with thee" teaches the mystery of nature.

Now "glorify me with thee" is not the same as "glorify me." For he does not ask merely to be glorified so as to have something proper to himself of glory: but he prays that the Father be glorified with himself by him.

For in order that he might remain in his unity as he had remained, the Father was about to glorify him with himself; because the unity of his glory had gone beyond bounds through the obedience of the dispensation: namely, so that he might again be, through the glorification, in that nature in which he had been united by the mystery of the divine nativity, and might be glorified by the Father with himself: so that what he had had with him before might remain, and the assumption of the servile form should not alienate the nature of the form of God from him; but that he should glorify the form of a servant with himself, so that the form of God might remain: because he who had remained in the form of God was the same who was in the form of a servant.

And since the form of a servant had to be glorified in the form of God, it had to be glorified with him himself, in whose form the condition of the servile form was to be honored.

What manner of words are the words of God. Christ sought glory not for the Word, but for the flesh.—This word of the Lord is not new, nor is it now first set down in the evangelical teachings: and this very mystery of the Son being glorified with God the Father with himself, he attested by that most beautiful expression of the gratitude of his hope, at the time when Judas was going out to betray him, and, lifted up by the joy of accomplishing his dispensation, said these things: Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God also has glorified him in himself, and God shall straightway glorify him. Why are we, heavy souls of muddy body, and minds foul and filthy with the stench of a conscience defiled by sins, puffed up even to the point of pronouncing judgment upon the divine profession concerning itself?

And, appointing ourselves arbiters of the celestial (that is, the divine) nature, do we rebel with our impious disputings, our calumnies against God? For with what great simplicity of words was the Lord able to speak the evangelical faith: and he so adapted his speech to our understanding, as far as the weakness of our nature could bear, yet not so as to say anything unworthy of the majesty of his nature. And indeed I judge the first meaning of his saying to be unambiguous, when he says: Now is the Son of man glorified. For all glory was being acquired not for the Word, but for the flesh: that is, not for the nativity of God, but for the dispensation of the man who was born. But what follows, I ask what it signifies: And God is glorified in him. For I hear that God is glorified in him: and what this is according to your understanding, heretic, I do not know.

God is glorified in him, that is, in the Son of man: and, error: reads "so that the form of God might remain, because he who had remained in the form of a servant was the same who was in the form of God".

I ask whether the Son of man is the same as the Son of God. And since the Son of man is not other, nor the Son of God other (for the Word was made flesh); and since he who is the Son of God is himself also the Son of man; I ask who it is, in this Son of man who is also Son of God, in whom God is glorified.

How mutual is the glory of the Father and the Son. What it is that God is glorified in the Son of man. Who is the God who glorifies in himself the God who has been glorified in the Son of man.—Since God is glorified in the Son of man, who is also the Son of God, let us see what this third thing is that is added: If God is glorified in him, God also has glorified him in himself. What, I ask, is the mystery of this sacrament? God, having glorified the Son of man, glorifies the glorified God in himself. In the Son of man is the glory of God, and the glory of God is in the glory of the Son of man. God glorifies in himself. Man, indeed, is not glorified through himself. Nor again is he who is glorified in the man, being God, though he receives glory, anything other than God.

But indeed, when, the Son of man having been glorified, God, glorifying God, glorifies him in himself; I find the glory of a nature taken up into the glory of a nature that glorifies that nature. For God does not glorify himself: but he glorifies in himself the God who has been glorified in the man. But that which he glorifies in himself, although he does not glorify himself, nevertheless takes the nature that is glorified up into the glory of his own nature. And since God, glorifying God, glorifies in himself, because he has been glorified in the man; he shows that the God whom he has glorified dwells in him, when he glorifies him in himself. Bring forth now, whoever you are, heretic, the tortuous and inextricable questions of your teaching: which, though they entangle themselves in their own knots, will nevertheless in no train of reasoning maintain the difficulty of sticking fast.

For the Son of man is glorified, and God is glorified in him: and God, having glorified him who was glorified in the man, glorifies him in himself. For it is not the same thing, that the Son of man is glorified, as that God is glorified in the Son of man, or that God glorifies in himself the God who has been glorified in the man. Say this according to the sense of your impiety, in your own words, what you wish it to mean that God is glorified in the Son of man. Surely it must be either that Christ is he who is glorified in the flesh, or the Father who is glorified in Christ. If it is Christ; then certainly Christ, who is glorified in the flesh, is God. If it is the Father; it is a mystery of unity, since the Father is glorified in the Son.

Either, by confessing Christ, you speak of God even against your will: or by understanding the Father as God, you will not deny the nature of God the Father in Christ. And let this much be said concerning the glorified Son of man, and concerning God glorified in him. But concerning this—that God glorifies in himself the God who has been glorified in the Son of man—in what point, pray, do you think a means of exercising your impiety has been left to you, so that Christ should not be true God according to the truth of his nature? For God glorifies in himself Christ, God born man: is that which he glorifies in himself something outside himself?

For he renders back to Christ in himself the glory which he had with himself: and when the assumption of the servile form is taken up into the form of God, the God who has been glorified in the man is glorified in himself, he who, before the dispensation of self-emptying, was in himself, and was united through the form of a servant and through the nature of his birth. For the nativity had not made God of a new or alien nature, but the natural Son had succeeded to the Father by a natural generation.

And when, after the nativity of the man, he who was glorified in the man shines forth again into the glory of his own nature; God glorifies him in himself, since he is taken up into the glory of the paternal nature, from which he had been emptied through the dispensation.

The glory of the Father and of the Son is not different. It is not life to know God without Christ, who is also true God.—But the apostolic faith concludes the most audacious fury of your impiety, lest you should wander off through the license of a free interpretation, when it says: And every tongue shall confess that the Lord Jesus is in the glory of God the Father. For he whom the Father has glorified in himself must be confessed in his glory. And he who must be confessed in the glory of the Father, and whom the Father glorified in himself, is without doubt to be understood as existing among those whose Father he is; since he has both glorified him in himself, and he must be confessed in his glory. For he is not here now merely in the glory of God, but in the glory of God the Father. Nor did he glorify him with an exterior glory, but glorified him in himself.

In taking back for him that glory which is his own, and that glory which he had with him, he both glorifies him with himself and in himself. And thus he is understood to be inseparable from the bond of this faith even under the lowliness of manhood, when he says thus: Now this is eternal life, that they may know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent: since neither is there eternal life without Christ, with only God the Father known, and Christ is glorified in the Father. But if eternal life consists precisely in this, in knowing the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom he sent; then Christ surely is not to be reckoned true God, if life should consist in having believed in God without Christ. And that the Father alone is true God would not pertain to Christ as God, unless all the glory of Christ is in the only true God the Father.

For if the Father glorifies him in himself, and the Father alone is true God, then Christ is not outside the only true God: because Christ, glorified into God, is glorified by the Father, the only true God, in himself. And because he is glorified in himself by the only true one, he is not alienated from the only true one; because he is glorified in himself alone by the true one.

Third objection against the deity of the Son.—But perhaps against this pious faith of ours there will occur an assertion of your impious perfidy; so that this confession of necessity may seem alien to the understanding of the true God: Amen, amen I say to you, the Son cannot do anything of himself, but what he shall see the Father doing. Unless the twofold indignation of the Jews demands a twofold response; let this plainly be a profession of weakness, that the Son can do nothing of himself except what he shall see the Father doing. But if, to the Jews who both objected the charge of a violated sabbath, and who could not bear the equality with God claimed for Christ, since he professed God to be his Father, the same saying answered both charges; do you think that through the confession of the response you can obscure the truth of the words?

And although this passage has been treated by us in another book, yet because retracing the faith not only does no harm but even profits religion, let us, since the case demands it, go over the same matter again.

The charge of the violated sabbath. How it is removed. The work of the Father and of the Son is not different. A second charge on account of the presumed equality with God.—Hence, first, the necessity of the response arose: And for this cause the Jews persecuted Jesus, and sought to kill him, because he did these things on the sabbath. So their wrath was kindled even to the desire of killing him, on account of the works done on the sabbath. But let us also see what the Lord answered: My Father worketh until now, and I work. Show me, I ask, heretic, that this is the work of the Father. For through the Son and in the Son are all things, both visible and invisible. And you, who are wiser than the Gospels, must necessarily have obtained knowledge of the paternal work through some other secret doctrines, so as to show us the Father at work.

But if the Father works in the Son, according as he himself says: The words which I speak to you, I do not speak of myself; but the Father, who abides in me, he doeth his works. Do you see what this means: My Father worketh until now? For he says this for this reason, that the power of the paternal nature in him might be understood, that nature having used its power in the work of the sabbath. For since the Father works in himself while working, it is necessary that he himself works while the Father works: and therefore he says: My Father worketh until now, so that this very present moment of words and deeds should be glorified in himself alone in the true; erroneously so; for this is how it is to be understood: he is not alienated from him who alone is true; because by him who is true, he is glorified in himself alone.

The operation of the paternal nature in himself might be reckoned to be aimed at through the scope of this saying. For that which "worketh until now" is one and the same moment of the saying and of the time; so that no other work should be believed to be the Father's than this which he himself does: since through the fact that the Father works until now, this very thing was the Father's operation under the same time of the speech. And lest the faith, left within only the knowledge of the Father, should be absent from the hope of eternal life; he immediately added: And I work: so that this very thing which the Father works now, the Son also might work. And thus he taught a perfect faith, since that which is now is a work of the same time; and that which the Father works, the Son also works, apart from being outside the union of the singular.

But the grief of the hearers was doubled: for what follows is this: Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only broke the sabbath, but also said that God was his own Father, making himself equal to God. And here again I will point out, both by the judgment of the Evangelist and by the common assent of the human race, that the Son is in equality of the paternal nature: but equality exists only from the same nature; because birth has no other source for what it retains, and every generation is not alien from him who generates, since it subsists from the same source as regards what it retains. Let us then see what the Lord answered to this doubled indignation: Amen, amen I say to you, the Son cannot do anything of himself, but what he shall see the Father doing. For whatsoever things he doth, these the Son also doth in like manner.

The response to the charge of the violated sabbath. That "he cannot" shows authority, not weakness. What "unless he see" signifies. The response to the second charge.—Unless the words are proper to the particular proposition; we do violence to the words by presumption of our own faithless understanding. But if the response is subject to the causes of the anger; then it is rather our faith that speaks what is taught, than irreligious perversity that defends the error of its impiety. Let us ask then whether this response is proper to the work of the sabbath: The Son cannot do anything of himself, but what he shall see the Father doing. For he had said above: My Father worketh until now, and I work. If what he does, he does by the authority of the paternal nature within him, the Father acting, who works until now on the sabbath; then the Son is beyond the charge of the sabbath work, in that the authority of the paternal operation is preferred in him.

For he did not refer "cannot" to weakness, but to authority; for "of himself he cannot," unless he shall have seen.

For seeing does not confer the power; and since the seeing does not confer the power, it does not weaken the nature by saying it cannot without seeing, but shows the authority arising from the seeing. For that which he says, "unless he see," signifies consciousness in the seeing, just as he says to the Apostles: Behold I say to you, lift up your eyes, and see the countries, for they are white already to harvest. Therefore it is the consciousness in himself of the paternal nature, which works in itself while working, so that the Lord of the sabbath might not be believed to have violated the sabbath, that he says: The Son cannot do anything of himself, but what he shall see the Father doing: so that he might show what he was working from the consciousness of the nature working in himself, since, while he himself worked on the sabbath, the Father worked until now on the sabbath.

But to the grief of the other indignity he referred the cause in the following saying: For whatsoever things the Father doth, these the Son also doth in like manner. Reproach the weakness of God to the Son, take away also the equality of nature, if it is not the case that whatsoever things the Father does, these the Son also does in like manner; if any difference of paternal power and operation is admitted; if, though the equality of honor is proper to the equality of power and nature, it is not demanded. For he himself says shortly after: That all men may honor the Son, as they honor the Father. He who honoreth not the Son, honoreth not the Father who sent him. Distinguish then equality in honor as not unequal: but do not weaken the nature in the same operation of power.

Epilogue.—Why do you turn the cause of this response into an insult to divinity? To the working of the sabbath he responded, that he could do nothing of himself, except what he had seen the Father doing: but for the demonstration of equality, he professed that whatsoever the Father did, he also did. Hold which pertains to the sabbath as a reproach of weakness, if it is not the case that whatsoever the Father does, the Son also does likewise. But if whatsoever things there are, are without exception; in what then will weakness be found, since in nothing that the Father can do can the Son not do also? Or in what, then, is equality denied through an intercession of weakness, since one and the same honor is demanded for each?

But if the power of operating is the same, and the observance of honoring is the same; I do not understand in what, then, an insult to nature is left as weak, since the same power of might and the same equality of honor belong to the Father and to the Son.

What is meant by "The Son can do nothing of himself" is confirmed in another place. Merit.—And indeed although these things have been treated with the very resolution of the matter; yet lest, in that which the Lord says: The Son cannot do anything of himself, but what he shall see the Father doing, it should serve rather your impiety toward weakening his nature, than toward showing the consciousness of the paternal nature in him, through which he worked with authority on the sabbath; the knowledge of the dominical saying pertaining to that matter must also be shown, where he says: And of myself I do nothing, but as the Father hath taught me, these things I speak. And he that sent me is with me, and he hath not left me alone, because I do always the things that please him. Do you perceive what it means, that the Son cannot do anything unless he sees the Father doing it?

And by what mystery it is said, "and of myself I do nothing"; and again, "He hath not left me alone, because I do always the things that please him"? For if he does nothing of himself for this reason, because the Father abides in him; how again does the Father not leave him alone for this reason, because he does the things that are pleasing to him? The diversity of the sayings does not agree according to your sense, heretic, so that he should do nothing of himself except as taught by the Father abiding in him: and again that the Father should abide in him for this reason, because he does the things that are pleasing to him. For if he does nothing of himself on account of the Father abiding in him; how then has he merited that the Father abide in him by this, that he does the things that please him? For it is no merit at all, not to do of oneself the things one does.

And on the other hand, how are the things the Son does pleasing to the Father, since the Father, abiding in the Son, does these very things? You are hemmed in, impiety, and the most fortified piety of our faith encloses you. Either the Son does something, or he does not: if he does not, how does he please in the things he does? But if he does, how does he do the things which he does not do of himself? Since it is both proper to have done the things that please, and without merit not to have done of himself what he has done.

The Son who acts through himself, who does not act from himself.—But of nature, you who contradict, this is the unity, that he so acts through himself as not to act from himself; and so does not act from himself as to act through himself. Understand the Son as acting, and through him the Father acting. He does not act from himself, when the Father is to be shown as remaining in him. He acts through himself, when according to the Son’s nativity he himself does the things that are pleasing. Let it be a matter of weakness that he does not act from himself, unless indeed he himself so acts that the things he does are pleasing.

But it would not be in the unity of nature, if the things he himself does, and in which he is pleasing, he does not do through himself, but the Father remaining in him teaches him to act. Thus the Father teaches by remaining, and the Son by acting does not act from himself, and the Son, not acting from himself, when he does the things that are pleasing, himself does them. And thus the unity of nature is retained in the acting: while he who works does not work from himself, and he who does not work from himself works.

He says that he does not do his own will, but that of the Father. Not on account of a necessity of acting, but on account of unity.—Add also to this that which you use to the reproach of weakness: Everything that the Father gives me comes to me, and him who comes to me I will not cast out; because I came down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of the Father who sent me. But perhaps the Son may be without freedom of will, so that the weakness of nature imposes necessity upon him. And he is therefore subject to necessity, not to will, in that he does not cast out those given to him who come from the Father.

But the Lord, signifying in these words the unity of the mystery, while he does not cast out those given to him, while he does the will not his own but that of him who sent him, after this same word had been repeated to the murmuring Jews, confirms the sense of our understanding, saying: Everyone who hears from the Father and learns, comes to me, not that anyone has seen the Father, except he who is from God, he has seen the Father. Amen, amen I say to you, he who believes in me has eternal life. And I ask first, where the Father was heard, where he taught those who heard. But no one has seen the Father, except he who is from God. And how can anyone hear one whom no one has seen? Hearing therefore from the Father, he comes to the Son.

And when the Son is heard and teaches, the property of the paternal nature in him is shown both as heard and as teaching, so that this which the Son teaches and is heard is understood to be the hearing of the paternal doctrine. For since no one has seen the Father, and one coming to the Son hears and learns from the Father so as to come: we are admonished to understand what it is that in the speaking Son the Father teaches, and that in the Son who is beheld the Father, who has been seen by no one, is heard; because the nativity of the Son contains within itself in perfection the property of the paternal nature.

Wishing therefore, the only-begotten God, to testify to paternal authority, with the unity of nature preserved in himself, both does not cast out those given to him by the Father, and makes not his own will but that of him who sent him—not because he does not will the things he does, or because he who teaches is not himself heard: but that he might show both him who sends and himself who is sent under the property of an undifferentiated nature; since the things which he wills, does, and speaks, he signifies to be also the will and works and words of the Father.

Christ has free will. Yet not at variance with the Father’s will.—But that he is of free will, he shows unambiguously when he says: For as the Father raises the dead and gives life, so also the Son gives life to whom he wills. When equal power of virtue and dignity of honor in the Father and the Son is manifested, there also the freedom of the will is shown: but when unity is demonstrated, there the affection of the paternal will is signified. For what the Father wills, the Son does. But to do is more than to obey the will: because obeying is inferior, acting from oneself. Where also weak, not weakening. A little after, "mandando" for "manendo": corruptly. The will, has the necessity of something external; to do the will is proper to unity, since it is the doing of the will.

And when the Son does the will of the Father, he teaches, through the indifference of nature, that the will is natural to him with the Father: since his will is everything that he does. The Son plainly wills all things that the Father wills, nor does his natural will dissent. For since this is the will of the Father, which he shows saying: For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day: hear now whether the will of the Son is at variance with the Father, when he says: Father, those whom you have given me, I will that where I am, they also may be with me. It is not therefore doubted that the Son wills.

For since the Father wills that those who believe in the Son should have eternal life, the Son wills that those who believe should be there where he himself is. Unless perhaps cohabitation with Christ is not eternity (eternal life): or Christ does not bestow on those believing in him a perfect and blessed state, when he says these things: No one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and he to whom the Son wills to reveal him. Is he not, in the freedom of his will, willing to grant us the knowledge of that paternal secret? And is his will so free that he imparts the knowledge of himself and of the Father to whomever he wills? And thus between the Father and the Son both the nature of the nativity and of the unity has been demonstrated: since the Son is so free in will, that what he does willingly is the doing of the paternal will.

There is no hope without faith. The Father and the Son are in each other. The Father, as author, is greater than the Son, who is also less as man. In Christ the nature of God remained, the form emptied.—Anyone plainly ignorant of the dispensation of faith is outside the understanding of the mysteries: and not having attained the doctrine of the Gospel, he wanders from the hope of the Gospel. The Father is to be believed in the Son, and the Son in the Father, through unity of nature, through power of virtue, through equality of honor, through the generation of nativity. But perhaps the Lord’s testimony is contrary to this our profession, when he says: The Father is greater than I. Is this, heretic, the weapon of your impiety? Are these the arms of your fury? Has it slipped your mind that the Church knows nothing of two unbegotten beings, and confesses no two fathers?

Have you forgotten the dispensation of the Mediator, and in it the birth, the cradle, the age, the passion, the cross, the death? And being reborn have you not confessed (in the Creed) that the Son of God was born of Mary? If the Son, remaining in all these things, says: The Father is greater than I; do you think this dispensation of your salvation, this emptying of the form of God, is to be unknown? And that the Father, apart from this assumption of human passions, remained in that blessed eternity of his uncontaminated nature, without the assumption of our flesh?

For we profess that the only-begotten God, remaining in the form of God, remained in the nature of God, and we do not straightway pour back the unity of the servile form into the nature of the divine unity: nor again do we preach the Father in the Son by bodily insinuation, but that from him, of the same kind, a begotten nature had, naturally in itself, the nature of him who begets: which nature, remaining in the form of the nature of him who begets, took on the form of nature and of bodily weakness. For it was the property of nature: but it was no longer the form of God, because through its self-emptying the form of a servant had been assumed. For nature had not failed so as not to be: but the nature of God, remaining, had taken up in itself the lowliness of earthly birth, exercising the power of its own kind in the habit of assumed lowliness.

And, born God of God, found man in the form of a servant, showing himself God by his mighty works, he was not other than God, whom by his deeds he teaches himself to be; nor was he not man, in whose habit he was found to remain.

The Father seen in the Son.—And for this reason, in this same discourse above, having testified to the unity of nature with the Father, he had said: He who has seen me has seen also the Father; and, The Father in me, and I in the Father. Which surely have no difference from the equality of nature; since the contemplation of the Son compensates for the sight also of the Father, and the One, remaining in the One, does not distinguish the One from the One.

And lest through bodily contemplation it should be thought that he referred from himself the sight of the paternal contemplation, he had added: Believe me, that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: but if not, at least believe because of the works: so that, since the power of nature was the matter at hand, and the operation itself is the power of the virtue; through the power of the virtue, the unity of the paternal nature in himself might be known: since insofar as anyone had recognized him as God in the power of his nature, so far he would recognize God the Father in the power of nature: and since the Son, being as great as the Father, presented the Father to be seen in himself through his deeds, thereby the Father was known as undifferentiated from the Son, through the understanding of the undifferentiated according to the power of nature.

Why, and with what equality of nature preserved, Christ said, The Father is greater than I.—The only-begotten God, then, about to fulfill the dispensation of the flesh, and to complete the mystery of the assumed servile form, made use of a profession showing our faith, saying: You have heard that I said to you, I go, and I come to you. If you loved me, you would rejoice that I go to the Father; because the Father is greater than I. These things, then, which pertain to the nature of divinity, having been explained in this same discourse above, does this profession then take away from the Son the equality of nature, which the genuine nativity brings to completion? Or is it any insult to the only-begotten God that the Father is to him an unbegotten God; since from the unbegotten God an only-begotten nativity subsists in an only-begotten nature?

For the Son is not the source of his own origin, nor did he himself, not existing, procure for himself a nativity out of nothing: but existing as living nature from living nature, he holds in himself the power of nature, with the authority of nature acknowledged, so that he might both testify to the honor, and to the grace of the nativity received in honor. And this indeed he renders as due to the Father, that he attributes his obedience to the will of him who sent him, yet not so that the obedience of his humility should weaken the unity of nature; having become obedient even unto death, yet not even after death is he not above every name.

The Father, as author of the gift, is greater: the Son, to whom He gives the whole of what He is, is not lesser.—But if perhaps He seems unequal on this account, because after the emptying of the form of God this name is given to Him, this calumny is ignorant of the mystery of assumed lowliness. For if the birth of a man brought in a new nature, and lowliness changed the form under the assumption of a servant's condition; now the bestowal of the name restores equality of form. For ask what was given. For if what was given is that which belongs to God; the gift of this nature does not import ignobility into that divine nature. Finally, this name which is now given to Him, though it has the mystery of a gift, does not have in the gift of the name a name foreign to Him.

For it is given to Jesus, that at His name every knee should bow, of things in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that the Lord Jesus is in the glory of God the Father. The honor of this confession, therefore, is given so that He may be confessed to be in the glory of God the Father. Do you hear then: The Father is greater than I? Know Him of whom, on account of the merit of obedience, it was said: And He gave Him a name which is above every name. Hear again: I and the Father are one; and, He who has seen me has seen the Father also; and, I am in the Father, and the Father in me. Understand the honor of the confession bestowed as a gift, because the Lord Jesus is in the glory of God the Father. When, then, is it said, The Father is greater than I? Surely then, when the name above every name is given to Him.

But on the other hand, when is it, I and the Father are one? Surely when every tongue confesses that the Lord Jesus is in the glory of God the Father. If, then, by the authority of the one giving, the Father is greater, is the Son thereby lesser by the confession of the gift? The one giving, then, is greater; but the one to whom oneness is given as a gift is not thereby lesser. If it is not given to Jesus that He should be confessed in the glory of God the Father, He is lesser than the Father. But if being is given to Him in that glory in which the Father is, He has both, in the authority of the giver, that He is greater, and in the confession of the gift, that they are one.

The Father, then, is greater than the Son: and plainly greater, who gives being as great as He Himself is; who imparts, through the mystery of the birth, an image of unbegotten being to Him whom He begets from Himself into His own form; whom, again, He renews from the form of a servant into the form of God; whom, in His own glory, according to the Spirit, born as Christ God, He gives again to be, in His own glory, according to the flesh, Jesus Christ, God who died. He shows, therefore, the reason why, if they loved Him, they would rejoice that He goes to the Father, because the Father would be greater.

In what sense the Father is said to be greater is gathered from what is said before and after.—Teaching, then, that this joy arises from love, because love would rejoice that Jesus is to be confessed to be in the glory of God the Father; He immediately added the merit of the resuming of this glory, saying, For the prince of this world comes, and has nothing in me. The prince of this world has nothing in Him: because, being found in the condition of a man, He remained outside the sin of the flesh in the likeness of sinful flesh, condemning sin in the flesh by sin. But referring all this to the obedience of the paternal command, He added: But that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father has given me commandment, so I do; arise, let us go hence.

He hastens, rising up, to consummate the mystery of His bodily passion through the love of accomplishing the paternal command; yet immediately opening the mystery of the bodily assumption, through which we might, as it were, be in Him as the vine in the manner of branches, giving us as branches a useful fruit, unless He had been made the vine. And therefore He bids us abide in Him through the faith of the assumed body, so that, because the Word was made flesh, we might be, like branches, in the nature of His flesh: alienating then the form of paternal majesty from the assumption of this bodily lowliness, when, professing Himself the vine in unity with the branches, He shows the Father to be the careful vinedresser of this vine, who, cutting away its useless and unfruitful branches, appoints them to be burned.

Saying, then, He who has seen me has seen the Father also; and, The words which I speak, I do not speak from myself, but the Father who abides in me, He does His works; and, Believe me, that I am in the Father, and the Father in me, so that He might manifest both the mystery of the birth and the mystery of the assumed body, by the continuity of what was said, coming to this He says, Because the Father is greater than I. And immediately, so that the full reason of the saying might underlie it, He added the example of the vinedresser and the vine and the branch, showing thereby the assumption of bodily lowliness.

And hence He teaches that the reason for going to the Father, and the joy of love in going to the Father, must be that the Father is greater than He: from whom, namely, He was to resume glory; with whom, and in whom, He was to be glorified, not with a new honor, but with the former one; not a foreign one, but the one He had with Him. If, then, He is not to be glorified in Him, that is, so as to be in the glory of God the Father; ascribe reproach to His nature: but if the authority is that by which He is glorified by Him, then know the Father to be greater in the authority of glorifying.

The Father is greater, yet the Son is not lesser.—Why do you drag the dispensation into impiety? Why do you assault the mystery of our salvation unto death? The Father, about to glorify the Son, is greater: the Son, glorified in the Father, is not lesser. Or how is He lesser, who is in the glory of God the Father? Or is the Father then not greater? The Father, then, is greater, while He is Father: but the Son, while He is Son, is not lesser. The birth of the Son constitutes the Father greater: but the nature of the birth does not allow the Son to be lesser. The Father is greater, while He is asked to restore glory to the assumed man: the Son is not lesser, while He resumes glory with the Father. And thus both the mystery of the birth and the dispensation of the incarnation are fulfilled.

For the Father, while He both is Father and now glorifies the son of man, is greater: and the Father and the Son are one, while the Son, born of the Father, after the assumption of an earthly body, is glorified in the Father.

Unbegottenness and birth are not of a different nature. The Son is born, not begun.—The birth, then, does not have an ignobility of nature: because He is in the form of God, because He is born of God. And although unbegottenness is thought to differ from birth by its very signification; yet birth is not outside the nature of unbegottenness, because it did not take from elsewhere that which it subsisted as. For although it did not so follow as to be made co-unbegotten; yet it received from the unbegotten God the very being which is God. Our faith, therefore, though it does not grasp the beginning of the birth, professes the Only-begotten always (understand: to be) God; because nature does not allow that He, whose birth exceeds every time of beginning, should be confessed to have at some point begun. But He whom faith confesses to be always, and before the ages, it does not doubt to have been born nonetheless with timeless infinity, confessing Him nonetheless from the birth of an unoriginated intelligence.

Ignorance of the day is objected against Him.—But heretics take this up as a reproach to His nature, because it is said, The Father is greater than I: or that other saying, But of that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone. Ignorance of the day and hour, then, is objected against the Only-begotten God: as though God born of God were not in that perfection of nature by which He is God, since, with the necessity of not-knowing dominating, some external power would already be more potent than He, which would hold Him, as though weak against itself, in the infirmity of ignorance. Nay rather, the fury of the heretics compels us, by a certain necessity of confession, to this impious understanding, so that it must be believed thus; because it was said thus by the Lord, and it might seem most irreligious that the protestation of His profession concerning Himself should be corrupted by a different opinion of our understanding.

The author of all things can be ignorant of nothing. He who knows things that are neither in Himself nor through Himself, much more knows things that are in Him and through Him. The day of the Lord is established through Him and in Him.—And first, before the reason and cause of the saying is recalled, it must be judged by the sense of common judgment, whether it can be credible that He who is the author of all things, as to what they are and shall be, should be ignorant of anything among all things. For if all things are through Christ and in Christ, and thus through Him, that all things are in Him; that which is neither outside Him nor not through Him, how is it not also in His knowledge, since His knowledge for the most part grasps, through the power of a not-ignorant nature, even those things which are neither in Himself nor through Himself?

But indeed that which takes its cause from nowhere but Him, and which He contains within Himself as to the motion toward that which is and shall be; how is this outside the knowledge of that nature, through which and in which that which is to be effected is contained? For the Lord Christ does not fail to know human thoughts, not only those stirred by present motion, but also those to be moved by the instinct of future will, the Evangelist testifying: For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that did not believe, and who would betray Him. Shall it be thought, then, that the power of His nature, which grasps the knowledge of things not yet existing, and does not fail to know the future disturbances of still quiet minds—that this power was ignorant of that which is exterior and which is through Himself and within Himself? And shall He who is powerful over what is foreign be powerless over His own?

Concerning whom let us remember it was said, All things were created through Him and in Him, and He is before all; or that other saying, Because it pleased that in Him all fullness should dwell, and that through Him all things should be reconciled unto Him? Since, then, all fullness is in Him, and all things are reconciled through Him and in Him, and that day is the expectation of our reconciliation: does He, in whom is the time of that day, and through whose mystery it is, not know this day? For that day is the day of His own coming, of which the Apostle says, When Christ shall appear, who is your life, then you also shall appear with Him in glory. No one, then, is ignorant of what is through himself and within himself: shall Christ be present, and yet be ignorant of the day of His own coming?

