Against the Arians

The deceits of the Arians.

Beginning therefore from the very head of the perfidy, not of the faith, and running thence through the whole body, we shall prove that many things have been heaped together by the fraud of a common profession which we cannot indeed accept; and that some things have been piled up without any semblance of shame. For one God is set forth not without fraud, nor are two simply denied; the name of substance is altogether sworn away for this reason, that the Son may be cut off from the Father; finally his nativity is reported as unknown, which, if it be believed as it is, from the Father, is by that very confession sufficiently known.

The Father is called greater than the Son, yet not by that difference by which the Father is greater than the Son, but greater in all the goods of divine glory; and if the Son is less in these, it will not even be granted that he is in the Father, since his eternal blessedness will receive into itself nothing except what is proper to it. But nothing is proper to God except what is full and perfect; nor again will the Father deign to be in him in whom he could not be wholly. It is denied that the Father has a beginning, for this reason, that the Son may be believed to have his origin not from an author but from time. But I think that one to whom a beginning is thus ascribed cannot be denied to be liable also to an end.

Then the Son is said to be subject to the Father, not, however, as a Son to a Father, but as a servant to a Lord, though we read that a servant cannot be an heir. Finally, when he is said to be subject to God along with every creature, the Father is proclaimed invisible and immortal, so that the Son may lie, of course, in the contrary of these. If, then, we refute each of these things, not by human presumption, but by divine authority, it will follow that the catholic faith stands on that side which receives God to be such as he who is God ought to be.

Poison smeared with honey.

It is agreed, he says, that God is one. They cannot indeed seem to argue by slanderous conjectures, and to twist the sanctity of simple faith by malicious interpretation. But one must look to Ursacius and Valens and Potamius, because very often, in the same words, they have confessed the one God by a subtle fraud. I have accepted nothing simple in this profession of faith, which at first sight flatters, with heretical subtlety, so as to deceive the ignorant, the credulous, the unwary—in the same way that honey commends a cup of poison. It is agreed, he says, that the one God is the almighty Father. None of us denies this, because none is ignorant of it; but (as can be proved from their own treatises) we say that in this passage they have professed not so much one God, as one almighty Father. For with equal constancy they refuse the Son, and yet confess the Son to be God.

I think they will not deny having taken up the other; and therefore it remains entirely in their power, in this their perfidy, not faith, whether they call the one God the Father, or the one God. Although in the whole body of their profession they so far do not deny our Lord as to destroy him as God—that is, they call him by the name only of Lord, by which name we too are accustomed to be called. I, he says, have said: You are gods. By which name Moses too was formerly granted the title: I will make you, he says, a god to Pharaoh. Let no one, therefore, think that the catholic profession is accomplished by these words, if we both confess the one God the Father, and do not deny the Son to be God. For the Father can be called one God in such a way that he is one Father, not the one God. And the Son too can be called God in such a way that he is not God.

God is one, or none. Blind heretics.

Two gods, he says, we know can neither exist nor ought to be preached. This we never proclaim from our mouth either—two gods. For God, if he is not one and true, is not God. But it must be noted by what definition this is set forth, to what perfidy this whole thing is prepared, into which crime words common to us both are made to break forth. For immediately they set forth why they have denied two gods: Because God himself says: I go to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God; by which definition, through an evil interpretation, the Son is separated from the Father to such a degree, and set below the almighty God, that the condition of nativity and the weakness of humanity are made to be shared by us together with him.

Then they add "the God of all"; "God is one"—by which statement the Lord is absolutely denied to be God; for he is subjected to God the Father not by the name of Son, but by the condition of a creature. And I believe that at this point Apostolic authority will be claimed in their defense, that Christ is said to be God rather than actually be so, because it is written: And God gave him a name which is above every name. But they also cite the Lord's own words denying that he is the true God, when he says: This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God; and: Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. Further you will hear: Why do you not seek honor from the one and only God? But of that day and hour no one knows, except the Father alone. O blind leaders! O men deceived by worldly ambition!

Not distinguishing the twofold state of the Lord's power, each remaining within its own proper distinctness, but applying to God whatever is said of his manhood, so that God himself is made to share in the weakness of man.

The blasphemies of the Arians. The letter of Potamius.

And therefore you wish this twofold state to appear not joined but confused, as also one of your own number, that is, the letter of Potamius which has been sent both from East and West, in which he asserts that, the flesh and spirit of Christ having been coagulated by the blood of Mary and reduced into one body, God was made passible. This he says lest anyone should believe him to be from that source of which it is sufficiently agreed he is impassible. You have therefore made out of the Spirit of God and the flesh of man I know not what third thing: because he is not truly even God, if he ceases to be the Word (for he was made flesh); nor truly man, because he is not properly flesh, for he was the Word; so that, as it were, from both he is now neither—he, I say, he who, against this poison, distinguished each of his own substances by the property of its affection.

