(NOTE: The electronic text obtained from The Electronic Bible Society was 
not completely corrected. EWTN has corrected all discovered errors. If you 
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Transliteration of Greek words: All phonetical except: w = omega; h serves 
three puposes: 1. = Eta; 2. = rough breathing, when appearing initially 
before a vowel; 3. = in the aspirated letters theta = th, phi = ph, chi = 
ch. Accents are given immediately after their corresponding vowels: acute = 
' , grave = `, circumflex = ^. The character ' doubles as an apostrophe, 
when necessary.


ST. HILARY OF POITIERS

ON THE TRINITY, Books VI-VIII

[Books 6-7 translated by the Rev. E. W. Watson, M.A., Warden of the Society 
of St. Andrew, Salisbury; Book 8 by Mr. E. N. Bennett, Fellow of Hertford, 
and revised by Mr. Watson.]


BOOK VI.

    1. It is with a full knowledge of the dangers and passions of the time 
that I have ventured to attack this wild and godless heresy, which asserts 
that the Son of God is a creature. Multitudes of Churches, in almost every 
province of the Roman Empire, have already caught the plague of this deadly 
doctrine; error, persistently inculcated and falsely claiming to be the 
truth, has become ingrained in minds which vainly imagine that they are 
loyal to the faith. I know how hardly the will is moved to a thorongh 
recantation, when zeal for a mistaken cause is encouraged by the sense of 
numbers and confirmed by the sanction of general approval. A multitude 
under delusion can only be approached with difficulty and danger. When the 
crowd has gone astray, even though it know that it is in the wrong, it is 
ashamed to return. It claims consideration for its numbers, and has the 
assurance to command that its folly shall be accounted wisdom. It assumes 
that its size is evidence of the correctness of its opinions; and thus a 
falsehood which has found general credence is boldly asserted to have 
established its truth.

    2. For my own part, it was not only the claim which my vocation has 
upon me, the duty of diligently preaching the Gospel which, as a bishop, I 
owe to the Church, that has led me on. My eagerness to write has increased 
with the increasing numbers endangered and enthralled by this heretical 
theory. There was a rich prospect of joy in the thought of multitudes who 
might be saved, if they could know the mysteries of the right faith in God, 
and abandon the blasphemous principles of bureau folly, desert the heretics 
and surrender themselves to God; if they would forsake the bait with which 
the fowler snares his prey, and soar aloft in freedom and safety, following 
Christ as Leader, prophets as instructors, apostles as guides, and 
accepting the perfect faith and sure salvation in the confession of Father 
and of Son. So would they, in obedience to the words of the Lord, He that 
honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father which hath sent Him(1), be 
setting themselves to honour the Father, through honour paid to the Son.

    3. For of late the infection of a mortal evil has gone abroad among 
mankind, whose ravages have dealt destruction and death on every hand. The 
sudden desolation of cities smitten, with their people in them, by 
earthquake to the ground, the terrible slaughter of recurring wars, the 
widespread mortality of an irresistible pestilence, have never wrought such 
fatal mischief as the progress of this heresy throughout the world. For 
God, unto Whom all the dead live, destroys those only who are self-
destroyed. From Him Who is to be the Judge of all, Whose Majesty will 
temper with mercy the punishment allotted to the mistakes of ignorance, 
they who deny Him can expect not even judgment, but only denial.

    4. For this mad heresy does deny; it denies the mystery of the true 
faith by means of statements borrowed from our confession, which it employs 
for its own godless ends. The confession of their misbelief, which I have 
already cited in an earlier book, begins thus:--"We confess one God, alone 
unmade, alone eternal, alone unoriginate, alone true, alone possessing 
immortality, alone good, alone mighty." Thus they parade the opening words 
of our own confession, which runs, "One God, alone unmade and alone 
unoriginate," that this semblance of truth may serve as introduction to 
their blasphemous additions. For, after a multitude of words in which an 
equally insincere devotion to the Son is expressed, their confession 
continues, "God's perfect creature, but not as one of His other creatures, 
His Handiwork, but not as His other works." And again, after an interval in 
which true statements are occasionally interspersed in order to veil their 
impious purpose of alleging, as by sophistry they try to prove, that He 
came into existence out of nothing, they add, "He, created and established 
before the worlds, did not exist before He was born." And lastly, as though 
every point of their false doctrine, that He is to be regarded neither as 
Son nor as God, were guarded impregnably against assault, they continue:--
"As to such phrases as from Him, and from the womb, and I went out from the 
Father and am come, if they be understood to denote that the Father extends 
a part and, as it were, a development of that one substance, then the 
Father will be of a compound nature and divisible and changeable and 
corporeal, according to them; and thus, as far as their words go, the 
incorporeal God will be subjected to the properties of matter." But, as we 
are now about to cover the whole ground once more, employing this time the 
language of the Gospels as our weapon against this most godless heresy, it 
has seemed best to repeat here, in the sixth book, the whole heretical 
document, though we have already given a full copy of it in the fourth(2), 
in order that our opponents may read it again, and compare it, point by 
point, with our reply, and so be forced, however reluctant and 
argumentative, by the clear teaching of the Evangelists and Apostles, to 
recognise the truth. The heretical confession is as follows:--

    5. "We confess one God, alone unmade, alone eternal, alone unoriginate, 
alone posessing immortality, alone good, alone mighty, Creator, Ordainer 
and Disposer of all things, unchangeable and unalterable, righteous and 
good, of the Law and the Prophets and the New Testament. We believe that 
this God gave birth to the Only-begotten Son before all worlds, through 
Whom He made the world and all things, that He gave birth to Him not in 
semblance, but in truth, following His own will, so that He is unchangeable 
and unalterable, God's perfect Creature, but not as one of His other 
creatures, His Handiwork, but not as His other works; not, as Valentinus 
maintained, that the Son is a development of the Father, nor, as Manichaeus 
has declared of the Son, a consubstantial part of the Father, nor, as 
Sabellius, who makes two out of One, Son and Father at once, nor, as 
Hieracas, a light from a light, or a lamp with two flames, nor, as if He 
was previously in being and afterwards born, or created afresh, to be a 
Son, a notion often condemned by thyself, blessed Pope, publicly in the 
Church, and in the assembly of the brethren. But, as we have affirmed, we 
believe that He was created by the will of God before times and worlds, and 
has His life and existence from the Father, Who gave Him to share His own 
glorious perfections. For, when the Father gave to Him the inheritance of 
all things, He did not thereby deprive Himself of attributes which are His 
without origination, He being the source of all things.

    6. "So there are three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Ghost. God, for 
His part, is the Cause of all things, utterly unoriginate and separate from 
all; while the Son, put forth by the Father outside time, and created and 
established before the worlds, did not exist before He was born, but, being 
born outside time before the worlds, came into being as the Only Son of the 
Only Father. For He is neither eternal, nor co-eternal, nor co-uncreate 
with the Father, nor has He an existence collateral with the Father, as 
some say who postulate two unborn principles. But God is before all things, 
as being indivisible and the beginning of all. Wherefore He is before the 
Son also, as indeed we have learnt from thee in thy public preaching. 
Inasmuch then as He has His being from God, and His glorious perfections, 
and His life, and is entrusted with all things, for this reason God is His 
Source. For He rules over Him, as being His God, since He is before Him. As 
to such phrases as from Him, and from the womb, and I went out from the 
Father and am come, if they be understood to denote that the Father extends 
a part and, as it were, a development of that one Substance, then the 
Father will be of a compound nature and divisible and changeable and 
corporeal, according to them; and thus, as far as their words go, the 
incorporeal God will be subjected to the properties of matter(3)."

    7. Who can fail to see here the slimy windings of the serpent's track: 
the coiled adder, with forces concentrated for the spring, concealing the 
deadly weapon of its poisonous fangs within its folds? Presently we shall 
stretch it out and examine it, and expose the venom of this hidden head. 
For their plan is first to impress with certain sound statements, and then 
to infuse the poison of their heresy. They speak us fair, in order to work 
us secret harm. Yet, amid all their specious professions, I nowhere hear 
God's Son entitled God; I never hear sonship attributed to the Son. They 
say much about His having the name of Son, but nothing about His having the 
nature. That is kept out of sight, that He may seem to have no right even 
to the name. They make  a show of unmasking other heresies to conceal the 
fact that they are heretics themselves. They strenuously assert that there 
is One only, One true God, to the end that they may strip the Son of God of 
His true and personal Divinity.

    8. And therefore, although in the two last books I have proved from the 
teaching of the Law and Prophets that God and God, true God and true God, 
true God the Father and true God the Son, must be confessed as One true 
God, by unity of nature and not by confusion of Persons, yet, for the 
complete presentation of the faith, I must also adduce the teaching of the 
Evangelists and Apostles. I must show from them that true God, the Son of 
God, is not of a different, an alien nature from that of the Father, but 
possesses the same Divinity while having a distinct existence through a 
true birth. And, indeed, I cannot think that any soul exists so witless as 
to fancy that, although we know God's self-revelations, yet we cannot 
understand them; that, if they can be understood, would not wish to 
understand, or would dream that human reason can devise improvements upon 
them. But before I begin to discuss the facts contained in these saving 
mysteries, I must first humble the pride with which these heretics rebuke 
the names of other heresies. I shall hold up to the light this ingenious 
cloak for their own impiety. I shall shew that this very means of 
concealing the deadliness of their teaching serves rather to reveal and 
betray it, and is a widely effectual warning of the true character of this 
honeyed poison.