It is His own day, according to the same Apostle, because the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night: and is He to be understood as held back by ignorance of it? Human nature foreknows, as far as it is able, what it determines to do, and the knowledge of what is to be done follows the will to act: but shall God, born, be ignorant of what is in Himself and through Himself? For through Him are the times, and in Him is the day; because through Him is the constitution of things to come, and in Him is the dispensation of His own coming: and shall He be in such dullness that He is ignorant, by a torpid sense of nature, of what is established in Himself—after the manner of wild beasts, which, being animated apart from any reasoning of provident counsel, do not know what they themselves are doing, being driven, as it were by some stupid motion of agitated will, into some uncertain course by chance?

It is injurious to the Father to attribute ignorance to the Son, as though He had begrudged it to Him.—How, too, shall the Lord of glory, the day of whose coming is unknowable, be believed to be of a nature disordered and imperfect, which both has the necessity of coming and has not attained the knowledge of His own coming? Whereby ignorance would be a stronger thing than God, in that it would take from Him the power of possessing knowledge.

Now indeed how great is the occasion of impiety doubled, if, besides the weakness of Christ, a fault also shall be imputed to God the Father; so that He should have defrauded His only-begotten God and Son of His love of the knowledge of this day, and out of an affection of malice have begrudged Him the knowledge of the coming consummation: and while He willed that the day and hour of His passion should not be unknown to Him, should have denied Him the day of His power, and the hour of being glorified in His saints, and taken away the knowledge of blessedness from Him to whom He had granted the foreknowledge of death? The trepidation of human conscience cannot bear this, that it should presume to itself this judgment concerning God, and ascribe to Him the faults of human mutability; so that either the Father should deny something to the Son, or God, being born, should be ignorant of something.

As God, He is void of envy; as Father, He gives away nothing of what He has, especially since He is simple. As it is proper to God, so it is proper to the Son of God, to foreknow future things.—Now God knows not to be, at any time, anything other than love, nor anything other than Father. And he who loves does not envy; and he who is a father is not also, in part, not a father. For this name does not admit of portion, that he should be father from one part, and not father from another. For the Father is Father of the whole of that which is in Him, having Himself wholly in that of which He is Father, so that it is not by portion that He is Father: not that He Himself is father to those things which are His own, but that in those things in which He Himself exists, He is wholly Father to Him who is from Him.

And whereas, according to the natures of human bodies, which are brought together from unlike parts and consist of composite elements, no one can be father except of all that is his, while nativity, being perfect, preserves in the children that which is present in each of the kinds and parts of the parent: therefore each one, being father, is father of all that is his, since the nativity proceeds from the whole and remains in the whole. And since in God there are no corporeal things, but things absolute; not things divided into parts, but things whole and universal; not things made alive, but things living; He is wholly living, and wholly one God, since He is not composed by portion, but perfected by simplicity: it is necessary that, according as He is Father, He Himself should be, to Him whom He has begotten of Himself, wholly Father of all that is His, since the perfect nativity of the Son consummates Him as Father out of all that is His.

If, therefore, the Father is proper to the Son; it is necessary that the Son remain in that propriety by which He is Father. But how shall He be thought to remain, if He be outside the nature of foreknowledge, and something from the Author be wanting to His nativity? For nearly the whole will be wanting, if He does not have that which is proper to God. But what else is proper to God, than the knowledge of future things; so that a nature capable of invisible and not yet existing kinds should contain things not yet abiding, but destined to abide hereafter?

Nothing is hidden from Him in whom are all the treasures of knowledge, though they be hidden nonetheless.—But Paul, the teacher of the Gentiles, does not permit us this profession of impious error, that the only-begotten God should be thought to have been ignorant of something; for he says: Instructed in love, unto all the riches of the fulness of understanding, unto the knowledge of the mystery of God, of Christ, in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden. Christ God is a mystery, and in Him all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge lie hidden. But this cannot be suited to a portion, nor to the whole together: because a part is not understood as the whole, and the whole does not allow itself to be understood as a part. For if the Son does not know the day, then not all the treasures of knowledge are in Him: He does not know the day, containing in Himself all the treasures of knowledge.

But it is fitting that we remember that these treasures of knowledge are hidden in Him, and that they are not therefore absent because they are hidden: since, through that which He is God, they are present in Him; but through that which He is a mystery, they are hidden. But the mystery of God, of Christ, in whom all the treasures of knowledge are hidden, is not hidden or unknown to us. And since He Himself is the mystery, let us see whether, in the things which He does not know, He is ignorant. For if in other cases the profession of not knowing does not carry the meaning of ignorance; then not even now does He, in not knowing, actually not know. For since His ignorance, according as all the treasures of knowledge lie hidden in Him, is rather a dispensation than an ignorance; you have a cause of not knowing without the meaning of ignorance.

How it is said of God that He does not know a thing, or that He now knows it.—For in all the things which God says He does not know, He does indeed profess ignorance, but He is not thereby held in ignorance: since, in regard to that which He does not know, it is not the weakness of not knowing, but either it is not the time for speaking, or it is a dispensation of not acting. God speaks to Abraham, saying: The cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is fulfilled, and their sins are exceedingly great. I will go down therefore and see whether they have done according to the cry that has come to me; and if not, that I may know. We have, then, a God who does not know, something which nevertheless He does not fail to know.

For since He knows their sins to be exceedingly great, and again He goes down to see whether they have been consummated, and if not yet consummated, that He may know: we understand that He is not ignorant because He does not know; but that He then knows, because it is the time for acting. Therefore, for God to know is not a change from ignorance, but the fulness of time. For He is still awaited to know: and since we cannot understand of Him that He is ignorant of a thing; yet since He still awaits, as it were, in order to know, it is necessary that what, knowing, He does not know, and, not knowing, He knows, be nothing else than either a dispensation of speaking, or of acting.

God is said now to know that which He now brings forth.—It is not, then, permitted to doubt that God's knowledge proceeds rather from time than from mutation, since, with regard to that which God knows, it is rather the time for the knowledge to be professed, than for it to be acquired: as we are taught also from this, which was said to Abraham: Lay not your hand upon the boy, and do nothing to him: for now I know that you fear your God, and have not spared your beloved son for my sake. God, therefore, now knows; but to know now is the profession of a former ignorance. Since this cannot fall upon God, nor should it be thought that He was previously ignorant that Abraham was faithful to Him, of whom it is said, Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him for righteousness: this "now I have known" is the time at which Abraham received his testimony, not also the time at which God began to know.

For Abraham, by the holocaust of his son, had taught the love which he bore toward God: God then knew, when He speaks. And because He is not to be understood as not having known before, it is necessary that He be understood as having known then, precisely because He speaks. And of the many things which are contained in the Old Testament concerning the knowledge of God, these only have been demonstrated by us for the sake of example: that that which God does not know is to be understood to be so, not by reason of ignorance, but of time.

He is said not to know those unworthy of His knowledge—the workers of iniquity, the foolish virgins.—But in the Gospels we find the Lord, though knowing many things, not knowing them. He does not know the workers of iniquity, who glory in many mighty works and in His name, saying: And then I will declare, I never knew you. Depart from me, all you that work iniquity. Even with an oath He does not know them, whom nevertheless He does not fail to know to be workers of iniquity. He does not know them, therefore, not because He is ignorant, but because they are unworthy of His knowledge on account of the iniquity of their work: confirming the faith of His word even by the solemnity of an oath, and holding, in the power of His nature, that He is not ignorant, and retaining, in the mystery of His will, that He does not know.

The only-begotten God also does not know the foolish virgins: and He, entering the chamber of His glorious coming, is ignorant of those careless to procure oil to match His own. For they even come and ask, and are so far from being unknown, that this is answered to them: Amen I say to you, I know you not. For there are meetings which their entreaty does not permit to be unknown: but the answer of not knowing is a matter rather of will than of nature; since, by Him to whom nothing is unknown, they are unworthy to be known.

Finally, lest He should be thought to be ignorant through weakness, immediately He spoke thus to the Apostles: Watch therefore, because you know not the day nor the hour: so that, while He warns them to watch on account of ignorance of the day and the hour, it might be understood, through this, that the virgins were unknown by Him for this reason, that, being drowsy and negligent, they had remained unworthy of entrance to His chamber, from lack of oil.

Christ, ignorant of nothing, speaks by dispensation as if ignorant. The knowledge of the day is hidden: therefore it is spoken of as though unknown.—The Lord Jesus Christ, then, who is God, searching the hearts and reins, is not in that weakness of nature such that He should not know, since this very thing, that He does not know, is to be understood as belonging to the knowledge of His nature. But if perchance any shall impute ignorance to Him, let them fear lest it be said to them by Him who knows their thoughts, Why do you think evil in your hearts? For since He, being not ignorant of thoughts and deeds, sometimes questions as though ignorant concerning things thought and done—as about the touching of the hem by the woman, or about the disagreement of words among the Apostles, or about the tomb of Lazarus in the presence of those weeping—He is to be understood not as truly not knowing, but as speaking.

For nature does not allow that He who, though absent, knew that Lazarus was dead and buried, should not know the place of the sepulchre; and that He who sees thoughts should not have known the faith of the woman, and that He who has no need to ask anyone about anything should have been ignorant of the disagreement of the Apostles.

But for Him who knows all things, it is sometimes a dispensation to say that He does not know the very things which He does not fail to know: while, either in the case of Abraham, knowledge is dissembled for a time, or, in the case of the foolish virgins and the workers of iniquity, knowledge is denied to those unworthy of it, or, in the mystery of the Son of man, the questioning of one ignorant is from the man in Him: in all these accommodating Himself to the reality of His bodily birth, by which the weakness of our nature is held fast; not that He who is God should be weak by nature, but that God, born man, should have assumed the weaknesses of men; and He assumed them in such a way, not that the unchangeable nature was reduced into a weak nature, but that in the unchangeable nature there might be the mystery of the assumption: while He who was God is man; nor did He, being man, cease to remain God.

Acting, therefore, and confirming Himself as man born, while remaining God the Word, very often in that profession by which He is man—though the assertion is often also that of God as of man—He does not know those things which either are not to be confessed in that time, or are not acknowledged unto merit.

How wisely it is hidden.—It is therefore to be understood why he professed that he did not know the day. If it is believed that he is altogether ignorant, the Apostle contradicts this: In whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. There is therefore a hidden knowledge: and because it must be hidden, sometimes even ignorance must be confessed, that it may be able to be hidden. For if it will be in open declaration, it will not also remain in secret. He therefore denies that he knows: so that the knowledge may be able to be hidden. But if he is ignorant for this reason, that the knowledge may remain hidden; then, knowing all things, he is not ignorant of all by nature, since he is ignorant only for this reason, that it may be hidden. But why the knowledge of the day is hidden is not obscure.

For, admonishing us to remain always intent with unremitting faith, he took away the security of a defined knowledge: so that the anxious mind, in the uncertainty of a suspended expectation, hastening and always awaiting the day of the coming, might always hope by awaiting; and that a watchful care might hold fast the uncertainty itself, though not of a doubtful time. For thus the Lord says: Therefore be ye also ready, for ye know not what hour the Son of man cometh. And again: Blessed is that servant whom his Lord, when he cometh, shall find so doing. The ignorance was not necessary for error, but for perseverance.

Nor is that a detriment which, being denied, is what being unknown grants as an increase—lest the security of knowledge should stir up the negligence of a dissembled faith, but rather that an indefinite expectation might retain an unremitting preparation: which might always be wary of the feared coming of the thief, he choosing the time of sleep for the theft, while the father of the household watches, always in fear of loss.

Though Christ penetrates human things as the greater, they refuse to allow that he penetrates the Father's things as the lesser.—Although, then, it is not obscure that the ignorance of God is not ignorance but a mystery: since by dispensation, either of acting, or of declaring, or of showing, he so does not know that he knows; and so is not ignorant that he is ignorant: nevertheless it must be seen whether perhaps he is so weak that he cannot know those things which the Father knows: he indeed being able to know the thoughts of human hearts, because the stronger nature mingles itself with the motions of the inferior nature, and passes through it, as through something weak, with vehement power; but is unable, being weaker, to penetrate a nature more vehement than his own; because as light things are permeable to heavy ones, and rare things to dense ones, and liquid things to solid ones; so on the contrary heavy things do not yield to light ones, nor dense to rare, nor solid to liquid; because, while strong things are not open to weak ones, weak things nevertheless are penetrated by strong ones.

For this reason, then, the Son is said by the impious to be ignorant of the thoughts of God the Father, because, being himself weak, he does not approach in entering the stronger, nor, being weak, pass through the one who is strong.

The Scriptures do not allow Christ to be called inferior to the Father. The Father and the Son are a mutual mirror.—And if anyone shall dare not only to speak with rash mouth concerning the only-begotten God, but even to think with an impious heart; let him know that the Apostle believed thus concerning the Holy Spirit, writing to the Corinthians: But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit. For the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? So also the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. But let us, spurning these vain examples of corporeal things, estimate God of God, and Spirit of Spirit, rather by their own powers than by earthly conditions. Let us estimate, however, not by our own sense, but by divine profession: and let us believe him who says, He that hath seen me hath seen the Father also.

Nor let us be ignorant of him who said, Or else believe me for the very works' sake, that the Father is in me, and I in the Father. Nor let us be ignorant of him who spoke, I and the Father are one. For if the names of things, recalled according to human understanding, confirm our sense: he who is seen in another through understanding has no difference of nature from him in whom he is seen; nor does he differ in kind who, having the one who abides in himself, is in the one who abides; nor are they diverse who are one. Understand the unity, since the nature is not divided. But grasp again the mystery of the undivided nature, since as a mirror one is of one.

But a mirror in such wise that the splendor of the external nature does not send forth an imagined likeness; but since the living nature is not different from the living nature, inasmuch as it is wholly from the whole, which, while it is only-begotten, has the Father in itself, and abides in the Father, since it is God.

The heretics wrongly twist the sayings about the unity of nature into a unity of will.—Since, then, the heretics cannot deny these things proclaimed by the Lord to signify the mystery of the nativity, they try thus to evade them, so as to refer them to a concord of will; so that in God the Father and in God the Son there is not a unity of divinity, but of will: as though the discourse of divine teaching were destitute, and the Lord could not have said, I and the Father will one thing: or as though it were of the same meaning to say, I and the Father are one: or as though he, unskilled in speaking, did not say, He who has seen my will has seen also the will of my Father: and that this were the same as, He who has seen me has seen the Father also: or as though it were surely not in the usage of divine speech to say, The will of my Father is in me, and my will is in my Father; but rather that this saying were fitting: I in the Father, and the Father in me.

All of which, although they are foul, and inept, and impious, and human sense does not yield to this opinion of foolish judgment—that either the Lord could not say what he wished, or said something other than what he said: although he is found to have used parabolic and allegorical sayings, yet it is one thing either to confirm sayings by examples, or to satisfy the dignity of things by the significations of proverbs, or to accommodate oneself to the professions of the times: nevertheless this same passage concerning the unity, which is being treated of, does not allow that anything other than what the words sound should be believed in the sayings. For if they are one through this, that they will one thing; but natures that are separable cannot will one thing, since natures differing by diversity of dissenting kind necessarily disagree in diverse wills by diversity of nature: how can they will one thing, for whom to know is not one thing; since the knowledge and the ignorance of a single will impede unity?

Since therefore ignorance is contrary to knowledge, things that are contrary cannot will one thing.

The Father alone knows the day for this reason, that he does not conceal it from the Son alone: the Son does not know it, because he reveals it to no one.—But perhaps this, that the Son says the Father alone knows, confirms that the Son, who said he did not know, is ignorant. Unless he had plainly said that the Father alone knows, a matter of the greatest peril would be left to our understanding, lest perhaps he himself should be thought to be ignorant. For since in that which he does not know, it is for him a dispensation of hidden knowledge rather than a nature of not knowing; through this also, in that the Father alone knows, he is to be believed not to have been ignorant: because, as we taught above, knowledge with God is not an understanding of knowing that which he had not known, but of speaking.

And through this, that the Father alone knows, the Son is not understood to be ignorant; since the Son says that he himself does not know for this reason, that others also may not know: and says that the Father alone knows for this reason, that he himself may not be ignorant. For if God is said then to have known that he was loved by Abraham, when he did not conceal this from Abraham; it is necessary that the Father also be said to know the day for this reason, that he has not concealed it from the Son, God taking knowledge not from a sudden cognition, but declaring it in time. If therefore the Son also, according to the mystery, does not know the day, so as to be silent; on the contrary it is necessary that the Father alone be shown to know the day, because he does not remain silent.

God is simple, and is by no means to be thought of in human fashion. He is not changed. He can do all things.—But far be it that novelties of corporeal changes be thought to exist in the Father and the Son, as though the Father should at some time either speak to the Son, or be silent. We indeed remember that sometimes a voice was sent from heaven; so that among us it might confirm the mystery of the Son by the signification of the paternal saying, as the Lord says: This voice came not because of me, but for your sakes. But the nature of God has no need of the composed necessities of human office—the motion of the tongue, the tempering of the mouth, the effort of breath, the striking of air.

God is simple; he is to be understood by our religion, to be confessed by piety: but not to be pursued by sense, but to be adored; lest a moderate and weak nature should occupy, by mere opinion, the mystery of an infinite and powerful nature's understanding. He is not therefore diverse in the parts of a composite divinity: so that in him there should be either will after torpor, or speech after silence, or work after leisure: so that he should not be thought to will anything unless moved to willing; or unable to speak anything unless words sound after silence; or unable to be understood to do anything unless it issues into a work.

He is not subject to the laws of nature, from whom every nature receives its law: nor is he held back in anything by weakness or by the mutation of accomplishing, he who is beyond the measure of power, according to the Lord's saying: Father, all things are possible unto thee: so that as much as human sense does not grasp, so much God is able to do. But not even he himself defrauded himself of the power of omnipotence, saying, All things whatsoever the Father doeth, these also the Son doeth likewise. There is no difficulty where there is no weakness; because difficulty is subject to a power of accomplishing that is impotent. For the nature of difficulty lies in the weakness of power: which, since it has no measure of power, is not held by the law of weakness.

He could never at any time be ignorant of the day. The Son's nature is one with the Father's.—This has therefore been demonstrated by us, lest either God be thought to have spoken to the Son after silence, or the Son to have known after ignorance: but that our understanding must be instructed by the significations proper to our own nature, which would not understand anything to be shown except through one speaking, and would not think anything to be unknown except through knowing. The Son, therefore, does not know the day for this reason, that he is silent: and he says that the Father alone knows for this reason, that he alone is not silent to him alone. But he does not await, as I have said, these difficulties of nature, so as to know only when he has ceased to be ignorant, so as to hear only when the Father has begun to speak.

He taught without ambiguity the unity of his nature with the Father, as of the only-begotten, saying: All things that are the Father's are mine.

For he did not speak now of obtaining; because it is one thing to exist extrinsically by one's own subsistence, and another to be, in one's own things, that very self: of which the one is to possess heaven, earth, and the whole world, the other is to signify oneself in those things which are one's own—one's own, however, not as though they were subject as external things, but because he himself subsists from his own things. Now therefore, since all things that are the Father's are his own, he signifies the nature of divinity, not the community of things obtained.

For as to that which he spoke of the Holy Spirit's receiving from what is his, he says, All things that are the Father's are mine; and therefore I said, he shall receive of mine: so that while he receives of his own, he should not also be thought not to receive of the Father's; or while he took of the Father's, he should not also be understood not to take of his own. For the Holy Spirit was not taking from creatures, he who is the Spirit of God; so that he should seem to receive from these, since all these things are God's. But it is not for this reason that all things that are the Father's are his own, that what he takes from the Son should seem not also to be taken from the Father's; since all things that were the Father's were understood to be also the Son's.

To whom the will, and likewise the knowledge, is the same as the Father's.—This nature, therefore, needed neither change, nor questioning, nor address, so as to know after ignorance, to ask after silence, to hear after asking: but remaining perfect in the mystery of its own unity, as it had nativity from God, so also it had universality. But having universality, it did not fail to hold also the things which belong to universality, namely knowledge and will: lest what the Father knows, the Son should know through questioning; or what the Father wills, the Son should will through a signification given to him. But since all things which are the Father's were his own, it belonged to that property of nature that he should not will or know anything other than the Father. But for the demonstration of the nativity a demonstration of person is frequently employed, when it is said: I came not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.

He does the will of the Father, not his own: while, by the will of him who sent him, he signifies also the Father. But that he wills that same thing, he shows without ambiguity, saying: Father, those whom thou hast given me, I will that where I am, they also may be with me. Since therefore the Father wills that we be with Christ, in whom, according to the Apostle, he chose us before the foundation of the world, and the Son himself wills this same thing, namely that we be with him; the will as to nature is the same, though it is distinguished as to the signification of the nativity in the will.

That the Apostles understood him not as ignorant, but as keeping silence by dispensation.—The Son therefore does not not know what the Father does not know; nor because the Father alone knows, does the Son therefore not know: since the Father and the Son abide in unity of nature; but that the Son does not know—he in whom all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden—is a dispensation of keeping silence: as the Lord himself testified, when he answered the Apostles inquiring about the times: It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father has put in his own power. Knowledge is denied: and not only is it denied, but even the concern for knowledge is checked, since it is not theirs to know these times.

Indeed these same men now, after the resurrection, ask about the times—they to whom, when they had asked before, it was said that not even the Son knows: nor can they be seen, according to what they had heard, to have understood that the Son does not know, since they themselves again question him as one who knows. But understanding that the mystery of not knowing was a dispensation of silence, and now, after the resurrection, judging it to be a time for speaking, they ask. And to them the Son no longer says that he does not know; but that it is not theirs to know, because the Father has placed it in his own power. If then the Apostles understand that this—that the Son does not know the day—is a dispensation, not a weakness; do we say that the Son does not know the day for this reason only, lest he be God?

Since the Father God has for this reason placed the day in his own power, lest it should pass into the knowledge of human understanding: and the Son, having been asked before and saying that he did not know, now again answers not that he does not know, but that it is not theirs to know; but that the Father has placed the times not within his own knowledge, but within his own power? For since day and moment are contained within the name of times, it cannot be thought that he himself, who is to restore the kingdom to Israel, is ignorant of the day and moment of that restoration. But instructing them for the understanding of his own nativity through the exception of the Father's power, he did not answer that he himself did not know; and showing that the faculty of that knowledge was not granted to them, he professed that this very thing consists in the mystery of the Father's power.

Therefore, because the Son says that he does not know the day and the moment, he is not to be believed not to know, just as, when according to the man he either weeps, or sleeps, or is sorrowful, God is not to be confessed as subject either to tears, or fear, or sleep: but with the truth of the Only-begotten preserved in himself, it must be understood that, according to the weakness of the flesh—weeping, sleep, hunger, position, weariness, fear—he likewise, of equal necessity according to the man's nature, professed ignorance of the day and hour.

What is the cause of dissenting opinions. Men following the doctrine of preference, not of reason.—It is not doubtful that every discourse of human speech has always been liable to contradiction: because, since the movements of wills differ, the sense of minds differs also; since, with the feeling of opposing judgments resisting, it contradicts those assertions by which it is offended. For although every statement perfect in the reasoning of truth exists; yet since one thing seems or is pleasing to some and another to others, the discourse of truth lies open to the response of opponents: because against truth either not understood or giving offense, the error of a foolish or vicious will resists. For all persistence of adopted wills is immoderate: and with unbending movement the zeal for opposing persists, where the will is not subjected to reason, nor is zeal devoted to doctrine, but we seek out reason for the things we wish, and we fit doctrine to the things we are zealous for.

And then the doctrine that is fashioned will be one of name rather than of nature: and it will no longer remain the reasoning of truth, but of preference; which the will will have fitted rather to the defense of what pleases it, not one which will stir the impulse of the will through the understanding of rational truth. Through these vices of zealous wills, therefore, all the contradictions of opposing intentions arise: and between the assertion of truth and the defense of preference there is a persistent battle: while both truth holds its ground, and the will defends itself. But if the will did not go before reason, but were moved through the understanding of truth to will that which is true: never would doctrine be sought from the will, but reason would move all will to doctrine; and everything would be, without contradiction, most true, since each one would not defend as true what he wished, but would have begun to wish what is true.

What masters they seek.—Not unaware of these vicious wills, the Apostle, among the many precepts for attesting the faith and preaching the word, writing to Timothy, says: There shall be a time when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires will heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears: and will turn away their hearing from the truth, and will be turned unto fables. For when, through zeal for impiety, they shall be beyond the endurance of sound doctrine, then they will heap up teachers for the things they desire, accumulating, that is, doctrines suited to their own desires, not desiring to be taught, but gathering teachers to that which they desire: so that the very heap of sought-out and accumulated teachers may satisfy, with its doctrines, their seething desires.

And this so great madness of foolish irreligion, by what spirit at length, not enduring sound doctrine, it shall desire corrupted doctrine, if one does not know, let him learn from the same Apostle writing to this same Timothy: Now the Spirit manifestly says, that in the last times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, doctrines of demons, in the hypocrisy of liars. For what advance in doctrine is it to seek preferences rather than what ought to be taught? Or what religion of doctrine is it, not to desire what ought to be taught, but to heap up doctrine for what is desired? But these are the incitements supplied by seducing spirits, and they confirm the falsehoods of a feigned religion. For lying hypocrisy follows the defection from the faith, so that there may be piety even in words, which the conscience has lost.

And indeed they render this same feigned piety impious with every falsehood of words, corrupting the sanctity of the faith with the institutions of false doctrine: since the doctrine has been heaped up according to the desires of their pursuits rather than according to the evangelical faith. For with ears stirred by itching, while they are tickled, through an impatient delight in hearing, under the novel preaching suited to their desire, being themselves wholly estranged from the hearing of truth, they devote themselves entirely to fables: so that they may acquire, for the things they speak, the appearance of truth, while they can neither speak nor hear the things that are true.

The foregoing agrees with the Arians.—We have fallen plainly into this most troublesome time of apostolic prophecy. For now, teachers of the creature rather than of God being sought out, zeal is applied rather to human desires than to the doctrines of sound faith: and the itching of ears has excited them to such a point, toward hearing what they desire, that, teachers having been heaped up, this alone for the present prevails as preaching, by which the only-begotten God is, in our faith, either estranged from the power and truth of God the Father, or a God of another kind, or not God at all: a deadly profession of impiety in either case, either proclaiming two gods under a diversity of divinity, or altogether denying the God from whom he has nature through nativity from God. This is pleasing to ears estranged from the hearing of truth and turned to fables: the hearing of this sound doctrine is not endured, and it itself, with its preachers, goes altogether into exile.

Hilary, in exile, free and joyful.—But although now, with many heaping up for themselves teachers according to their own desires, sound doctrine is exiled; nevertheless the truth of preaching will not be exiled from any of the saints. For we, exiles, shall speak through these books, and the word of God, which cannot be bound, will run free, warning of this same time of apostolic prophecy: so that when the impatience of hearing the truth is detected, and teachers heaped up according to human desires are found, there may no longer be doubt about the time; but truth may be understood to rejoice together in it, together with the rejoicing preachers of the sound faith.

Nor shall we complain of the times: rather we shall even rejoice, because iniquity has shown itself through this time of our exile, by which, impatient of truth, it banishes the preachers of sound doctrine, so that it may heap up for itself teachers according to its own desires: we, rejoicing and exulting in the Lord in our exile, that the fullness of apostolic prophecy has come to pass in us.

How cautiously he has conducted himself in the preceding books. The customary calumnies of the Arians against Catholics.—Holding, then, in the preceding books, as I judge, a profession of sincere faith and uncontaminated truth, although, according to the custom of human nature, no discourse is free from liability to contradiction, yet I think we have moderated the whole reasoning of our response in such a way, that no one could contradict it except with a profession of impiety. For the truth concerning those sayings which the heretics presume from the Gospels, according to the art of their false speech, has been so demonstrated, that it is no longer permitted, in contradicting, to excuse ignorance, but one must confess irreligion. This also we have now tempered, according to the gift of the Holy Spirit, the whole demonstration of the faith, so that they could not even falsely fabricate any charge against us.

For they are accustomed so to fill the ears of the ignorant concerning us, as to assert that we deny the nativity, when we preach the unity of divinity: and they say that by this, I and the Father are one, a solitary God is signified by us: so that the unborn God, descending into the Virgin, was born man, who for the dispensation of the flesh subjoined that which he thus began, I, and for the demonstration of his divinity subjoined, and the Father, as though he were the father of this his man; but he, consisting of two, that is, man and God, spoke of himself, we are one.

What has been said so far concerning the eternal generation of the Son.—But we, professing a nativity subsisting without time, have preached God the Son as God not of a nature alien to God the Father: neither equal to the Unborn out of unborn-ness, but not unlike him out of the generation of the Only-begotten: nor that they are one out of doubled names of union, but out of the nativity of nature; nor that there are two gods, through diversity of kind, in the faith, nor again a solitary one, because he is the only God, where the mystery of the only-begotten God must be confessed; but that the Son is signified and exists in the Father, since in him is both the nature of the Father and the name (namely, of that nature), while in the Son the Father is understood and abides, since the Son can neither be called Son nor exist, except from the Father:

that also, of the living nature, he is the living image, and the form of God in God, naturally sealed, of a power and kind so undifferentiated that in him neither work, nor speech, nor sight is alien from the Father: but since the image naturally has in itself the nature of its author, through his own natural image the author has both worked, and spoken, and been seen.

What concerning the temporal.—And while proclaiming this generation of the Only-begotten as both timeless and inexpressible, and exceeding every sense of human understanding, we have also taught the mystery of God born into man from the Virgin's childbearing: showing that according to the dispensation of the flesh assumed, when, emptying himself from the form of God, he took the form of a servant, the weakness of the human condition did not weaken the nature of God, but rather, the power of divinity being preserved unharmed in man, the power of God toward man was acquired. For although God was born into man, he was not born for this reason, that he might cease to remain God, but that, God remaining, the man born might be in God. For his name is Emmanuel, which is, God with us: so that it is not a falling-away of God to man, but a progress of man to God.

Or when he asks to be glorified, this pertains not at all to the nature of God, but to the assumption of lowliness. For he asks for that glory which he had with God before the foundation of the world.

What concerning the unknown hour.—Responding also to the most foolish assertions of these men, we have come down even to a demonstration concerning the unknown hour: which, even if, according to them, had not been grasped (perceived) by the Son, still this would not pertain to any insult to the divinity of the Only-begotten; because nature could not bear that his nativity should draw him back to the uninitiable substitution of unbegottenness, the Father still reserving to his own power the defining of the moment of that day, for the demonstration of unbegotten authority: nor can weak nature be understood to be in him, in whom there was only so much of the nativity of nature as a perfect nativity could fulfill: nor should the ignorance of the day and hour be reckoned as a difference of divinity in the Only-begotten God, since, for the demonstration against the Sabellian heretics of the unbegotten and uninitiable power in the Father, this is an exception of unbegotten power in him.