For the Spirit in him governs its own things, that is, its powers and works and signs; and the flesh performed its own passions. He desired food, when he was tempted by the devil; he thirsted at the well of Samaria, though it is the prophet's word: The eternal God will neither thirst nor hunger. What further, out of human feeling, did he weep for Lazarus and for Jerusalem? At last he was sorrowful even unto death. But what he expressed by feeling, did he not also testify by words? For he says to Nicodemus: That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit; and, the flesh, he says, is weak, but the spirit is willing. Therefore the spirit does not become flesh, nor the flesh spirit—which these excellent teachers wish, namely, that our Lord and God, by this mixture of substances, was made passible. And they wish him to be called passible for this reason, lest he also be believed impassible.

But what need is there to scrutinize deeper things, and to expose and publish to common judgment the inner venom coming forth through arguments, when the light-fleeing serpent, unwinding its course through its twists and proceeding tortuously, has at length shown what and how great it is, and, sprinkling its poison as usual with its accustomed freedom, has poured forth the whole of it at once in its triumphs? From the bishops proceeds this edict: Let no one say "one substance"—that is: Let no one preach in the Church that the Father and the Son are of one power. What have you done, O men of blessed memory, who, gathered at Nicaea from all parts of the world, and having examined the sacred volumes, made with careful discourse the perfect rule of the catholic faith, giving to those who believed rightly the right hands of a common faith, but to those in error a form for believing?

Behold your labor, behold your anxious care, to what has it come, by which the seeds of the evil of the East, insofar as it was in your power at that time, you slew by the catholic profession! It is forbidden to be preached in the Church, which alone you decreed ought to be preached in the Church for the detection of heresies. That which you approved is taken away, and that which you condemned is brought in: because the lie could not be built up unless the truth were destroyed. That truth indeed is not subject to destruction, and, as it is always incorrupt, it will endure; but it has punished those who lay sacrilegious hands upon it, as if it had been violated.

Let no one say "one substance." What crime, what wickedness is in this word, on what side does it strike the catholic faith? Is it in the sound of the term, or in the interpretation of the thing itself? I am not mistaken in anything: the interpretation is free of fault. For substance is said to be that which is always of itself; that is, which subsists within itself by its own proper power; which force belongs to God alone and only. But that this term is usual and familiar in the divine volumes, I do not think even those who deny it are ignorant. For David, in the person of Christ: I am stuck in the mire of the deep, and there is no substance. And again: My substance is in the lower parts of the earth. And: My substance is ever before you. And: My substance is as nothing before you. Let the usurer search out his substance. But also the sentence of Solomon: Your substance, he says, and your sweetness.

And Jeremiah: If they had stood in my substance. And in the Proverbs: The substance of the rich man is a fortified city. And in the same: Fathers divide house and substance to their sons. But also Tobias: If, he says, you have abundant substance. And the same: Son, out of your substance give alms. But also John: Whoever has the substance of the world. And in the Gospel: Behold, he says, I give half of my substance. We have gathered these examples together for this reason, lest that saying should ensnare the unlearned, which they have asserted; namely, that "substance" was not preached because it is nowhere found in the divine Scriptures. Therefore, if neither the word "substance" itself is new to the sacred letters, nor does its interpretation carry any fault, it remains for us to examine for what reason this name is rejected. Examining it, however, we find that they reject not the name, but the force of the name.

And if this becomes clear, we shall have among us a right view of the standing of the name; and their own understanding will be shown to be at fault, since, while seeking new paths of profane understanding, they have withdrawn from the straight boundary line of the Gospels.

Yet before I establish what I have promised, those things which are proposed to the contrary must be met. For they say that indeed the name "substance" is found in the divine volumes, but it does not straightway pertain to that same species which is introduced by us. For there, they say, by the word "substance" either power or divinity is signified. Do we then, in claiming one substance of the Father and the Son, proclaim anything other than equal riches in each, namely of one divinity? Of which riches the Apostle says: "God made known," he says, "the riches of the glory of his mystery": which is Christ. And we say that the power of both is one, of which the same Apostle says: "Christ is the power of God". Which power indeed, because it needs no external aid, has been called substance, as we said above, being whatever it is to itself, owing nothing to another.