    9. For instance, these heretics would have it that the Son of God is 
not from God; that God was not born from God out of, and in, the nature of 
God. To this end, when they have solemnly borne witness to "One God, alone 
true," they refrain from adding "The Father." And then, in order to escape 
from confessing one true Godhead of Father anti of Son by a denial of the 
true birth, they proceed, "Not, as Valentinus maintained, that the Son is a 
development of the Father." Thus they think to cast discredit upon the 
birth of God from God by calling it a "development," as though it were a 
form of the Valentinian heresy. For Valentinus was the author of foul and 
foolish imaginations; beside the chief God, he invented a whole household 
of deities and countless powers called aeons, and taught that our Lord 
Jesus Christ was a development mysteriously brought about by a secret 
action of will. The faith of the Church, the faith of the Evangelists and 
Apostles, knows nothing of this imaginary development, sprung from the 
brain of a reckless and senseless dreamer. It knows nothing of the "Depth" 
and "Silence" and the thrice ten aeons of Valentinus. It knows none but One 
God the Father, from Whom are all things, and One Jesus Christ, our Lord, 
through Whom are all things, Who is God born from God. But it occurred to 
them that He, in being born as God from God, neither withdrew anything from 
the Divinity of His Author nor was Himself born other than God; that He 
became God not by a new beginning of Deity but by birth from the existing 
God; and that every birth appears, as far as human faculties can judge, to 
be a development, so that even that birth might be regarded as a 
development. And these considerations have induced them to make an attack 
upon the Valentinian heresy of development as a means of destroying faith 
in the true birth of the Son. For the experience of common life leads 
worldly wisdom to suppose that there is no great difference between a birth 
and a development. The mind of man, dull and slow to grasp the things of 
God, needs to be constantly reminded of the principle, which I have stated 
more than once(4), that analogies drawn from human experience are not of 
perfect application to the mysteries of Divine power; that their only value 
is that this comparison with material objects imparts to the spirit such a 
notion of heavenly things that we may rise, as by a ladder of nature, to an 
apprehension of the majesty of God. But the birth of God must not be judged 
by such development as takes place in human births. When One is born from 
One, God born from God, the circumstances of human birth enable us to 
apprehend the fact; but a birth which presupposes intercourse and 
conception and time and travail can give us no clue to the Divine method. 
When we are told that God was born from God, we must accept it as true that 
He was born, and be content with that. We shall, however, in the proper 
place discourse of the truth of the Divine birth, as the Gospels and the 
Apostles set it forth. Our present duty has been to expose this device of 
heretical ingenuity, this attack upon the true birth of Christ, concealed 
under the form of an attack upon a so-called development.

    10. And then, in continuation of this same fraudulent assault upon the 
faith, their confession proceeds thus:--"Nor, as Manichaeus has declared of 
the Son, a consubstantial part of the Father." They have already denied 
that He is a development, in order to escape from the admission of His 
birth; now they introduce, labelled with the name of Manichaeus, the 
doctrine that the Son is a portion of the one Divine substance, and deny 
it, in order to subvert the belief in God from God. For Manichaeus, the 
furious adversary of the Law and Prophets, the strenuous champion of the 
devil's cause and blind worshipper of the sun, taught that That which was 
in the Virgin's womb was a portion of the one Divine substance, and that by 
the Son we must understand a certain piece of God's substance which was cut 
off, and made its appearance in the flesh. And so they make the most of 
this heresy that in the birth of the Son there was a division of the one 
substance and use it as a means of evading the doctrine of the birth of the 
Only-begotten, and the very name of the unity of substance. Because it is 
sheer blasphemy to speak of a birth re-suiting from division of the one 
substance they deny any birth; all forms of birth are joined in the 
condemnation which they pass upon the Manichaean notion of birth by 
severance. And again, they abolish the unity of substance, both name and 
thing, because the heretics hold that the unity is divisible; and deny that 
the Son is God from God, by refusing to believe that He is truly possessed 
of the Divine nature. Why does this mad heresy profess a fictitious 
reverence, a senseless anxiety? The faith of the Church does, as these 
insane propounders of error remind us, condemn Manichaeus, for she knows 
nothing of the Son as a portion. She knows Him as whole God from whole God, 
as One from One, not severed but born. She is assured that the birth of God 
involves neither impoverishment of the Begetter nor inferiority of the 
Begotten. If this be the Church's own imagining, reproach her with the 
follies of a wisdom falsely claimed; but if she have learned it from her 
Lord, confess that the Begotten knows the manner of His begetting. She has 
learnt from God the Only-begotten these truths, that Father and Son are 
One, and that in the Son the fulness of the Godhead dwells. And therefore 
she loathes this attribution to the Son of a portion of the one substance; 
and, because she knows that He was truly born of God, she worships the Son 
as rightful Possessor of true Divinity. But, for the present, let us defer 
our full answer to these several allegations, and hasten through the rest 
of their denunciations.

    11. What follows is this:--"Nor, as Sabellius, who makes two out of 
One, Son and Father at once." Sabellius holds this in wilful blindness to 
the revelation of the Evangelists and Apostles. But what we see here is not 
one heretic honestly denouncing other. It is the wish to leave no point of 
union between Father and Son that prompts them to reproach Sabellius with 
his division of an indivisible Person; a division which does not result in 
the birth of a second Person, but cuts the One Person into two parts, one 
of which enters the Virgin's womb(5). But we confess a birth; we reject 
this confusion of two Persons in One, while yet we cleave to the Divine 
unity. That is, we hold that God from God means unity of nature; for that 
Being, Who, by a true birth from God, became God, can draw His substance 
from no other source than the Divine. And since He continues to draw His 
being, as He drew it at first, from God, He must remain true God for ever; 
and hence They Two are One, for He, Who is God from God, has no other than 
the Divine nature, and no other than the Divine origin. But the reason why 
this blasphemous Sabellian confusion of two Persons into One is here 
condemned is that they wish to rob the Church of her true faith in Two 
Persons in One God. But now I must examine the remaining instances of this 
perverted ingenuity, to save myself from the reputation of a censorious 
judge of sincere enquirers, moved rather by dislike than genuine fear. I 
shall shew, by the terms with which they wind up their confession, what is 
the deadly conclusion which they have skilfully contrived shall be its 
inevitable issue.

    12. Their next clause is:--"Nor, as Hieracas, a light from a light, or 
a lamp with two flames, nor as if He was previously in being, and 
afterwards born, or created afresh, to be a Son." Hieracas ignores the 
birth of the Only-begotten, and, in complete unconsciousness of the meaning 
of the Gospel revelations, talks of two flames from one lamp. This 
symmetrical pair of flames, fed by the supply of oil contained in one bowl, 
is His illustration of the substance of Father and Son. It is as though 
that substance were something separate from Either Person, like the oil in 
the lamp, which is distinct from the two flames, though they depend upon it 
for their existence; or like the wick, of one material throughout and 
burning at both ends, which  is distinct from the flames, yet provides them 
and connects them together. All this is a mere delusion of human folly, 
which has trusted to itself, and not to God, for knowledge. But the true 
faith asserts that God is born from God, as light from light, which pours 
itself forth without self-diminution, giving what it has yet having what it 
gave. It asserts that by His birth He was what He is, for as He is so was 
He born; that His birth was the gift of the existing Life, a gift which did 
not lessen the store from which it was taken; and that They Two are One, 
for He, from Whom He is born, is as Himself, and He that was born has 
neither another source nor another nature, for He is Light from Light. It 
is in order to draw men's faith away from this, the true doctrine, that 
this lantern or lamp of Hieracas is cast in the teeth of those who confess 
Light from Light. Because the phrase has been used in an heretical sense, 
and condemned both now and in earlier days, they want to persuade us that 
there is no true sense in which it can be employed. Let heresy forthwith 
abandon these groundless fears, and refrain from claiming to be the 
protector of the Church's faith on the score of a reputation for zeal 
earned so dishonestly. For we allow nothing bodily, nothing lifeless, to 
have a place among the attributes of God; whatever is God is perfect God. 
In Him is nothing but power, life, light, blessedness, Spirit. That nature 
contains no dull, material elements; being immutable, it has no 
incongruities within it. God, because He is God, is unchangeable; and the 
unchangeable God begat God. Their bond of union is not, like that of two 
flames, two wicks of one lamp, something outside Themselves. The birth of 
the Only-begotten Son from God is not a prolongation in space, but a 
begetting; not an extension(6), but Light from Light. For the unity of 
light with light is a unity of nature, not unbroken continuation.