But since we have taught that this profession of not knowing the day is not the weakness of ignorance, but the dispensation of silence: now also every occasion of impious assertion must be purged, and all the preachings of heretical blasphemy must be run through, so that the truth of the Gospel may shine forth through those very things by which it seems to be obscured.

The fear and pain of the passion is objected against the equality of the Son.—For very many of them wish, from the fear of the passion and from the weakness of suffering, that he was not in the nature of the impassible God: so that he who feared and grieved was not either in that security of power which does not fear, nor in that incorruption of Spirit which does not grieve; but of an inferior nature from God the Father, and trembled with fear of human suffering, and groaned at the atrocity of bodily punishment; and they strive with this assertion of their impiety, because it is written: My soul is sorrowful even unto death; and again: Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; and also this: My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Let them add this too: Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.

For they seize all these professions of our pious faith for the usurpation of their impiety: so that he feared, who was sorrowful, and who begged that the cup be taken from him; that he grieved, who complained that he was forsaken by God in his suffering; that he was also weak, who commended his spirit to the Father, lest anxiety admit a likeness of a nature equalized to God in the nativity of the Only-begotten, which testifies to its weakness and diversity both by the entreaty of the cup, and the complaint of desolation, and the confession of commendation.

It is not rightly said that he feared death, which he taught should not be feared.—And first, before we show from these very sayings that no weakness either of fearing or of grieving fell upon him concerning himself: it must be asked what he could be thought to have been able to fear, so that a dread of unbearable pain should have fallen upon him. And I think no other cause than that of suffering and death is put forward here for fear. And I ask those who so judge, whether it stands to reason that he feared to die, who, banishing from the Apostles all terror of death, exhorted them to the glory of martyrdom, saying: He who does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me: and he who finds his soul shall lose it: and he who loses it for my sake shall find it.

For since to die for him is life; what is he to be thought to have grieved over in the mystery of death, who repays life to those dying for him? And since he warns that those who kill the body are not to be feared; did death itself terrify him to fear of bodily suffering?

Which also he met willingly, with the power of reviving.—Then again, what pain of death would he fear, who was about to die by the liberty of his own power? For, for the human race, death of life is hastened either by an external force, that is, fever, wound, accident, collapse, ravaging the body; or the very nature of our body, worn out by old age, succumbs into that same death. But the Only-begotten God, having such power of laying down his soul as of taking it up again, in order to accomplish in himself the mystery of death, when, having drunk the vinegar, he had testified that he had accomplished the whole work of human sufferings, bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

If this right has been left to human nature, that by exhaling its own breath it may rest in death, and, the body not dissolved, the soul may depart from its weakening; or that, with limbs torn or pierced or crushed, the spirit, as if violated in its own seat, bursts forth or flows out: could fear of death fall upon the Lord of life, if, in that he died with the spirit sent forth, he did not use the power of his own liberty to die? But if he died of himself, and rendered up his spirit through himself; there is no terror of death in the power of dying.

Death was terrible neither to body nor to spirit.—But perhaps through the timidity of human ignorance he feared this very power of dying in himself; so that although he died of himself, he still feared this very fact, that he was to die. And if there will perhaps be those who so judge, let them determine for which thing they think death was terrible, for the Spirit, or for the body. If for the body; do they not know that within three days he was to raise up the temple of his body to the Holy One who was not to see corruption? But if death is terrible for the Spirit; would Christ, while Lazarus rejoiced in Abraham's bosom, fear the chaos of hell? These things are foolish and ridiculous, that he who had the power of laying down his soul and taking it up again should fear to die, who was about to die for the mystery of human life under the liberty of his own will.

There is no fear of death in the will and power of one who is not to die long, who dies: because both the will to die and the power to revive are outside the nature of fear, since death cannot be feared both in the will to die and in the power to live.

Whether he feared the punishments.—But perhaps the pain of the body hanging on the cross, and the violent bonds of the binding ropes, and the raw wounds of the driven nails were objects of fear? And let us see of what body the man Christ is; that pain should remain in flesh suspended, and knotted, and pierced through.

Whence sensation arises in bodies.—For such is the nature of bodies, that, animated through the fellowship of the soul into a certain sense of feeling soul, it is not dull and inanimate matter: but it feels when touched, and grieves when pierced, and stiffens with cold, and rejoices when warmed, and wastes with hunger, and grows fat with food. For from a certain passage of the soul possessing and penetrating it, according to those things in which it is, it is either delighted or hurt. When, therefore, bodies pierced or dug into feel pain, the sense of the soul poured into them admits the sense of pain. Finally, a wound of the body feels pain up to a certain point, and fingers do not feel the parings of nails cut from the flesh.

And if at any time, through the encroachment of some defect, some corrupted part of the limbs has lost the sense of living flesh; when it is either cut off or burned, whoever it might have felt pain will not feel it, since the mixture of the soul no longer remains in it. Or when a heavy necessity of cutting into the body remains, the vigor of the soul is lulled by a medicated potion, and the mind, seized by more violent juices, is exhausted into a forgetfulness of its own sense within the near-dead body. And then the limbs are cut, unaware of pain, and the dead sense of the flesh escapes every wound of the blow, by the sense of the soul growing numb within itself. Thus the animated body brings pain into its own weak sense, through the mingling of the soul into its weakness.

Whence the body and soul of Christ.—If therefore the man Jesus Christ lived in the body through the beginnings of our body and soul, and not in such a way that God was the ruler of his own body but not likewise of his own soul, being made in the likeness of man, and being found in fashion as a man, he was born; he felt the pain of our body, being animated in the body, of our soul and body, both at conception and at the beginning. But if, having assumed to himself flesh from the Virgin through himself, he himself fitted to himself, from himself, the soul of the body conceived through himself; then, according to the nature of soul and body, it was necessary that there also be a nature of sufferings. For, emptying himself from the form of God, and taking the form of a servant, and being born the Son of God, also being born the Son of man, not failing from himself and his own power, God the Word perfected a living man.

For in what way will the Son of God be born the son of man; or, remaining in the form of God, will he have taken the form of a servant: if the Word, being God, was not able of himself both to assume flesh within the Virgin, and to grant a soul to the flesh, so that the man Christ Jesus was born perfect for the redemption of our soul and body; and did he assume the body in such a way that it, conceived from the Virgin, made him to be in the form of a servant? For the Virgin bore only what she bore from his own Holy Spirit. And although she gave as much to the nativity of the flesh from herself, as much as women, in the assumed origins of bodies to be brought forth, expend from themselves; nevertheless Jesus Christ did not come together through the nature of human conception.

But every cause of birth, brought in through the Spirit, retained in the man's nativity what belongs to the mother; while yet he had in the power of his origin what belongs to God.

Christ who is both from heaven, and the son of man, and in heaven.—Hence, therefore, the Lord himself shows that greatest and most beautiful mystery of the man he assumed, saying: No one ascends into heaven, except he who descended from heaven, the Son of man who is in heaven. That he descended from heaven, is the cause of his origin conceived from the Spirit. For Mary did not give origin to the body: although she contributed all that is natural to her sex toward the growth and bringing forth of the body entirely. But that he is the Son of man is the childbirth of the flesh assumed in the Virgin. But that he is in the heavens, is the power of a nature always remaining: which, though begun and founded through itself in flesh, did not confine itself, from the power of its own infinity, within the region of a defined body.

Remaining in the form of a servant by the power of the Spirit and the might of the Word of God, he was not absent, as Lord of heaven and the world, from any circle within or without heaven and the world. Through this therefore he both descended from heaven, and is the Son of man, and is in the heavens: because the Word made flesh had not lost remaining what the Word is. For while he is the Word, he is also in the heavens; while he is flesh, he is also the Son of man: while the Word was made flesh, he is both from heaven, and is the Son of man, and is in heaven: because both the power of the Word, not remaining in corporeal manner, was not lacking to the place from which it had descended; and the flesh had taken its origin from nowhere else than from the Word; and the Word made flesh, while it was flesh, was nonetheless still also the Word.

He is of earth, as from the Virgin; as from the Word, of heaven.—But the blessed Apostle has also spoken absolutely of the mystery of this ineffable bodily nativity, saying: The first man is of the slime of the earth, the second man is of heaven. For in saying man, he taught the nativity from the Virgin: who, discharging a mother's office, followed the nature of her sex in the conception and bringing forth of the man. And when he says the second man is of heaven, he attested his origin from the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the Virgin; and thus, since he is both man and is of heaven, the bringing forth of this man is from the Virgin, and his conception is from the Spirit. And these things indeed the Apostle says.

That the flesh of the Son of man, because it is from the Virgin, is bread from heaven, because it is from the Holy Spirit.—The Lord himself, unfolding the mystery of this his nativity, spoke thus: I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of my bread, he shall live forever, calling himself bread; for he himself is the origin of his own body. And lest the power and nature of the Word should be thought to have failed him in becoming flesh, he said again that it was his bread: so that, by this, that descending from heaven he is bread, the origin of the body should not be thought to be from human conception, while the body is shown to be heavenly.

But indeed, since it is his own bread, this is the confession of the body assumed through the Word; for he added: Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you: so that, because that which is the Son of man, and the bread which descends from heaven, is he himself: through his bread descending from heaven, and through the flesh and blood of the Son of man, both the assumption of flesh conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin might be understood.

Christ perfect God, perfect man.—The man Jesus Christ, then, of this body, is both the Son of God and the Son of man, and, emptying himself from the form of God, took the form of a servant. He is no other Son of man than he who is the Son of God: nor is he another in the form of God than he who was born perfect man in the form of a servant: so that, just as by the nature established for us by God, the prince of our origin, man is born of body and soul, so Jesus Christ, through his own power, was man and God of flesh and soul, having in himself both the whole and true reality of what man is, and the whole and true reality of what God is.

Against those teaching that Christ received the flesh and soul of Adam. The soul is a work of God.—Although many, by the art of confirming their heresy, are wont so to deceive the ears of the unlearned, as to say that, because both the body and soul of Adam were in sin, the Lord received from the Virgin the flesh of Adam as well as his soul, and that the Virgin did not conceive the whole man from the Holy Spirit. But if they understood the mystery of the flesh assumed, they would understand also the mystery of the same being both Son of man and Son of God. As if indeed, had he assumed only flesh from the Virgin, he had also assumed soul from the same source: whereas every soul is a work of God, but the generation of flesh is always from flesh.

Against those who wish Christ to be a mere sound of a voice, and who falsely charge Catholics with denying that he is, as it were, a man.—But wishing that the only-begotten God, who in the beginning was with God, God the Word, should not be a substantive God, but an uttered word of the voice, so that what a spoken word is to speakers, this the Son should be to God the Father; they wish craftily to steal in, so that the subsisting Word, God, and Christ remaining in the form of God, should not have been born man: so that, when a human origin rather than the mystery of spiritual conception has animated that man, the Word, God, should not have come into existence by making himself man through the birth of the Virgin, but as the Spirit of prophecy was in the prophets, so the Word of God was in Jesus, and they are accustomed to accuse us, because we say Christ was born, not a man of our body and soul:

whereas we proclaim the Word made flesh, and Christ emptying himself from the form of God and taking the form of a servant, born perfect man according to the habit of human conformation and our likeness: so that he might be truly the true Son of God and truly the true Son of man: neither is he not a man born of God, nor, because he is a man born of God, is he therefore deficient in being God.

The soul of Christ is from God. He is one in two perfect natures.—But just as he assumed for himself, by himself, a body from the Virgin, so he assumed for himself a soul from himself; which is by no means ever furnished to man from the origins of those who beget. For if the Virgin had the conception of flesh from none other than God, much more is it necessary that the soul of the body was from nowhere else but God. And since he himself, the very Son of man, is he who is also the Son of God, because the whole Son of man is the whole Son of God; how ridiculous it would be for us to proclaim, besides the Son of God, who is the Word made flesh, some other, I know not whom, as a prophet animated by the Word of God, when the Lord Jesus Christ is both the Son of man and the Son of God?

By the fact indeed that his soul is sorrowful even unto death, and that he has power to lay down his soul and to take it up again, he wished to attribute the soul as from without, not from the Holy Spirit, as the body also was conceived from him: since the Word, God, remaining in the mystery of his own nature, was born man. But he was born, not that he might be one and then another: but that, being God before man, taking up man he might be understood as man and God. For in what manner was Jesus Christ, the Son of God, born of Mary, except that the Word was made flesh: namely, that the Son of God, being in the form of God, took the form of a servant?

But that he who was in the form of God took the form of a servant is set forth by contraries in comparison: so that, as great as is the truth of remaining in the form of God, so great is the truth of having taken the form of a servant. For to understand the property of nature, we are driven by the common signification of the word to that end. For he who is in the form of a servant is also in the form of God. And although this belongs to nature, and that to the dispensation; yet it is in the property of the same truth, that each is: so that he is as truly in the form of God as he is truly in that of a servant.

But as to have assumed the form of a servant is nothing other than to have been born man; so to be in the form of God is nothing other than to be God, yet one and the same, not by a failing of God, but by the assumption of man, we profess that he was found both in the form of God through divine nature, and in the form of a servant, according to the habit of man, from the conception of the Holy Spirit. And so, since Jesus Christ was both born, and suffered, and died, and was buried; and rose again.

He cannot in these diversities of mysteries be so divided from himself as not to be Christ: since there is no other Christ than he who, being in the form of God, took the form of a servant; nor is there another than he who was born, who died; nor another than he who died, who rose again; nor another than he who rose again, who is in heaven; and in heaven there is none other than he who before descended from heaven.

Christ liable to suffering, but was he also liable to pain? Christ's prerogative in the flesh.—The man Jesus Christ, therefore, the only-begotten God, through flesh and Word being both Son of man and Son of God, took a true man according to the likeness of our man, without God failing from himself: in whom, although a blow might fall, or a wound descend, or knots be drawn tight, or a hanging lift him up, these indeed brought the force of the suffering, yet did not bring the pain of the suffering: just as some dart, either piercing water, or piercing fire, or wounding air, indeed inflicts all these sufferings upon its own nature, so that it may pierce, and prick, and wound; but the suffering inflicted does not retain its nature in these, since it is not in the nature of water to be pierced, nor of fire to be pricked, nor of air to be wounded, although it is the nature of the dart both to wound and to prick and to pierce.

The Lord Jesus Christ indeed suffered, while he was being struck, while he was being hung up, while he was being crucified, while he was dying: but the suffering rushing into the body of the Lord was not other than suffering, nor yet did it exert the nature of suffering: since it both raged with penal ministry, and the power of the body, without any sense of pain, received the force of the punishment raging against it. Indeed that body of the Lord would have the nature of our pain, if our body had this by nature, that it might tread upon the waves and walk upon the billows, and not be weighed down by its entering, nor would the waters yield beneath the standing feet, that it might even penetrate solid things, nor be kept out by the barriers of a closed house.

But if the only nature of the Lord's body were this, that by its own power, by its own soul, it were borne on the waters, and stood upon liquids, and passed over what was built up: what then do we judge of the flesh conceived from the Spirit, according to the nature of the human body? That flesh, that is, that bread, is from heaven; and that man is of God. Having indeed a body suited for suffering, and he did suffer; but having no nature suited for pain. For it is proper to its own nature, that body, which on the mountain is conformed unto heavenly glory, which by its touch puts fevers to flight, which forms eyes out of its own spittle.

Whether human passions were in Christ.—But perhaps, in whom the affection of weeping, thirsting, and hungering remained, it is necessary that the nature of the other human passions also be in him. Let him who is ignorant of the mystery of the weeping, thirst, and hunger know also that he who gives life is not weeping over Lazarus's death, but rejoices in it, and that he who offers rivers of living water from himself is thirsting, and neither does he burn with thirst, who is able to give drink to the thirsty, and does not condemn a tree that has not offered its fruits to the hungry as one hungering, nor is that nature to be overcome by fasting, which by the command of aridity changes the nature of greenness.

But if, apart from the mystery of weeping and thirst and hunger, the flesh assumed, that is, the whole man, has been permitted the natures of the passions: yet not in such a way that he was overcome by the injuries of the passions; so that he who wept did not weep for himself, so that he who thirsted did not, in order to drink, drive away his thirst, and he who hungered did not fill himself with food from some meal. For neither, when he thirsted or hungered or wept, is the Lord shown to have drunk or eaten or grieved: but for demonstrating the truth of the body, the custom of the body was undertaken, so that by the custom of our nature the custom of the body was satisfied. Or when he took drink and food, he attributed it not to the necessity of the body, but to custom.

In Christ there was the truth of a human body, not its vices. Not the flesh of sin, but its likeness.—For he had a body, but one proper to his own origin; not arising from the vices of human conception, but subsisting in the form of our body by the power of his own virtue: bearing indeed us through the form of a servant, but free from the sins and vices of the human body; so that we indeed might be present in him through the birth of the Virgin, but that our vices, proceeding from the origin of ourselves, might not be present in him through his virtue: while, born a man, he was not born through the vices of human conception.

For the Apostle held fast the mystery of demonstrating this nativity, when he says: But he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of man, and found in habit as a man: so that while he took the form of a servant, he is to be understood as having been born in the form of man; while, however, he was made in the likeness of man and found in habit as a man, the very appearance and truth of the body attest a man, yet he is ignorant of the natures of vices, insofar as he was found in habit as a man. For the birth is in the likeness of nature, not in the propriety of vices.

For because, in that he took the form of a servant, the nature of his birth seemed to be signified, he added that he was made in the likeness of man and found in habit as a man: lest the truth of the birth should be believed to belong also to the propriety of nature through the vices of the weak, since both in the form of a servant there was a true birth; and in being found in habit as a man there was a likeness of nature. He himself indeed, born a man of himself through the virgin, was found also in the likeness of the sinful flesh of sin. This same thing the Apostle attested, writing to the Romans, when he says: For what was impossible to the law, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sent his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and of sin condemned sin.

That habit was not as of a man, but as a man: nor was that flesh the flesh of sin, but the likeness of the flesh of sin: while both the habit of the flesh is in the truth of the birth, and the likeness of sinful flesh is alien from the vices of human suffering. Thus the man Christ Jesus is both in the truth of birth while he is man, and is not in the propriety of sin while he is Christ: because he who is man could not fail to be man, in that he was born; and he who is Christ could not have lost what he is as Christ. And thus, while he is the man Christ Jesus, he has both the birth of man, in that he is man; nor is he in the vicious weakness of man, in that he is Christ.

Christ, true man, remained true God without the vices of man. The events of the Passion are weighed.—Although, then, the apostolic faith instructs us to the understanding of this mystery, which has testified that the man Christ Jesus was both found in habit as a man, and sent in the likeness of sinful flesh: so that when he is in habit as man, he is in the form of a servant, and is not in the vices of nature; and when he is in the likeness of sinful flesh, the Word is indeed flesh, but is rather in the likeness of sinful flesh than is itself the flesh of sin: and when he is the man Christ Jesus, he is indeed man, but in the man he cannot be other than what Christ is: and thus he is born a man from the birth of the body, nor is he in the vices of man, in that he is not in that origin; because the Word made flesh could not fail to be flesh, in that it was made so, and although the Word was made flesh, it did not lose being what the Word is; and while the Word made flesh cannot lack the nature of its own origin, it could not but remain, as to what it is as Word, in the origin of its own nature, nor is it not truly to be understood that the Word made flesh is flesh; yet in such wise that, because it dwelt in us, that flesh is not the Word, but is the flesh of the Word dwelling in the flesh: since these things are so, let us nevertheless see whether the whole order of the Passion as it was accomplished permits us to understand weakness of bodily pain in the Lord.

For setting aside for a little while the grounds of those sayings from which heresy ascribes fear to the Lord, let us compare the very facts as they took place. For it cannot be that fear should be signified in the words of him whose confidence is contained in the deeds.

Whether there was fear of the Passion in Christ.—Does it seem to you, O heretic, that the Lord of glory feared his passion? But to Peter, for the error of this ignorance, he is both "Satan" and a "scandal". And Peter indeed, through the love of Christ, whom not flesh and blood but the Father who is in heaven had revealed to him, having abhorred the mystery of the passion, was confirmed to the faith by so severe a sentence. What hope will you pursue, in denying Christ to be God, and adding to him a fear of the passion? Did he fear, who went forth to meet armed men to be seized? And was there weakness in his body, at whose onset the dismayed ranks of his pursuers fell down, and, unable to bear the majesty of one delivering himself to bonds, fell backward with bodies overturned? What weakness, then, do you believe to have ruled over this body, whose nature possessed such great power?

Whether he feared pain.—But perhaps he feared the pain of wounds. What horror of the piercing nail, I ask, did he have, who restored the flesh of the cut-off ear by the mere act? Explain to us, you who assert the Lord's weakness, this work of weakened flesh in the very time of the passion. For as Peter drew and drove in his sword, the servant of the priest stood by with his ear cut off. How was it that, from the wound of the severed ear, at Christ's touch, the flesh of the ear was restored? Whence, between the flowing blood and the very traces of the cutting sword, and in the very charge of the mutilated body, came forth what did not exist, and there followed what had no substance, and there was repaid what was lacking? Does the hand that produces this ear grieve at the nail? And does he feel a wound to himself, who leaves no pain of a wound to another?

Is he sorrowful with fear of being pierced in the flesh, he to whose touch it is permitted to bestow flesh after the blow? But if this power was in the body of Christ, by what faith, I ask, is he defended as having been naturally weak, for whom it was natural to restrain the whole nature of human weaknesses?

Whether he was sorrowful thence.—But perhaps, by a foolish and impious perversity, an assertion of weak nature in him will be presumed from this, that his soul was sorrowful even unto death. I do not yet, heretic, accuse you of not understanding the force of the saying. Meanwhile, however, I ask of you why, when Judas was going out to the betrayal, you do not remember that it was said: Now is the Son of man glorified. For if the passion was about to glorify him, how had fear of the passion made him sorrowful? Unless perhaps he was so irrational as to fear to suffer those things which were about to glorify him in his suffering.

Whether he prayed that the cup be taken from him.—But perhaps it will be thought that he feared to such a degree that he prayed the cup be taken from him, saying: Abba, Father, all things are possible to thee, take away this cup from me. Not to charge you falsely with the rest, would you not have convicted the dullness of your impiety even from this, that you had read: Put up thy sword into the sheath; the cup which my Father has given me, shall I not drink it? For how could he pray, through fear of suffering, that what he was hastening to fulfill through zeal for the dispensation be taken from him? For it is not fitting that he should not wish to suffer, who wished to suffer. And when you knew that he willed to suffer, it would have been more religious to confess ignorance of the saying, than to burst forth, in the fury of impious folly, into asserting that he prayed not to suffer, whom you knew to have willed to suffer.

Whether he complained that he was forsaken.—But, I believe, you will arm yourself for the battle of your impiety even with the saying of the Lord's voice: God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? For perhaps, after the contumely of the cross, you think that the regard of paternal aid withdrew from him, and hence arose the complaint of his own desolate weakness. If, then, for you contempt and weakness and the cross are a contumely in Christ, you ought not to have been forgetful of this saying: Truly I say to you, henceforth you shall see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.

Recapitulation.—Where, I ask, in the passion is there fear? Where is weakness? Where is pain? Where is contumely? Is he said by the impious to fear? But he himself proclaims that he wishes to suffer. Is he contended to be weak? But he shows himself powerful in that, when his dismayed persecutors were confronted, he was not withstood by them. Is he charged with grieving over wounds of the flesh? But in that he restores the flesh of the ear from the wound, though he himself is flesh, he is nevertheless found outside the carnal nature of grieving over a wound: because while with his hand he touches the severed ear, that hand is of the body, and while the hand brings forth the ear from the wound, it is signified to the weak that that hand is not of the body.

Whether the cross was a contumely to him.—But it is said the cross was contumelious to him. Yet through this the Son of man is to be seen sitting at the right hand of power, and, having been made man from the birth of a virgin, has returned in his majesty with the clouds of heaven. You do not grasp, irreligiously, the causes of natural things: and while, full of the spirit of impiety and error, you do not understand the mystery of the faith, you proceed, in heretical dullness, from the very sense of the world.

For everything that is feared must needs be avoided while it is feared; and what is weak takes terror from its own frailty; and whatever grieves has in itself the unchangeable nature of grieving; and whatever is contumelious is always dishonorable: but by what sense of reason do you understand that our Lord Jesus Christ feared that toward which he hastened; and that he, who dismayed strong men, trembled with weakness; and that he, who did not permit wounds to give pain, being wounded, grieved; and that he was dishonored by the contumely of the cross, to whom the cross was a session with God, and a return to the kingdom?

Descending to the lower regions, he did not withdraw from heaven. The faith of the thief is one thing, that of heretics another.—But perhaps you think even this left to you as an occasion for impiety, that he feared the descent to the lower world and the very necessity of death, since he seems to attest this very thing by this saying: Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit. Reading this, and not understanding it, you should either have been piously silent, or even reverently have prayed for understanding of it: you should not rather have wandered, incapable of the truth, through an impudent assertion of foolish fury. Are we to believe that he feared the chaos of hell and torrents of flame and every abyss of avenging punishments, he who says to the thief on the cross: Amen I say to thee, today thou shalt be with me in paradise?

The power of this nature I will no longer say you will confine by fear, but not even by the region of the infernal seat, which, descending to the lower world, did not depart from paradise (just as also the Son of man, speaking on earth, remained also in heaven), promising paradise to his martyr, and pledging the delights of consummated blessedness. Bodily fear has no hold on this, penetrating indeed the lower world, but everywhere extended by the power of its own nature. And this nature, mistress of the world, and immense in the freedom of spiritual power, the chaos of hell does not claim for itself by the terror of death, from which the delights of paradise cannot be absent. For the Lord, about to be in the lower world, is also about to be in paradise. Cut off, for fear of punishment, a portion of an indivisible nature: and place it with Christ even among the dead, that it may grieve, and enter in.

By this reasoning some philosophers explain how Adam, innocent, was without experience of pain, because assuredly he was able to alter what had been born of himself to produce pain. Leave paradise, that he might reign. For the thief asks that he be remembered by him in his kingdom. And, I believe, the groan heard as the nail passed through his palms kindled him to this faith of blessed confession: and he learned the kingdom of Christ through the suffering of the infirmed body in Christ. He asks the honor of being remembered in the kingdom: you reckon the death of the cross to fear. The Lord soon promises him the fellowship of paradise: you confine Christ in the underworld under the terror of punishment. This is a faith of a different hope. The thief merited paradise beneath the cross, confessing the hanging Christ to be in the kingdom: but you, reckoning Christ in the pain of punishment and the fear of death, must necessarily be deprived both of paradise and of the kingdom.

Epilogue, of what sort the body of Christ was.—Therefore, when the powers of the things said and done are compared, it is beyond doubt demonstrated that in the nature of his body there was no infirmity of bodily nature, since it was within the power of that nature to drive away every infirmity of bodies; and that that passion, although it was inflicted upon the body, nevertheless did not bring to the body the nature of suffering: because although the form of our body was in the Lord, yet he was not in the body of our vitiated infirmity, since he did not have his origin from that which the Virgin brought forth from the conception of the Holy Spirit: for although she bore him by the office of her sex, yet she did not receive him from the elements of earthly conception.

For she bore from herself a body, but one which had been conceived from the Spirit; having indeed in itself the truth of its own body, but not having the infirmity of nature: since that body is the truth of a body which is born of a virgin; and it is outside the infirmity of our body, since it took its beginning from a spiritual conception.

What it means to be sorrowful unto death.—But the heretics seem to strive against the demonstration of apostolic faith with this saying: "My soul is sorrowful unto death", so that his profession, who says he is sorrowful, may testify to the infirmity of nature, by the consciousness of which he began to be sorrowful. And first I ask the sense of human understanding, what it is to be sorrowful unto death. For it is not of the same signification to be sorrowful on account of death, and to be sorrowful unto death: because where sorrow is on account of death, there death itself is the cause of the sorrow; but where the sorrow is unto death, death is no longer the cause of the sorrow, but its end. Therefore of him who is sorrowful, not on account of death, but unto death, it must be asked whence he is sorrowful. Moreover he is sorrowful not for an uncertain nor indefinite time of human ignorance, but unto death.

And the sorrow taken up was so far from being on account of death, that it was to be dissolved by death.

The cause of Christ's sorrow. To whom he prays that the cup may pass. The two wills of Christ.—And that we may understand the cause of the sorrow, let us see what preceded, or what followed, this profession of sorrow. For the whole mystery of the passion and of the faith had been completed by the Lord at the paschal supper. And afterward he teaches that all would be scandalized in him, yet promises that he will go before them into Galilee. Peter, though the others were to be scandalized, pledged with steadfast faith that he himself would not be scandalized. But the Lord, not ignorant through his divine nature of what was to happen, answered that he would deny him thrice: so that the scandal of the others might be understood through Peter, since he, by denying him thrice, would fall into so grave a peril of faith. Then, taking with him Peter, James and John, two chosen for martyrdom, and John for confirming in the preaching of the Gospel, he professed himself sorrowful unto death.

Then, going forward, he prayed, saying: "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt". He asks that the cup pass from him, though it was already remaining with him: which was even then being accomplished in the blood of the New Testament, to be poured out for the sins of many. For he does not ask that it not be with him, but that it pass from him. Then he asks that his own will not be done: and what he wishes to be accomplished, that very thing he does not wish to be granted to himself. For he says, "Nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt": that by the will of praying against the cup he might signify the participation of human anxiety in himself, yet not separate the resolve of the will united and common with the Father from himself.

But that it might not be understood that he was praying for himself, and that the reasoning of the will thus signified and the entreaty might not be taken as absolute; he began this whole petition of his with this beginning, "My Father, if it is possible." Is something then left to the Father, as though it were uncertain to him whether it were possible? And if nothing is impossible to the Father, it must be understood in respect of whose condition that "if it is possible" is left. For after this prayer of entreaty follows: "And he came to his disciples, and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, Could you not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray, that you enter not into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak". Is the cause of the sorrow, and the entreaty for the transferring of the cup, still obscure?

For he bids them watch with him and pray for this reason, that they might not enter into temptation, the spirit indeed being willing, but the flesh weak. For those who promised through the constancy of a faithful conscience that they would not be scandalized, were about to be scandalized through the weakness of the flesh. He is therefore not sorrowful for himself, nor does he pray for himself; but for those whom he admonishes to pray watchfully, that the cup of the passion might not fall upon them: which he prays may pass from him, that is, that it might not remain in them.

Why he says "if it is possible."—He prayed that it be transferred from him, if it were possible, for this reason: because, although nothing is impossible to God, as he himself says: "Father, all things are possible to thee"; yet it is impossible for man not to be overcome by the terror of suffering, nor can faith be known except through trial. And therefore, both as man he wills the cup to pass for the sake of men, and, as the will of God from God, he is united to the effect of the paternal will. But that which he says, "if it is possible," he plainly taught in that which he said to Peter: "Behold, Satan has desired to have you, that he might sift you as wheat: but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not". For through this cup of the dominical passion all were to be tried.