Nothing new, therefore, do we say in this word, nothing foreign, nothing incongruous to divinity, even if it be transferred into whatever direction of meaning. But (as I had begun to say) all this question of the word is a matter of another grief: it is not the word but the force of the word that displeases them. For with what ears could they accept that one substance of the Father and the Son is proclaimed—that is, honor, dignity, brightness, power, majesty, common in equal truth to each—who separate the Son from the Father, and, having divided the substances, propose that each dwells in his own property, the communion of divinity having been repudiated? This, then, is the grief called blasphemy, this the sacrilege, by which one God is acknowledged in the Father and the Son. For though the authors of this poison have died, their crimes and doctrine do not die.

Those authors, I say, who separate the Son from the Father to such a degree that they have brought forth with sacrilegious mouth that the Son of God was indeed created and founded before the ages, but received to live and to be from the Father: and that he existed before he was born; and that he is indeed God, but not true God. To the successors, therefore, of this perfidy—not faith—through whom the inheritance of evils creeps on, one substance rightly displeases, which they demand be removed as a scandal and a divorce of unity, not knowing that only those are to be called catholic who agree in the communion of this profession.

But who could bear with equanimity this, that they who assert with certainty that he has a beginning, hold his nativity to be uncertain? Either both must be held in obscurity, because they are of the same time; or both ought to be known. For the one can neither be known nor be unknown apart from the other. "The Son," he says, "has a beginning, but his nativity is hidden." Is it not unjust—who has revealed anything about his nativity? Why has he kept silent? Nay rather, whence is the nativity itself known, which is asserted to be unknown? But at this point men void of all good hope set up as a defense the authority of the prophet who says: "Who has declared his generation?", not understanding that already then those were foreseen by the prophetic spirit who were going to give a beginning to the Word of God, that is, to the Son of God. "Who has declared his generation?" he says; that is to say: No man will be able.

For no one has been able except he himself, who, expounding the bosom of the Father, has principally revealed to us the secrets of his own nativity. For we also read that the same kind of thing was said: "Who has known the mind of the Lord?" But again we are taught: "except the spirit which is in him." "Who has declared his generation?"—that is to say: Let no one dare to declare what he cannot. But why will no one be able? Because, namely, he who lacks nativity is not only from him and with him, but also in him. For the one begotten from the unbegotten was born to those goods of divine glory which belonged to the unbegotten; and did the Father, in that same unbegotten one, cease to have what he begot, by having in himself the very one he begot?

His nativity, therefore, is proclaimed inexpressible for this reason, that through it the Son is unconceived, but perfect from God the Father, God the Son is, because, according to the Scriptures, we have said of the Son, "from him, and with him, and in him".

Lest anyone be troubled by the variety of meanings, the reasoning of the sayings must be rendered; and lest what is proposed be confused, it must be rendered briefly. "From him" regards the author; "with him," the only-begotten; "in him," regards the nativity of the substance. This is heard in all things. Hold fast the mysteries of the divine dispensation. You know enough. "Who," he says, "has declared his generation?" For who could declare according to nature a nativity which is contrary to nature? For he alone is born who is conscious of his own nativity. For he, understanding through nature the origin of where good things were prepared, was in the Father, by that very condition by which he was born. "Who has declared his generation?" he says. And they add that this has been revealed to no one, because it is known, namely, to himself alone and to the Father. This is to say, without the deceit of subtle words: The Father indeed begot the Son, but no one knows whence.

For likewise the Jews said: "We know that God spoke to Moses; but as for this man, we know not from whence he is". For although sometimes they make common cause with us in words, and some things seem said simply, sprinkling the infamy of heretical depravity; yet because most of what they say comes against the true faith, it is necessary that the fewer things be understood according to the more; especially since, if anything is accepted that comes against the faith, it is the ruin of the whole faith. "No one knows," he says, "how the Son was begotten, except the Father alone". What then does that sentence mean, since the Lord, not wishing us to be ignorant of this, says: "I came forth from the Father, and from the bosom of the Father"? Alas! Why, if they follow the darkness of ignorance, did he not wish us to be ignorant? And indeed he did not wish it, so that with the author known to us, the question of his status might be removed.

For it should not be asked who, how, or of what sort he was, since we would know whence he was. But if in this place it is proposed that the very sentence of the Lord himself confirms this, namely where he says: "No one knows the Father except the Son, nor does anyone know the Son except the Father"; they will hear from us, lest they do fraud to the divine definition. For it follows: "And he to whom the Son wills to reveal him." For that is not utterly hidden which cannot be revealed. For it is revealed, if anyone is worthy of the revelation.