    13. And again, what a wonderful example of heretical ingenuity is 
this:--"Nor as if He were previously in being, and afterwards born or 
created afresh, to be a Son." God, since He was born from God, was 
assuredly not born from nothing, nor from things non-existent. His birth 
was that of the eternally living nature. Yet, though He is God, He is not 
identical with the pre-existing God; God was born from God Who existed 
before Him; in, and by, His birth He partook of the nature of His Source. 
If we are speaking words of our own, all this is mere irreverence; but if, 
as we shall prove, God Himself has taught us how to speak, then the 
necessity is laid upon us of confessing the Divine birth in the sense 
revealed by God. And it is this unity of nature in Father and in Son, this 
ineffable mystery of the living birth, which the madness of heresy is 
struggling to banish from belief, when it says, "Nor as if He were 
previously in being, and afterwards born, or created afresh, to be a Son." 
Now who is senseless enough to suppose that the Father ceased to be 
Himself; that the same Person Who had previously existed was afterwards 
born, or created afresh, to be the Son? That God disappeared, and that His 
disappearance was followed by an emergence in birth, when, in fact, that 
birth is evidence of the continuous existence of its Author? Or who is so 
insane as to suppose that a Son can come into existence otherwise than 
through birth? Who so void of reason as to say that the birth of God 
resulted in anything else than in God being born? The abiding God was not 
born, but God was born from the abiding God; the nature bestowed in that 
birth was the very nature of the Begetter. And God by His birth, which was 
from God into God, received, because His was a true birth, not things new-
created but things which were and are the permanent possession of God. Thus 
it is  not the pre-existent God that was born; yet God was born, and began 
to exist, out of and with the properties of God. And thus we see how 
heresy, throughout this long prelude, has been treacherously leading up to 
this most blasphemous doctrine. Its object being to deny God the Only-
begotten, it starts with what purports to be a defence of truth, to go on 
to the assertion that Christ is born not from God but out of nothing, and 
that His birth is due to the Divine counsel of creation from the non-
existent.

    14. And then again, after an interval designed to prepare us for what 
is coming, their heresy delivers this assault;--"While the Son, put forth 
outside time, and created and established before the worlds, did not exist 
before He was born." This "He did not exist before He was born" is a form 
of words by  which the heresy flatters itself that it gains two ends; 
support for its blasphemy, and a screen for itself if its doctrine be 
arraigned. A support for its blasphemy, because, if He did not exist before 
He was born, He cannot be of one nature with His eternal Origin. He must 
have His beginning out of nothing, if He have no powers but such as are 
coeval with His birth. And a screen for its heresy, for if this statement 
be condemned, it furnishes a ready answer. He that did exist, it will be 
said, could not be born; being in existence already, He could not possibly 
come into being by passing through the process of birth, for the very 
meaning of birth is the entry into existence of the being that is born. 
Fool and blasphemer! Who dreams of birth in the case of Him Who is the 
unborn and eternal? How can we think of God, Who is(7), being born, when 
being born implies the process of birth? It is the birth of God the Only-
begotten from God His Father that you are striving to disprove, and it was 
your purpose to escape the confession of that truth by means of this "He 
did not exist before He was born;" the confession that God, from Whom the 
Son of God was born, did exist eternally, and that it is from His abiding 
nature that God the Son draws His existence through birth. If, then, the 
Son is born from God, you must confess that His is a birth of that abiding 
nature; not a birth of the pre-existing God, but a birth of God from God 
the pre-existent.

    15. But the fiery zeal of this heresy is such that it cannot restrain 
itself from passionate outbreak. In its effort to prove, in conformity with 
its assertion that He did not exist before He was born, that the Son was 
born from the non-existent, that is, that He was not born from God the 
Father to be God the Son by a true and perfect birth, it winds up its 
confession by rising in rage and hatred to the highest pitch of possible 
blasphemy:--"As to such phrases as from Him, and from the womb, and I went 
out front the Father and am come, if they be understood to denote that the 
Father extends a part, and, as it were, a development of that one 
substance, then the Father will be of a compound nature and divisible and 
changeable and corporeal, according to them; and thus, as far as their 
words go, the incorporeal God will be subjected to the properties of 
matter." The defence of the true faith against the falsehoods of heresy 
would indeed be a task of toil and difficulty, if it were needful for us to 
follow the processes of thought as far as they have plunged into the depths 
of godlessness. Happily for our purpose it is shallowness of thought that 
has engendered their eagerness to blaspheme. And hence, while it is easy to 
refute, the folly, it is difficult to amend the fool,  for he will neither 
think out right conclusions for himself, nor accept them when offered by 
another. Yet I trust that they who in pious ignorance, not in wilful folly 
bred of self-conceit, are enchained by error, will welcome correction. For 
our demonstration of the truth will afford convincing proof that heresy is 
nothing else than folly.

    16. You said in your unreason, and you are still repeating to-day, 
ignorant that your wisdom is a defiance of God, "As to such phrases as from 
Him, and from the womb, and I went out from the Father and am come," I ask 
you, Are these phrases, or are they not, words of God? They certainly are 
His; and, since they are spoken by God about Himself, we are bound to 
accept them exactly as they were spoken. Concerning the phrases themselves,  
and the precise force of each, we shall speak i in the proper place. For 
the present I will only put this question to the intelligence of every 
reader; When we see From Himself, are we to take it as equivalent to "From 
sortie one else," or to "From nothing," or are we to accept it as the 
truth? It is not "From some one else," for it is From Himself; that is, His 
Godhead has no other source than God. It is not "From nothing," for it is 
From Himself; a declaration of the nature from which His birth is. It is 
not "Himself," but From Himself; a statement that They are related as 
Father and Son. And next, when the revelation From the womb is made, I ask 
whether we can possibly believe that He is born from nothing, when the 
truth of His birth is clearly indicated in terms borrowed from bodily 
functions. It is not because He has bodily members, that God records the 
generation of the Son in the words, I bore Thee from the womb before the 
morning star (8). He uses language which assists our understanding to 
assure us that His Only-begotten Son was ineffably born of His own true 
Godhead. His purpose is to educate the faculties of men up to the knowledge 
of the faith, by  clothing Divine verities in words descriptive of human 
circumstances. Thus, when He says, From the womb, He is teaching us that 
His Only-begotten was, in the Divine sense, born, and did not come into 
existence by means of creation out of nothing. And lastly, when the Son 
said, I went forth from the Father and am come, did He leave it doubtful 
whether His Divinity were, or were not, derived from the Father? He went 
out from the Father; that is, He had a birth, and the Father, and no other, 
gave Him that birth. He bears witness that He, from Whom He declares that 
He came forth, is the Author of His being. The proof and interpretation of 
all this shall be given hereafter.

    17. But meanwhile let us see what ground these men have for the 
confidence with which they forbid us to accept as true the utterances of 
God concerning Himself; utterances, the authenticity of which they do not 
deny. What more grievous insult could be flung by human folly and insolence 
at God's self-revelation, than a condemnation of it, shewn in correction? 
For not even doubt and Criticism will satisfy them. What more grievous than 
this profane handling and disputing of the nature and power of God? Than 
the presumption of saying that, if the Son is from God, then God is 
changeable and corporeal, since He has extended or developed a part of 
Himself to be His Son? Whence this anxiety to prove the immutability of 
God? We confess the birth, we proclaim the Only-begotten, for so God has 
taught us. You, in order to banish the birth and the Only-begotten from the 
faith of the Church, confront us with an unchangeable God, incapable, by 
His nature, of extension or development. I could bring forward instances of 
birth, even in natures belonging to this world, which would refute this 
wretched delusion that every birth must be an extension. And I could save 
you from the error that a being can come into existence only at the cost of 
loss to that which begets it, for there are many examples of life 
transmitted, without bodily intercourse, from one living creature to 
another. But it would be impious to deal in evidences, when God has spoken; 
and the utmost excess of madness to deny His authority to give us a faith, 
when our worship is a confession that He alone can give us life. For if 
life comes through Him alone, must not He be the Author of the faith which 
is the condition of that life? And if we hold Him an untrustworthy witness 
concerning Himself, how can we be sure of the life which is His gift?

    18. For you attribute, most godless of heretics, the birth of the Son 
to an act of creative will; you say that He is not born from God, but that 
He was created and came into existence by the choice of the Creator. And 
the unity of the Godhead, as you interpret it, will not allow Him to be 
God, for, since God remains One, the Son cannot retain His original nature 
in that state into which He has been born. He has been endowed, through 
creation, you say, with a substance different from the Divine, although, 
being in a sense the Only-begotten, He is superior to God's other creatures 
and works. You say that He was raised up, that He in His turn might perform 
the task committed to Him of raising up the created world; but that His 
birth did not confer upon Him the Divine nature. He was born, according to 
you, in the sense that He came into existence out of nothing. You call Him 
a Son, not because He was born from God, but because He was created by God. 
For you call to mind that God has deemed even holy men worthy of this 
title, and you consider that it is assigned to the Son in exactly the same 
sense in which the words, I have said, Ye are Gods, and all of you sons of 
the Most High (9),  were spoken; that is, that He bears the name through 
the Giver's condescension, and not by right of nature. Thus, in your eyes, 
He is Son by adoption, God by gift of the title, Only-begotten by favour, 
First-born in date, in every sense a creature, in no sense God. For you 
hold that His generation was not a birth from God, in the natural sense, 
but the beginning of the life of a created substance.