And the Father is asked on behalf of Peter, that his faith may not fail: so that at least the grief of repentance might not be absent from the weakness of him who denied; that his faith should not fail in this, that he repented.

Who is sorrowful unto death.—Therefore the sorrow unto death belongs to the Lord: because in death, by the shaking of the earth, the darkness of the day, the rending of the veil, the opening of the tombs, the resurrection of the dead, the faith of the apostles would now have to be confirmed, which the terror of the nighttime guard, and among the scourgings, blows, spittings, the crown of thorns, the burden of the cross, and the whole mockery of the passion, and finally the condemnation of the accursed cross, would shake.

Knowing therefore that all these things would be dissolved after his passion, the Lord is therefore sorrowful unto death: and he knows that this cup cannot pass unless he drink it, saying: "My Father, this cup cannot pass from me, unless I drink it: thy will be done": that is, that the fear of the cup would pass away when the passion was accomplished, which, unless he had drunk it, could not pass; that the end of his terror would come only after the terror of the passion accomplished in himself; because after his death, through the glory of his powers, the scandal of apostolic infirmity would be driven away.

Why he now permits the apostles to sleep.—And although in that he says, "Thy will be done," he was permitting the apostles, in respect of the scandal of the cup, that is, of his passion, to the disposition of the Father's will; yet after the thrice-repeated prayer he used again the entreaty: after which he said, "Sleep now, and rest". For it is not without the consciousness of some internal reasoning that he, who before had rebuked them for sleeping, now bids them sleep and rest. But Luke is thought to have given us the understanding of this exhortation: for when he had said that Satan had desired to sift the apostles like wheat, and that the Lord had been asked concerning Peter's faith, that it might not fail; he added that after a long prayer of the Lord an angel had come to strengthen him; with whom present he began to pray more earnestly, so that his bodily sweat flowed out in drops of blood.

For when an angel had been sent for the protection of the apostles, and the Lord had been strengthened through him, so that he might not be sorrowful for them, he now says without the fear of sorrow: "Sleep now, and rest." Of the angel, indeed, Matthew and Mark say nothing, nor of the demand of the devil: but after the sorrow of the soul, after the rebuke of the sleepers, after the entreaty for the transferring of the cup, the exhortation to the sleepers did not follow out of nothing, except that, since he was about to be absent from them, and strengthened by the granted help of the angel, he permitted them, in the security of that guard, to be given over to sleep.

Concerning the sweat of blood and the coming of the angel, nothing in many books. The infirmity of Christ is wrongly inferred from this.—Nor indeed should it be unknown to us, that in very many Greek and Latin codices nothing at all is found written, either concerning the coming angel, or concerning the sweat of blood. Since it is doubtful, then, whether this is lacking in various books, or is superfluous (for this remains uncertain to us on account of the diversity of the books), certainly if the heresy flatters itself with anything from this, so as to affirm him to be weak, who had need of the help of a strengthening angel; let it remember that the Creator of the angels did not need the protection of his own creation; and then, necessarily, that he was strengthened in that same manner in which he was also sorrowful.

For if he is sorrowful for us, that is, sorrowful on account of us, it is necessary that he be strengthened on account of us and for us: because he who is sorrowful concerning us and is strengthened concerning us, was strengthened under the same condition under which he was sorrowful. But no one will dare to attribute the sweat to infirmity: because to sweat blood is also against nature. Nor is it infirmity, that his power did not act according to the custom of nature: nor will it in any way be able to pertain to the heresy of infirmity, that which serves against the heresy that falsely asserts a phantasm, through the sweat of blood, toward the truth of the body. Therefore, since both the sorrow is concerning us, and the prayer is for us, it cannot but be understood that all these things were done on account of us, since all the things concerning which there was fear were prayed for on our behalf.

The sorrow, the entreaty about the cup, regard the apostles.—But the Gospels furnish each other mutual completeness: while some things are understood from others, because all is the preaching of one Spirit. For this silent prayer of the Lord, offered for the apostles by all the evangelists, John, the greatest preacher of spiritual causes, shows the Lord to have prayed thus, saying: "Holy Father, keep them in thy name. While I was with them, I kept them in thy name: those whom thou gavest me, I have kept". That prayer, then, was not for himself, but for the apostles: nor is he sorrowful for himself, who admonishes them to pray that they be not tempted: nor is an angel sent for himself, who, if he willed, could bring down twelve thousand legions from the heavens: nor does he fear on account of death, who is anxious unto death: nor does he ask that the cup pass by himself; but he asks that the cup pass from him, though it could not pass unless he drank it.

But "to pass" is not to depart from a place, but to cease to exist altogether: which indeed both the evangelic and the apostolic word signify, when it is said, "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away". But also the Apostle: "Behold, old things have passed away, and new things have come to be". But also when he says, "And the figure of this world shall pass away". The cup, therefore, concerning which he prays to the Father that it may pass, cannot pass unless it be drunk. Was baptized: and that the Lord prays; certainly He prays for these, whom, remaining with them, He Himself saved, and whom He also left to the Father to be saved. But now, about to accomplish the mystery of death, He prays the Father to guard these: and the angels sent to Him, if indeed it is so, are not an ambiguous presence; and the securing of the prayer obtained is manifest, since, the prayer having been completed, He exhorts them to sleep.

Moreover the Evangelist shows the effect of the prayer obtained, and the security of the exhorted sleep, already in the very work of the passion, when, concerning all the apostles who were to escape from the hands of the persecutors, he says: that the word might be fulfilled which He had said, that of those whom Thou gavest me, I have lost none of them. For the entreaty of the prayer is fulfilled through Himself, and all are saved. But the Father is entreated that He Himself now save in His own name those who have been saved through Him. And He so saves that the faith of Peter, penitence following, does not fail, though it was terrified.

Epilogue.—Since therefore both the Lord's prayer in John, and the devil's demand in Luke, and those things which are in Matthew and Mark—the sadness even unto death, the rebuke of the sleepers, and the renewed exhortation—leave no ambiguity: since, when through the prayer in John, by which He commends the apostles to the Father, both the cause of the sadness and the entreaty concerning the passing of the cup are resolved; the Lord entreating not that the passion be removed from Himself, but praying that the Father guard the apostles who were about to suffer: and through Luke, the prayer against the devil having been shown, the permission of sleep, before feared, is now secure by reason of confidence.

Christ free from human vices. Whence the feeling comes.—There is not therefore in that nature which is above man the anxiety of human trepidation: and it is outside the evils of an earthly body, the body not being begun from earthly elements, even though the Holy Spirit brought in the origin of the Son of man through the mystery of conception. For indeed the power of the Most High mingled with the power of the body which the virgin was bringing forth from the conception of the Spirit.

For since, through the fellowship of the soul poured into the body, the sense of the animated body lives, and the soul, mingled with the body, gives life to the very body for the pain of things inflicted upon it; when that soul, by the blessed warmth of its heavenly hope and its faith, has looked down upon the beginning of its earthly origin in its body, the body also is made into the sense and spirit of its own feeling in pain, so that it ceases to perceive that it suffers what it suffers: and what more need we say concerning the nature of the Lord's body, and of the Son of man descending from heaven? Earthly bodies themselves sometimes do not know how to fear and to grieve, though it is necessary both that they be pained and that they be feared for.

The three boys do not fear the flames. Much more Christ.—For I ask whether the Israelite boys feared the flames fed for the kindling of the fiery Babylonian furnace, and whether fear of so great a fire came upon that body of our conception. I ask also whether they grieved to be surrounded by flames. But perhaps because they were not burned, they grieve at nothing; and then it will be thought that the nature of burning was absent from the fires. Certainly this was the nature of the body, that it should both fear to be burned and be able to be burned. But if, through the spirit of faith, earthly bodies—that is, bodies begun according to the elements of common causes—could neither be burned nor fear, then those things which, through faith in God in man, are against nature, having been begun in God according to the power of the Spirit at the origin of their nature, are not to be reckoned according to nature.

The bound boys are in the midst of the fire: they do not fear the fire, while they mount into it; they do not feel the flames, while they pray; they cannot be burned, while they are in the fire. Both the bodies and the fire lose their nature in these things; for neither are they burned, nor does it burn: and yet in other respects both fire and body remain in their own nature; for those standing around are burned, and the instruments of punishment are in punishment. You do not wish, impious heretic, that when the nail passed through His palms Christ should not have suffered pain, nor that wound have brought any bitterness of the piercing weapon. I ask why the boys did not fear the fires, nor grieve: or what there was of nature in their bodies, that it should exceed the nature of fire.

But if they, by the warmth of faith and the glory of blessed martyrdom, know not how to fear the things that are feared; would Christ, even if He had been conceived from the origin of our vices, yet, about to remain God through the cross, and to judge the world, and to be king of everlasting ages, be sad with fear of the cross? And, forgetful of such great rewards, tremble with the anxiety of base fear?

The force of faith to ward off pain.—Daniel the prophet, to be nourished by the prophet's meal, does not fear the lions' den. The apostles rejoice to be beaten and to suffer for the name of Christ. For Paul, his own offering is the crown of righteousness. Martyrs stretch out their necks to be cut off by their executioners with hymns, and mount, with songs, the fires built up for them of piled wood. To such a degree does the sense of faith, the fear of natural weakness having been destroyed in bodies, change the very bodies to a sense of not feeling pain, so that through the purpose of the soul firmness is brought into the body, and the animated body perceives itself to feel only that toward which it is moved by the zeal of the soul; so that what the mind, through desire of glory, disdains to suffer, the body, with the soul giving it life, does not feel itself to suffer.

If these things are natural in men through the warmth of a soul burning for glory, so that they do not know their own sufferings, and are ignorant of their wounds, and do not perceive their deaths: shall the Lord of glory, Jesus Christ, whose very fringe is power, whose spittle and word are the nature of a body—while both the withered hand, no longer withered, is bidden to be stretched forth, and the man born blind does not feel the defects of his birth, and the man deaf in his ear is not deaf—be reckoned in that weakness of a pierced and suffering body, in which the spirit of faith did not abandon glorious and blessed men?

How Christ took up our sufferings. Who bears sins.—The only-begotten God therefore suffered all the weaknesses of our sufferings that came upon Him; but He suffered by the power of His own nature, just as He was born by the power of His own nature: for though He was born, He did not fail to retain in His birth the nature of His omnipotence. For though He was born according to the law of men, yet He was not conceived according to the law of men: having in Himself both the constitution of the human condition in His birth, and being Himself, in His origin, outside the constitution of the human condition. Accordingly, He so suffered in the body from the weakness of our body, that He took up the sufferings of our body by the power of His own body.

And the word of the prophet also is witness to this our faith, when he says: He bears our sins, and grieves for us: and we thought that He was in sorrows, and in a plague, and in affliction. But He was wounded because of our iniquities, and was made weak because of our sins. The opinion of human reckoning, then, is deceived, thinking that He grieves for this reason, because He suffers. For bearing our sins, that is, assuming the body of our sin, He Himself nevertheless does not sin. For He was sent in the likeness of sinful flesh; bearing indeed in the flesh sins, but ours. And He grieves for us, not that He grieves with the feeling of our grief: because, being found in habit as a man, having in Himself a body of pain, but not having the nature of grieving, since He has the habit of man, yet His origin is not of man, He being born from the conception of the Holy Spirit.

Hence therefore He was reckoned to be both in sorrows and in a plague and in affliction. For He took the form of a servant: and being born of a virgin as man, He brought upon us the opinion that the pain of suffering was natural to Him. But He Himself was wounded; yet because of our iniquities. For although He was wounded, yet it is not the wound of His own iniquity: and whatever He suffers, He does not suffer for Himself. For man is not born for himself, nor is he wicked of himself. The Apostle testifies to the reason of this dispensation, saying: Praying that through Christ we may be reconciled to God: Him who knew no sin He made to be sin for us. For sin in the flesh is condemned through sin, and though free of sin, He Himself was made sin, that is, condemning sin in the flesh through the flesh, ignorant indeed of flesh, but for us He was made flesh: and therefore He was wounded because of our iniquities.

The power of Christ shines forth in the passion. The passion of Christ a triumph.—But moreover the Apostle knows no trepidation of pain in Christ. For, about to speak of the dispensation of the passion, he proclaimed it in the mystery of divinity, saying: Forgiving you all sins, blotting out the handwriting that was against us in decrees, which was contrary to us, taking it out of the way, and fastening it to the cross, having spoiled himself of the flesh, he led away the principalities and powers with confidence, triumphing over them in himself. Does then this Power seem to you to have succumbed to the nail of the wound; and, terrified at the blow of the piercing thing, to have changed itself into a nature of grieving? And yet the Apostle, speaking with Christ speaking in him, and recalling the work of our salvation through the Lord, so signifies the death of Christ, that He spoils Himself of the flesh, and dishonors the powers with confidence, and triumphs over them in Himself.

If in His passion there is necessity, and it is not a gift of your salvation; if on the cross there is the pain of being pierced, and not the nailing of the decree which was written as death against you; if in death there is the force of death, and not, through the power of God, the stripping off of the garments of flesh; if, in short, death itself is anything other than the dishonoring of the powerful, than confidence, than triumph: then ascribe weakness, if there is necessity and nature there, if there is force there and diffidence and disgrace. But if, on the contrary, these things are proclaimed in the mystery of the passion; what madness is it, I ask, having repudiated the faith of apostolic doctrine, to change the sense of religion, and to drag all this to the reproach of a weak nature, which is both will and mystery, which is both power and confidence and triumph?

It is plainly a triumph, to be sought out unto the cross, and, offering Himself, not to be sustained by force; to stand at the sentence of death, but thence to sit down at the right hand of power; to be pierced with nails, but to pray for His persecutors; to drink vinegar, but to consummate the mystery; to be numbered among the wicked, but to grant paradise; to be lifted up on the wood, but the earth to tremble; to hang on the cross, but the sun and the day to flee; to go forth from the body, but to call back souls into bodies; to be buried dead, but to rise as God; according to man to suffer all weak things for us, but according to God to triumph in all these things.

They object that He was forsaken. How little this proves.—It remains for us still, as it seems to the heretics, a great and grave profession of confessed weakness, and one uttered especially by the very voice of the Lord, when He says: God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me? Which is understood to be the assertion of the greatest complaint, that He complains of being forsaken, given over to weakness? But this is a violent presumption of impious understanding, which fights against itself in every kind of the Lord's sayings: that He who hastens to death, who is to be honored through it, who after it is to sit at the right hand of power, should, amid so many causes for blessedness, have feared to die, and on that account should complain that He was deserted by His God in the necessity of dying, when in undergoing death He was to remain among those blessed ones!

Their various fabrications concerning the conjunction of the Word and the man.—Nay more, heretical minds strive toward this irreligion as toward a path prepared for them, in that they will either that God the Word entirely failed into the soul of the body, so that Jesus Christ the son of man was not the same as the Son of God; or that God the Word failed of himself, while he quickens the body by the office of a soul; or that Christ was not born a man at all, because in him the Word of God dwelt only after the manner of a prophetic spirit. But the error of this ridiculous perversity extends itself to a greater boldness of impiety, so that Jesus Christ was not Christ before he was born of Mary: as though he who was born were not the one who already was, but rather began then for the first time to be that which he was born.

Through this there is also added this defect of vice, that God the Word, as though some part of the powers of God extending itself by a certain continuous tract, dwelt in that man who began to exist from Mary, and equipped him with the powers of divine operation, while yet he lived by the motion and nature of his own soul.

Errors that follow from this.—By this subtle and pestilent teaching, therefore, they are led into vice, so that either God the Word existed as the soul of the body through a change of a nature weakening itself, and the Word ceased to be God; or again, that man was animated only by the external and bare nature of the soul's moving life alone, that man in whom the Word of God, that is, a certain as it were power of an extended utterance, dwelt—and thus in every way an entrance is opened to a most impious understanding, so that either God the Word failed into the soul, and God the Word did not remain, or Christ did not exist at all before Mary's childbirth; because Jesus Christ, a man common only in soul and body, has this as the beginning from which he began to be man, whom the power of an outwardly extended utterance strengthened unto the power of works—who now, deserted by a renewed withdrawal of the extension from the Word of God, cries out: God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

Or else, indeed, when he was changed into the soul of the body from the nature of the Word of God, having used the Father's help in all things, now bereft of it and given over to death, laments his solitude and accuses the one forsaking him: and in every way a destructive danger of deceived faith is prepared, whether one supposes that weakness of nature is signified in God the Word through the complaint, or that God the Word did not exist at all, since for Christ Jesus the birth from Mary is the only beginning.

The true faith opposed to the heretical.—But amid these impious and weak opinions, the faith of the Church, imbued with apostolic teachings, knows a nativity in Christ, but knows no beginning. It knows a dispensation, but knows no division. It does not allow Christ Jesus to be such that Jesus himself is not Christ; nor does it distinguish the Son of man from the Son of God, lest perhaps the Son of God be not understood also as the Son of man. It does not absorb the Son of God into the Son of man. Nor does it split Christ with a threefold faith, whose seamless woven tunic from above was not torn: so that it should divide Jesus Christ into Word and soul and body, nor again absorb God the Word into soul and body. To it, God the Word is whole; to it, the man Christ is whole; retaining in the sacrament of its confession this one thing—not believing Christ to be anything other than Jesus, nor proclaiming Jesus to be anything other than Christ.

The human mind fails in the things of God. It is blunted, wishing to see more than is granted.—I am not unaware, however, to what extent the magnificence of the heavenly mystery impedes the weakness of human understanding, so that we cannot easily either declare these things in words, or judge them by sense, or even grasp them in mind. The Apostle, knowing that this is arduous and most difficult for earthly nature—namely, that we should conceive the efficacy of divine matters by our own judgment, as though it were keener for understanding than God is for effecting—writes thus to that legitimate son of his according to the faith, one who had taken up the sacred letters from infancy: As I besought thee to remain at Ephesus, when I went into Macedonia, that thou shouldest charge some not to teach otherwise, nor to give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which furnish questions rather than the edification of God which is in faith.

He forbids that the discourses of genealogy be handled, and that the fables of endless questioning be touched. But he teaches that the edification of God is in faith: so that he may confine the measure of human modesty within the faithful reverence of God's omnipotence, and that our weakness not extend itself to perceiving those things which blunt the very nature of perceiving. For if, when men gaze upon the sun alone, the power of intense light stuns them, so that if ever the keen gaze of curious contemplation more diligently inquires into the cause of the radiant light, the nature of the eyes is recalled to a deadened sense of seeing, and it happens that by striving to see more, you see less—what then must we expect in the things of God and in the sun of righteousness alone? Will not foolishness press upon those who wish to be over-wise? Will not the very keen light of understanding be seized by the stupor of blunted folly?

For a lower nature will not understand the cause of a higher nature; nor does heavenly (that is, divine) reason lie subject to human conception. For whatever is subjected to a weak consciousness will be within the condition of weakness. Thus the power of God exceeds the human mind: to which, if weakness extends itself, it will be rendered the more weak, since it loses even what it does possess, the higher nature of heavenly things being stronger to blunt it; because that greater nature, in embracing it, undoes all the persistence of one pursuing it.

Just as, therefore, the sun must be looked at in such a way that it can be seen, and must be received with as much light as is admitted—lest, if we wish to expect more, we obtain even less than we are able—so also heavenly reason is to be understood only so far as it permits itself to be understood; it is to be expected only so far as it has given itself to be apprehended; lest, if we are not content with the moderation of its indulgence, we lose what has been granted. There is, then, in God that which can be perceived: there is, plainly, if only you wish what can be. For just as there is in the sun something you may see, if you wish to see what you can see, but you lose what you can see while you strive after what you cannot—so also in the things of God you have something you may understand, if you wish to understand what you can.

But if you hope beyond what you can, you will not be able even to keep what you had been able to.

In the very temporal birth of Christ man is blinded.—I shall not yet set in motion the mystery of that temporal nativity; that discussion belongs to its proper place. Meanwhile my concern is with the mystery of the assumed flesh, in words. I now consult those searchers of heavenly secrets, that they speak of the mystery of Christ born of a virgin according to their own nature. Whence will they say the conception was to the virgin? Whence the birth to the virgin? What will they argue to be the cause of these generative origins? And what came together within the recesses of the maternal womb? Whence the body? And whence the man? Now further, after these things, what is it for the Son of man to have descended from the heavens while remaining in the heavens? For it is not the same thing, according to bodily causes, to descend and to remain: of which the one is a transformation by departure, the other an unperturbed remaining.

The infant wails, yet he is in heaven; the boy grows, yet God abides in his fullness. Now indeed, when he ascends to where he was before, and he descends who remains, by what sense of human understanding will this be comprehended? For the Lord says: What if you shall see the Son of man ascending where he was before? The Son of man ascends where he was before; and what understanding will grasp this? The Son of man who is in the heavens descends from heaven; and what reason will account for this? The Word was made flesh; what words will speak this? The Word becomes flesh, that is, man-God: and he who is man is in the heavens, and he who is God is from the heavens. He ascends while descending; but he descends without descending. He is what he was, and what he is he was not. We run through causes, and we are failed by reason; we discern the reason, and we do not understand the causes.

But understanding Christ Jesus even thus, we shall know; and thinking ourselves to understand more, we shall not know.

The mystery of Christ's tears.—Now indeed how great is that mystery of the sayings and deeds—that Christ wept, and through anguish of soul let tears flow from his eyes! Whence come these afflictions of his soul, that the sorrow of sadness draws forth weeping from the body? And what bitterness of circumstance, and intolerance of grief, dissolves into tears the Son of man descending from the heavens? What then was it that he wept over within himself? Was it God the Word, or the soul of his body? For although the function of tears belongs to the body, yet the sorrow of the soul, in the ministry of the body, as it were sweats out something of grief. Then again, what cause did he have for weeping? Does he attend impious and parricidal Jerusalem, which was to suffer nothing worthy of the slaughter of such great prophets and apostles and of the death of her own Lord, with the due honor of tears?

And as the calamities of human deaths are wept over, so is the fall of this lost and desperate nation mourned? And what, I ask, is this sacrament of weeping? The soul that is sad weeps. But did this soul send the prophets? Did this soul so often wish to gather her chicks together and cover them with the shelter of wings? But sorrow does not befall God the Word, nor tears the Spirit. Nor does it fit the soul either, to have acted anything before the body existed. And yet it is not doubtful that Jesus Christ truly wept.

Over what he wept at Lazarus. Whether that weeping was of God, or of the soul, or of the body.—With like reality of tears Lazarus too was wept for. And I ask first, what is wept over in Lazarus? Certainly not death, which was not unto death, and was for the glory of God. For the Lord says: This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it. Death, then, which was the cause for glorifying God, brought no sorrow of weeping. But not even in this was there any necessity for weeping, that he had been absent while Lazarus was dying. For he himself says plainly: Lazarus is dead, and I am glad for your sakes, that you may believe, that I was not there. His absence therefore had no cause for tears, since it was profiting toward the faith of the Apostles, since, absent, the consciousness of divine knowledge had pronounced the death of the sick man.

No necessity for weeping remains, then; and yet he wept. And still I ask, to whom shall that weeping be attributed? To God, or to the soul, or to the body? But the body by itself alone does not have tears, which it pours forth for the grief of a mourning soul. But it is far less fitting that God should have wept, who is to be glorified in Lazarus. Nor is it fitting that the soul should call Lazarus from the tomb, and that at the command and power of a soul bound to a body, a soul already dissolved from it be called back into its dead body. Does he who is to be glorified grieve? Does he who is about to give life weep? It does not belong to one about to give life to weep, nor to one about to be glorified to grieve: and yet he who both wept and grieved gives life.

Who in Christ lays down and takes up his soul again. Is it the body, or the Word?—Not from necessity of poverty, nor from ignorance of what has been said, do we recall but a few things out of many; but that reason, not being tedious, may commend a complete exposition. The Lord both does and performs that which is not known by consciousness, which is neither ignored nor is it ignorable, since both truth is present in the facts, and mystery is present in the power, as we shall also plainly show from the things which he says: For this cause the Father loveth me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again: this commandment have I received of my Father. He lays down his own soul from himself: and I ask, who lays it down?

For we do not doubt that Christ is God the Word: nor again are we ignorant that the Son of Man consisted of soul and body, the Angel confirming this to Joseph: Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and go into the land of Israel; for they are dead which sought the young child's life. Whose then, I ask, is this soul—the body's, or God's? If the body's; what power does the body have, which is animated into life through the motion of the soul? Then again, has the body received any commandment, seeing that without the soul it is dull and dead? But if anyone shall think that his soul, God the Word, lays itself down, so as to take it up again, let him show that God the Word died, that is, that without sense and life, in the manner of a dead body, he remained, so that he again assumed his soul for living, whereby he might once more be quickened.

The soul is not God's.—But no one who has any share of reason will attribute a soul to God: although it is frequently written that the soul of God hates the sabbaths and the new moons, and also that it is pleased in certain things. But this is customarily mentioned from that signification whereby hands and eyes and fingers and arm and heart are also reckoned in a corporeal God. For since the spirit, according to the Lord's saying, has not flesh and bones; to him who is and is not changed, no members of bodily parts pertain to the solidity of his being; but the simple and blessed nature remains one whole, which is all things. Therefore God is not, in bodily fashion, animated into life by the office of an inward soul, but he himself lives to himself by life.

Neither does God lay down his soul, nor does the body take itself up again.—And how does he lay down his soul, or take up again what was laid down? Or what is the reason of this commandment? God therefore neither lays it down unto death, nor takes it up unto life. But neither has the body a commandment for taking itself up again: for it does not take itself up by its own power. For it was said of the temple of his body: Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. God therefore raises up the temple of his body. And who lays down the soul, that he may take it up again? For the body does not take itself up by its own power, but is raised up by God. Now that which is dead is raised up, and that which lives does not lay down its soul.

And so God is neither dead, nor buried: and yet it was said by him: For she, in pouring this ointment on my body, did it for my burial. That which was poured on his body was done for his burial, and it is not the same thing for him to be himself, and to be his own; nor is it one and the same, that he be made ready for burial, and that his body be anointed; nor does it fit that he be his own body, and that he himself be buried.

Whence the solution of the question proposed depends.—But this is the understanding of the divine mystery, not to be ignorant of God, whom you know not to be unaware of as man; not to be ignorant of man, whom you should not fail to know as God; not to divide Jesus Christ, because the Word was made flesh; not to think him buried, whom you understand to have raised himself again; not to doubt that he raised himself, whom you dare not deny to have been buried. For Jesus Christ was buried, because he also died. But he died, who while about to die spoke: God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? But he who spoke these things is he who also said: Amen I say to thee, today thou shalt be with me in paradise; and, also promising paradise, he cried out with a loud voice: Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit. And having said this, he gave up the ghost…contract.

Various questions concerning the death of Christ.—You now, whether by dividing Christ threefold into Word and soul and body, or by contracting the whole Christ, God the Word, into merely a man of common kind, reveal to us this great mystery of piety, which was manifested in the flesh: whose spirit did Christ deliver up, and who commended his spirit into the hands of the Father, and who was in paradise on that same day, and who complained that he was forsaken by God? For the complaint of one forsaken in dying is the mark of weakness; but the promise of paradise is the kingdom of the living God. The commendation of the spirit is the confidence of one commending; the delivering up of the spirit is the departure of one dying. I ask therefore, who dies? Surely he who delivers up the spirit. Then who delivers up the spirit? Surely he who commended his spirit to the Father.

And if the same one who commended is the same one who, delivering up the spirit, died: I ask whether the body commends the soul, or God the soul of the body? For it is not doubtful that the spirit is frequently signified as the soul: and this indeed from the very fact that Jesus, about to die, delivered up his spirit. If then anyone should think that the soul is commended by the body—living, as it departs from dissolution; eternal, as from corruption; abiding, as unto resurrection—and it is not doubted that the same one who commended his spirit to the Father is he who was on that same day in paradise with the thief: I ask whether, having been received into the tomb, he remained in paradise; or rather, whether, remaining in paradise, he complained of being forsaken by God.

The solution.—For the Lord Jesus Christ is one and the same, the Word made flesh, signifying himself through all these things: who, while he signifies himself forsaken unto death, is man; yet while he is man, in paradise God reigns; and reigning further in paradise, the Son of God commends his spirit to the Father; but the spirit commended to the Father, the Son of man delivers up unto death. What contumely do we now inflict upon the mystery? You have him, in complaining that he is left unto death, saying so because he is man: you have him, who dies, professing that he reigns in paradise, because he is God. Why do we retain, only unto impiety, what he spoke to us for the understanding of his death; and pass over in silence what the same one professed for the demonstration of his immortality?

If this voice and speech are of the same one, complaining that he is forsaken, and professing that he reigns: by what reasoning of unbelief do we divide our faith, so that the same one who reigns is not he who died at the same time; since he himself has testified both things of himself, both commending his spirit, and giving up the ghost? But if the same one commending and delivering up his spirit both dies while reigning and reigns while dead; then we have, in the mystery of the Son of man and the Son of God, one who dies while reigning, and reigns while dying.

Epilogue.—Let therefore all irreligious unbelief, incapable of the divine mystery, stand aside: which does not know that Christ weeps not for himself, but for us, that, having assumed the truth of manhood, he himself also, taking on the affections of human custom, might attest it: which is ignorant that Christ dies not for himself, but for our life, that through the death of the immortal God, the life of mortals might be renewed: which does not understand the complaint of the forsaken one, and the confidence of the one reigning; so that, in our understanding, the fact that God reigns, and the fact that he complains that he is dying, may both be true—both man dead, and God reigning. For he who dies and he who reigns are not different; nor is he who commends his spirit different from him who gives up the ghost; nor is he who is buried different from him who rises again; nor is he who descends other than he who ascends.

Christ undivided. This escapes the prudent of the age.—Hear on this matter that faith of apostolic teaching, instructed not by the sense of the flesh, but by the gift of the Spirit, when he speaks to the Greeks seeking wisdom and to the Jews seeking signs: But we preach Christ Jesus crucified, unto the Jews indeed a stumblingblock, and unto the Gentiles foolishness; but unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ Jesus the power of God, and the wisdom of God. Is Christ then divided, so that Jesus crucified is one, and Christ the power and wisdom of God another? But this is both a stumblingblock to the Jews, and foolishness to the Gentiles; but to us, Christ Jesus is the power of God, and the wisdom of God; but a wisdom not known to the world, nor understood by the prudent of the age.

And learn how little it was understood, from the same blessed Apostle saying: But we speak the wisdom of God, which is hidden in a mystery, which God ordained before the world unto our glory, which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory.

Is the Apostle then ignorant, that this wisdom of God is hidden in a mystery, and unknowable to the princes of the world? Does he divide Christ, so that the Lord of glory is one, and Jesus crucified another? But he contradicts this most foolish and most impious opinion, saying: For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.