Now, therefore, this knowledge of the secret is not concealed for the sake of a cause which is revealed from a cause: and it follows that we, unworthy of the knowledge, are the cause, and God is not to be held unjust who punishes ignorance; for he would not punish it, if he had not given knowledge. For he gave it through the Holy Spirit. Finally, "the Spirit," he says, "of truth will declare to you all truth". When he says "all truth," certainly he excepts nothing. This is the Spirit of knowledge and truth, through whom Solomon speaks concerning the Lord's nativity: "What she is, and how wisdom was made, I will relate, and I will search out her from the beginning of her nativity". Therefore through the same Spirit we can find what we seek. For the Apostle also says: "God has revealed it to us through his Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God".

No one knows the things that are in God, except the Spirit of God: which Spirit, if the same Apostle proves it dwells in us, we can therefore, through the same Spirit, insert ourselves into the secrets of God. And indeed: "Seek," he says, "and you shall find: ask, and it shall be given to you: knock, and it shall be opened to you". And again: "Father, what you have hidden from the wise, you have revealed to little ones": to us, certainly, to whom the Lord says: "To you it has been given to know the mystery of God"; that mystery certainly of which the Apostle says: "Which was not made known to the sons of men in former ages, but now has been revealed to his saints". Revealed plainly. For he shows the eminent riches of his glory, in goodness upon us from Christ, who himself is the glory of God the Father. He himself is the true offspring of the Unbegotten.

This is the meaning: "No one knows how the Son was begotten." No one indeed—but from among those in whom, as the Lord says, his word finds no place; just as also not among the Jews, to whom the same Lord says: "You," he says, "know not whence I come, nor whither I go; because you judge according to the flesh". For how "no one," if the Father says: "My heart has belched forth a good word"? How "no one," if the Son says: "I came forth from the mouth of the Most High"? Seek no further, and you have nothing more to seek; for you know the whole: because what is said is the whole. "From the mouth," he says, "of the Most High I came forth." For this is the perfect nativity of the Word, that is, a beginning without beginning. This is a rising having a beginning in nativity, but not having one in its state.

For from the unbegotten God, the begettable God went forth, one from one, true from true, full from full; and so, being born among those things which always were, that which is born did not begin to be from things unconceived, nor does it have time, being connatural by nature with the timeless Father. For it is written: "God is spirit": and he was born eternal from God. That therefore of his nature, in which eternity consists. The Son, therefore, is not imperfect, although born, because he was born from the perfect one: nor is he who begot diminished, because he begot from himself. For he who is whole gave the whole, so that, according to the power of the Spirit, he might be wholly in the whole.

But now the evil teachers do not contain themselves within the secrets of their own art, and they stand against the truth, even while standing on truth itself, having horns like a lamb but speaking like dragons. Wishing therefore to split the Son from the Father and to place him below God, they cite from the Gospel: "The Father," he says, "is greater than I". And how greater? At once, with heretical presumption, they define: In honor, brightness, dignity, majesty. But if this is so, why is it commanded that all should honor the Son, just as they honor the Father? But if this is so, then daily we blaspheme in thanksgivings and in the offerings of sacrifices, confessing these things common to the Father and the Son; since indeed the Son cannot fail to have wholly what belongs to the Father, since he himself is wholly in the Father. Finally John says: "No one has ever seen God, except the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father".

And therefore he says: "All that is yours is mine, and mine is yours"; and: "The Son can do nothing of himself", and: "I came not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me". Which is certainly not a confession of weakness, but an assertion of unity. For he had said, both against weakness and for unity: "He who sent me is with me"; and, "The Father, abiding in me, does his works"; and: "The words which I speak are not mine, but the Father's". Whatever, therefore, is detracted from the Son, will be detracted also from the Father. For neither does the one act without the other, since the one cannot be without the other. Nor is the Son "Son" unless he has the Father; nor is the Father "Father" unless having the Son. "The Father," he says, "is greater than I." But the fullness of the same divinity is in the Son. Finally the Apostle says: "However many the promises of God are, in him is the 'Yes'".

Do the acts of obedience of the Son, then, dissolve the standing of his divinity? For all that God is would be dissolved in Christ, if it is taken as belonging to another's majesty: but it would belong to another, if the Father were greater in majesty. Which majesty indeed, because it is one, namely of one God, cannot but be perfect: imperfect is unequal: but it is unequal, if it is less than another.

But at this point that which Matthew relates applauds you, namely that the Son of man, as though private and lesser indeed—read in that same Matthew—the Son is to come in the majesty of the Father; concerning which coming Luke also says: When the Son of man shall come, he says, with his glory and the Father's. Therefore the Son is not so much said by you to be lesser in majesty, when this is said, as he is denied to be God. He, I say, he of whom Solomon says: He is the brightness of eternal light, and the spotless mirror of the majesty of God. Clearly a spotless mirror. For he keeps the face of God; and, faithfully expressing the figure, he has rendered the full image of the Father. And what more can be said of his condition, in which the Lord Christ acknowledged himself? The Father, he says, is greater than I. Rightly greater, because he alone is author without an author.