    19. And now, Almighty God, I first must pray Thee to forgive my excess 
of indignation, and permit me to address Thee; and next to grant me, dust 
and ashes as I am, yet bound in loyal devotion to Thyself, freedom of 
utterance in this debate. There was a time when I, poor wretch, was not; 
before my life and consciousness and personality began to exist. It is to 
Thy mercy that I owe my life; and I doubt not that Thou, in Thy goodness, 
didst give me my birth for my good, for Thou, Who hast no need of me, 
wouldst never have made the beginning of my life the beginning of evil. And 
then, when Thou hadst breathed into me the breath of life and endowed me 
with the power of thought, Thou didst instruct me in the knowledge of 
Thyself, by means of the sacred volumes given us through Thy servants Moses 
and the prophets. From them I learnt Thy revelation, that we must not 
worship Thee as a lonely God. For their pages taught me of God, not 
different from Thee in nature but One with Thee in mysterious unity of 
substance. I learnt that Thou art God in God, by no mingling or confusion 
but by Thy very nature, since the Divinity which is Thyself dwells in Him 
Who is from Thee. But the true doctrine of the perfect birth revealed that 
Thou, the Indwelt, and Thou, the Indweller, are not One Person, yet that 
Thou dost dwell in Him Who is from Thee. And the voices of Evangelists and 
Apostles repeat the lesson, and the very words which fell from the holy 
mouth of Thy Only-begotten are recorded, telling how Thy Son, God the Only-
begotten from Thee the Unbegotten God, was born of the Virgin as man to 
fulfil the mystery of my salvation; holy Thou dwellest in Him, by virtue of 
His true generation from Thyself, and He in Thee, because of the nature 
given in His abiding birth from Thee.

    20. What is this hopeless quagmire of error into which Thou hast 
plunged me? For I have learnt all this and have come to believe it; this 
faith is so ingrained into my mind that I have neither the power nor the 
wish to change it. Why this deception of an unhappy man, this ruin of a 
poor wretch in body and soul, by deluding him with falsehoods concerning 
Thyself? After the Red Sea had been divided, the splendour on the face of 
Moses, descending from the Mount, deceived me. He had gazed, in Thy 
presence, upon all the mysteries of heaven, and I believed his words, 
dictated by Thee, concerning Thyself. And David, the man that was found 
after Thine own heart, has betrayed me to destruction, and Solomon, who was 
thought worthy of the gift of Divine Wisdom, and Isaiah, who saw the Lord 
of Sabaoth and prophesied, and Jeremiah consecrated in the womb, before he 
was fashioned, to be the prophet of nations to be rooted out and planted 
in, and Ezekiel, the witness of the mystery of the Resurrection, and 
Daniel, the man beloved, who had knowledge of times, and all the hallowed 
band of the Prophets; and Matthew also, chosen to proclaim the whole 
mystery (1) of the Gospel, first a publican, then an Apostle, and John, the 
Lord's familiar friend, and therefore worthy to reveal the deepest secrets 
of heaven, and blessed Simon, who after his confession of the mystery was 
set to be the foundation-stone of the Church, and received the keys of the 
kingdom of heaven, and all his companions who spoke by the Holy Ghost, and 
Paul, the chosen vessel, changed from persecutor into Apostle, who, as a 
living man abode under the deep sea (2) and ascended into the third heaven, 
who was in Paradise before his martyrdom, whose martyrdom was the perfect 
offering of a flawless faith; all have deceived me.

    21. These are the men who have taught me the doctrines which I hold, 
and so deeply am I impregnated with their teaching that no antidote can 
release me from their influence. Forgive me, O God Almighty, my 
powerlessness to change, my willingness to die in this belief. These 
propagators of blasphemy, for so they seem to me, are a product of these 
last times, too modern to avail me. It is too late for them to correct the 
faith which I received from Thee. Before I had ever heard their names, I 
had put my trust in Thee had received regeneration from Thee and become 
Thine, as still I am. I know that Thou art omnipotent; I look not that Thou 
shouldst reveal to me the mystery of that ineffable birth which is secret 
between Thyself and Thy Only-begotten. Nothing is impossible with Thee, and 
I doubt not that in begetting Thy Son Thou didst exert Thy  full 
omnipotence. To doubt it would be to deny that Thou an omnipotent. For my 
own birth teaches me that Thou art good, and therefore I am sure that in 
the birth of Thine Only-begotten Thou didst grudge Him no good gift. I 
believe that all that is Thine is His, and all that is His is Thine. The 
creation of the world is sufficient evidence to me that Thou art wise; and 
I am sure that Thy Wisdom, Who is like Thee, must have been begotten from 
Thyself. And Thou art One God, in very truth, in my eyes; I will never 
believe that in Him, Who is God from Thee, there is ought that is not 
Thine. Judge me in Him, if it be sin in me that, through Thy Son, I have 
trusted too well in Law and Prophets and Apostles.

    22. But this wild talk must cease; the rhetoric of exposing heretical 
folly must give place to the drudgery of framing arguments.  So, I trust, 
those among them who are capable of being saved will set their faces 
towards the true faith taught by the Evangelists and Apostles, and 
recognise Him Who is the true Son of God, not by adoption but by nature. 
For the plan of our reply must be that of first proving that He is the Son 
of God, and therefore fully endowed with that Divine nature in the 
possession of which His Sonship consists. For the chief aim of the heresy, 
which we are considering, is to deny that our Lord Jesus Christ is true God 
and truly the Son of God. Many evidences assure us that our Lord Jesus 
Christ is, and is revealed to be, God the Only-begotten, truly the Son of  
God. His Father bears witness to it, He Himself asserts it, the Apostles 
proclaim it, the faithful believe it, devils confess it, Jews deny it, the 
heathen at His passion recognised it. The name of God is given Him in the  
right of absolute ownership, not because He has been admitted to joint use 
with others of the title. Every work and word of Christ transcends the 
power of those who bear the title of sons; the foremost lesson that we 
learn from all that is most prominent in His life is that He is the Son of 
God, and that He does not hold the name of Son as a title shared with a 
widespread company of friends.

    23. I will not weaken the evidence for this truth by intermixing words 
of my own. Let us hear the Father, when the baptism of Jesus Christ was 
accomplished, speaking, as often, concerning His Only-begotten, in order to 
save us from being misled by His visible body into a failure to recognise 
Him as the Son. His words are:--This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well 
pleased (3). Is the truth presented here with dim outlines? Is the 
proclamation made in uncertain tones? The promise of the Virgin birth 
brought by the angel from the Holy Ghost, the guiding star of the Magi, the 
reverence paid Him in His cradle, the majesty, attested by the Baptist, of 
Him Who condescended to be baptized; all these are deemed an insufficient 
witness to His glory. The Father Himself speaks from heaven, and His words 
are, This is My Son. What means this evidence, not of titles, but of 
pronouns? Titles may be appended to names at will; pronouns are a sure 
indication of the persons to whom they refer. And here we have, in This and 
My, the clearest of indications. Mark the true meaning aid the purpose of 
the words. You have read, I have begotten sons, and have raised them up 
(4); but you did not read there My sons, for He had begotten Himself those 
sons by division among the Gentiles, and from the people of His 
inheritance. And lest we should suppose that the name Son was given as an 
additional title to God the Only-begotten, to signify His share by adoption 
in some joint heritage, His true nature is expressed by the pronoun which 
gives the indubitable sense of ownership. I will allow you to interpret the 
word Son, if you will, as signifying that Christ is one of a number, if you 
can furnish an instance where it is said of another of that number, This is 
My Son. If, on the other hand, This is My Son be His peculiar designation, 
why accuse the Father, when He asserts His ownership, of making an 
unfounded claim? When He says This is My Son, may we not paraphrase His 
meaning thus:--"He has given to others the title of sons, but He Himself is 
My own Son; I have given the name to multitudes by adoption, but this Son 
is My very own. Seek not for another lest you lose your faith that This is 
He. By gesture and by voice, by This, and My, and Son, I declare Him to 
you." And now what reasonable excuse remains for lack of faith? This, and 
nothing less than this, it was that the Father's voice proclaimed. He 
willed that we should not be left in ignorance of the nature of Him Who 
came to be baptized, that He might fulfil all righteousness; that by the 
voice of God we might recognise as the Son of God Him Who was visible as 
Man, to accomplish the mystery of our salvation.