Against the dividers of Christ; the seeming oppositions in him are reconciled.—The Apostle knows nothing else, nor does he judge himself to know anything else: but we, of weaker understanding and weaker faith, cut Christ Jesus asunder, divide him, double him, becoming arbiters of mysteries and slanderers of a hidden sacrament. For to us there is one Christ crucified, another the wisdom of God; one buried, another descending; and one the Son of man, another the Son of God. Not understanding, we teach; and not knowing, we find fault; and we correct the sayings of God as if we were men correcting men: Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth: who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. Is it another who intercedes for us, than he who is at the right hand of God?

Or is he who is at the right hand of God not the same one who rose again? Or is he who rose again not the same one who died? Or is he who died not the same one who condemns? Or is he who condemns not the same God who justifies? Let us therefore separate, if it be permitted, from God who justifies, the Christ who condemns; from Christ who condemns, the Christ who died; from the Christ who died, the Christ sitting at the right hand, and praying for us. If then all these things are one Christ; neither is the Christ who died another, and the Christ who was buried another; nor is he who descends to the lower parts another, and he who ascends into the heavens another, according to that saying of the Apostle: Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth?

He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things: to what point do we extend the foolish-speaking ignorance of our impiety, that we profess to be able to explain by ourselves that which is hidden in the mystery of God? He that descended is the same also that ascended. Is it doubted that Jesus Christ, man, rising from the dead, ascending above all the heavens, is at the right hand of God? Will it be said that the body which lay in the tomb descended to the lower regions?

If then he who descended is the same also who ascended, and it is not believed that the body descended to the lower regions, and it is not doubted that the body, rising from the dead, ascended into the heavens: what faith, other than that of a hidden mystery, unknown to the world and to the princes of the age, is left here, so that, since he who descends and he who ascends is one and the same, our Jesus Christ also is one—both Son of God, and Son of man, both God the Word, and man of flesh, both suffering, and dying, and buried, and rising again, and received into the heavens, and sitting at the right hand of God: having in himself, one and the same, through dispensation and nature, in the form of God and in the form of a servant, without any division of himself in that which he is man, and without division in that which he is God?

In the one Christ, weakness as man, power as God.—Not incautiously, then, nor forming the faith of our understanding by ignorant opinion, the Apostle has thus spoken the mystery of this confession: For though he was crucified out of weakness, yet he lives out of the power of God. For proclaiming the Son of Man to be the Son of God, who, though by the dispensation he was man, yet remained by nature God, he says that the same one was crucified out of weakness who lived out of the power of God: so that, while the weakness was from the form of a servant, and the nature remained from the form of God, and he who was in the form of God had assumed the form of a servant, there should be no ambiguity as to in what mystery he both suffered and lived: so that, since in the same one there was both weakness unto suffering and, unto life, the power of God, he who suffered and lived was not another and divided from himself.

The rule for grasping the mysteries of Christ.—The Only-begotten God indeed suffered what men can suffer: but let us make use of the Apostle’s faith and word: For I delivered to you first of all, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures. He did not use bare statements as an occasion for error, but admonished us to confess the manner of death and resurrection, not so much by the names of the things as by the force of the Scriptures: so that our understanding of his death might be the same as that signified by the Scriptures.

For, not leaving room for weak thoughts and scrupulous calumnies of faith, he added this end alone—that death and resurrection be proclaimed according to the Scriptures—lest, driven about by the wind of empty disputations, or hindered by the foolish subtleties of deceitful questions, we should be weakened; but that our unharmed faith might always call itself back to this harbor of its religion, so that it might believe and confess the death and resurrection of the Son of Man and Son of God, Jesus Christ, according to the Scriptures; with pious security set forth against the calumny of resistance, since Christ Jesus must be understood to have died and risen just as it is written. For faith has no danger, and every pious profession is safe within the hidden mystery of God. Christ was born of a Virgin: but according to the Scriptures he was conceived of the Holy Spirit. Christ wept: but according to the Scriptures; so that in what he wept, he rejoiced.

And Christ hungered: but according to the Scriptures God worked without food upon a tree having no fruit. Christ suffered: but according to the Scriptures he was then to sit at the right hand of Power. He complained of being forsaken unto death: but according to the Scriptures he then received his confessor with himself into the kingdom of paradise. He died: but according to the Scriptures, rising, the Lord sat down at the right hand of the Lord. In the faith of this mystery, therefore, is life: this confession admits no calumny.

The commendation of faith.—Certainly the Apostle does not leave it permissible to doubt and to ask: Christ born, having suffered, having died, rising—in what manner, by what power, by what division, by what parts? Who weeps, who rejoices, who complains, who descends, who ascends? But, showing the merit of faith in this matter through the confession of unhesitating religion alone, he says, But the righteousness which is of faith speaks thus: Say not in your heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? That is, to bring Christ down. Or who shall descend into the abyss? That is, to bring Christ up again from the dead. But what does the Scripture say? The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that is, the word of faith which we preach: that if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you shall be saved.

Faith perfects the just man, according to what is said: Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him for righteousness. Did Abraham quarrel with God, when he promised him the inheritance of the nations, and, according to the multitude of the stars and of the sand, the numerousness of offspring that would remain from him? For religious Faith, not doubting concerning the omnipotence of God, was not held back by the conditions of human weakness; but, despising what in itself was frail and earthly, embraced the faith of the divine promise beyond the measure of bodily constitution: because human law can in no way regulate the powers of God, God showing forth in effecting liberality as much as he showed in promising of his will. Nothing, therefore, is more just than faith: because, although fairness and moderation in earthly deeds are commendable, yet nothing is more just for man than to have believed, with the understanding of unbounded power, in the omnipotence of God.

Faith is demanded concerning the descent and ascent of Christ.—Awaiting, therefore, in us this righteousness which is of faith, the Apostle removed the irreligion of uncertain and faithless ambiguity, forbidding the admission into the heart of anxious thought, showing also the authority of the prophetic word. For he says: Say not in your heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? These words, spoken thus by the Prophet, he follows with the resolution of the appended sentence, saying: That is, to bring Christ down. For the sense of the human mind does not extend itself to heavenly (divine) knowledge; but neither does religious faith doubt concerning divine works. Christ had no need of the aid of human power, that he should be brought down into the body from that seat of his blessedness by the assistance of someone ascending into heaven; no external power drove him to the earth. He must be believed to have come just as he came; and it is true piety to confess Christ not as brought down, but as descending.

His mystery is his own, both in time and in work. Neither, because he has now come, must he be believed to have been brought down by another; nor is his temporal advent to be understood as subject to the power of one bringing him down. But not even the faithlessness of another ambiguity is permitted. For immediately from the prophetic word it is added, Or who shall descend into the abyss? And presently the same explanation is subjoined, that is, to bring Christ back again from the dead. The freedom of returning into heaven arises from the freedom of descending into the earth. And the hesitation of doubting is removed: knowledge is in faith, reason is in power, effect is in the facts, cause is in the power.

Faith ought to be of the heart together with the mouth. A brief and easy way to salvation is faith.—But for this a wavering conscience will not do. For the Apostle, pursuing the whole mystery of the Scripture, says: The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart. There is no need of a slow and far-fetched word of confession, nor is any interval to be left between heart and mouth, so that what must be spoken for the profession of religion might be thought over through faithless ambiguity. But it must be both near us and within us: lest by some delay between the region of the heart and of the mouth our faith should perhaps not be as much in the sense as in the words; but, joined to mouth and heart, it should have an unhesitating religion both of feeling and of speaking.

And of this prophetic saying too, as in the rest, the Apostle has appended the reason: This is the word of faith which we preach: that if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you shall be saved. It is piety not to doubt, and it is righteousness to believe, and it is salvation to confess. Not to flow off into uncertainties, nor to boil over into foolish talk, nor to weigh the powers of God by any reasoning, nor to circumscribe his power by any measure, nor to revisit the causes of unsearchable mysteries—to confess the Lord Jesus, and to believe that he was raised from the dead by God, is salvation. But what madness it is to slander what and of what sort Jesus is, when salvation consists solely in this one thing, to know that he is Lord!

How great, further, is the error of human vanity, to stir up disputes about his resurrection, when it suffices for life to have believed that he was raised by God! In simplicity, then, is faith; in faith is righteousness; in confession is piety. God does not call us to the blessed life through difficult questions, nor solicit us with the manifold kind of eloquent speech. Eternity is available to us in an absolute and easy way: to believe that Jesus was raised from the dead by God, and to confess that he himself is Lord. Let no one, then, seize upon what has been said on account of our ignorance as an occasion for irreligion. For Jesus Christ had to be known as having died, that we might live in him.

What appears to be the weakness of Christ is the instruction of our faith.—If then, for the understanding of his death, he says: God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And, Father, into your hands I commend my spirit: did he, taking thought for our confession, rather confess himself to be weak than leave us free of doubt? For, about to raise Lazarus, he prays to the Father: did he need prayer, saying: Father, I give thanks to you that you have heard me: and I knew that you always hear me, but because of the crowd I said it, that they may believe that you sent me? He prayed, then, for us, lest the Son be unknown: and although the word of entreaty availed him nothing, yet he spoke for the profit of our faith. He was not, then, wanting in help; but we are wanting in instruction. He also prays to be glorified, and presently the voice of God the Father glorifying him is heard from heaven.

But at the wonder of the voice heard, he says: This voice came not for my sake, but for yours. For us the Father is asked, for us the Father speaks; let it all be for the effect of our confession. And since the answer of glorification was not granted to a petition for glory, but to the ignorance of the hearers, how shall the complaint of the passion, in the very height of the exultation of suffering, not be understood as granted for the instruction of our confession? Christ prays for his persecutors, because they know not what they do. Christ from the cross promises paradise, because God reigns. Christ on the cross rejoices at having accomplished all things with the draught of vinegar, because, about to die, he had fulfilled the prophecy. He was born for us, he suffered for us, he died for us, he rose for us.

And since this alone is our property unto salvation, that we confess him as the Son of God risen from the dead, why, I ask, should we perish in this irreligion, that, when Christ, remaining within the confidence of his own divinity, showed himself, through the meaning of assumed manhood, to die with the assurance of one dying, this most of all should serve to deny him as God—that he professed himself to us, the Son of God, both to be the Son of Man and to have died?

words, which apply to Christ after the glory of the resurrection. For what he then says: I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God—he will show that this was said of that nature by which he has brothers; just as of that nature in which they are participants with him, the Prophet said: God, your God, has anointed you above your fellows. Next he explains the words of the Apostle, from which they think they can prove that Christ, as a servant, must be subjected to the Father, and that he will yield up the power of his kingdom, and will suffer the abolition of his nature: whereas in the Apostle "the end" signifies perfection and an unchangeable state, not abolition; nor does the handing over of the kingdom take away from the Son the power of reigning any more than the Father is deprived of the property of those things which he handed over to the Son; and finally the subjection is that of the dispensation, not of servitude.

Then he explains the manner and causes of that subjection, and declares that it profits neither God, to whom nothing is lacking, nothing added, nor the only-begotten Son, who is equally unchangeable, but us alone. It should not be passed over in silence that Jerome, being asked by the priest Amandus what that saying in Paul meant to him—For he must reign, until he puts all his enemies—wrote back in Epistle: I am amazed that you wished to ask this of me, when the holy Hilary, Bishop of Poitiers, has filled out the eleventh book against the Arians with this very question and its solution.

As there is one Lord, so there is one faith of the one God. The Father and the Son are one God.—The Apostle, treating in many ways the whole and complete sacrament of the evangelical faith, spoke also these things, among other precepts of divine knowledge, to the Ephesians: As also you are called in one hope of your calling. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, and through all and in all of us. For he did not abandon us to ambiguous and errant pursuits of indefinite doctrine, nor permit human minds to wander in uncertain opinions, but by fixing set and opposing barriers he enclosed the freedom of understanding and will: so that he did not allow us to think save only that which had been proclaimed by him, since by the fixed constitution of an unchangeable faith it was not permitted to believe now one thing, now another.

Therefore, in proclaiming to us one Lord, he mentions one faith; then, in mentioning one faith of the one Lord, he also shows one baptism: so that, since the one Lord has one faith, through this one faith in the one Lord there should also be one baptism. And because the whole sacrament, both of baptism and of faith, is in the one Lord and likewise in the one God, he concluded the consummation of our hope with the profession of the one God: so that the one baptism and the one faith, as they belong to the one Lord, so too belong to the one God.

For each is one, not by union, but by property: since it is proper to each that he is one, whether it be proper to the Father to be what a father is, or to the Son to be what a son is; and that which each is, in his own property, "one," is a sacrament of unity for both: because the one Lord Christ cannot take away from God the Father that he is Lord, and the one God the Father is not understood to deny to the one Lord Christ that he is God: since if, by virtue of the fact that God is one, it does not seem proper to Christ also to be God, then it must be understood that, by virtue of the fact that Christ is the one Lord, it is not owed to God also that he should be Lord; if that which is "one" is not a signification of the sacrament, but an exception of union.

Therefore, of the one Lord, as of the one God the Father, there is both one baptism and one faith.

There is not one faith among those who disagree about Christ.—But the faith is no longer one, if it does not retain, in the profession of conscience, one Lord and one God the Father. But how does a faith which is not one confess one Lord and one God the Father? Now, in so great a diversity of proclamations, it will no longer be one, if one man believes that the Lord Jesus Christ, when the nail pierced his palms, groaned with the pain of our weakness, and, being in need of the power of his own nature and might, feared with the terror of his imminent death: if he will also deny that which is principal, that he was born, and will proclaim rather that he was created: if he will say "God" more than he will understand it; since it is a matter of religious devotion to call beings gods, but to understand "God" is a matter of the consciousness of divine nature.

Now therefore the Lord Christ is no longer one, if to one he does not grieve, as God, while to another he fears as weak; if to one he is God by nature, to another by mere name; and to one he is Son by generation, to another by mere appellation. And for this reason God the Father is not one in faith either, if to some he is believed to be Father by power, to others by generation, since God is the Father of all. Who, moreover, will doubt that whatever is outside the one faith is outside the faith? Since in the one faith both the one Lord Christ and the one God the Father exist. But the one Lord Christ is one Son not in name, but in faith, but only if he is God, if he is unchangeable, if he has never at any time lacked either to be God or to be Son. Whoever, therefore, shall proclaim Christ otherwise than he is, that is, as neither Son nor God, will proclaim another Christ.

But neither is there one faith in the one baptism: because, according to apostolic doctrine, the faith of that one baptism is one, of which the one Lord and Son of God is Christ, and is God. 3. Christ can no longer be denied: why. He must be proclaimed such as he is believed by faith.—For Christ can no longer be denied to be Christ, nor can he be made unknown to the world. The scrolls of prophecy attest him, the daily-progressing fullness of the ages testifies to him, the tombs of the Apostles and Martyrs speak of him through the workings of miracles, the power of his name proves him, unclean spirits confess him, the bellowings of punished demons resound with him. But in all these things it is the disposition of his own power that is at work.

As for the rest, he must be proclaimed by our faith to be such as he is; so that, not by name but by confession, in the one faith of the one baptism, he may be one Lord for us: because according to the one Lord Christ, there is one God the Father.

The Arians proclaim another Christ, as they proclaim another Father. They cunningly exalt the Father, in order to cast down the Son.—But now these new proclaimers of Christ, by denying all the things that are Christ's, proclaim another Lord Christ just as they proclaim another God the Father: since the one has not begotten but created, and the other was not born but created; and for this reason Christ is God outside the truth, since it is not his by nativity to be God; and God the Father is outside the confession of faith, since it is not his by generation to be Father.

They praise, indeed, deservedly and as is fitting, God the Father—namely as being of an inaccessible, inconceivable, inviolable, ineffable, infinite, provident, powerful, benign nature, moving and traversing all things, remaining within and without, and perceiving all things in all: but when they add, to the superabundance of this praise, "alone good," "alone powerful," "alone immortal," who does not understand that this religious display of praise tends toward this end—that the Lord Jesus Christ, remaining outside this blessedness which is rendered as an honor to God alone by way of exclusive exception, should himself be both mortal and weak and evil, while in these attributes the Father alone exists? And for this reason a natural nativity from God the Father is denied to him, lest through generation that blessedness which is natural to God the Father should remain in him also; since nativity depends on the power of that nature which begot.

5. To the Son, as image, belong all things that belong to the Father.—Untaught either by apostolic or evangelical proclamations, they exalt the magnificence of God the Father, for the sake of usurping their own impious profession, not by the faith of religion but by the artifice of impiety: so that, while expounding all things about his nature to be incomparable, they affirm, by an exception of comparison, the only-begotten God to be of a degenerate and weak nature: God (I say, understand it thus), the living image of the living God, and the most complete form of the blessed nature, and the only-begotten nativity of the unbegotten substance: which, unless it has the perfect glory of the paternal blessedness, and reflects the absolute form of the whole nature, is not in the truth of an image. But if the only-begotten God of the unbegotten God is his image, then the truth of a perfect and absolute nature is in him, by which it is effected that he is the image of the truth.

The Father is powerful: but if the Son is weak, he is no longer the image of the powerful one. The Father is good: but if the Son exists in a divinity of a different kind, an evil nature does not render the image of the good. The Father is incorporeal: if the Son, as regards the Spirit, is circumscribed by a body, then the form of the incorporeal is not corporeal. The Father is ineffable: if speech comprehends the Son, then an ineffable nature that is speakable is outside the image. The Father is the true God: if the Son exists in a falsity of God, then he who is false is no longer the image of the true. The Apostle does not proclaim him to be the image of God in part, nor the form of God by a portion: but he says that he is the image of the invisible God and the form of God.

The divine nature in the Son of God cannot be more expressly proclaimed by the Apostle than by this—that, as regards that which is invisible in God, Christ is the invisible image of the invisible God: for surely he who was in a visible substance would not reflect the image of an invisible nature.

They seize upon what belongs to the man, to the injury of the Word. The objections thus far have been dissolved by the distinction of the twofold nature.—But as we have taught in the previous books, they seize upon the dispensation of the assumed body for the contumely of the divinity, and they snatch causes of impiety from the sacrament of our salvation. If they were faithful to the apostolic faith, they would understand that he who was in the form of God had assumed the form of a servant; nor would they employ the form of a servant to the dishonor of the form of God, since the form of God contained in itself the fullness of God: and they would treat, with a devout reasoning, the things belonging to the ages and the mystery, so that the divinity should not receive contumely, nor the dispensation give rise to error.

But since, as I judge, all things have already been most thoroughly demonstrated by us, and the power of the divine nature has been shown even under the nativity of the assumed body, no place for doubt remains, but that the only-begotten God and man performed all things by the powers of God, and accomplished all things in the powers of God with the full reality of man: having in himself both the nature of the powerful God in his deeds, since he was born of God; and the completeness of a perfect man, since his birth was of the Virgin: and subsisting with the reality of a body in the nature of God, and remaining with the nature of God in the reality of a body.

What remains; and whence it must be dissolved.—Although, therefore, the whole discourse of our reply has descended even to the very glory of death itself, and each proposition of their impious profession has been contradicted from the evangelical and apostolic teachings: nevertheless, since even after the glory of the resurrection the impious have dared to presume certain things, in order to demonstrate a degenerate nature's weakness, these very points must now be answered. And thus, as has been observed by us in the other cases, the reasoning of these very sayings must be drawn from these very sayings themselves: so that the truth may be found there where it is denied. For the things that were divinely spoken simply and for the instruction of faith must necessarily have been spoken in such a way that, for the purpose for which they were spoken, they are not to be confirmed by examples of foreign and extrinsic sayings.

They wish him to be weak, to whom God and Father are the same as to us, to whom he is subject.—For among their other impieties, the heretics are accustomed to use also this saying of the Lord: I ascend to my Father and to your Father, and to my God and to your God: so that, by the fact that his Father is their Father, and his God is their God, he might not be in the nature of God; while he thereby professes that God the Father is the same to the rest as he is to himself, the privilege ceasing which belongs to the communion of both nature and nativity, by which he was both born as God and is Son. Let them also hold to that saying of the Apostle: But when he shall have said, all things are subjected, it is manifest that he is excepted who subjected all things to him.

But when all things shall be subjected to him, then he himself also shall be subject to him who subjected all things to him, that God may be all in all: so that, because that subjection will be reckoned a testimony of a weak nature, he who is not in the power of the paternal nature is he whom natural weakness has subjected to the power of a mightier nature. Let them take up this as though it were the most fortified and impregnable defense of all their impiety, for the abolishing of the truth of the nativity: that because through subjection he is not God, and because through a God and Father common to himself and to us he is in the communion of a creature, he himself also is, from God, creation rather than generation; since creation subsists from nothing, but generation has a natural author of its nativity.

The mystery of our salvation is a sacrament of piety, not an offense to divinity.—Every calumny indeed is dishonest, because falsehood contradicts truth, since now with unbridled shamelessness it does so: yet sometimes it puts forward some veil of ambiguous excuse, so that what is impudent in feeling may appear modest in its defense. But now, in these things which have been impiously presumed for the weakening of the divinity of our Lord, all room for modesty or false excuse has been shut out: since, when the very indulgence of ignorance ceases, only the will of an irreligious understanding is exposed. For, to defer for a little the demonstration of that gospel saying itself: was this not a well-known preaching of the Apostle, who says: And indeed, by the confession of all, great is the mystery of piety, which was manifested in the flesh, was justified in the spirit, was seen by angels, was preached to the nations, was believed in this world, was taken up in glory?

Is there anyone still of such dull understanding as to think the dispensation of the flesh assumed by the Lord to be anything other than a sacrament of piety? And in the first place, whoever is outside this confession is outside the faith of God. For the Apostle does not doubt that this must be confessed by all, that the mystery of our salvation is not an insult to divinity, but a sacrament of great piety: and a sacrament no longer hidden in mystery, but manifested in the flesh; nor still weak through the nature of the flesh, but justified in the spirit: so that through the justification of the spirit the weakness of the flesh might be absent from our faith, and through the manifestation of the flesh the mystery might not be hidden, and through the unknowable cause of the mystery, only confession of great piety might remain in the sacrament.

And thus the Apostle kept the whole order of the faith, so that while it is piety, it is a sacrament; while it is a sacrament, there is knowledge in the flesh; while there is knowledge in the flesh, there is justification in the spirit; because the sacrament of piety, which is manifested in the flesh, in order that it be truly a sacrament, is manifested in the flesh through the justification of the spirit.

And lest that manifestation in the flesh, of what sort it was, should be unknown as a justification in the spirit; the sacrament, which was manifested in the flesh, and justified in the spirit, and seen by angels, and preached to the nations, and believed in this world, this same thing was taken up in glory: so that in all things it might be the sacrament of great piety, while it is manifested in the flesh, while it is justified in the spirit, while it is seen by angels, while it is preached to the nations, while it is believed in this world, while it is taken up in glory. For the sight is followed by preaching, and preaching by faith, and the assumption of glory completes all things: because the assumption of glory is itself also the sacrament of great piety; and through this dispensation of faith, we are prepared to be made conformable, to be taken up into the glory of the Lord.

Therefore the assumption of flesh is the sacrament of great piety: because through the assumption of flesh, there is the manifestation of the sacrament in the flesh. But yet the manifestation in the flesh must be confessed to be nothing other than the sacrament of great piety: because its manifestation in the flesh is both the justification of the spirit and the assumption of glory. And by what hope, then, is in our faith the weakness of divinity considered a mystery of pious dispensation; when through the assumption of glory, the sacrament of great piety must be confessed? And since it is now no longer weakness, but a sacrament; not necessity, but piety: the reasoning of the gospel saying must now be sought, lest what is the mystery of our salvation and glory be left as an occasion for impious preaching.

They wish Christ to be created and a servant, because to us God is a common Father.—Grave to you, heretic, is the authority and indissoluble profession of the Lord concerning himself, in which he says: I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God; so that, through the fact that the same Father is Father both to us and to him, and the same God is God, he might be in that same weakness in which we are; while both through the same Father we are made equal as sons, and through the same God we are compared as servants: and since we are both creation by origin, and servants by nature, yet since he shares with us a common Father and a common God, so also there should be, along with creation according to nature, servitude common to him and us.

And here the fury of impious preaching also uses this prophetic saying: God, thy God, hath anointed thee: so that he is not in that power of nature by which he is God, since God anointing him is set before him as his God.

God is to him also Father, because he was born; and because he was born, therefore he is God.—He who does not know God as born, does not know Christ as God. But for God to be born is nothing other than to be in that nature in which he is God: because being born, while it shows the cause of the birth, does not thereby fail to exist in the kind of the author. But what does not fail in kind, does indeed owe to its author the cause of its birth, yet has not lost from itself the nature of the author; because the birth of God is neither from elsewhere, nor is it something else. For if it is from elsewhere, it is not a birth; but if it is something else, it is not God. But since God is from God, God is thereby also Father to God the Son and to the glory of his birth, all intermediate steps being omitted.

He is God and Father of the same nature: because the birth of God is both from God, and in it there is the nature of the kind by which he is God.

Christ so tempered his words, that he might disclose himself both as born and as God.—The Lord, therefore, so tempered the measure of this pious and due profession in all that he spoke, lest the confession of his birth should bring insult to his divinity, lest the religious observance of obedience should offend the nature of his majesty: but so that his birth might profess the due honor, which ought to subsist as owed to its author; and the assurance of nature might show the consciousness of nature, which subsisted in being born as God. Hence comes that saying, He who has seen me has seen the Father also: but also this, The words which I speak, I do not speak of myself. For while he does not speak of himself, it is necessary that he owe to his author what he speaks: but when the Father is seen in him being seen, it is the consciousness of nature, which, in order to demonstrate God in himself, subsisted, being born into God, not alien from God.

Or that saying, What the Father has given me is greater than all; and again, I and the Father are one. For the paternal giving is a profession of the birth assumed: and that they are one is a property arising from the nativity of nature. Or that saying, But all judgment he has given to the Son, that all may honor the Son, as they honor the Father. For while judgment is given, the birth is not passed over in silence: but while honor is made equal, nature is retained. Or that saying, I am in the Father, and the Father in me; and again, The Father is greater than I. For in that they are in one another, recognize the divinity of God from God: but in that the Father is greater, understand the confession of paternal authority. As also is this, The Son cannot do anything of himself, unless he sees the Father doing it: for whatever things he does, these the Son also does likewise.

While he does not do it of himself, the Father is to him, according to the birth, the author of what he does: and yet, since whatever the Father does, the Son also does likewise, he subsists in nothing other than God, with the nature of paternal omnipotence subsisting in himself for doing all things which God the Father does. These things, therefore, according to the unity of the spirit, and the property of nature which is according to the nativity, have been so demonstrated, that both the nativity might confess the God of its own subsistence, and the subsistence might not pass over the consciousness of nature in silence: God the Son professing to himself God as Father while he is born of him; but as to that which he was born, having wholly by nature that which God is.

He whom he had as Father because born, began to have as Lord when he was made a servant.—The dispensation, therefore, of this great and pious sacrament made the Father of the divine birth also the Lord of the assumed condition: while he who was in the form of God was found in the form of a servant. For he was not a servant, since according to the spirit he was God, the Son of God. And according to common judgment, where there is no servant, there is no lord either.

God indeed is both Father of the birth of the only-begotten God: but as to that in which he is a servant, we cannot reckon a lord for him except then, when he is a servant: because if, whereas before by nature he was not a servant, and afterward according to nature he began to be what he was not; no other cause of lordship is to be understood than that which arose from servitude; he then having, from the dispensation of nature, a Lord, when by the assumption of manhood he offered himself as a servant.

In the form of a servant he said, I ascend—Remaining, therefore, in the form of a servant, he who before remained in the form of God, Christ Jesus the man, spoke: I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God. If, then, a servant said these things, and spoke to servants; how would this profession not be that of a servant, and be transferred rather to that nature which is not in the nature of a servant; since for him who, remaining in the form of God, assumed the form of a servant, communion with servants can only be, as a servant, on the ground that he is a servant? The Father, therefore, is to him as he is to men; and God is to him as he is to servants.

And since these things are spoken by the man Jesus Christ in the form of a servant to men who are servants, it is not doubted that the Father is to him, as to the rest, on the part by which he is man, and that God is to him, as to all, from that nature by which he is a servant.

He spoke in that form in which he calls us brothers. Why Christ is a worm.—Finally, he began this same discourse of such a profession with this beginning, saying thus: But go to my brothers, and say to them, I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God. And I ask now, are they to be understood as brothers to him according to the form of God, or according to the form of a servant: and does our embodiment have any fellowship with him, according to the fullness of the divinity dwelling in him, such that we are reckoned as brothers to him with respect to that which he is God? But the prophetic spirit also does not fail to know in what respect the only-begotten God has brothers: for this was spoken not so much by a man as by a worm, I will declare thy name to my brethren.

And this worm—whether not living from the conception of common origins, or emerging alive from the depths of the earth—spoke to signify the flesh assumed and made alive of itself even out of the underworld; and throughout the whole psalm, having spoken beforehand in prophetic spirit the mysteries of his passion, he necessarily has brothers by that dispensation in which he suffered. The Apostle also knows the mystery of brothers in him, proclaiming him firstborn from the dead, so too firstborn among many brethren. Therefore, in this respect he is firstborn among many brethren, according to which he is firstborn from the dead; and since the mystery of death is in the body, the mystery of brotherhood also is in the flesh. Thus they are brothers to God from the flesh; because the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us: but the only-begotten God, in the exception of the only-begotten, is without brothers.

God is the father of Christ both by his own reason and by a common reason.—But he himself, containing in himself the nature of our universality through the assumption of flesh, was what we are, nor had he lost the being what he remained; having from his birth then, and from his constitution now, God as his father. According to his constitution now, because all things are from God the Father. For God is father to all, since all things are from him and in him. But to the only-begotten God, because the Word was made flesh, he is not father only from this: for he is father with respect to that which in the beginning was with God, God the Word. But when the Word was made flesh, it remains true both in the nativity of the Word of God and in the constitution of the flesh that he is father. For God is the father of all flesh; but not according to the fact that he is father to God the Word.

But the Word being God neither ceased to be the Word, nor was not flesh. For the Word, which was made flesh and dwelt in us, neither while dwelling is not truly the Word, nor while the Word is flesh is he not truly God-man: because both the dwelling must belong to him who remains, and the becoming flesh must be understood to belong to him who is born. And that it dwells in us is the assumption of our flesh: because through that which dwells in us, the Word made flesh, God is present in the truth of our body. If therefore Christ Jesus, man according to the flesh, detracts from the nature of God the Word, or if Christ Jesus, God the Word made man, is not so according to the mystery of piety; let it be counted an insult to nature, that according to us both the Father is father, and God is God to him.

But if Christ Jesus, God the Word made man, did not cease to be God the Word; the fellowship between us and him, with respect to the Father and to God, is only from that nature by which he is our brother: because "I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God," is announced to the brothers not through that by which he is the only-begotten God the Word, but through that by which the Word was made flesh.