Finally the Apostle says of the Son: In him, he says, dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. Therefore as the Son is in the Father, so also the Father is perfect in the Son. Finally, when our Lord said that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, he added: He shall receive of mine. Just as John, when he had said: We announce to you eternal life, which was with the Father, added: This life is in his Son. As though, since both, each in the other, are perfect, yet one perfect God exists in two.

The Father, he says, is greater than I. Rightly greater, because he himself did not descend into the Virgin; which Sabellius refused, for whom the Father and the Son are not both, that is, one person of two names; whereas he ought to have heard the voice of the Father through Isaiah: Behold my Son whom I have chosen, I will put my Spirit upon him; and afterward should recognize the Son speaking through the same prophet: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me. Foreseeing which heresy the Lord said: Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? Certainly he did not say: I am the Father, and I am in myself: but, I am in the Father, and the Father in me: by which saying he struck down two heresies, namely the Sabellian and the Arian.

He taught that the Father and the Son are not one person, as Sabellius holds, nor two substances, as Arius holds, but (as the catholic faith confesses) one substance and two persons.

But what need is there of arguments? Since the Lord himself has pronounced a definitive sentence? Whatsoever things the Father does, the same also does the Son: how the same, if he cannot aspire to the summit of that paternal glory? Nay, because he can, John rightly says: Without him, he says, nothing was made. And the Lord himself says: I and the Father are one. One indeed by nature: because what was in the Son of man remained also in the bosom of the Father. Finally: And you know me, he says, and you know whence I am: and I have not come of myself, but he is true who sent me, whom you do not know. I know him, because I am with him, and he sent me; and: I am not alone, he says, but I and he who sent me, the Father; and: As the Father knows me, I also know the Father. But I do not know whether the Son could have known the Father, if the Son had a beginning allotted to him.

For the begotten could not know the unbegotten before he was begotten. Then he does not know the Father as he is known by the Father: and falsehood must be ascribed to him (which ought not to fall upon the Lord), and rightly ascribed, if his assertion does not stand by reason. But it will not stand, unless he is the one who not only went forth from the Father, but is in the Father, and has always been. All things, he says, the Father has delivered into his hand. How all things, unless of every time as well? But how of every time, if he lacks a beginning? For however much you say he was born before all time, yet since you wish him who is born to have at some point begun, and not to have been what was made: I do not know how you can defend that he has obtained all things from the Father, and of every time.

The Son, he says, is subject to the Father together with all these things which the Father himself has subjected to him. This poisoned venom you cover with the veil of studied words. We steadfastly preach what we have heard from our fathers: and you therefore should not abandon the doctrine of your fathers. They, I say, freely said that the God of heavenly glory is not the true God, but a perfect creature of God. Yet you, holding the same view, avoiding abrupt blasphemy in words, pursue ambiguities to deceive the simple and unwary. For you profess the Son to be subject to the Father, not in the name of Father or Son, as the holy and catholic Church says, but (as we said above) under the condition of a creature. For when you say: The Son is subject to the Father together with all these things which the Father has subjected to him; do you not number him himself among the order of creatures which were established in time?

For according to you, our God and Lord has nothing more than every creature, except that he is first in number, except that even those things serve him with which he serves. For he too is a servant, if he serves; and though he is Lord of some, yet Lord by will, if he was made Lord by the will of the Lord, by this very fact serving, in that he was commanded to rule. This is that which you say secretly, and your fathers said with freedom: that the Son of God was brought forth by the Father without time, and was founded not before he was born. What blindness of heart is this, I ask? What forgetfulness of hope? Nay, what a mad and blasphemous confession, calling him God whom you have compared to all these things that were made out of nothing!

This is also to mock the Son with a false name of divinity, if he is said in word to be what is denied in heart; and to brand God the Father as a liar, who indeed says: I am who am; and: I am the Lord alone; and: My glory I will not give to another; and: Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one God; and: Do not seek my name, God is my name. If therefore God is one, this name belongs to one. But he will no longer be one, unless the Son is God in God the Father. And rightly the Lord, according to the prophet who had said: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord: I have come, he says, in the name of my Father. What name of the Father is this, but the name of God and Lord? Which John, recognizing in the Son, says: Who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.