    24. And again, because the life of believers was involved in the 
confession of this faith,--for there is no other way to eternal life than 
the assurance that Jesus Christ, God the Only-begotten, is the Son of God--
the Apostles heard once more the voice from heaven repeating the same 
message, in order to strengthen this life-giving belief, in negation of 
which is death. When the Lord, apparelled in splendour, was standing upon 
the Mountain, with Moses and Elias at His side, and the three Pillars of 
the churches who had been chosen as witnesses to the truth of the vision 
and the voice, the Father spoke thus from heaven:-This is My beloved Son in 
Whom I am well  pleased; hear Him (5). The glory which they saw was not 
sufficient attestation of His majesty; the voice proclaims, This is My Son. 
The Apostles cannot face the glory of God; mortal eyes grow dim in its 
presence. The trust of Peter and James and John fails them, and they are 
prostrate in fear. But this solemn declaration, spoken from the Father's 
knowledge, comes to their relief; He is revealed as His Father's own true 
Son. And over and above the witness of This and My to His true Sonship, the 
words are uttered, Hear Him. It is the witness of the Father from heaven, 
in confirmation of the witness borne by the Son on earth; for we are bidden 
to hear Him. Though this recognition by the Father of the Son removes all 
doubt, yet we are bidden also to accept the Son's self-revelation. When the 
Father's voice commands us to shew our obedience by hearing Him, we are 
ordered to repose an absolute confidence in the words of the Son. Since, 
therefore, the Father has manifested His will in this message to us to hear 
the Son, let us hear what it is that the Son has told us concerning 
Himself.

    25. I can conceive of no man so destitute of ordinary-reason as to 
recognise in each of the Gospels confessions by the Son of the humiliation 
to which He has submitted in taking a body upon Him,--as for instance His  
words, often repeated, Father, glorify Me (6), and Ye shall see the Son of 
Man (7), and The Father is greater than I (8), and, more strongly, Now is 
My soul troubled exceedingly (9), and even this, My God, My God, why  hast 
Thou forsaken me (9)"? and many more, of which I shall speak in due time,--
and yet, in the face of these constant expressions of His humility, to 
charge Him with presumption because He calls God His Father, as when He 
says, Every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be 
rooted up (1), or, Ye have made my Father's house an house of merchandise 
(2). I can conceive of no one foolish enough to regard His assertion, 
consistently made, that God is His Father, not as the simple truth 
sincerely stated from certain knowledge, but as a bold and baseless claim. 
We cannot denounce this constantly professed humility as an insolent demand 
for the rights of another, a laying of hands on what is not His own, an 
appropriation of powers which only God can wield. Nor, when He calls 
Himself the Son, as in, For God sent not His Son into this world to condemn 
the world, but that the world through Him might be saved (3),  and in, Dost 
thou believe on the Son of God (4)? can we accuse Him of what would be an 
equal presumption with that of calling God His Father. But what else is it 
than such an accusation, if we allow to Jesus Christ the name of Son by 
adoption only? Do we not charge Him, when He calls God His Father, with 
daring to make a baseless claim? The Father's voice from heaven says Hear 
Him. I hear Him saying, Father I thank Thee (5), and Say ye that I 
blasphemed, because l said, I am the Son of God (6)? If I may not believe 
these names, and assume that they mean what they assert, how am I to trust 
and to understand? No hint is given of an alternative meaning. The Father 
bears witness from heaven, This is My Son; the Son on His part speaks of My 
Father's house, and My Father. The confession of that name gives salvation, 
when faith is demanded in the question, Dost thou believe an the Son of 
God? The pronoun My indicates that the noun which follows belongs to the 
speaker. What right, I demand, have you heretics to suppose it otherwise? 
You contradict the Father's word the Son's assertion; you empty language of 
its meaning, and distort the words of God into a sense they cannot bear. On 
you alone rests the guilt of this shameless blasphemy, that God has lied 
concerning Himself.

    26. And thus, although nothing but a sincere belief that these names 
are truly significant,--that, when we read, This is My Son and My Father, 
the words really indicate Persons of Whom, and to Whom, they were spoken--
can make them intelligible, yet, lest it be supposed that Son and Father 
are titles the one merely of adoption, the other merely of dignity, let us 
see what are the attributes attached, by the Son Himself, to His name of 
Son. He says, All things are delivered Me of My Father, and no one knoweth 
the Son but the Father, neither knoweth any the Father save the Son, and he 
to Whom the Son will reveal Him (7). Are the words of which we are 
speaking, This is My Son and My Father, consistent, or are they not, with 
No one knoweth the Son but the Father, neither knoweth any the Father save 
the Son? For it is only by witness mutually borne that the Son can be known 
through the Father, and the Father through the Son. We hear the voice from 
heaven; we hear also the words of the Son. We have as little excuse for not 
knowing the Son, as we have for not knowing the Father. All things are 
delivered unto Him; from this All there is no exception. If They possess an 
equal might; if They share an equal mutual knowledge, hidden from us; if 
these names of Father and Son express the relation between Them, then, I 
demand, are They not in truth what They are in name, wielders of the same 
omnipotence, shrouded in the same impenetrable mystery? God does not speak 
in order to deceive. The Fatherhood of the Father, the Sonship of the Son, 
are literal truths. And now learn how facts bear out the verities which 
these names reveal.

    27. The Son speaks thus:--For the works which the Father hath given Me 
to finish, the same works which I do, bear witness of Me that the Father 
hath sent Me; and the Father Himself which hath sent Me hath borne witness 
of Me (8). God the Only-begotten proves His Sonship by an appeal not only 
to the name, but to the power; the works which He does are evidence that He 
has been sent by the Father. What, I ask, is the fact which these works 
prove? That He was sent. That He was sent, is used as a proof of His 
sonlike obedience and of His Father's authority: for the works which He 
does could not possibly be done by any other than Him Who is sent by the 
Father. Yet the evidence of His works fails to convince the unbelieving  
that the Father sent Him. For He proceeds,  And the Father Himself which 
hath sent Me hath borne witness of Me; and ye have neither heard His voice 
nor seen His shape (9). What was this witness of the Father concerning Him? 
Turn over the pages of the Gospels and review their contents. Read us other 
of the attestations given by the Father beside those which we have heard 
already; This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased, and Than art My 
Son. John, who heard these words, needed them not, for He knew the truth 
already. It was for our instruction that the Father spoke. But this is not 
all. John in the wilderness was honoured with this revelation; the Apostles 
were not to be denied the same assurance. It came to them in the very same 
words, but with an addition which John did not receive. He had been a 
prophet from the womb, and needed not the commandment, Hear Him. Yes; I 
will hear Him, and will hear none but Him and His Apostle, who heard for my 
instruction. Even though the books contained no further witness, borne by 
the Father to the Son, than that He is the Son, I have, for confirmation of 
the truth, the evidence of His Father's works which He does. What is this 
modern slander that His name is a gift by adoption, His Godhead a lie, His 
titles a pretence? We have the Father's witness to His Sonship; by works, 
equal to the Father's, the Son bears witness to His own equality with the 
Father. Why such blindness to His obvious possession of the true Sonship 
which He both claims and displays. It is not through condescending kindness 
on the part of God the Father that Christ bears the name of Son; not by 
holiness that He has earned the title, as many have won it by enduring 
hardness in confession of the faith. Such sonship is not of right; it is by 
a favour, worthy of Himself, that God bestows the title. But that which is 
indicated by This, and My, and Hear Him, is different in kind from the 
other. It is the true and real and genuine Sonship.

    28. And indeed the Son never makes for Himself a lower claim than is 
contained in this designation, given Him by His Father. The Father's words, 
This is My Son, reveal His nature; those which follow, Hear Him, are a 
summons to us to listen to the mystery and the faith which He came down 
from heaven to bring; to learn that, if we would be saved, our confession 
must be a copy of His teaching. And in like manner the Son Himself teaches 
us, in words of His own, that He was truly born and truly came;--Ye neither 
know Me, nor know ye whence I am, for I am not came of Myself, but He that 
sent Me is true, Whom ye know not, but I know Him, for I am from Him, and 
He hath sent Me (9a). No man knows the Father; the Son often assures us of 
this. The reason why He says that none knows Him but Himself, is that He is 
from the Father. Is it, I ask, as the result of an act of creation, or of a 
genuine birth, that He is from Him? If it be an act of creation, then all 
created things are from God. How then is it that none of them know the 
Father, when the Son says that the reason why He has this knowledge is that 
He is from Him? If He be created, not born, we shall observe in Him a 
resemblance to other beings who are from God. Since all, on this 
supposition, are from God, why is He not as ignorant of the Father as are 
the others? But if this knowledge of the Father be peculiar to Him, Who is 
from the Father, must not this circumstance also, that He is from the 
Father, be peculiar to Him?  That is, must He not be the true Son born from 
the nature of God? For the reason why He alone knows God is that He alone 
is from God. You observe, then, a knowledge, which is peculiar to Himself, 
resulting from a birth which also is peculiar to Himself. You recognise 
that it is not by an act of creative power, but through a true birth, that 
He is from the Father; and that this is why He alone knows the Father, Who 
is unknown to all other beings which are from Him.