God is father to Christ as the Word, and is God to him as Jesus and servant.—Now the apostolic speech does not speak with careless or uncertain significations open to an occasion of impiety. As now the Evangelist, beginning the Lord's saying from the acknowledgment of brothers, taught that the whole profession of the saying pertains to the fellowship of that nature from which he is a brother, since the speech is directed to the brothers: lest what was proclaimed for the mystery of piety should be reckoned as an insult to divinity; since our fellowship with him, by which he is father to us and father to himself, and God to us and God to himself, existed according to the dispensation of the flesh, we being reckoned as brothers to him by the birth of the body. No one therefore doubts that God the Father is also the God of our Lord Jesus Christ: but this pious profession of ours does not lie open to an occasion of impiety.

He is his God: not therefore in such a way that he is God of a different kind from him. But because he is born God from the Father, and by dispensation is a servant; let him have both a father, since from him he is God; and his God, since from the Virgin he is flesh. This the Apostle marks with a brief and complete statement, saying: "Making mention of you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation". For where Jesus Christ is, there is his God: but where glory is, there is the Father. He therefore who is father to Christ according to glory, the same is God to Christ according to Jesus. For the Angel names Jesus as Christ the Lord, whom Mary was to bring forth. But the Spirit of prophecy speaks of Christ the Lord.

And to many this saying seems more obscure according to the Latin, because Latin does not use pronouns, which the Greek always uses by a proper and necessary custom. For thus it is written: ὁ θεὸς τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, ὁ πατὴρ τῆς δόξης. As with us, if the custom of pronouns were always used, it would be pronounced thus: "That God of that our Lord Jesus Christ, that Father of that glory." For through this, that he is "that God" of "that Jesus Christ," and "that Father" of "that glory," a certain propriety according to the capacity of our understanding is expressed: so that where Christ's glory is, there is his Father; but where Christ Jesus is, there is his God the Father; having his God in the dispensation when he is a servant, and his Father in the glory when he is God.

It was said of Christ as man: Thee hath anointed—But times or ages do not bring about a diversity of Spirit, so that it is not one and the same Christ in the body who also remained in Spirit in the prophets. For speaking through the mouth of the holy patriarch David: "God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows", he spoke not according to any other mystery than according to the dispensation of the assumed body. For he who now, commanding the brothers, says that their Father is his Father and their God is his God, then also declared that he had been anointed by his God above his fellows: so that, while he is not a sharer with the only-begotten Christ God the Word, he might nevertheless be known as his fellow according to that assumption by which he is flesh.

For that anointing did not benefit that blessed and incorruptible nativity remaining in the nature of God, but the mystery of the body and the sanctification of the assumed man, as the apostle Peter testifies, when he says: "For of a truth they gathered together in this city against thy holy son Jesus, whom thou hast anointed". And again: "You know the word which was published throughout all Judea, beginning from Galilee, after the baptism which John preached, Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed him with the Holy Ghost and with power". Jesus therefore is anointed for the mystery of the flesh regenerated. And it is not doubtful how he was anointed with the Spirit and power of God, namely when, as he ascended from the Jordan, the voice of God the Father was heard: "Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee": so that through this testimony of the flesh sanctified in him, the anointing of the spiritual power might be known.

The same cannot be understood of the Word. Since there is no cause for him. Since he is anointed, being God by nature.—But when in the beginning the Word was God with God, the anointing has no cause or explanation of his nature, which is announced as nothing other than being in the beginning. Nor indeed did God have any need of anointing himself through the Spirit and power of God, being himself the Spirit and Power of God. God therefore is anointed by his own God above his fellows. And if before the dispensation of the flesh there were many "of Christ" according to the law, Christ now, who is anointed above his fellows, is later in time, while he is set before the anointed fellows. Indeed, that prophetic word shows that this anointing, which is later, occurred in time, saying: "Thou hast loved justice and hated iniquity: therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows".

A consequent and later cause is never referred to as being prior: because to have merited something is later than to be one who can merit. For it belongs to one to merit who is himself the author of the merit to be acquired. If therefore we shall attribute an anointing to the nativity of the only-begotten God, an anointing granted on account of the merit of justice loved and iniquity hated; the only-begotten God will be understood rather as advanced through anointing than as begotten; and now, through increases and advances, he who was not born God but was anointed into being God by merit will be brought to completion; and now Christ will be God by cause, and not every cause will be through God Christ. And where then will be that saying of the Apostle: "All things by him, and in him, and he is before all, and all things consist by him"?

For the Lord Jesus Christ is God, not on account of anything, nor through anything is he God; but he was born God. And he who is God by generation did not, after his birth, advance into being God by cause: but in that he was born, he is, by being born, nothing other than God. But when he is anointed by cause, the advance of the anointing does not regard that which needs no increase, but that which, through the increase of the mystery, needed the advance of anointing, that is, that through the anointing our man Christ might be sanctified. If therefore now also, through the prophet, the dispensation of the servant is shown, on account of which he is anointed by his God above his fellows; and is anointed for this reason, because he loved justice and hated iniquity: why will the prophetic saying not pertain to that nature of Christ in which those from the assumption of flesh are his fellows?

Since especially the Spirit of prophecy has so tempered itself that, while God is anointed by his own God, he has both, in the dispensation of the anointing, that which is his God, and in his nature, that which is God. God therefore is anointed: but I ask whether that which in the beginning was God the Word was anointed? By no means; for the anointing is later than God. And since it is not the nativity of the Word, in that it was God with God in the beginning, that is anointed; it is necessary that that in God be anointed which is later in the dispensation by which he is God. And since God is anointed by his own God; that is anointed, whatever from him was assumed as servile in the mystery of the flesh.

To what extent we have fellowship with Christ.—Let no one, therefore, violate with an impious sense the mystery of great piety, which was manifested in the flesh, nor let anyone equate himself with the Only-begotten through the substance of divinity. Let him be to us both brother and fellow according to that by which the Word made flesh dwelt in us, according to that by which the Mediator of God and men is the man Jesus Christ. Let him be to us, according to the servants, both common father and common God: and let him be anointed above his fellows in that nature, although with the privilege granted to those anointed, by which the fellows are anointed. Let him be, in the mystery of the Mediator, both true man and, likewise, true God, God himself from God, having a common father and God with us in that fellowship by which he is a brother.

The subjection, the handing over of the kingdom, and the end are raised as objections.—But perhaps that subjection, and the handing over of the kingdom, and then the end, must be understood as either an abolition of nature, or a failure of power, or an infirmity of divinity. For most wish it so, that either, while he is subjected to God when all things are subjected, he is not God by reason of the condition of subjection; or, while he hands over the kingdom, he is not in the kingdom; or, when he is the end, his own destruction follows the end.

The manner of answering.—It is fitting, therefore, to treat thoroughly the whole sense of the apostolic speech on these matters: so that, with the reasoning of each and every saying explained and set forth, we may be shown capable of the whole mystery through an understanding of the whole. He says thus: "For since by man came death, and by man the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order: the firstfruits Christ, then they that are Christ's, who at his coming: then the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God and the Father, when he shall have brought to nought all rule and all authority. For he must reign, until he hath put all enemies under his feet. For God hath subjected all things under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.

And when he shall say, All things are subjected, without doubt he is excepted who subjected all things to him. And when all things shall be subjected to him, then the Son also himself shall be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all".

That there are certain things which a man does not grasp at once.—The Apostle, chosen as teacher of the Gentiles not from men, nor through man, but through Jesus Christ, sets forth the secrets of the heavenly dispensations with as much clarity of absolute speech as he can. And he who had been caught up even to the third heaven and had heard things unutterable revealed to the sense of human understanding only those things of which human nature was capable; not being ignorant, however, that certain things cannot at once, as soon as they are heard, be understood, because our weakness would more slowly bring to a true and complete judgment of the mind those things which were poured into the ears; being left, by a longer delay of hesitation, to the sense rather than to the hearing, since to have heard belongs to the voice, but to have understood belongs to reason—God nevertheless revealing understanding to those desirous of understanding.

For writing to Timothy, who had been instructed from infancy in the sacred letters through the glorious faith of his grandmother and mother, he added among many other things this also: "Understand what I say, for the Lord will give thee understanding in all things". The exhortation to understand arises from the difficulty of understanding. But understanding is a gift from God, a benefit of faith, through which the weakness of sense earns the grace of revelation. If then Timothy, by apostolic testimony a man of God, and a legitimate son to Paul according to faith, is admonished to understand, because the Lord is to give him understanding in all things; let us too remember that we are admonished by the Apostle unto understanding, knowing that the Lord will grant us understanding of all things.

One should not be ashamed to change a wrong opinion once the truth has been perceived.—And if perhaps, through the error of the human condition, we shall hold some opinion rashly presumed, let us not refuse an advance in understanding through the grace of revelation; lest having once understood something by our own sense should so prevail as to make us ashamed of understanding something more correctly by changing our view. Wherefore this same blessed Apostle, prudently and deliberately counselling moderation in this matter, writes also to the Philippians: "As many therefore as are perfect, let us be thus minded; and if in anything you are otherwise minded, this also God will reveal to you. Nevertheless, whereto we have already attained, let us walk by the same". A prior opinion does not prejudice the revelation of God. For the Apostle has admonished those who are perfect as to what they should think, and for those who think otherwise he awaits the revelation of God, that they may think that which is perfect.

If, then, some have understood this profound dispensation of hidden knowledge otherwise, and something right and probable is offered through us, let them not be ashamed, according to the Apostle, through the revelation of God to think perfectly; nor let them love ignorance of the truth more than they hate persisting in what is untrue. For those who think otherwise, and to whom God has revealed this, he admonishes to press on toward that to which they have already come; that, leaving behind the sense of their first ignorance, according to the advance of the course they have entered upon, they may obtain the revelation of perfect understanding. Let us then press on to that whereto we have attained. And if perhaps the error of a devious path delays our advance, yet through the revelation of God, having again entered upon that toward which we were pressing, let us not change the course of our advance.

For we have pressed on toward Christ Jesus, the Lord of glory and King of the ages everlasting, in whom all things are restored, in heaven and on earth, on whom all things depend, in whom and with whom we shall abide forever. Entering, then, upon these things, let us think perfectly; and if we think otherwise in anything, God will reveal to us that which is thought perfectly. Let us therefore, according to the apostolic faith, take up again the mystery of the present sayings; and in the manner in which all things have been treated by us above, let us bring forward every sense of impious will, subjected under the apostolic sayings, from the very truth of apostolic faith.

Three things called into question.—Three things, then, according to the order of the sayings, are called into question: first, the end; then, the handing over; then, the subjection: so that through these either Christ ceases at the end, or by handing over the kingdom he does not retain it, or he exists as subject to God outside the nature of God.

The connection of the objected words of Paul.—And first it must be known that this is not the order of apostolic doctrine. For first is the handing over of the kingdom, then the subjection, and last the end. But to each several cause its own proper kinds of cause are subjoined, so that while individual things terminate in other things, the preceding cause always has a cause lying beneath it. For there shall be an end; but when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God. But he shall deliver up the kingdom when he shall have destroyed every rule and every power. But he shall destroy every rule and power, because he must reign. But he shall reign until he put all his enemies under his feet. But he shall put his enemies under his feet, because God has subjected all things under his feet. But God has subjected them thus, that death, the last enemy, shall be conquered by him.

Then, all things being subjected to him, except him who subjected all things to him, then he himself also shall be subjected to him who subjected all things to him. But the cause of the subjection is none other than that God may be all in all. The end, therefore, is that God be all in all.

What the heretics allege.—And now, before all things, it must be asked whether the end is a failing away, whether the handing over is a loss, whether the subjection is a weakness. If these are not subject to these contraries in themselves, they will stand in that truth of understanding in which they are spoken.

It is taken from them that the end is abolition. What the end is.—The end of the law, then, is Christ; and I ask whether Christ, who is its end, is an abolition of the law, or its perfection. But if Christ, who is its end, does not dissolve the law but fulfills it, according to what he says: "I came not to destroy the law, but to fulfill it", the end is not a failing away, but a consummated perfection. For all things tend to an end, not that they may cease to be, but that they may abide in that to which they have tended. And all things exist for the sake of an end; but the end itself is not referred to anything else. But since the end is all things, it remains, itself, wholly to itself. And because it does not pass out from itself to any other time or thing rather than to itself, the intention of all hope is ever extended toward the end itself.

And therefore the Lord, urging the patience of devout faith which reserves itself for the end, thus exhorts: "Blessed is he who shall have persevered to the end"; certainly not that failing away should be blessed, and not-being should be the fruit, and abolition be established as the reward of each one's faith; but because the end of the proposed blessedness is a mode without departure, blessed are those who shall have persevered even to the end of the consummation of blessedness, the expectation of faithful hope not extending beyond itself. The end, therefore, is the abiding, unmoving state toward which one tends. Further, the Apostle, forewarning of the end of impiety unto the fear of ceasing, says: "Whose end is destruction, but our expectation is in the heavens". If, then, there is an end both for the blessed and for the impious, and the end is understood to be a failing away, religion and impiety are made equal by the end, because both, through the appointed end, come alike into common non-being.

And where is our expectation in the heavens, if through the end we cease to be, after the manner of the impious? But if for the saints there is expectation, while for the impious the end is said to be due, still not even so is the end believed to be a failing away; for that which is the punishment of impiety, is it altogether not-being, when there is no sense of avenging punishments, no cause remaining in them for suffering through their own failing away? The end, therefore, is the abiding perfection of an unchangeable constitution, which is reserved for blessedness, and prepared for impiety.

That the handing over of the kingdom is not a failing away from reigning.—Now, therefore, since it can no longer be doubted that in the end is to be understood not a failing away, but a constitution that will not pass away—though certain things are still reserved for the full explanation of the saying—yet, having shown thus far only enough to establish the meaning, let us see whether the handing over of the kingdom is to be understood as a failing away from reigning, so that what the Son hands over to the Father he does not retain by handing it over. But if anyone in the fury of foolish impiety shall contend this, he must needs confess that the Father, when he handed over all things to the Son, lost them by handing them over, if to have handed over signifies to be in want of the things handed over.

For the Lord says, "All things have been delivered to me by my Father"; and again: "All power is given to me in heaven and on earth". If, then, to have handed over is to have lacked, the Father also lacked the things which he gave. But if the Father did not lack by handing over, neither can the Son be understood to lack the things which he hands over. Therefore, if to have handed over all things does not appear to have been a want of the very things handed over, it remains that in the handing over the cause is to be recognized as one of dispensation—why the Father, in handing over, does not lack, and the Son, in giving, is not in want.

The subjection of Christ signifies not humiliation, but dispensation.—But concerning subjection, lest anything contumelious be imputed therein to the Son—while several other points aid our faith, this particular passage will especially be of help—let me first ask the common understanding, whether we are now to think of subjection in such a way as though, subjecting servitude to lordship, weakness to power, or dishonor to honor by contrary qualities, we should suppose that the Son is thus subjected to God the Father by a diversity of dissenting nature. But if this is what is imagined, the caution of the apostolic word will forbid this error of human opinion. For, all things being subjected to him, he then says that he who subjects all things to himself is to be subjected; and by the fact that he "shall then" be subjected, he signified a dispensation in time.

For if we should understand subjection in another sense, then even though he "shall then" be subjected, certainly he is not subject now; and we would make him dissenting, and insolent, and impious, whom the necessity of time—as though, the swelling of tyrannical impiety having been broken and crushed—is to bring at last into obedience. And where then would be this: "I came not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me"; and again: "Therefore the Father loves me, because I do the things that are pleasing to him"; and also this: "Father, thy will be done"; or this of the Apostle: "He humbled himself, becoming obedient even unto death"? And he who humbles himself has this in his nature, not to be humble; and he who becomes obedient takes up, by an act of will, that whereby he obeys, since through humbling himself he becomes obedient.

The Only-begotten God, then, humbling himself and becoming obedient to the Father even unto the death of the cross—in what manner, when all things are subject to him, shall he himself then be understood to be subjected to the Father? Unless it be that this subjection is not of a new obedience, but of a mystery of dispensation; since obedience already abides, and the subjection is to be entered upon in time. Nothing else, therefore, is now the meaning of subjection than the demonstration of a mystery.

The things said to be still to be subjected to Christ are already subjected.—And this is to be understood according to this same hope of our faith. For it is not unknown that the Lord Jesus Christ, rising from the dead, sits at the right hand of God, the Apostle himself testifying, when he says: "According to the working of the power of his might, which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavens, above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come; and hath subjected all things under his feet". For the apostolic word, according to the power of God, signifies future things as though already accomplished.

For the things which are to be done through the fulfillment of the times already stand in Christ, in whom is all fullness; and whatever things are to come, in these there is rather an order of dispensation than a novelty. For God has subjected all things under his feet, although they are still to be subjected; so that in the fact that they are subjected, the unchangeable power of Christ may be seen; but in the fact that they are still to be subjected, there is, according to the fullness of the succeeding times, an advance unto the end of the ages.

What emptying is. Its distinction from subjection.—But it is no obscure knowledge that every opposing power must be emptied out, and that this prince of the air and power of spiritual wickedness is to be handed over to eternal destruction, according to that saying: Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, which my Father hath prepared for the devil and his angels. Now emptying is not the same thing as subjection. For to empty an opposing power is to take away the right of power so that it no longer remains, and through the emptying of the power, it is to abolish the dominion of a kingdom of which the Lord also testified, saying, My kingdom is not of this world: having before testified concerning this same prince of the world, powerful in this kingdom, whose power shall cease when the dominion of his kingdom is emptied out. But subjection, which belongs both to obedience and to faith, is itself a demonstration either of concession or of transformation.

In what sense that which Christ has subjected to himself, the Father has subjected to him.—Thus, when the magistrates are emptied out, his enemies shall be subjected. But they shall be subjected in such a way that he himself subjects them to himself. And he shall subject them in such a way that God subjects them to him. Was the Apostle ignorant of the force of the Gospel saying, when he said: No man comes to me, unless my Father draw him to me; when yet it is written: No man goes to the Father, but by me? So that now he himself subjects his enemies to himself, and yet God has subjected them to him; all this work of his testifying that it is the work of God in him. And though one must go to the Father only through him, yet one does not come to him unless the Father has drawn him. For while he is understood as the Son of God, the truth of the paternal nature in him is learned.

And thus, the Son being known, God the Father calls; and the Son being believed, the Father receives: because the signification and knowledge of the Father in the Son comes about through the signification, in himself, of God the Father, bearing us religiously toward him with paternal devotion. The Father therefore draws in this way, while he who is the principal is believed to be the Father. But no one goes to the Father except through the Son: because, faith in the Son ceasing in us, the Father is unknowable, men not being able to approach the paternal worship unless the veneration of the Son has first been received. And so, the Son being known, the Father brings us to the eternity of life and receives us: and both come about through the Son, since by the preaching, through him, of the Father, the Father both leads us to himself, and he himself leads us to the Father.

Therefore, for the full understanding of the present saying, a reminder of this mystery was necessary, that it might be through the Son that the Father both draws and receives us: and by this we might understand in what sense that which he himself has subjected to himself, God has subjected to him. Namely, the nature of God remaining in him through birth, and that nature performing what he himself does: while he acts in such a way that God acts; and yet he himself performs what God has performed: yet in such a way, that in what he himself does, the Son of God is understood to act; but in what God does, the property of the paternal nature in him, as in a son, is perceived to exist.

Who are the enemies that are to be subjected to Christ.—Therefore, when the magistrates and powers have been emptied out, his enemies shall be subjected to him under his feet. And who ought to be understood as enemies, the same Apostle taught, saying: As concerning the Gospel, they are enemies for your sakes: but as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers' sakes.

These, then, we remember as enemies of the cross of Christ: but because they are beloved for the fathers' sakes, we know they are reserved for subjection, according to what is said: For I would not, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own conceits: that blindness in part has happened in Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles should come in; and so all Israel shall be saved, as it is written, And there shall come out of Sion he that shall deliver, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: and this is to them my covenant, when I shall have taken away their sins. The enemies, therefore, shall be subjected under his feet.

They are subjected, insofar as they are conformed to the glory of Christ.—But it must be understood what follows upon that subjection, namely this, The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. Now the destruction of death is nothing other than resurrection from the dead: since, corruption of death having ceased, the eternity of a now living and heavenly nature is established, according to what is said: For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. And when this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall come to pass the word that is written: Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O death, where is thy victory? In the subjection of the enemies, therefore, death is conquered: and death being conquered, immortality succeeds as life.

But what that full property of subjection is, after the subjection of faith, the same Apostle testified, when he said, Who will transform the body of our lowliness, to be conformed to the body of his glory; according to the working whereby he is able to subject all things to himself (Philipp. Iii, 21). Subjection, then, is also that which is a concession from nature into nature: while one, ceasing from being according to what it is by itself, is subjected to him into whose form it yields. But it ceases, not so as not to be, but so as to advance; and by transformation it becomes subject, passing over into the appearance of another kind received.

The subjection of the Son, a sharing in the paternal glory.—Finally, that the reasoning of this mystery might be complete, after death is at last conquered, he then says: And when he shall say, All things are subjected, except him who subjected all things to him, then he himself also shall be subjected to him who subjected all things to him, that God may be all in all. The first degree of the mystery, then, is that all things be subjected to him; and then that he himself become subject to him who subjects all things to himself: so that just as we are subjected to the glory of his reigning body, so again by the same mystery he himself, reigning in the glory of his body, is subjected to him who subjects all things to himself. But we are subjected to the glory of his body, that we may be in that brightness in which he reigns in his body: because we shall be conformed to his body.

The glory of Christ's body.—And indeed the Gospels do not keep silent about the glory of his now reigning body. For thus it is written, the Lord saying: Amen I say to you, there are some of them that stand here, who shall not taste death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom. And after six days Jesus took Peter, and James, and John his brother, and brought them up into a high mountain apart, and was transfigured before them, and his face did shine as the sun, and his garments became white as snow. The glory, then, of his body coming into its kingdom was shown to the Apostles: for the Lord stood in the manner of his glorious transformation, the brightness of his reigning body being disclosed.

A sharing in that glory promised to us.—And promising indeed to the Apostles a sharing in this glory of his, he says: So shall it be at the end of the world. The Son of man shall send his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all scandals, and them that work iniquity, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the just shine as the sun in the kingdom of their Father: he that hath ears to hear, let him hear. Are not natural and bodily ears open to all men for the hearing of what is said, that it should have been necessary to admonish them, by the Lord's warning, to hear? But the Lord, hinting at the knowledge of the mystery, demanded the hearing of faithful doctrine. At the end of the world, therefore, scandals are taken away from his kingdom. We have, then, the Lord reigning according to the brightness of his body, until scandals are taken away.

We have again ourselves made conformable to the glory of his body in the kingdom of the Father, shining as it were in the brightness of the sun: in which brightness, transformed on the mountain, he showed to the Apostles the appearance of his kingdom.

Imparting glory, he delivers us as a kingdom to God without loss to his own kingdom. The kingdom delivered up is ourselves. Christ delivering it up, and this insofar as he is man.—He shall deliver the kingdom, then, to God the Father: not as though, in delivering it, he yields it by power, but because we, made conformable to the glory of his body, shall be the kingdom of God. For he does not say: He shall deliver up his kingdom; but, He shall deliver up the kingdom, about to deliver us, made a kingdom to God through the glorification of his body. He shall deliver us, then, into the kingdom, according to what is said in the Gospels: Come, ye blessed of my Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. The just, therefore, shall shine as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.

For the Son shall deliver to God as a kingdom those whom he has called into the kingdom, to whom also he promised the blessedness of this mystery, saying: Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God. Reigning, therefore, he shall put away scandals, and then the just, in the kingdom of the Father, shall shine as the sun. But he shall deliver the kingdom to God the Father: and then those whom he shall have delivered to God as a kingdom shall see God. And what that kingdom is, he himself testified, saying to the Apostles: For the kingdom of God is within you. Reigning, therefore, he shall deliver up the kingdom. And if anyone should ask who this is that delivers up the kingdom, he shall hear: Christ is risen from the dead, the firstfruits of them that sleep; for by man came death, and by man the resurrection of the dead. For all this present discourse of the question concerns the mystery of the body, because Christ is the firstfruits from the dead.

But by what mystery Christ rose from the dead, let us learn from the Apostle's saying: Remember that Christ rose again from the dead, of the seed of David: thus teaching that death and the resurrection from it belong only to that dispensation by which he is flesh.

The cause of Christ's subjection, that God may be all in all. How this comes about.—But he reigns in this same now glorious body of his, until, the magistrates being emptied out and death conquered, he subjects his enemies to himself. And indeed this order is preserved by the Apostle, that to the magistrates and powers emptying out is attributed, but to the enemies, subjection. These being subjected, he shall be subjected to him who subjects all things to himself, namely the Lord, that God may be all in all, the nature of the divinity of the Father being brought into the nature of our assumed body. For by this God shall be all in all, because, according to the dispensation, the Mediator of God and men, out of God and man, having in himself, from the dispensation, what belongs to the flesh, shall obtain in all things, from subjection, what belongs to God, so that he may not be God in part, but wholly God.

There is, then, no other cause of the subjection than that God may be all in all, no nature of an earthly body remaining in him in any part, so that he who before contained the two natures in himself, may now be God only; not the body cast off, but transferred by subjection; not abolished by defection, but changed by glorification; God rather gaining man for himself, than losing God through man. He is subjected, indeed, not that he may not exist, but that God may be all in all; having, in the mystery of subjection, being and remaining what he is not, not being deprived in defection so as not to be.

The foregoing is confirmed from the Gospels.—And although apostolic authority suffices for the religious certainty of this understanding, that the Lord Jesus Christ, the firstfruits of them that sleep, is to be subjected in time and through dispensation, that God may be all in all: by which not weakness of divinity is meant, but the progress of assumption, while man and God, he is now wholly God: yet lest perhaps, because we believe him both glorified in the body while he reigns in it, and afterward to be subjected that God may be all in all, we might be thought not to have presumed this also from the Gospels; the testimony of our faith must be established not only by apostolic, but also by dominical sayings; so that what Christ spoke through Paul's speaking, that same thing Christ himself had already spoken before Paul.

On the glory of the Son of man.—Showing to his Apostles, then, in the fullest sense of the words, the dispensation of this glory, he says: Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, and God has glorified him in himself, and God has straightway glorified him. We have first the glory of the Son of man, then, in the Son of man, the glory of God, in what is said: Now is the Son of man honored, and God is honored in him. For this first regards the glory of the body, which, from association with the divine nature, borrows glory. Then follows the attainment of a fuller glory, to be gained from the increase of the glory already granted to the body: If God is honored in him, and God has honored him in himself, and God has straightway honored him. For in this way God has glorified him in himself, because God is now glorified in him.

For the fact that God is glorified in him regards the glory of the body, through which the glory of God is understood by means of the body, the glory of God being understood through the glory of the Son of man. But the fact that God is glorified in him, and therefore God has glorified him in himself; through the increase of God glorified in him, God has glorified him in himself, so that, since he now reigns in the glory which is from the glory of God, he himself thence passes over into the glory of God. For God glorified him in himself, that is, in that nature by which he is God what he is: so that God may be all in all, the whole dispensation which is from that by which he is man now abiding wholly in God.

Nor indeed did he pass over the time in silence, saying: And God has glorified him in himself, and God has straightway glorified him: so that, since, as Judas was going forth to his betrayal, he had signified as present the glory which was to follow him after the passion by resurrection to come; he reserved for the future that glory whereby God was to glorify him in himself; the glory of God in him being shown through the power of the resurrection, while he himself was to abide wholly in the glory of God, that is, in God being all in all through the dispensation of subjection.

Those who wrongly understand the subjection are refuted.—And here indeed how great is the madness of the heretic's fury, to despair of that for God which he flatters himself with in his own human hopes; so that what God is powerful to do in man, he should be powerless to accomplish in himself? Neither speech nor reason capable of sense can say this, that God, by some natural necessity bound to provide for us, could bring nothing of blessedness to himself: not that he needs advancement, who is of an untroubled nature and power, but that, through the dispensation and mystery of great godliness, he who is God and is man should be unable to render to himself wholly that which God is; while he will without doubt grant to us also that we be that which we are not.

For the end of human life and death is resurrection: and the most certain wage of our warfare is incorrupt eternity, abiding not for the continuance of punishment, but not ceasing for the fruit and joy of perpetual glory. Since, then, this origin of our earthly bodies passes over into the condition of a better nature, and becomes conformed to the glory of the Lord's body; shall God, found in the form of a servant, though already glorified in body according to that wherein he is in the form of a servant, nevertheless not be conformed to God?—that he who will grant to us the form of his own glorified body should himself be able to bestow upon his own body nothing further than what he shall grant to us and to himself in common?

For as to what is said: Then shall he be subject unto him who put all things under him, that God may be all in all; very many of the heretics affirm it thus: that the Son must be subjected to God the Father for this reason, that the Father, through the subjection of the Son, may be God all in all; as though even yet perfection were lacking to God, which he was to obtain through the subjection of the Son: so that he must be understood as destitute of absolute and blessed divinity, if he is to attain to being God all in all through a progression of time.

To God, being full, nothing is lacking, nothing is added.—And to me indeed, understanding God with mere veneration, it seems no less impious to respond to these things than to entertain them; and, concerning a nature which exceeds the conception of human sense, to trust that one can declare it in words whose signification is still narrower than the understanding, and first to doubt whether something is lacking to God, or whether he himself is full, or whether it remains for him, already full, to become fuller. But if God, to whom it is not from elsewhere that he is always God, should have advancement, so as at some time to be more; yet he cannot arrive at the point of lacking nothing: because that nature to which advancement remains is never understood to have advanced without some increment still remaining; while a nature that looks toward advancement, though it always advances, yet always lies open to advancement.

But that which abides in perfect fullness, and always is, has not left to itself the possibility of being fuller: because perfect fullness admits no accession of a fuller fullness. And this indeed is the manner of piously conceiving of God, that nothing is lacking to God, and that he is full.

The example of the Apostle in thinking about the things of God.—But the Apostle is not ignorant with what voice of confession one must testify concerning God, saying: O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counsellor? Or who has first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him? For of him, and through him, and in him, are all things: to him be glory for ever and ever. God is not circumscribed by earthly mind, nor is this depth of his wisdom attained by the sense of a penetrating understanding, nor are the judgments of his ordinances grasped by the ingenuity of those who search them out, nor do the ways of the knowledge of him, past finding out, yield themselves to the pursuits of those who chase after them.