The Father, he says, has no beginning. This is to say that the Son has one. For what need is there to assert this concerning the Father, which is known, unless as a prejudgment of that opinion which has received the same conclusion concerning the Son? Who denies it? But I think that the image also of the invisible and unbegotten God cannot have begun after God. Finally, to Moses asking who he was, he replied: I am who am always. For he who is and will be always, was always. Concerning whom John says: What was from the beginning, we have seen with our eyes. And again: We announce to you eternal life, which was with the Father: certainly also in the Father: for what was from him could not exist outside him. And indeed when it is said: There was a time in him, it is not announced that he himself existed in time.

For the force of the eternal substance was not made by God, but came forth from God; therefore he says, And I went forth from the Father: and, I and the Father are one; and: He who sees me, sees also the Father; and: I am in the Father, and the Father in me; and: He who sent me is with me. Therefore David also says: With you is the beginning in the day of your power. For the Word of God, that is, the Son of God, before every beginning is with him from whom he is, and in him for whom there can be no beginning. We find indeed that Solomon said, in the person of Wisdom (which we maintain to be Christ): The Lord created me, and before the age founded me, and I was begotten before the deep. But it must not therefore be believed that God was made. For if he was made, he did not exist; if he did not exist, he will not exist.

And how is he God, to whom, that he might not be God, both conditions are prescribed? Therefore Wisdom of God is announced as born and founded, lest anything besides God the Father himself, who is also the origin of his own powers, should be believed to exist in nature. From this it would rightly be said: Wisdom was created from him and in him, from whom shone forth his only-begotten and blessed nativity. Whoever, therefore, shall prove that the Father was ever without the Word, without wisdom, without reason, without power, without the Spirit, he has proved that the Son, with the Father and in the Father, did not exist before every beginning. Yet I do not know whether the Father, lacking these powers, could be called God. For not only is God he who is perfect in his own eternity, but not even any creature will stand consummate according to its own kind if imperfect. For what is not cannot be something; but it will not be, if it lacks what it ought to have.

Therefore the whole was lacking to the Father, if anything was lacking of the whole. But it was lacking, if his Son, that is, the fulness of his powers, is not without a beginning: and this opinion must necessarily pass over into one or the other part of blasphemy by a profane and sacrilegious conclusion. For either the Father must be believed to have received a beginning together with his Son, because without the Son, that is, without his own powers, he could not exist; and there will be, as author of this beginning of theirs, some third God, I know not who: or if he alone is said to be without beginning up until the generation of the Son, he must be said to have been imperfect. For he is imperfect, if he began to have what before he willed not to have. But he ought to have had all things always, who ought always to have been perfect: because whatever has occupied the whole receives no increase.

The Father, they say, has no beginning, is invisible, is immortal, is impassible. They put these things forward for this reason, that they may ascribe the contrary of these to the Son. For whatever they deny of the Father, they confess of the Son; who, if he is proved to have a beginning, is rightly mortal, rightly passible. It ought indeed to be prejudged that the other kinds of passions also do not belong to the Son, once the first form of the proposition is destroyed, which gave a beginning to the Word of God. Nevertheless, lest through any diffidence we should fail to reconsider the other things impiously put forward beyond the rest. For as the other things subject to this definition cannot be ascribed to one who has no beginning, so if he is found akin to one of them, it is fair that those other things which had been defended should also be dissolved. The Father, he says, is invisible.

As if indeed we ever find that the Son too was not visible without transfiguration, before he became, obedient to the Father, corporeal out of eternity. For although he was seen by Abraham, and Jacob, and Moses, and Isaiah, and Ezekiel, yet the quality of that vision is explained. For the vision is reported as in sleep, and in a mirror, and in a riddle. Finally, to Moses asking that he might see him knowingly, he says, No one can see my face: for no one who has seen it shall live. Therefore let them either contend that in this passage the Father spoke, who says he himself is invisible: or if they do not deny it was the Son, let them know that he spoke, and that he, under his own name, was invisible, as the Word, as the Spirit. Finally, how the invisible God was seen, the same Scripture testifies. For it relates that God spoke with him, as with a friend, face to face.

And then it adds that Moses asked to see his face: which surely, if he had already seen it, he would not immediately have asked to see. Jacob indeed says: I saw the Lord face to face, and my soul was saved: but how was he saved by seeing that face which, if seen, kills? How also had the Lord shown his face, which he afterward said could not be seen, except under that condition which we mentioned above, namely in a mirror and in a riddle, in sleep and in vision? This means, therefore, that he assumed that visible matter when it pleased him, but immediately continued invisible: because it is necessary, if he is taught to be visible, that he not be, on that account, the one whom we confess to be invisible.