    29. But He immediately adds, For I am from Him, and He hath sent Me, to 
debar heresy from the violent assumption that His being from God dates from 
the time of His Advent. The Gospel revelation of the mystery proceeds in a 
logical sequence; first He is born, then He is sent. Similarly, in the 
previous declaration, we were told of ignorance (1), first as to Who He is, 
and then as to whence He is. For the words, I am from Him, and He hath sent 
Me, contain two separate statements, as also do the words, Ye neither know 
Me, nor know ye whence I am. Every man is born in the flesh; yet does not 
universal consciousness make every man spring from God? How then can Christ 
assert that either He, or the source of His being, is unknown? He can only 
do so by assigning His immediate parentage to the ultimate Author of 
existence; and, when He has done this, He can demonstrate their ignorance 
of God by their ignorance of the fact that He is the Son of God. Let the 
victims of this wretched delusion reflect upon the words, Ye neither know 
Me, nor know ye whence I am. All things, they argue, are from nothing; they 
allow of no exception. They even dare to misrepresent God the Only-begotten 
as sprung from nothing. How can we explain this ignorance of Christ, and of 
the origin of Christ, on the part of the blasphemers? The very fact that, 
as the Scripture says, they know not whence He is, is an indication of that 
unknowable origin from which He springs. If we can say of a thing that it 
came into existence out of nothing, then we are not ignorant of its origin; 
we know that it was made out of nothing, and this is a piece of definite 
knowledge. Now He Who came is not the Author of His own being; but He Who 
sent Him is true, Whom the blasphemers know not. He it was Who sent Him; 
and they know not that He was the Sender. Thus the Sent is from the Sender; 
from Him Whom they know not as His Author. The reason why they know not Who 
Christ is, is that they know not from Whom He is. None can confess the Son 
who denies that He was born; none can understand that He was born who has 
formed the opinion that He is from nothing. And indeed He is so far from 
being made out of nothing, that the heretics cannot tell whence He is.

    30. They are blankly ignorant who separate the Divine name from the 
Divine nature; ignorant, and content to be ignorant. But let them listen to 
the reproof which the Son inflicts upon unbelievers for their want of this 
knowledge, when the Jews said that God was their Father:--If God were your 
Father, ye would surely love Me; for I went forth from God, and am come; 
neither am I come of Myself, but He sent Me(2). The Son of God has here no 
word of blame for the devout confidence of those who combine the confession 
that He is true God, the Son of God, with their own claim to be God's sons. 
What He is blaming is the insolence of the Jews in daring to claim God as 
their Father, when meanwhile they did not love Him, the Son:--If God were 
your Father, ye would surely love Me; for I went forth from God. All, who 
have God for their Father through faith, have Him for Father through that 
same faith whereby we confess that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. But to 
confess that He is the Son in a sense which covers the whole company of 
saints; to say, in effect, that He is one of the sons of God;--what faith 
is there in that? Are not all the rest, feeble created beings though they 
be, in that sense sons? In what does the eminence of a faith, which has 
confessed that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, consist, if He, as one of a 
multitude of sons, have the name only, and not the nature, of the Son? This 
unbelief has no love for Christ; it is a mockery of the faith for these 
perverters of the truth to claim God as their Father. If He were their 
Father, they would love Christ because He had gone forth from God. And now 
I must enquire the meaning of this going forth from God. His going forth is 
obviously different from His coming, for the two are mentioned side by side 
in this passage, I went forth from God and am come. In order to elucidate 
the separate meanings of I went forth from God and I am come, He 
immediately subjoins, Neither am I come of Myself, but He sent Me. He tells 
us that He is not the source of His own existence in the words, Neither am 
I come of Myself. In them He tells us that He has proceeded forth a second 
time from God(3), and has been sent by Him. But when He tells us that they 
who call God their Father must love Himself because He has gone forth from 
God, He makes His birth the reason for their love. Went forth carries back 
our thoughts to the incorporeal birth, for it is by love of Christ, Who was 
born from Him, that we must gain the right of devoutly claiming God for our 
Father. For when the Son says, He that hateth Me hateth My Father also(4), 
this My is the assertion of a relation to the Father which is shared by 
none. On the other hand, He condemns the man who claims God as his Father, 
and loves not the Son, as using a wrongful liberty with the Father's name; 
since he who hates Him, the Son, must hate the Father also, and none can be 
devoted to the Father save those who love the Son. For the one and only 
reason which He gives for loving the Son is His origin from the Father. The 
Son, therefore, is from the Father, not by His Advent, but by His birth(5); 
and love for the Father is only possible to those who believe that the Son 
is from Him.

    31. To this the Lord's words bear witness;--I will not say unto you 
that I will pray the Father for you, for the Father Himself loveth you, 
because ye have loved Me, and believe that I went forth from God, and am 
come from the Father into this world(6). A complete faith concerning the 
Son, which accepts and loves the truth that He went forth from God, has 
access to the Father without need of His intervention. The confession that 
the Son was born and sent from God wins for it direct audience and love 
from Him. Thus the narrative of His birth and coming must be taken in the 
strictest and most literal sense. I went forth from God, He says, conveying 
that His nature is exactly that which was given Him by His birth; for what 
being but God could go forth from God, that is, could enter upon existence 
by birth from Him? Then He continues, And am come from the Father into this 
world. To assure us that this going forth from God means birth from the 
Father, He tells us that He came from the Father into this world. The 
latter statement refers to His incarnation, the former to His nature. And 
again, His putting on record first the fact of His going forth from God, 
and then His coming from the Father, forbids us to identify the going with 
the coming. Coming from the Father, and going forth from God, are not 
synonymous; they might be paraphrased as 'Birth' and 'Presence,' and are as 
different in meaning as these. It is one thing to have gone forth from God, 
and entered by birth upon a substantial existence; another to have come 
from the Father into this world to accomplish the mysteries of our 
salvation.

    32. In the order of our defence, as I have arranged it in my mind, this 
has seemed the most convenient place for proving that, thirdly(7), the 
Apostles believed our Lord Jesus Christ to be the Son of God, not merely in 
name but in nature, not by adoption but by birth. It is true that there 
remain unmentioned many and most weighty words of God the Only-begotten 
concerning Himself, in which the truth of His Divine birth is set so 
clearly forth as to silence any whisper of objection. Yet since it would be 
unwise to burden the reader's mind with an accumulation of evidence, and 
ample proof has been already given of the genuineness of His birth, I will 
hold back the remainder of His utterances till later stages of our enquiry. 
For we have so arranged I the course of our argument that now, after 
hearing the Father's witness and the Son's self-revelation, we are to be 
instructed by the Apostles' faith in the true and, as we must confess, the 
truly born Son of God. We must see whether they could find in the words of 
the Lord, I went forth from God, any other meaning than this, that there 
was in Him a birth of the Divine nature.

    33. After many dark sayings, spoken in parables by Him Whom they 
already knew as the Christ foretold by Moses and the Prophets, Whom 
Nathanael had confessed as the Son of God and King of Israel, Who had 
Himself reproached Philip, in his question about the Father, for not 
perceiving, by the works which He did, that the Father was in Him and He in 
the Father; after He had already often taught them that He was sent from 
the Father; still, it was not till they had heard Him assert that He had 
gone forth from God that they confessed, in the words which immediately 
follow in the Gospel;--His disciples say unto Him, Now speakest Thou 
plainly, and speakest no proverb. Now therefore we are sure that Thou 
knowest all things, and needest not that any man should ask Thee; by this 
we believe that Thou wentest forth from God(8). What was there so 
marvellous in this form of words, Went forth from God, which He had used? 
Had ye seen, O holy and blessed men, who for the reward of your faith have 
received the keys of the kingdom of heaven and power to bind and to loose 
in heaven and earth, works so great, so truly Divine, wrought by our Lord 
Jesus Christ, the Son of God; and do ye yet profess that it was not until 
He had first told you that He had gone forth from God that ye attained the 
knowledge of the truth? And yet ye had seen water at the marriage turned 
into the marriage wine; one nature becoming another nature, whether it were 
by change, or by development, or by creation. And your hands had broken up 
the five loaves into a meal for that great multitude, and when all were 
satisfied ye had found that twelve baskets were needed to contain the 
fragments of the loaves; a small quantity of matter, in the process of 
relieving hunger, had multiplied into a great quantity of matter of the 
same nature. And ye had seen withered hands recover their suppleness, the 
tongues of dumb men loosened into speech, the feet of the lame made swift 
to run, the eyes of the blind endowed with vision, and life restored to the 
dead. Lazarus, who stank already, had risen to his feet at a word. He was 
summoned from the tomb and instantly came forth, without a pause between 
the word and its fulfilment. He was standing before you, a living man, 
while yet the air was carrying the odour of death to your nostrils. I speak 
not of other exertions of His mighty, His Divine powers. And is it, in 
spite of all this, only after ye heard Him say, I went forth from God, that 
ye understood Who He is that had been sent from heaven? Is this the first 
time that the truth had been told you without a proverb? The first time 
that the powers of His nature made it manifest to you that He went forth 
from God? And this in spite of His silent scrutiny of the purposes of your 
will, of His needing not to ask you concerning anything as though He were 
ignorant, of His universal knowledge? For all these things, done in the 
power and in the nature of God, are evidence that He must have gone forth 
from God.