All his things are sunk into an unsearchable depth, and nothing of his affairs will be found, nothing will be tracked down. For no one has known his mind: and he has not needed external counsel. Now all this discourse of ours is concerning us, not also concerning him through whom all things are, who is the Angel of great counsel, who also says: No one knows the Son, but the Father; neither does anyone know the Father, but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal him. But against our feeble minds, which plunge themselves into the depth in order to define and circumscribe the divine nature, we must use the confession of the apostolic protestation: lest rash opinion usurp to itself anything about God beyond what is taught.

What things fall under human understanding.—This is the common understanding of natural causes, that nothing falls under sense except what is subject to sense, whether it be some object set before the eyes, or any work later than our own sense and mind: of these, one, that which is either touched or seen, falls within the scope of our judgment, to be measured by touch and sight itself; the other, that which comes to be in time, and which either is begotten or is established by us from some more recent beginning, because it does not precede the perception of understanding, is likewise subject to the judgment of discerning sense.

For neither does our sight discern invisible things, since it can distinguish only things beheld; nor will our mind extend itself into that time in which it did not exist, and search out things older than its own origin, since only an opinion concerning those things of which it is itself the elder is left to it: which opinion, itself for the most part uncertain through the necessity of its own natural weakness, does not hold absolute knowledge in the recognition of causes; much less does it perceive, its sense returning beyond its own birth, the things which are before it by an eternal order.

God is an unsearchable depth. He needs nothing.—And therefore the Apostle, since only those things could ever fall into knowledge which come after sense, having called to mind the depth of the wisdom of God, and the infinity of his unsearchable judgments, and the secret of his untraceable ways, and the ignorance of his unknown mind, and the unintelligibility of his uncommunicated counsel, added: For who has first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him? For of him and through him and in him are all things, to him be glory for ever and ever. God, who always is, is not now subject to anything, nor is he preceded by any earlier movement of mind or understanding of his own. And therefore he himself is wholly an untraceable and unsearchable depth.

But wholly in such a way that he is not thereby defined within a measure, but is understood as immense: because he has taken what he is from no one, nor has anyone given to him beforehand, that he should be obliged to make recompense to a giver. For of him and through him and in him are all things. He has no need of things abiding of themselves, by themselves, and within themselves; neither he who is the origin, nor he who is the maker, nor he who is the container, both external to internal things, and creator of things effected: and he himself is never in need of his own. Nothing is before him, nothing is from elsewhere, nothing is outside him. Of what advancement of fullness, then, does he stand in want, that through time God should still become all in all? Or whence shall he take, outside of whom there is nothing?

And nothing in such wise that he himself always is. And he who himself always is, and outside of whom there is nothing, by what increase is he to be completed, or by what growth is he to be changed, he who says: I am, and I am not changed (Malachi III, 6): since there remains neither room for change, nor cause for advancement, nor anything prior to eternity, nor anything else for God to be besides what God himself is? Therefore God will not be all in all through the subjection of the Son: nor will he be brought to completion through a cause, seeing that from him, and through him, and within him every cause consists. He remains, then, as he always is, God, nor does he need advancement who, as regards what he is, is of himself and unto himself always.

The Son is unchangeable. In emptying himself he was not changed. That God be all in all is our advancement.—But not even in the Only-begotten God does the necessity of a changed nature fall. For he is God, which is the name of full and perfect divinity. For, as we have taught above, both the signification of a repeated glory, and the cause of subjection, are to the end that God may be all in all; but that God be all in all is a mystery, not a necessity. For remaining in the form of God he assumed the form of a servant, not changed, but emptying himself, and hiding within himself, and himself made void within his own power: tempering himself down to the form of the human condition, lest the weakness of the assumed lowliness should not bear the powerful and immense nature; but the uncircumscribed power so moderated itself as far as it was necessary for it to obey even unto the suffering of the body joined to it.

But the fact that he contained himself, making himself void within himself, brought no detriment to his power; since, within this lowliness of self-emptying, he nevertheless made use of the full power of all that was emptied within himself.

That God therefore will be all in all is a progress belonging to our assumption. For he who, being in the form of God, was found in the form of a servant, must again be confessed in the glory of God the Father: so that he may be understood, without ambiguity, as remaining in that form of his, in whose glory he must be confessed. It is therefore a dispensation only, not a change: for he is in that in which he was. But since there is a middle thing that began to be, that is, man born; there is acquired for him the whole of that nature which before was not God, since God being all in all is shown after the mystery of the dispensation. These, then, are our gains, and our progressions, namely, our being made conformable to the glory of the body of God. But the only-begotten God, although he was also born man, is nevertheless nothing other than God, all in all.

For that subjection of the body, by which what is carnal in him is swallowed up into the nature of the spirit, will constitute him who, besides being God, is also man, to be God all in all: but that manhood of ours advances into that state. But we shall advance into a conformable glory of our manhood, and being renewed unto the knowledge of God, we shall be reformed unto the image of our Creator, according to the saying of the Apostle: Having put off the old man with his deeds, and having put on the new man, who is renewed unto the knowledge of God according to the image of him that created him. Man, therefore, is consummated as the image of God. For being made conformable to the glory of the body of God, he rises up into the image of the Creator, according to the arrangement of the shaping of the first man.

And after sin and the old man, having become, in the knowledge of God, a new man, he obtains the perfection of his constitution, acknowledging his God, and by this being his image: and, advancing through religion toward eternity, he shall, through eternity, remain the image of his Creator.

It might perhaps trouble one that he says he was created, were he not also teaching that he was begotten. Nor indeed ought it to be thought that he signified the same thing by two words, when he professes that he was created for the sake of a cause, but begotten before the cause. Thus also, while he teaches that the Father is the maker of the world, he kills that impious understanding by which some interpret him as created in the works in such a way that Christ was first made for the purpose of the world's accomplishment: whereas Christ is said to be created in the work not with respect to his nativity, but to his dispensation; which dispensation indeed he carried out from the beginning of the world, while through the assumed appearance of various created forms he made himself visible to Adam, Cain, Abel, Noah, Hagar, Abraham, Moses, Jacob, and the other Fathers.

Here he touches upon, but does not reject as impious, only as unlearned, the interpretation of certain persons who think that even the eternal nativity is there called "created" for much the same reason that Paul proclaimed Christ, truly born of Mary, as "made": namely, so that every opinion of suffering in his generation might be removed. At last Hilary concludes this book and the whole work with a confession of his faith concerning the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The very objections of the heretics lead to the truth.—We are steering at last, with the Holy Spirit now attending us, toward the safe and tranquil harbor of secure faith. And so, as very often happens to those tossed by much sea and wind, that when they are hindered and delayed near the shores of harbors by heavy and troublesome waves, at last that very surge of the vast and terrible wave drives them into a haven known and trusted by them.

This, I hope, will happen to us, striving in this twelfth book against the heretical tempest: that when in it we give our storm-tossed vessel over to the wave of most grievous impiety, that very wave itself may carry us into the bosom of the desired rest. For, all being driven about by the uncertain wind of doctrine, on this side is fear, on that side danger, on another even shipwreck, because the only-begotten God is defended, under prophetic authority, as a creature: so that in him there is not nativity, but creation, because it is said in the person of Wisdom, The Lord created me, the beginning of his ways. This is the greatest wave of their storm, this is the heavy billow of the twisting whirlwind: which, being received by us and broken by our secure vessel, will carry us on even to the very safest harbor of the desired shore.

The certain truth of faith concerning the Son.—But we lean not, sailor-like, upon uncertain and idle hopes: hopes which sometimes, when men sail more by vows than by confidence, wandering and unstable winds either abandon or drive off course. But there abides with us the inseparable Spirit of faith, remaining as the gift of the only-begotten God, and leading us by an unchangeable course to calm waters: for we know the Lord Christ not to be a creature, because he himself is not one; nor a thing made, because he is Lord of all things made: but we know him as God, God the proper offspring of God the Father. We indeed all, according to the condescension of his goodness, are said and taken to be sons of God; but he alone is the true Son of God the Father, and his is a true and absolute nativity, abiding only in the knowledge of the two. This alone is our religion: to confess the Son not as adoptive, but as born; not as chosen, but as begotten.

For we proclaim him neither made, nor unborn: because we neither compare the Creator to creatures, nor falsely claim a nativity without generation. He who exists through nativity does not exist through himself. Nor is he unborn who is Son. Nor can he who is Son be what a son is otherwise than by being born.

Among the Arians, the prophetic and the evangelical Spirit contend with themselves.—No one, however, doubts that the causes of impiety are always contrary and opposed to the causes of religion: nor can that be piously accepted which is judged to have been impiously accepted: so that either these new correctors of the apostolic faith divide the evangelical and the prophetic Spirit into disputes and split it into quarrels; or these prophesied in one way and those preached in another way: because Solomon calls us to the veneration of a creature, while Paul reproves those who serve the creature.

These things certainly do not seem to agree with one another according to the understanding of impiety, so that the Apostle—both taught through the law and set apart by predestination, and speaking through Christ speaking within him—either was ignorant of prophecy or, not being ignorant of it, dissolved it; and did not know that Christ was a creature, whom he called creator; and forbade the religion owed to a creature, he who admonished that service is owed to the Creator alone, saying: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever.

Christ is properly called creator.—Does not Christ God, speaking in Paul, sufficiently refute this impiety of false speech? Does he not sufficiently condemn the lie of altered truth? For through the Lord Christ all things were created: and therefore it is his proper name that he is creator. The name and nature of his efficient action do not fail to apply to him. Melchizedek is our witness, thus proclaiming God the creator of heaven and earth: Blessed be Abraham of God most high, who created heaven and earth. The prophet Hosea is also a witness, saying: Establishing the heaven, and creating the earth, I the Lord your God, whose hands created all the host of heaven (Hosea xiii, 4). Peter is a witness, writing thus: As unto a faithful creator committing your souls. Why do we impose the name of the work upon the workman? Why do we call God by our own names? He is our creator, he is the creator of all the heavenly host.

Christ cannot be called a creature.—Since these things must, according to apostolic and evangelical faith, be understood as referring to the Son, through whom all things were made, how shall he be made equal to those very things which he wrought, and be included in that appellation of nature by which all things exist? First indeed the sense of human understanding rejects this, that the creator be a creature; because creation exists through the creator. But if he be a creature, he is also subject to corruption, and liable to expectation, and subjected to servitude. For the same blessed apostle Paul says: For the earnest expectation of the creature awaits the revelation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who subjected it in hope. Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the sons of God.

If therefore Christ is a creature, it is necessary that he be uncertain under the hope of a far-off expectation, and that his long expectation rather await us, and that, awaiting, he be subject to vanity, and that through the necessity of subjection he be subjected unwillingly. But being subjected unwillingly, he must necessarily also be a servant; and being a servant, he must also remain in the corruption of nature. For the Apostle teaches that all these things are proper to a creature: from which, by a long expectation, he is to be freed, and shall become glorious according to human glory. O what an imprudent and impious profession concerning God, to subject him, through the reproach of being a creature, to such mockeries—that he should hope, that he should serve, that he should be compelled, that he should be known, that he should be to be freed—for our sake, not his own, though it is from what belongs to him that we are advanced to something.

If he is a creature, the Father is likewise a creature: because to the Son belongs the nature of the Father. The emptying of the Word is its abolition.—But our impiety, with a huge increase of faithlessness, proceeds through this audacity of an unlawful assertion: so that, because the Son is a creature, the Father too does not differ from a creature. For Christ, remaining in the form of God, took the form of a servant: and he who is in the form of God, if he is a creature, God will not be different from a creature, since a creature is in the form of God. But to be in the form of God is understood as nothing other than to abide in the nature of God: through which also God is a creature, since a creature is in his nature.

But he who was in the form of God did not think it robbery to be equal with God; because he descended from the equality of God, that is, from his form, into the form of a servant. But he could not descend from God into man except by emptying himself, as God, out of the form of God. But in emptying himself he was not abolished, so as not to be; though he was other than he had been. For he did not fail from himself, who emptied himself into himself: since the power of his virtue remains even in the power of emptying himself; and to have passed into the form of a servant is not to have lost the nature of God, since to have emptied the form of God is nothing else than the power of divine virtue.

Equal honor is owed to the Son as to the Father.—Moreover, to be in the form of God is nothing else than to be equal to God: so that equality of honor is owed to the Lord Jesus Christ, who is in the form of God, he himself saying: That all may honor the Son, as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. There is never a difference of things, unless also in a difference of honor. For the same things are of the same veneration: because either the highest honor will unworthily be paid to inferior things, or, with contempt of the superior, inferior things will be made equal to them in honor.

But if the Son is rather creation than nativity, he will, through veneration, be made equal to the Father; and there is no true religion of honor for us toward the Father, since so great a veneration is imposed upon us toward him as is due to a creature: but because he is equal to God the Father in that he was born God from him, he is also equal in honor. For he is Son, not a creature.

God, though lacking parts, is said to have begotten out of the womb, because out of Himself. For those who wish the Son to be out of nothing, the sense of the passage cited does not suffice.—And this is that noble utterance of the Father concerning Him, Out of the womb before the daystar have I begotten thee. But God is not prejudged, as we have already often said, by the weakness of our understanding; so that, because He said He had begotten out of the womb, He should be understood as consisting, through internal and external parts coming together by means of members, as it were from the origins of bodily causes: whereas, being free and absolute beyond the necessity of natural causes, remaining Lord of the whole of nature, He signifies the property of the nativity of His Only-begotten by the power of His own unchangeable nature.

For a spirit born from a spirit, although it is born from the property of spirit, by which it also is spirit, has for it no other cause than the perfect and unchangeable causes for that which is born. And though born from a cause, albeit a perfect and unchangeable one, it is necessarily born from a cause according to the property of that very cause. But the property of human necessities is contained within the causes of the womb. But for God, who is perfect not from parts, but is unchangeable through spirit, since God is spirit, there is no natural necessity of internal causes. But because He was proclaiming to us a birth of spirit from spirit, He formed our understanding by an example drawn from our own causes; not as an example of the manner of nativity, but for the understanding of the generation; so that that example may serve not for necessity, but for understanding.

If then the Only-begotten God is a creation, what then does the meaning of that understanding intend, which through the custom of human nativity shows the understanding of the divine generation?

Through the members of our body the operations of God are signified.—For very often, through these members of our bodies, signifying to us the momentums of His operations, God has taught our understanding by the usage of common intelligence, as when He says: Whose hands created all the host of heaven (Hosea xiii, 4); or again, The eyes of the Lord are upon the just; or again, I have found David the son of Jesse, a man according to my own heart.

For since the will is signified by the heart, by which David, through uprightness of character, was pleasing; and the knowledge of the universe, by which nothing is outside the knowledge of God, is expressed under the word of eyes; and the efficacy of works, since nothing is not from God, is understood by the name of hands: God, willing and providing and doing all things, is to be understood, under the signification of bodily causes, without bodily ministry—just as already in that He begot out of the womb, not through the bodily cause of human origin—the sense for understanding also a spiritual nativity is brought forward; since through the other significations of members, the effect of the other efficacies also in God is shown?

It was said Out of the womb to show a true nativity.—Since therefore the heart is set forth for the will, the eyes for sight, the hands for effect, while nevertheless, beyond the incorporeal comparison of parts, God both wills and provides and accomplishes, and these same things are declared through heart and eyes and hand: is it not so that the signification, by which He begot out of the womb, is a showing of a true nativity?

Not that He begot out of a womb, just as He neither acts by a hand, nor sees by eyes, nor wills by a heart: but because, through the signification of these, He truly does and sees and wills all things, so through the signification of the womb, He truly begot of Himself Him whom He begot, not through the cause of a womb, but for the profession of truth: just as He neither wills nor sees nor acts through the causes of bodies, but uses these designations of parts, so that through the ministries of bodily things the power of incorporeal efficacies may be perceived.

The prophet does not call a creature him whom God attests to be His Son.—The nature of human custom, then, does not allow, nor does the sense of the Lord's teaching permit, that the disciple be set before the teacher, or the servant command the master: since the one is subject to the other both through ignorance, as the ignorant to the knowing; and through condition is weaker, as servitude to dominion. Since these things are common judgment; by what rashness of example shall we now both call and reckon God a creature, and the Son a creature, when nowhere has He, both Master and Lord, spoken thus of Himself as servant and disciple to His own, nor has He taught that His nativity was either a creation or a making?

But the Father has never attested anything else than a Son, and the Son has professed nothing else than that God is His own Father; asserting Himself to be born, certainly not made or created, as He says: Every one that loveth the Father loveth the Son also, who was born of him.

The name of son does not befit a work.—But works are the making of creatures, not the nativity of generation. For neither is heaven a son, nor is earth a son, nor is the world a nativity, of which it is said, All things were made through him, and through the Prophet, The works of thy hands are the heavens: and through the same, Do not forsake the works of thy hands. Is a painting a son to the painter, or a sword a son to the smith, or a house a son to the architect? For these are works of those who make them: but to a father, only he who is born of him is a son.

We were made sons of God, not born, and therefore are not His own.—And we indeed are sons to God, but sons by making. We were sons without natural affection, since through the others.

For we too were once children of wrath; but we have been made sons to God through the spirit of adoption, and we merit to be called this rather than are born to it. And because everything that comes to be, before it comes to be, was not; we, when we had not been sons, are made into that which we are. For before, we were not sons: but after we merited it, we are this. But we are not born, but made; not begotten, but acquired. For God has acquired for himself a people: and by this He begot. But that God has begotten sons we never know with the signification of proper ownership. For He does not say: My sons I have begotten and exalted: but only this: Sons I have begotten and exalted.

The objection that Israel is called both His own and made.—Unless perhaps someone, in that He says: Israel is my firstborn son, will understand this, that He said "my firstborn," as detracting from the Son the property of generation; so that, because He also said "mine" of Israel, the assumption of made sons has been usurped in place of the property of nativity? And therefore is it not so that He is my beloved Son; since "mine" is also said to be proper to those who are manifestly not born. But that they are not born, though they are said to be born, is taught also from this, when it is said, To the people that shall be born, whom the Lord made.

Israel is not a proper son, but a proper firstborn. He who was not, is not properly a son.—Therefore the people of Israel is born in order that it may be made; nor, through the fact that it is said to be born, is it not also understood to be made. For it is a son by adoption, not by generation; and there is for it not property, but a mere designation. For although "my firstborn" is written of him; yet there is a great and wide difference between "My beloved Son" and "My firstborn son." For where there is nativity, there is "My beloved Son": but where there is an election from the nations, and an adoption through will, there is "My firstborn son." Here what is His own belongs to the firstborn: there what is His own belongs to the son.

And in nativity the son is first His own, and thus beloved; but in election the son is first firstborn, and thus afterward His own: so that, the son Israel having been adopted from among all peoples, what was proper to him was that he is the firstborn; but to Him who is born to the one God alone it is manifest that what is proper is that he is Son. There is not therefore a true and perfect nativity, where one is reckoned rather than generated: because it is not doubtful that that people, which is born into sonship, is also made.

But what comes to be, when it had not been, and through the fact of having been made is said to be born; there is not in it a true nativity, because before it was born it was something else than what it now is. And therefore it was not before it was born, that is, before it was made: because he who is a son from the nations was a nation before he was a son: and by this he is not truly a son, because he is not always a son. But the Only-begotten God neither ever was at some time not a Son, nor was He anything before He was Son, nor is He Himself anything except Son. And thus He who is always Son has not left room for the understanding of Himself, that He should at some time not have been.

It is common to human affairs both to have at some time not been, and to be out of nothing.—And human nativities indeed have, in time, a not-having-been: first because all are born from those who before were not. For although for each one being born there is an origin from him who existed; nevertheless that very one, from whom he is born, was not before he was born. Then he himself who was born, was born after he was not, time remaining before he is born. For being born today, in that which was of yesterday he was not; and into that which he is, from that which he was not, he began, and it is within our understanding that that which is born today was not yesterday. And thus his nativity, by which he exists, remains after that which was not; because it is necessary that today first exist after yesterday's time, so that for him there be a not-having-been in time.

And these things indeed are common in the origin of human affairs, that all things receive their beginning from having not been before: first indeed, as we have shown, through time, then through cause. And through time indeed it is not doubtful that those things which now have begun did not exist before: but through cause, because it does not follow for them that they exist from a cause such that they remain. For turn over all the causes of origins, and direct your understanding to what is prior: you will find that nothing began through a cause, while all things are created by the power of God into that which they are, and are not also born from something.

Whence also it is natural for each kind, through succession itself, that it should not have been and should have begun, while it is both after time and in time: and while all things universally are after time, they also take the cause of themselves from things previously not existing, since they are born from those things which before were not: that very first parent of the human race, Adam, having been formed from earth, which is out of nothing, and after time, that is, after heaven, earth, day, sun, moon, and stars, who both had no origin of being born and began though he had not been.

The Only-begotten neither ever was not, nor is out of nothing.—But for the Only-begotten God, over whom no prior time presides, it is not left that He should at some time not have been, because that very "at some time" is already prior, and afterward "not to have been" belongs to time: and He will not begin to exist after that time, but He Himself is prior to time, so that in that in which, before He is born, He was not, that very thing in which He was not shall be preferred to Him. Then, He who is born from Him who is, cannot be understood as born from that which was not: because for Him, He who is, is the cause for that which is; not also is that which is not the origin of His being born.

Therefore for Him who is neither in time, so as at some time not to have been; nor in the Father, that is, in the Author, so as to subsist from nothing: He has left no occasion for Himself, either that He was born from nothing, or that He was not before He was born.

The subtleties of the Arians against the eternity of the Son.—I am not unaware, moreover, that many of those whose mind, either dulled by impiety, does not grasp the sacrament of God, or whose fury is inclined, under the guise of religion, through the domination of a hostile spirit, to disparage God, are wont to affirm to the ears of the simpler folk this: that since we say the Son always existed, and that nothing that did not exist could ever have existed without birth, on the ground that it always was; they contend that by human understanding the notion that what always was should not be admitted as having been born; but that "the reason for being born is that something should be which was not; but to be what one was not, is, under common understanding, nothing other than to be born." And they add these arguments, subtle enough and pleasing to the ear: "If," he says, "he was born, he began; and since he began, he was not;

and since he was not, it cannot be that he had been." And therefore they contend that this is the utterance of pious understanding: "He was not before he was born: because, in order that he who was not might exist, it was not he who already existed that was born." Nor did he who already existed need birth, since he who was not was the one born, in order that he might exist.

The poison of captious questions. Faith is to be preferred to these.—And first of all, men who profess a religious knowledge of divine things ought, where the truth of evangelical and apostolic preaching prevailed, to have rejected the tortuous questions of clever philosophy, and rather to follow the faith which is in God: because a weak understanding will easily be stripped of the defense of its faith by the sophism of a syllogistic interrogation, since a captious proposition, by demanding a simple answer that submits to the terms of the question, in the end despoils one's very understanding through the questioning itself; so that what one lost in profession, one no longer holds even in conscience. For what will so necessarily submit to questioning as this: when it is asked of us, Does anything exist before it is born? Is it not in our profession that what is born did not exist before?

For it is neither in nature nor in necessity that what exists should be born: since to be born is necessary only for the purpose that a thing might exist, not because it already existed. When this has been granted by us—because it is rightly granted—stripped of the consciousness of faith, we now, taken captive, acquiesce in impious and alien pursuits.

These things are not only to be avoided, but also to be refuted. What learned faith accomplishes beyond unlearned faith.—Foreseeing this, the blessed Apostle Paul, as we have frequently shown, warned us to be on our guard, saying: See to it that no one despoil you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the elements of the world, and not according to Christ, in whom dwells all the fullness of divinity bodily. We must therefore be on guard against philosophy, and the pursuits of human traditions are not so much to be avoided as to be refuted. For we ought not to concede to them as though they conquer rather than deceive: because we, preaching Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God, ought rightly not so much to flee human doctrines as to refute them; and to both block and instruct the simpler folk, lest they be despoiled by these teachings.

For since God, being able to do all things, can wisely do all those very things, and neither does reason fall short of his power, nor power fall short of reason, it is fitting that those who preach Christ to the world should, through the knowledge of wise omnipotence, oppose the irreligious and imperfect doctrines of the world, according to that saying of the blessed Apostle: For our weapons are not carnal, but mighty before God unto the destruction of strongholds, destroying arguments, and every height that is raised up against the knowledge of God. The Apostle did not leave faith bare and destitute of reason: which, although it is most powerful for salvation, yet unless it is instructed through doctrine, will indeed have, amid adversities, a safe refuge for retreat, but will not also retain a steadfast assurance of holding its ground; and it will be as camps are for the weak after flight, not as undaunted fortitude is present for those who hold the camp.

Therefore insolent disputations against God must be crushed, and the fortifications of deceitful reasonings destroyed, and minds raised up to impiety must be ground down, not with carnal weapons, but with spiritual ones; not with earthly doctrine, but with heavenly wisdom: so that, as great as the distinction between divine and human things is, by so much heavenly reason may surpass earthly pursuits.

Although the Son is born, yet he always exists, because he is from the Father who always exists.—Let, then, the anxiety of perfidy cease; nor let it suppose that we deny what it itself does not understand, when that alone is well both understood and believed by us. For by the very utterance of our words, when we profess him born, we nevertheless do not proclaim him unborn. For to be unborn and to be born are not the same thing: because the one is from another, but the other is from no one. And it is one thing to be eternal always, without an author; another to be coeternal with the Father, that is, with the author. For where the Father is the author, there also is birth; but where the author is eternal, there also is the eternity of birth: because just as birth is from an author, so from an eternal author is eternal birth. Now everything that always exists is also eternal. But yet not everything that is eternal is also unborn.

For that which is born of the eternal has eternal being as that which is born. But that which is unborn is unborn together with eternity. But that which is born of the eternal, if it is not born eternal, then the father will no longer be an eternal author. If, therefore, anything of eternity were lacking to him who was born of the eternal Father, it would be beyond doubt that this same thing was lacking to the author: because what is infinite to the begetter is infinite also to the one begotten. For neither reason nor sense admits any middle ground between the birth of God the Son, and the begetting of God the Father: because in the begetting there is birth, and in the birth there is begetting. Each of these is without interval in itself, because without the other, neither is anything at all.

That therefore which does not stand except from both together, cannot in any respect endure without both together: because if in some respect one were lacking, that same one could not, in that respect, exist without the other.

Objection: What is born, did not exist.—But someone incapable of this divine sacrament will say: Everything that is born did not exist; because it was born in order that it might exist.

It does not befall the Son, who is always born, to have not existed.—And who then would doubt that things born in human affairs at some point did not exist? But it is one thing to be born of one who did not exist, another to be born of one who always exists. For every infancy, since it did not exist before, began in time. Which, growing in turn into childhood, afterward also compelled its way into adolescence, and then into fatherhood. And he is not always a father who previously, having begun, advanced into adolescence through childhood, and into childhood through infancy. Therefore he who is not always a father, has not always begotten either. But where the father always exists, the son also always exists. If, then, you hold in thought or understanding a God, in whose sacrament of knowledge it is proper that he is Father, yet not always the father of a begotten son—you also hold, in understanding and knowledge, that the one begotten is not always the son.

But if it is always proper to the Father that he is always father, it is necessarily proper to the Son that he is always Son. And how shall it fall within our speech and understanding that he did not exist before he was born, to whom it is proper always to be that which is born?

As the Son has all things in common with the Father, so also always existing. To the Father it is proper to be. To the Son it is proper also to be.—The Only-begotten, containing in himself, as God, the form and image of the invisible God, is equalled, in all those things which are proper to God the Father, through the fullness of true divinity in himself. For, as we have taught in the earlier books, through power and honor, just as the Father, so he too is to be honored and is powerful: so also, in that the Father always exists, it is common also to the Son, in that he is Son, always to exist. For according to what was said to Moses, He who is has sent me to you, it is an understanding beyond doubt that it is proper to God to be that which he is: because that which is cannot be understood or said not to be.

For to be and not to be are contraries: nor do these differing significations come together into one and the same thing; because while the one remains, the other will not be. Therefore where there is being, it cannot enter into either sense or speech to be non-being.

To our understanding, drawn back and continually recalled to the intelligence of him who is, this very thing alone, that he is, is always prior to it: because that which is infinite in God always withdraws itself from the recourse of our infinite understanding: so that before that which is proper to God—always to be—our retreating intention grasps nothing else; because nothing else, in proceeding by eternity toward the understanding of God, ever meets us beyond this, that God always is. That, therefore, which is signified concerning God through Moses, and which by common understanding we are permitted to understand as nothing else, is itself, as the Gospels testify, proper to the Only-begotten God: since in the beginning was the Word, and since this was with God, and since he was the true light, and since the Only-begotten God is in the bosom of the Father, and since Jesus Christ is God over all.

He is eternal from the eternal: hence he was not from nothing, nor did he ever not exist.—He therefore was, and is: because he is from him who, being what he is, always is. Now to be from him, that is, to be from the Father, is birth. But to be always from him who always is, is eternity; yet eternity not from itself, but from the eternal. Now from the eternal comes nothing other than the eternal. But if not eternal, then the father also, who is the author of the begetting, is not eternal. Since, then, it is proper to the one always to be father, and to the other always to be son, and in that he is, eternity is signified; through that also to which "to be" is proper, "to be eternal" is also proper. No one, moreover, doubts that begetting signifies birth, and that birth teaches an abiding existence (namely, from that from which the one born derives his origin), and not also a non-abiding one.

Furthermore it cannot be doubted that no one who already existed is born. For the cause of being born does not apply to him who by himself remains eternal. But the Only-begotten God, who is both the Wisdom of God and the Power of God and the Word, though born, testifies to the Father as his author. Since he was born of one who abides, he was not born from nothing. Since he was born before eternal ages, he must necessarily, by his birth, precede every understanding. He has not left it in his words that he did not exist before he was born. For if it falls under our understanding that he did not exist before he was born, then both our understanding and time are prior to his birth: because everything that did not exist is already subject both to understanding and to time, in that very signification by which it did not exist; because "not to have existed" is a part of time.

But he who is from eternity, and always was, is neither without birth, nor did he not exist; since both to have always existed is above time, and to have been born is birth.

Human reason impiously strives against eternal nativity.—We confess, then, that the only-begotten God was born, but was born before eternal ages; because this must be confessed, in that the words of the apostolic and prophetic proclamations bind us to it: although human perception does not grasp the understanding of an atemporal nativity, because it is not fitting that anything among earthly natures should be born before times. And when this shall be preached by us in this way, how again shall we say, by the same grasp of understanding, that he was not before he is born, since according to the Apostle the only-begotten God is before eternal times?

If therefore that he was born before eternal times is not a matter of human reasoning but of the profession of faithful understanding—because both the nativity is through an Author, and that which exceeds times is eternal, and it lies beyond earthly perception that he should be born before eternal times—then surely we are now, by an impious will, exalting the perception of human reason, so as to think, by the understanding of the world, that he was not before he was born, when in fact he who is born eternal is born beyond human perception and the understanding of the world. But eternal is whatever exceeds time.