But in order that they may resolve this assertion by the questions of the Old Testament, they take confirmation from the New Testament. For the Lord and God says, when speaking of the Father, that the image of the Father was seen by no one: but if the image of the Father is the Son himself, as the Apostle proves, he denies that he was visible, by saying that no one has seen the image of the Father. And therefore he says: Neither do you know me, nor my Father. And here surely he confirms two as unknown, but as much two as inseparable. For if they had known him, they would have known the Father too: because through indivisibility, neither could be known or unknown without the other. A similar reasoning follows concerning what is mortal and passible.

For if the Son has no beginning, inasmuch as he has always been and is in him to whom no beginning is given; nor is visible, who remains in the bosom of the invisible one: then he is to be held neither mortal nor passible, yet from that part of the substance by which he is God. For we know that the spirit of God suffered nothing, at least under its own name: because God is impassible, because God is spirit. Let us hold that all that suffering properly belongs to the flesh and the soul, that is, to man: in which man, while he suffered, the Son of God also was present, adhering to him by nature to the Father from whom he had come; and, keeping the bond of unity, he bore man on earth, nor was he absent from the heavens. Thus he is called mediator, thus the go-between of both substances.

Therefore the spirit of God is not passible, although he suffered in his own man: whom for that reason he did not desert even in the passion, so as to grant him the ability to suffer: which, unless it is received in this way, the reasoning of our faith will not stand, granting, that is, human weakness to him whom they do not deny to be God. For if he is also said to have a beginning, and is taught to be visible, and is represented as mortal, I do not see how he differs from a man, over whom passions of this kind reign.

We confess, they say, the Son of God, God from God, light from light. It cannot indeed seem sacrilegious to disturb by malicious disputation the perfect confession of the catholic faith; but it must not be granted that what they do not hold with us be taken from us by means of what they do hold with us. We acknowledge, therefore, and receive with veneration the words of the common faith, but what shall we do? Thus does the insane doctrine of the Arian madmen hand it down. For it too, saying God from God, light from light, makes out of God another God, out of light another light: so that the Son is from the Father and not in the Father, that is, so that, made God from God, he is not the only-begotten in God.

But what more is there here, since the writings of some of those who recently sent us this excellent faith are preserved, in which, while saying God from God, light from light, they nevertheless taught in heretical disputation that he is separated from the Father and utterly cut off? They say that the Son of God himself took on a man from Mary, through whom he suffered together. Concluding therefore all things with a fitting end, they confessed in writing what they had conceived in mind, their words answering to their sense, and revealing their hidden poisons: saying, namely, that the Son of God took a man from Mary, through whom he suffered together. First, I do not see why they preferred to say "suffered together" rather than to confess freely "suffered." As if to suffer together were something other than to suffer. Moreover, if God is impassible, he is surely also incapable of suffering-together. Therefore he no more suffered together than he suffered, at least from that condition by which he is God.

Finally the Apostle says: He suffered out of weakness, namely of the flesh (for the flesh is weak; the spirit is willing); but he lives out of the power of God: namely out of himself. For he himself, the power of God, having life in himself: which we believe, that our Lord consisted of two substances, namely human and divine; and that he was immortal by the divine, as he was mortal by that which was human: for born of the one, proved by the other: from the one immortal, from the other mortal. Finally the same Apostle says: Christ died: that is, was anointed: for this name is derived from anointing. If therefore nothing other than the flesh was anointed, then the flesh alone is said to have died, whenever Christ is announced as having died.

But if anyone wishes to force one or the other of two alternatives upon us, so that we either determine one God singularly, if we confess one; or freely declare two, if we call both the Father God and the Son God: let this be known before all things, that we say neither one with prejudice, nor two; because we say one in two, the Lord himself suggesting it: I and the Father are one, so that two might be believed in one power.

For he did not speak as though from one person of Father and Son, as if the Son, confirming himself as the Father, should say: I am my own Son; and: Today I have begotten myself; and: Before the morning star I begot myself; and, The Lord created me the beginning of his ways; and: Before the ages he founded me; and: I and the Father are one: but rendering knowledge of the mystery by distinction, not division, of persons: I, he says, am in the Father, and the Father in me: I and the Father are one: and: He who sees me sees the Father also: for the Son is seen as of the Father, the true image and expressed figure of his substance, that is, the Word of God, not a mere sound of voice, but a substantive reality, and, through substance, a corporealizing one. For that which he made from so great a substance did not come to exist without substance.

Nothing empty, therefore, from what is full; nothing hollow from what is solid: because the Word of God, the Spirit of God, Christ, is furnished with substance; and, to speak more clearly, is the body of the Word: for the spirit has a body, but a body of its own kind. For the spirit is both invisible and incomprehensible. Is God, then, an empty and hollow thing? For God is spirit. Finally: No one knows, he says, the things that are in God, except the spirit that is in him. We read indeed: Who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor? No one indeed, but no one outside his own spirit: which spirit the prophet calls wise, an architect, and a wonderful counselor: and not without reason. For the same spirit is the Word and Wisdom of God: from whose person Solomon says: When he prepared the heavens, I was present with him; and: I was with him, and he took delight in me.