    34. By this the holy Apostles did not understand that He had gone 
forth, in the sense of having been sent, from God. For they had often heard 
Him confess, in His earlier discourses, that He was sent; but what they 
hear now is the express statement that He had gone forth from God. This 
opens their eyes to perceive from His works His Divine nature. The fact 
that He had gone forth from God makes clear to them His true Divinity, and 
so they say, Now therefore we are sure that Thou knowest all things, and 
needest not that any man should ask Thee; by this we believe that Thou 
wentest forth from God. The reason why they believe that He went forth from 
God is that He both can, and does, perform the works of God. Their perfect 
assurance of His Divine nature is the result of their knowledge, not that 
He is come from God, but that He did go forth from God. Accordingly we find 
that it is this truth, now heard for the first time, which clenches their 
faith. The Lord had made two statements; I went forth from God, and I am 
come from the Father into this world. One of these, I am come from the 
Father into this world, they had often heard, and it awakens no surprise. 
But their reply makes it manifest that they now believe and understand the 
other, that is, I went forth from God. Their answer, By this we believe 
that Thou wentest forth from God, is a response to it, and to it only; they 
do not add, 'And art come from the Father into this world.' The one 
statement is welcomed with a declaration of faith; the other is passed over 
in silence. The confession was wrung from them by the sudden presentation 
of a new truth, which convinced their reason and constrained them to avow 
their certainty. They knew already that He, like God, could do all things; 
but His birth, which accounted for that omnipotence, had not been revealed. 
They knew that He had been sent from God, but they knew not that He had 
gone forth from God. Now at last, taught by this utterance to understand 
the ineffable and perfect birth of the Son, they confess that He had spoken 
to them without a proverb.

    35. For God is not born from God by the ordinary process of a human 
childbirth; this is no case of one being issuing from another by the 
exertion of natural forces. That birth is pure and perfect and stainless; 
indeed, we must call it rather a proceeding forth than a birth. For it is 
One from One; no partition, or withdrawing, or lessening, or efflux, or 
extension, or suffering of change, but the birth of living nature from 
living nature. It is God going forth from God, not a creature picked out to 
bear the name of God. His existence did not take its beginning out of 
nothing, but went forth from the Eternal; and this going forth is rightly 
entitled a birth, though it would be false to call it a beginning. For the 
proceeding forth of God from God is a thing entirely different from the 
coming into existence of a new substance. And though our apprehension of 
this truth, which is ineffable, cannot be defined in words, yet the 
teaching of the Son, as He reveals to us that He went forth from God, 
imparts to it the certainty of an assured faith.

    36. A belief that the Son of God is Son in name only and not in nature, 
is not the faith of the Gospels and of the Apostles. If this be a mere 
title, to which adoption is His only claim; if He be not the Son in virtue 
of having proceeded forth from God, whence, I ask, was it that the blessed 
Simon Bar-Jona confessed to Him, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living 
God(9)? Because He shared with all mankind the power of being born as one 
of the sons of God through the sacrament of regeneration? If Christ be the 
Son of God only in this titular way, what was the revelation made to Peter, 
not by flesh and blood, but by the Father in heaven? What praise could he 
deserve for making a declaration which was universally applicable? What 
credit was due to Him for stating a fact of general knowledge? If He be Son 
by adoption, wherein lay the blessedness of Peter's confession, which 
offered a tribute to the Son to which, in that case, He had no more title 
than any member of the company of saints? The Apostle's faith penetrates 
into a region closed to human reasoning. He had, no doubt, often heard, He 
that receiveth you receiveth Me, and He that receiveth Me receiveth Him 
that sent Me(1). Hence he knew well that Christ had been sent; he had heard 
Him, Whom he knew to have been sent, making the declaration, All things are 
delivered unto Me of the Father, and no one knoweth the Son but the Father, 
neither knoweth any one tire Father save the Son(2). What then is this 
truth, which the Father now reveals to Peter, which receives the praise of 
a blessed confession? It cannot have been that the names of 'Father' and 
'Son' were novel to him; he had heard them often. Yet he speaks words which 
the tongue of man had never framed before:--Thou art the Christ, the Son of 
the living God. For though Christ, while dwelling in the body, had avowed 
Himself to be the Son of God, yet now for the first time the Apostle's 
faith had recognised in Him the presence of the Divine nature. Peter is 
praised not merely for his tribute of adoration, but for his recognition of 
the mysterious truth; for confessing not Christ only, but Christ the Son of 
God. It would clearly have sufficed for a payment of reverence, had he 
said, Thou art the Christ, and nothing more. But it would have been a 
hollow confession, had Peter only hailed Him as Christ, without confessing 
Him the Son of God. And so his words Thou art(3) declare that what is 
asserted of Him is strictly and exactly true to His nature. Next, the 
Father's utterance, This is My Son, had revealed to Peter  that he must 
confess Thou art the Son of God, for in the words This is, God the Revealer 
points Him out, and the response, Thou art, is the believer's welcome to 
the truth. And this is the rock of confession whereon the Church is built. 
But the perceptive faculties of flesh and blood cannot attain to the 
recognition and confession of this truth. It is a mystery, Divinely 
revealed, that Christ must be not only named, but believed, the Son of God. 
Was it only the Divine name; was it not rather the Divine nature that was 
revealed to Peter? If it were the name, he had heard it often from the 
Lord, proclaiming Himself the Son of God. What honour, then, did he deserve 
for announcing the name? No; it was not the name; it was the nature, for 
the name had been repeatedly proclaimed.

    37. This faith it is which is the foundation of the Church; through 
this faith the gates of hell cannot prevail against her. This is the faith 
which has the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatsoever this faith shall 
have loosed or bound on earth shall be loosed or bound in heaven. This 
faith is the Father's gift by revelation; even the knowledge that we must 
not imagine a false Christ, a creature made out of nothing, but must 
confess Him the Son of God, truly possessed of the Divine nature. What 
blasphemous madness and pitiful folly is it, that will not heed the 
venerable age and faith of that blessed martyr, Peter himself, for whom the 
Father was prayed that his faith might not fail in temptation; who twice 
repeated the declaration of love for God that was demanded of him, and was 
grieved that he was tested by a third renewal of the question, as though it 
were a doubtful and wavering devotion, and then, because this third trial 
had cleansed him of his infirmities, had the reward of hearing the Lord's 
commission, Feed My sheep, a third time repeated; who, when all the 
Apostles were silent, alone recognised by the Father's revelation the Son 
of God, and won the pre-eminence of a glory beyond the reach of human 
frailty by his confession of his blissful faith! What are the conclusions 
forced upon us by the study of his words? He confessed that Christ is the 
Son of God; you, lying bishop of the new apostolate, thrust upon us your 
modern notion that Christ is a creature, made out of nothing. What violence 
is this, that so distorts the glorious words? The very reason why he is 
blessed is that he confessed the Son of God. This is the Father's 
revelation, this the foundation of the Church, this the assurance of her 
permanence. Hence has she the keys of the kingdom of heaven, hence judgment 
in heaven and judgment on earth. Through revelation Peter learnt the 
mystery hidden from the beginning of the world, proclaimed the faith, 
published the Divine nature, confessed the Son of God. He who would deny 
all this truth and confess Christ a creature, must first deny the 
apostleship of Peter, his faith, his blessedness, his episcopate, his 
martyrdom. And when he has done all this, he must learn that he has severed 
himself from Christ; for it was by confessing Him that Peter won these 
glories.

    38. Do you think, wretched heretic of today, that Peter would have been 
the more blessed now, if he had said, 'Thou art Christ, God's perfect 
creature, His handiwork, though excelling all His other works. Thy 
beginning was from nothing, and through the goodness of God, Who alone is 
good, the name of Son has been given Thee by adoption, although in fact 
Thou wast not born from God?' What answer, think you, would have been given 
to such words as these, when this same Peter's reply to the announcement of 
the Passion, Be it far from Thee, Lord; this shall not be, was rebuked 
with, Get thee behind Me, Satan, thou art an offence unto Me(4)? Yet(5) 
Peter could plead his human ignorance in extenuation of his guilt, for as 
yet the Father had not revealed all the mystery of the Passion; still, mere 
defect of faith was visited with this stern condemnation. Now, why was it 
that the Father did not reveal to Peter your true confession, this faith in 
an adopted creature? I fancy that God must have grudged him the knowledge 
of the truth; that He wanted to postpone it to a later age, and keep it as 
a novelty for your modern preachers. Yes; you may have a change of faith, 
if the keys of heaven are changed. You may have a change of faith, if there 
is a change in that Church against which the gates of hell shall not 
prevail. You may have a change of faith, if there shall be a fresh 
apostolate, binding and loosing in heaven what it has bound and loosed on 
earth. You may have a change of faith, if another Christ the Son of God, 
beside the true Christ, shall be preached. But if that faith which 
confesses Christ as the Son of God, and that faith only, received in 
Peter's person every accumulated blessing, then perforce the faith which 
proclaims Him a creature, made out of nothing, holds not the keys of the 
Church and is a stranger to the apostolic faith and power. It is neither 
the Church's(6) faith, nor is it Christ's.