Of one born before times it cannot be said, Before he was born, nor That he did not exist at some time.—For we comprehend all times either by opinion or by knowledge: since what now is, we know did not also exist the day before, because what existed the day before now is not; and what now is, is only now, and did not also exist the day before. But by opinion we measure past things in such a way that it is not doubted that before some city was founded there was a time when the city did not exist. Since, then, times are subject either to our knowledge or to our opinion, we judge by the sense of human understanding; so that we are thought to have said reasonably of some thing, "it did not exist before it was born," because the times, always brought forward before, precede the origin of each thing.

But indeed, when in the affairs of God, that is, in the nativity of God, nothing is not before eternal time; it does not fall to this, that of him to whom, before eternal times, eternal life was promised—as according to the saying of the blessed Apostle, in the hope of eternal life, which the God who does not lie promised before eternal times—it should be said that he at some time did not exist: because it cannot be understood that he began after something, who must be confessed to exist before eternal times.

We are bound to believe concerning the nativity of the Son otherwise than concerning our own. Hearing that he is always born, we perceive that he never did not exist.—If, then, that something should be born before eternal times is neither in human natures nor within understanding; and yet this is believed concerning God's professions of himself: how is it that what apostolic faith has spoken of as, without perception of eternal understanding, always born—that is, existing before eternal times—the unbelief of our own time again utters, through the sense of human understanding, that he did not exist before he was born? Since what is born before time is always born: because that which is before eternal time, this always is. But that which is always born does not admit that it at some time did not exist: because to have not existed at some time is now no longer to be always existent. But to be always is to exclude having not always been.

And once this is excluded—that through the fact that he is always born, he was not always—it does not fall to perception that he was not before he was born: because he who was born before eternal times is, in the sense of understanding, always born; although yet to be born before times does not fall under perception. For if—as indeed befits—before creation, whether invisible or corporeal, and before all ages and eternal times, and before all perception, he must be confessed to be born who, through the very fact that he is thus born, always is; it is also permitted by no perception to conceive that he was not before he was born: because he who was born before eternal times is before all perception, and it never falls under perception that he who must be confessed to be always should not have existed.

They reply, He who existed, then, was born.—But the cunning cavil of this question is put forward: "If," he says, "it does not fall under perception that he did not exist before he was born, this remains for perception, that he who existed was born."

It is one thing to be always born, another to exist before being born.—And to the caviller I will answer: Does he remember me saying anything other than "born"? Or is to exist before eternal times the same thing as for him who existed to be born? Because to be born what one already was is no longer to be born, but to change oneself by being born. But to be always born is this: to outrun, by being born, the sense of times, and not to be open to the understanding that he at some time did not exist unborn. It is not, then, the same thing, to be always born before eternal times, and to exist before being born. But to be always born before eternal times excludes his not having existed before he was born.

The Son neither exists, nor did not exist, before being born.—But this does not leave room for existing before being born: because he who is beyond perception is in no respect subject to perception. For if to be always born is beyond perception, it is no longer permitted, after perception, that he did not exist before he was born. Since, then, nothing else must be confessed as "to be always born" than "born," this does not fall under perception, either that he existed or did not exist before he was born: because nothing but "born before eternal times" always precedes perception.

He is therefore born, and always is: he of whom nothing else can be understood or said concerning himself, except "born." For since he is prior even to the very time of perceptions (because eternal time is before perception), he does not admit a perception judging concerning himself, that he existed or did not exist before he was born: because both to exist before being born does not belong to nativity, and not to have existed already belongs to time. Therefore both the infinity of eternal times consumes what belongs to time, that is, not having existed; and nativity does not allow what is not its own, that is, to exist before being born. But if either existing or not having existed should fall under perception, then nativity itself is after time: because he who is not always must necessarily have begun to exist after something.

He who is always born is perceived by the mind as always existing.—The end, therefore, both of faith and of speech and of perception is this: that the Lord Jesus both was born and always is: because if the mind, looking back, should search into anything concerning the Son, nothing else will ever occur to the perception of the one searching than that he was born and always is. As, therefore, it is proper to God the Father to exist without nativity, so it is owed to the Son through nativity to be always. But nativity will declare nothing other than the Father, nor will the Father declare anything other than nativity. For neither these names nor nature permits any middle ground.

For either the Father is not always, if the Son is not always; or if the Father is always, the Son too is always: because to the extent that time is denied to the Son so that he might not have always been Son, to that same extent it is lacking to the Father so that he might not always be Father: so that, although he is always God, yet he was not Father in that infinity in which he is God.

According to the Arians, God is not always Father.—The profession of impiety extends even to this, that it assigns not to the Son the times of nativity, but to the Father the generation: because the manner of generation is constituted within the times of nativity.

They are refuted. Times according to the Arians.—Do you think it pious and religious, heretic, to confess that God is indeed always, but not always Father? But if to think so seems to you pious, you must condemn Paul of impiety, who says the Son exists before eternal times; you must also accuse Wisdom herself, testifying of herself, that she was founded before the ages—she who was present with the Father when he prepared the heaven. But you, in order to attribute to God a beginning by which he is Father, first decree a beginning for the times by which they began: for if they began, then the Apostle is a liar, who professed them to be eternal. For you are accustomed to reckon times from the creation of the sun and moon, because it is written of these: "And let them be for signs and for times and for years". But he who is before heaven, who according to you is also before time, is likewise before the age.

And he is not only before the age, but even before generations of generations preceding the ages. Why do you confine things divine and infinite within things frail, earthly, and narrow? Paul knows nothing in Christ but the eternity of times. Wisdom speaks not of herself as being after something, but as before all things. With you, times were instituted from the sun and moon: but David signifies that Christ abides before the sun, saying: "Before the sun is his name". And lest you should think the things of God to have begun with the origin of this world, the same says: "And before the moon, generations of generations".

Here times are despised by such great men, worthy also of the spirit of prophecy: and nothing is left to human perception, in which it might extend itself before the nativity which exceeds eternal times: but let the faith of religious opinion have only this measure—that it remember the Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten God, both as born, unto the confession of a perfect nativity, and, in the veneration of his divinity, know him not to be ignorant of the eternal.

It is objected that Wisdom testifies that she was created.—But we are accused of falsehood, and along with us the doctrine of apostolic preaching is charged, for having confessed the nativity, yet professed the eternity of the nativity: so that the nativity might attest the Author, and the eternity, in the mystery of the divine nativity, might exceed the perception of human opinion. For there is brought forward against us the testimony of Wisdom concerning herself, who taught that she was created, in these words: "The Lord created me in the beginning of his ways".

What was created from the age, the same was founded before the age.—And O wretched man, heretic, who, seizing the arms granted to the Church against the Synagogue, attacks the faith of ecclesiastical preaching, and snatches the most strongly fortified understanding of saving doctrine against the salvation of all men—contending that Christ is a creature by these words, rather than being, like the Jew, one who denies the divinity of Christ before the eternal ages and, in all the works and teachings of God, quenches his efficacy through these very words of Wisdom subsisting!

Wisdom, who now says that she was created in the beginning of God's ways and in his works from the age—lest perhaps she should be thought not to abide before Mary—did not, however, refer her being created to the understanding of a nativity; because she was created in the beginning of the ways and in the works; but rather, lest anyone should think to subject this beginning of the ways—which indeed is the starting point of human knowledge concerning divine things—to the infinite nativity in time, she professed that she was founded before the ages: so that, while it is one thing to be created in the beginning of the ways and in the works, and another to be founded before the ages, the founding might be understood to be prior to the creation: and this very fact, that she was founded in the works before the age, might show the mystery of the creation; because the founding is before the age, and the creation, in the beginning of the ways and in the works, is after the age.

The age precedes not in time, but in eternity.—But now, lest the creation and founding should offend the faith of the divine birth, there follows: Before he made the earth, before he established the mountains, before all the hills he begot me. Already he who was founded before the age is begotten before the earth: not only before the earth, but also before the mountains and hills. And in these things indeed, since Wisdom is speaking of herself, she says more than is heard. For all things which are signified for the understanding of infinity must be of such a kind that they are not later in time than any thing or kind whatever. But for the demonstration of eternity, temporal things will by no means be fitted; because, by the fact that they are later than the rest, they do not of themselves manifest the beginning of infinity, since they themselves have received a temporal beginning.

For what great thing is it that God begot the Lord Christ before the earth, when the origin of the Angels is found to be older than the creation of the earth? Or why should he who is said to have been begotten before the earth also be shown to be born before the mountains, and not only before the mountains but even before the hills, since the signification of the hills comes after the mountains, and the understanding of the mountains comes after the earth? By which it cannot be supposed that these things were said for this reason, that he might be understood to exist before the hills and mountains and earth, who by the eternity of his infinity surpasses those things which are before the earth and mountains and hills.

He unfolded his infinity as far as was permitted, yet it could not be comprehended by created things.—But the divine speech has not left our understanding devoid of reason; for it shows the cause of what was said through what follows: God made the regions, and the uninhabitable places, and the peaks which are inhabited beneath heaven. When he was preparing the heaven, I was with him, and when he was marking out his own seat. When he was making the strong clouds above upon the winds, and when he was setting fixed fountains beneath the heaven, and when he was making the strong foundations of the earth, I was with him, arranging. What place of time is this? Or to what extent may the perception of human understanding be permitted to extend itself beyond the infinite birth of the only-begotten God?

For his generation cannot be comprehended by means of those things whose creation we conceive in the mind—he who is prior to all these things—so that although he precedes in time, he is nevertheless not infinite, to whom this alone is attributed, that he was born before temporal things. For while those things are subject to time in their constitution, he, though prior to all of them, is nevertheless not free from time: because the temporal constitution of these things points to a time of the birth of him who was born before—since this itself is time to him, namely, that he is set before temporal things.

He taught that he is coeternal with eternal things.—But the word of God and the teaching of true wisdom speaks perfect things, and signifies things absolute, teaching that he is prior not to temporal things, but to things infinite. For when the heaven was being prepared, he was present with God. Is the preparation of heaven, then, something temporal for God, as though a sudden motion of thought had crept unexpectedly into a mind before torpid and dull, and had, in human fashion, sought the outlay and instruments for fabricating the heaven? But the prophet has another understanding of the works of God, when he says: By the word of the Lord the heavens were made firm, and all their power by the breath of his mouth. Yet by the command of God the heavens needed to be made firm; for their apparatus and power, in this firmness of their undisturbed constitution, arises not from any tempering and mingling of matter, but from the breath of the divine mouth.

What then is it, that when God was preparing the heaven, Wisdom, begotten of him, was present with him; since neither does the creation of heaven consist in a preparation, nor is it of the nature of God to linger in the preparation of a work he is thinking out? For nothing that exists in things has ever not been always with God: which, although they began to exist for their own creation, were nevertheless not begun with regard to the knowledge or power of God. And the prophet is a witness for us, saying: God, who made all things that are to be. For the things that are to be, although in respect of their being created they will still come to be, are nevertheless already made to God, to whom nothing is new or sudden in the creating of things: while there is a dispensation of times for their creation, and they already exist as created in the foreknowing efficacy of the divine power.

And therefore now Wisdom, teaching that she was born before the ages, teaches that she is prior not only to those things which have been created, but coeternal with things eternal, namely with the preparation of heaven, and the setting apart of the seat of God. For the seat is not set apart at the moment it is made; for it is one thing for a seat to be set apart, another for it to be arranged. Nor is the heaven prepared at the moment it is being prepared: for she was present with him who was preparing and setting it apart. But afterward she was arranging together with him who was preparing: showing her eternity as present with him who prepares, and her ministry when she arranges together with him who prepares.

Therefore now also she said that she was begotten before the earth and mountains and hills, because she would teach that she was present also at the preparation of heaven: that she might show these things to have already been done then, when the heaven was being prepared, in the presence of God, through the fact that nothing is new to God.

God from eternity prepared the world all at once and at a single stroke.—For the preparation of things to be created is perpetual and eternal: nor was the body of this universe made by parts of thought, so that first the heaven was thought of, then afterward the care and treatment of the earth entered upon God's thought, and it was thought out piece by piece, that first it should be spread out into a plain, then afterward, by a better plan, be raised up into mountains, then again be varied also with hills, and fourthly be rendered habitable even in its very peaks, and that the prepared heaven and the seat of God should be marked out, and that the strong clouds above should hold the exhalations of the winds; that then fixed fountains should flow beneath the heaven, and finally that the earth should be made firm with strong foundations. For Wisdom professes herself to be prior to each and all of these things.

But since all things beneath heaven were made through God, and Christ was present at the arranging of heaven, and he precedes even the eternity itself of the prepared heaven, this does not allow one to suppose in God particular thoughts of minute things divided into parts, because the whole preparation of these things is coeternal with God. For although, according to Moses, the solidifying of the firmament, the baring of the dry land, the gathering of the sea, the establishment of the stars, and the generation of the waters and the earth in bringing forth living things from themselves have their own dispensation: yet the creation of heaven, earth, and the other elements is not distinguished even by the slightest moment of operation; because their preparation subsisted with God in an equable infinity of eternity.

Epilogue.—Since Christ, then, was present with God amid these infinite and eternal things, he has allowed us knowledge of his birth alone: so that, in the same measure as the understood birth of God would advance our faith, so much would the known eternity of his birth avail for the religion we have undertaken; because from him who is an eternal Father, neither reason nor sense admits anything, unless an eternal Son is proclaimed.

The name of creation in Christ is objected in vain.—But the name and profession of creation troubles us. Let the name of creation trouble us indeed, if birth before the ages, and creation into the beginning of the ways of God and into his works, were not both proclaimed. For birth cannot be taken for creation: since birth is before cause, but creation is through cause. For before the preparation of heaven he existed, and was founded before the age, who was created into the beginning of the ways of God and into his works. Or is it of the same understanding, to be created into the beginning of the ways of God and into his works, and to be born before all things? Of which the one has time in its accomplishment, but the other contains an understanding beyond time.

It is wrongly objected that he was created as a kind of minister for the founding of the world.—Or perhaps you would wish that which is created into the works to be understood in this way, that it was created for the sake of the works: that is, that Christ was created for the purpose of accomplishing the works, so that he himself would remain rather a servant and operator of the world, not born the Lord of glory; and that he was created for the ministry of accomplishing the age, not also that he was always the Son of love and King of the ages.

But although the common understanding extinguishes this most impious sense of yours—since it is one thing to be created into the beginning of the ways of God and into his works, and another to be born before the ages—yet this same passage, lest you should falsely claim that the Lord Christ was created for the sake of the working of the world, comes forward, since it shows God the Father to be the maker and worker of the universe. Safely indeed, because she herself, arranging, was present to him who was preparing all things.

But whereas all Scripture would have spoken of the Lord Jesus Christ as the creator of the world, yet now Wisdom, in order to destroy the occasion of impiety, has professed God the Father to be the fabricator of the world, and has not taught that she herself was absent from the fabricating, since she was present even at the preparing: and while the Father was preparing, and Wisdom was arranging together with him who was preparing, and was present also to him who was preparing; by this very fact, in that she is understood to have been created for the sake of the works, because she was present at the eternal preparation of the works to come, she would neither make Scripture a liar, because she was arranging together with him who was preparing.

Wisdom calls herself created, looking to what she accomplished after the age.—But at last, by the revelation of Catholic teaching, learn, heretic, from the beginning, what it means for Christ to have been created into the beginning of the ways of God and into his works, and learn from the very words of Wisdom herself the folly of your impious dullness. For she began thus: If I shall declare to you the things that are daily, I will be mindful to enumerate the things that are from the age: for when she had before said: You, O men, I beseech, and I send forth my voice to the sons of men. Understand cunning, you simple ones, and, you unlearned, apply your heart; and again: Through me kings reign, and the mighty write justice. Through me princes are magnified, and tyrants through me hold the earth; and again: I walk in the ways of equity, and I abide amid the paths of justice: that I may divide substance to those who love me, and fill their treasures with good things.

Wisdom does not keep silent her daily work. And first, admonishing all, she bids the simple understand cunning and the unlearned apply their heart, so that the vehement and diligent reader might weigh the distinct and separate meanings of the words. She thus teaches that all things are done, understood, praised, and held in their own manners and their own constitutions: and she shows that within herself are contained the reigns of kings, the prudence of the mighty, the famous works of princes, and the right of tyrants who hold the earth; and that she herself is not mixed up with iniquities, nor takes part in injustices; and this for the purpose that, by interceding in all the works of equity and justice, she may supply to those who love her the abundance of eternal goods and incorruptible treasures. Therefore, having professed that she will relate the things which happen daily, she also promises to be mindful in enumerating the things that are from the age.

And now what dullness of sense is it to suppose that the things which are said to be remembered "from the age" were done "before the age"? Since in those things which are "from the age," every work comes after the age: but those things which are "before the age" precede the constitution of the age which is posterior to them. Therefore Wisdom, having professed herself mindful to speak the things that are from the age, says: The Lord created me in the beginning of his ways, for his works. This, then, is the signification of things done from the age: it is not a doctrine of a generation proclaimed before the ages, but of a dispensation begun from the age.

Born before the ages, created from the age, what this means. That He is the beginning of the way of the works of God. When and why He was created.—And it must be asked, what it means that God, born before the ages, is again created into the beginning of the ways of God and into the works. For where there is nativity before the age, there is the eternity of an infinite generation; but where there is a creation from the age into the ways of God and into His works, the cause of the creation is adapted to the works and the ways. And first, since Christ is Wisdom, it must be seen whether He Himself is the beginning of the way of the works of God. Nor, as I think, is this doubtful: for He says, I am the way; and, No one comes to the Father, but through me.

The way is the guide of those going, the course of those hastening, the security of those who are ignorant, and a certain teacher of things unknown and desired. Therefore He is created into the beginning of the ways in the works of God: because He is both the way, and leads to the Father. But the reason for this creation, which is from the age, must be sought. For it is the mystery of the last dispensation, by which, being also created in the body, He professed Himself to be the way of the works of God. But He was created into the ways of God from the age: when, subjected to a visible form of creation, He assumed the condition of creation.

The ways of God from the age, the forms of created things assumed by the Word. Why He assumed various forms.—Let us see, then, into what ways of God, and into what works, the Wisdom born of God before the ages was created from the ages. Adam heard the voice of one walking in paradise. Do you suppose the gait of one walking was heard except in the form of an assumed creation: so that He who was heard walking about might subsist in some creation? I do not ask in what manner He spoke to Cain and Abel and Noah, and in what manner He was present blessing Enoch also. An angel speaks to Hagar: and yet He is the same God. Is it of the same form when He is seen as an angel, whose nature is that by which He is God? Certainly the form of an angel is shown, where afterward the nature of God is recalled. But why should I speak of the angel? A man came to Abraham.

Does Christ, in the guise of this creation according to man, stand there such as He also is as God? But a man speaks, and is present in a body, and is nourished with food: yet He is worshiped as God. Surely He who was before an angel, is now also a man: lest the diversity of this very assumed creation should allow it to be understood that this is the natural form of God. He is present also to Jacob, even to the embrace of the wrestling, in human guise, and joins hand, and strains with limbs, and bends at the sides, and in every motion and gait of ours He is found. But the same is afterward shown also to be fire to Moses: so that you might learn faith in the created nature more with regard to appearance than to the substance of nature. He had then in Himself the power of blazing up, yet not taking on the natural necessity of burning: because the blaze of fire appeared without harm to the bush.

He assumed without loss to eternity. By the same power by which He assumed, He consumed.—Run through the times, and understand of what sort He was seen, whether to Joshua the son of Nun, prophet of His name, or also to Isaiah, seen even according to the evangelic testimony proclaiming, or to Ezekiel, admitted even to the knowledge of the resurrection, or to Daniel, confessing the Son of man in the eternal kingdom of the ages, and to the others, to whom He bore Himself in the guise of a varied creation, into the ways of God and into the works of God, namely for the advancement of the knowledge of God and of our eternity. Why now does this dispensation of human salvation contrive so impious an insult against the eternal nativity? This creation is from the ages: but the infinite nativity is before the ages.

Do try, indeed, to do violence to the words, if any Prophet, if the Lord, if the Apostle, if any speech at all has referred the name of creature to the eternal nativity of the divinity. For in all these instances God, who is a consuming fire, is so present as created, that He consumed the creation by the very power by which He had assumed it: able again to abolish what had existed only for the sake of contemplation.

Paul said Christ was made as man. He also said created.—But that blessed and true nativity of flesh conceived within the Virgin, since then both the nature and the form of our creature was being born, the Apostle named creature and making. And certainly with him (according to him) this is the name of the true nativity according to man, when he says: But when the fullness of time came, God sent His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, that He might redeem those who are under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. He, then, is His own Son, who is a making in man and from man; and not only a making, but also a creature, as it is said: As the truth is in Jesus, that you put off, according to your former manner of life, the old man, which is corrupted according to the desires of deceit. But be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, which is created according to God.

Therefore that new man must be put on, who is created according to God. For He who was the Son of God, was born also the Son of man. Because it was not the nativity of divinity, but the creation of flesh; the new man received the signification of his kind, created according to God who was born before the ages. And why the new man was created according to God, He shows, adding accordingly: In justice, and holiness, and truth. For there was no guile in Him: and He was made for us justice and sanctification, and He Himself is the truth. This Christ, therefore, who is created the new man according to God, we put on. He is created according to God, because according to the justice, and sanctification, and truth of God, man was created ignorant of sin.

Creation cannot be attributed to eternal nativity.—If, therefore, Wisdom, recalling to mind the things that were done from the age, said that she was created into the works of God and into the ways of God; and created in such a way as to teach that she was founded before the ages, lest the mystery of that variously and frequently assumed creation should seem to have changed her nature, since the firmness of the founding could not admit the disturbance of an overturned state; but on the other hand, lest the founding should seem to show anything other than nativity, she professed before all things that she was begotten: now why is creation attributed to nativity, when she who is begotten before all things is herself founded before the ages; but she who is founded before the age is herself created from the ages into the beginning of the ways of God and into His works: so that creation from the ages is understood to differ from that nativity which is before the ages and before all things.

Impiety at least has no excuse, that it should plead the error of impiety.

In what sense, even though ignorantly, it could still not be impiously attributed.—For even if the weakness of understanding should hinder the sense of religious opinion, so that it could not now grasp what the property of creation is; nevertheless, even he who, following the Apostle's word, attributes the making to the true nativity, ought to have judged that creation too, though unlearnedly, yet not impiously, ought to serve the faith of generation.

For the Apostle, when about to proclaim the nativity of one from one, that is, of the Lord from the Virgin, without the conception of human passions, seems not to have spoken outside of reason when he said "made of a woman," whom he knew to be born, and had frequently said so: so that both the nativity might show the truth of the generation, and the "making" of one from one might attest the nativity; because the name of "making" would exclude the conception of human mingling, since He who was not doubted to be rather born was said to have been made from a virgin. But see now how impious you are, O heretic.

No prophetic, nor evangelic, nor apostolic word has said that Jesus Christ was rather created than born from God: but you deny the nativity, and affirm the creature, not according to the Apostle's meaning, who says "made" lest it be doubted that He was born, one from one; but toward the most impious sense, that God might not subsist by natural nativity, since a creature rather would have subsisted from nothing. This is the first poison of your unhappy mind, not to name the nativity a creature, but to fit the faith of creation in place of nativity. Although indeed it would be the mark of a poor understanding, yet not altogether irreligious, to have said "created" for this reason, that the impassible nativity from God, as of one from one, might be known.

The constant faith concerning the eternal nativity of the Son.—But the constant and apostolic faith suffers none of these things. For it knows in what dispensation of time Christ was created, and in what eternity of the ages He was born. But born of God, He is God, and there is no doubtful divinity in Him of true nativity and perfect generation. For we confess nothing in the things of God except what is born and eternal. Born, however, not after anything, but before all things: so that the nativity may only attest an Author, and not signify anything preposterous in itself from the Author. And indeed, by common confession, the nativity is indeed second from the Author, because it is from God; yet it is not separable from the Author, because insofar as our understanding will try to exceed the comprehension of the nativity, to that extent it must also exceed that of the generation.

This alone, therefore, is the pious speech about God, to know the Father: and to know with Him Him who is from Him the Son. Nor indeed are we taught anything else about God, except that He is the Father of the only-begotten God and Creator. Let human weakness, therefore, not stretch beyond itself: and let it say only this, in which alone is its salvation, that before the mystery of the flesh in the Lord Jesus Christ, it always knew this, that He was born.

Hilary professes to adhere to this, which he does not even limit by his own understanding.—I indeed, insofar as I shall be strong by this Spirit granted to me by You, holy Father, almighty God, will confess You to be eternal Father, as I confess You to be eternal God. Nor will I ever break out into such folly and impiety as, being an arbiter of Your omnipotence and mysteries, to raise this sense of my weakness beyond the religious opinion of Your infinity, and the faith of eternity signified to me: so as to determine that You were ever without Your Wisdom and Power and Word, the only-begotten God my Lord Jesus Christ. For the weak and imperfect speech of our nature does not prejudge my understanding concerning You; so that faith should be strangled within silence by poverty of speech.

For although word and wisdom and power in us are the work of our inner motion, yet with You there is the absolute generation of the perfect God, who is both Your Word and Wisdom and Power; so that He who is shown to be born of You in these names of Your eternal properties may always be inseparable from You: born, however, in such a way that He signifies nothing else to Himself than You as Author; nor does He lose the faith of infinity through this, that He is recorded to have been born before eternal times.

In many natural things, whose cause lies hidden, faith comes to our aid; how much more in things divine.—For thou hast granted many things of this sort in human affairs, whose effect, though the cause be unknown, is nevertheless not unrecognized. And it is a religious faith where there is also a natural ignorance. For when I raised toward thy heaven these feeble eyes of my light, I believed it to be nothing else than thy heaven. For beholding in it those star-bearing circles, and the yearly returns, and the Pleiades, and the north, and the morning star, allotted each to their diverse offices of ministry, I understand thee to be God in these things, though I do not grasp their understanding. But when I beheld the wondrous risings of thy sea, not having attained to the origin of its waters, nor to the movement of this measured alternation, yet grasping a faith of reason, though it be beyond my discernment, in these things too which I do not know, I am not without knowledge of thee.

Now indeed when my mind is turned to the earth, which by the power of hidden causes takes up what is sown, dissolves what it has taken up, gives life to what is dissolved, multiplies what has been given life, confirms what has been multiplied—I find nothing in these things which I could understand by my own sense; but my ignorance profits me toward the understanding of thee, since, unskilled in the nature that serves me, I understand thee only by the use of my own benefit. Not knowing even myself, I so perceive it, that I marvel at thee the more for this, that I am ignorant of myself. For the motion or reason or life of my discerning mind I perceive without understanding it, and perceiving it I owe it to thee, who beyond the understanding of my natural origin dost impart to me the perception of a nature that delights.

And though, not knowing thee by my own powers, I understand thee, and understanding, I venerate thee, yet I will not relax my faith in thy omnipotence in thy own affairs because I do not know it; so that my perception should seize upon the origin of thy Only-begotten, and subject it to itself, and something be in me whereby I might reach beyond both my Creator and my God.

The Son is born of the Father's substance, and thus is second from him, yet eternal and undivided.—His nativity is before eternal times. If there is anything among things which precedes eternity, there will surely be something which exceeds the sense of eternity. For he is thy own, and thy Only-begotten is thine own: not a portion, not an extension, not, according to the notion of efficient causes, some empty name; but Son, Son true God from thee God the Father, and begotten by thee in the unity of thy nature; to be confessed after thee in such a way that he is with thee, because thou art the eternal author of his eternal origin. For while he is from thee, he is second from thee; while he is thine, thou art not to be separated from him: because thou art not to be confessed as having ever been without thine own, lest thou be charged either with imperfection before the generation, or with superfluity after the generation.

And thus the eternal nativity avails only to this, that we may know thee to be the eternal Father of the Only-begotten Son from thee before eternal times.

The Holy Spirit is not a creature.—And it is too little for me, in the duty of my faith and voice, to deny that my Lord and God, thy Only-begotten Jesus Christ, is a creature: I will not suffer this fellowship of the name even in thy Holy Spirit, who is indeed from thee, and sent through him. For great is my reverence toward the things that are thine. Nor, because knowing thee alone unbegotten, and the Only-begotten born from thee, I shall yet not call the Holy Spirit begotten, will I ever call him created. I fear the insults of this word, which I hold in common with the other things established by thee, as they creep even toward thee. Thy Holy Spirit searches and knows thy deep things, according to the Apostle, and thine intercessor speaks for me to thee things ineffable from me: and shall I not only speak of, but even defame with the name of creation, the power of his nature which abides from thee through thy Only-begotten?

Nothing but that which is thine own penetrates thee; nor is the depth of thy immense majesty measured by a foreign and alien power. Whatever enters into thee is thine own; nor is whatever is present by the power of one who searches, foreign to thee.

He is ineffable.—But to me he is ineffable, whose ineffable utterances on my behalf are spoken to me.

For as in the fact that thy Only-begotten was born of thee before eternal times, all ambiguity of speech and difficulty of understanding ceasing, only the fact that he was born remains; so too, that thy Holy Spirit is from thee through him, even though I do not grasp it by sense, yet I hold it by conscience. For in thy spiritual things I am dull, thy Only-begotten saying: Marvel not that I have said to thee, You must be born again. The Spirit breathes where it wills, and you hear its voice, but you know not whence it comes, or whither it goes. So is everyone who is born of water and the Holy Spirit. I possess the faith of my regeneration without knowing it, and what I do not know, I already hold. For I am reborn without my own perception, along with the efficacy of being reborn. But there is no measure to the Spirit, who speaks when he wills, what he wills, where he wills.

And shall I refer to the ranks of creatures the nature of him whose coming and going, even under the awareness of one standing by, is unknown, and shall I limit it by a definition of its origin? All things indeed were made through the Son, who was with thee, God, in the beginning, God the Word, thy John declares. But Paul enumerates all things created in him, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible. And when he recalled that all things were created in Christ and through Christ, he judged it a sufficient designation for the Holy Spirit that he called him thy Spirit. With these men, especially chosen by thee, I hold this view, that just as I say nothing further about thy Only-begotten beyond the sense of my understanding according to them, than that he was born; so also, beyond the opinion of human understanding, I say nothing further about thy Holy Spirit according to them, than that he is thy Spirit.

Nor let this be to me a useless contention of words, but the steadfast profession of an unwavering faith.

Prayer.—Preserve, I beseech thee, this uncontaminated religion of my faith, and even to the departure of my spirit grant me this voice of my conscience: that what I professed in the Symbol of my regeneration, baptized in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, I may always hold fast: namely, that I adore thee our Father, thy Son together with thee; that I may deserve thy Holy Spirit, who is from thee through thy Only-begotten. Because I have a sufficient witness for my faith, saying: Father, all mine are thine, and thine are mine, my Lord Jesus Christ, abiding in thee and from thee and with thee, God forever, who is blessed unto ages of ages. Amen.