Therefore he is not "no counselor," because through him all things that were made were made. Finally, since the same is Wisdom and the Word of God, and the Spirit of God, yet the offices of the individual names are declared. Wisdom was present with the Father as he created all things: by his Word the heavens were made firm, and by the spirit of his mouth all their power. It appears, therefore, that one and the same came, now under the name of spirit, now under the appellation of wisdom.

Therefore this Word, when he was in the form of God, constructed by wisdom and by reason and by the power of the spirit, that is, possessing the whole force of God, did not think himself equal to God the Father, but taking the form of a servant, humbled himself even unto death. For he had put on that which could serve, that which could die: namely a man, whom he raised up and presented to heaven, and as a second Adam, through obedience, might restore what the first had lost through transgression. If anyone, therefore, still inquires from the Apostle about the dominical state, that is, the quality of that singular substance which by nature is subjoined to its author, let him hear, in brief, what the same Apostle felt, when he spoke of the unsearchable ways of God the Father and the hidden mysteries of old. From him, he says, and through him, and in him, are all things.

When it is said "through him," I recognize that the Son is signified: for I have read, Through him were all things made. When "in him" is declared, there is nothing new; for in him the beginnings of all seeds were established. But when it is said "from him," it surely looks to the Father as the author of all things. And if this is so, as it is, how will the reasoning stand consistent for those who join distinct things, that is, refer all things to one; when he from whom are all things is one, and he through whom are all things is another? Because one is unbegotten, the other only-begotten, unless under another condition it is rightly said: both all things are from the Son, since he is by nature in his heart, from whom are all things; and all things are through the Father, since he is always in him, through whom are all things. For the Father acts by sense; but the Son, who is the sense that is in the Father, seeing, accomplishes.

It must not, therefore, be believed that the Apostle spoke rashly: but this must not be believed to have been his belief, namely that the Son of God became, according to the flesh, what he was not, but according to the spirit is what he was; because what he always was cannot not have been.

Therefore we must hold to that reasoning which creeps along a steep and narrow path, with sheer precipices lying on either side, which, blinded by diabolical deceit, offer smooth and easy ways, so as to plunge into ruin those who go beyond bounds. For if we name one God singularly, excluding the term for the second person, we approve the madness of that heresy which asserts that the Father himself suffered. If we admit number with division, we are joined with the Arians, who assert that God was made a God, and that a new substance came into being out of nothing. Therefore we must hold, as we have said, to the rule which confesses the Son in the Father, the Father in the Son; which, preserving one substance in two persons, acknowledges the disposition of the divinity. Therefore the Father is God, and the Son is God: because in the Father who is God, the Son is God.

If this creates scandal for anyone, let him hear from us that the Spirit is of God; because for him for whom there is a second person in the Son, there is also a third in the Holy Spirit. Finally the Lord says: I will ask my Father, and he will give you another advocate. Thus the Spirit is other than the Son, just as the Son is other than the Father. Thus there is a third person in the Spirit, as there is a second in the Son: yet one God is all, and the three are one. This we believe, this we hold, because this we have received from the prophets: this the Gospels have spoken to us: this the apostles have handed down: this the martyrs confessed in their passion: in this we cling with minds of faith, against which, even if an angel from heaven should announce otherwise, let him be anathema.

But I am not unaware that, with all these things discussed and set forth into the light of public understanding, the name of Hosius, that most ancient priest of ever-ready faith, is being prepared against us like a kind of battering-ram, by which the rashness of our contradiction might be beaten back. But to those raising this engine against us I answer in quite a brief discourse. His authority cannot be pleaded as a precedent against us, because either he errs now, or he has always erred. For the world knows what he held down to this age, with what constancy he assented at Sardica and in the Nicene council, and condemned the Arians. What if he now thinks differently, and whatever things had before been condemned by him are now being defended: and what had been defended is now condemned? Again I say, his authority establishes no precedent for me. For if for nearly ninety years he believed wrongly, I will not believe that after ninety years he now judges rightly.

Or if he is right now, what must be thought of those who, sealed with the same faith in which he himself once stood, have departed from the world? And what would be pronounced concerning himself, if he had died before this synod? Therefore, as we said above, the authority of a prejudged opinion will avail nothing, because it stands against itself. And indeed we read: The righteousness of the righteous man shall not save him in whatever day he goes astray. Amen.