    39. Let us therefore cite every example of a statement of the faith 
made by an Apostle. All of them, when they confess the Son of God, confess 
Him not as a nominal and adoptive Son, but as Son by possession of the 
Divine nature. They never degrade Him to the level of a creature, but 
assign Him the splendour of a true birth from God. Let John speak to us, 
while he is waiting, just as he is, for the coming of the Lord; John, who 
was left behind and appointed to a destiny hidden in the counsel of God, 
for he is not told that he shall not die, but only that he shall tarry. Let 
him speak to us in his own familiar voice:--No one hath seen God at any 
time, except the Only-begotten Son, Which is in the bosom of the Father(7). 
It seemed to him that the name of Son did not set forth with sufficient 
distinctness His true Divinity, unless he gave an external support to the 
peculiar majesty of Christ by indicating the difference between Him and all 
others. Hence he not only calls Him the Son, but adds the further 
designation of the Only-begotten, and so cuts away the last prop from under 
this imaginary adoption. For the fact that He is Only-begotten is proof 
positive of His right to the name of Son.

    40. I defer the consideration of the words, which is in the bosom of 
the Father, to a more appropriate place. My present enquiry is into the 
sense of Only-begotten, and the claim upon us which that sense may make. 
And first let us see whether the word mean, as you assert, a perfect 
creature of God; Only-begotten being equivalent to perfect, and Son a 
synonym for creature. But John described the Only-begotten Son as God, not 
as a perfect creature. His words, Which is in the bosom of the Father, shew 
that he anticipated these blasphemous designations; and, indeed, he had 
heard his Lord say, For God so loved the world that He gave His Only-
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have 
everlasting life(8). God, Who loved the world, gave His Only-begotten Son 
as a manifest token of His love. If the evidence of His love be this, that 
He bestowed a creature upon creatures, gave a worldly being on the world's 
behalf, granted one raised up from nothing for the redemption of objects 
equally raised up from nothing, this cheap and petty sacrifice is a poor 
assurance of His favour towards us. Gifts of price are the evidence of 
affection the greatness of the surrender of the greatness of the love. God, 
Who loved the world, gave not an adopted Son, but His own, His Only-
begotten. Here is personal interest, true Sonship, sincerity; not creation, 
or adoption, or pretence. Herein is the proof of His love and affection, 
that He gave His own, His Only-begotten Son.

    41. I appeal not now to any of the titles which are given to the Son; 
there is no loss in delay when it is the result of an embarrassing 
abundance of choice. My present argument is that a successful result 
implies a sufficient cause; some clear and cogent motive must underlie 
every effectual performance. And so the Evangelist has been obliged to 
reveal his motive in writing. Let us see what is the purpose which he 
confesses;--But these things are written that ye may believe that Jesus is 
the Christ, the Son of God(9). The one reason which he alleges for writing 
his Gospel is that all may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of 
God. If it be sufficient for salvation to believe that He is the Christ, 
why does he add The Son of God? But if the true faith be nothing less than 
the belief that Christ is not merely Christ, but Christ the Son of God, 
then assuredly the name of Son is not attached to Christ as a customary 
appendage due to adoption, seeing that it is essential to salvation. If 
then salvation consists in the confession of the name, must not the name 
express the truth? If the name express the truth, by what authority can He 
be called a creature? It is not the confession of a creature, but the 
confession of the Son, which shall give us salvation.

    42. To believe, therefore, that Jesus Christ is the Son of God is true 
salvation, is the acceptable service of an unfeigned faith. For we have no 
love within us towards God the Father except through faith in the Son. Let 
us hear Him speaking to us in the words of the Epistle;--Every one that 
loveth the Father loveth Him that is born from Him(1). What, I ask, is the 
meaning of being born from Him? Can it mean, perchance, being created by 
Him? Does the Evangelist lie in saying that He was born from God, while the 
heretic more correctly teaches that He was created? Let us all listen to 
the true character of this teacher of heresy. It is written, He is 
antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son(2). What will you do now, 
champion of the creature, conjurer up of a novel Christ out of nothing? 
Hear the title which awaits you, if you persist in your assertion. Or do 
you think that perhaps you may still describe the Father and the Son as 
Creator and Creature, and yet by an ingenious ambiguity of language escape 
being recognised as antichrist? If your confession embraces a Father in the 
true sense, and a Son in the true sense, then I am a slanderer, assailing 
you with a title of infamy which you have not deserved. But if in your 
confession all Christ's attributes are spurious and nominal, and not His 
own, then learn from the Apostle the right description of such a faith as 
yours; and hear what is the true faith which believes in the Son. The words 
which follow are these;--He that denieth the Son, the same hath not the 
Father: he that confesseth the Son hath both the Son and the Father(3). He 
that denies the Son is destitute of the Father; he that confesses and has 
the Son has the Father also. What room is there here for adoptive names? 
Does not every word tell of the Divine nature? Learn how completely that 
nature is present.

    43. John speaks thus;--For we know that the Son of God is came, and was 
incarnate for us, and suffered, and rose again from tire dead and took us 
for Himself, and gave us a good understanding that we may know Him that is 
true, and may be in His true Son Jesus Christ. He is true and is life 
eternal and our resurrection(4). Wisdom doomed to an evil end, void of the 
Spirit of God, destined to possess the spirit and the name of Antichrist, 
blind to the truth that the Son of God came to fulfil the mystery of our 
salvation, and unworthy in that blindness to perceive the light of that 
sovereign knowledge! For this wisdom asserts that Jesus Christ is no true 
Son of God, but a creature of His, Who bears the Divine name by adoption. 
In what dark oracle of hidden knowledge was the secret learnt? To whose 
research do we owe this, the great discovery of the day? Were you he that 
lay upon the bosom of the Lord? You he to whom in the familiar intercourse 
of love He revealed the mystery? Was it you that alone followed Him to the 
foot of the Cross? And while He was charging you to receive Mary as your 
Mother, did He teach you this secret, as the token of His peculiar love for 
yourself? Or did you run to the Sepulchre, and reach it sooner even than 
Peter, and so gain this knowledge there? Or was it amid the throngs of 
angels, and sealed books whose clasps none can open, and manifold 
influences of the signs of heaven, and unknown songs of the eternal choirs, 
that the Lamb, your Guide, revealed to you this godly doctrine, that the 
Father is no Father, the Son no Son, nor nature, nor truth? For you 
transform all these into lies. The Apostle, by that most excellent 
knowledge that was granted him, speaks of the Son of God as true. You 
assert His creation, proclaim His adoption, deny His birth. While the true 
Son of God is eternal life and resurrection to us, for him, in whose eyes 
He is not true, there is neither eternal life nor resurrection. And this is 
the lesson taught by John, the disciple beloved of the Lord.

    44. And the persecutor, who was converted to be an Apostle and a chosen 
vessel, delivers the very same message. What discourse is there of his 
which does not presuppose the confession of the Son? What Epistle of his 
that does not begin with a confession of that mysterious truth? When he 
says, We were reconciled to God by the death of His Son(5), and, God sent 
His Son to be the likeness of the flesh of sin(6), and again, God is 
faithful, by Whom ye were called unto the fellowship of His Son(7), is any 
loophole left for heretical misrepresentation? His Son, Son of God; so we 
read, but nothing is said of His adoption, or of God's creature. The name 
expresses the nature; He is God's Son, and therefore the Sonship is true. 
The Apostle's confession asserts the genuineness of the relation. I see not 
how the Divine nature of the Son could have been more completely stated. 
That Chosen Vessel has proclaimed in no weak or wavering voice that Christ 
is the Son of Him Who, as we believe, is the Father. The Teacher of the 
Gentiles, the Apostle of Christ, has left us no uncertainty, no opening for 
error in his presentation of the doctrine. He is quite clear upon the 
Subject of children by adoption; of those who by faith attain so to be and 
so to be named. in his own words, For as many as are led by tire Spirit of 
God, they are the sons of God. For ye have not received the spirit of 
bondage again unto fear, but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, 
whereby we cry, Abba, Father(8). This is the name granted to us, who 
believe, through the sacrament of regeneration; our confession of the faith 
wins us this adoption. For our work done in obedience to the Spirit of God 
gives us the title of sons of God. Abba, Father, is the cry which we raise, 
not the expression of our essential nature. For that essential nature of 
ours is untouched by that tribute of the voice. It is one thing for God to 
be addressed as Father; another thing for Him to be the Father of His Son.

    45. But now let us learn what is this faith concerning the Son of God, 
which the Apostle holds. For though there is no single discourse, among the 
many which he delivered concerning the Church's doctrine, in which he 
mentions the Father without also making confession of the Son, yet, in 
order to display the truth of the relation which that name conveys with the 
utmost definiteness of which human language is capable, he speaks thus:--
What then? If God be for us, who can be against us? Who spared not His own 
Son,  but delivered Him up for us(9). Can Son, by any remaining 
possibility, be a title received through adoption, when He is expressly 
called God's own Son? For the Apostle, wishing to make manifest the love of 
God towards us, uses a kind of comparison, to enable us to estimate how 
great that love is, when He says that it was His own Son Whom God did not 
spare. He suggests the thought that this was no sacrifice of an adopted 
Son, on behalf of those whom He purposed to adopt, of a creature for 
creatures, but of His Son for strangers, His own Son for those to whom He 
had willed to give a share in the name of sons. Seek out the full import of 
the term, that you may understand the extent of the love. Consider the 
meaning of own; mark the genuineness of the Sonship which it implies. For 
the Apostle now describes Him as God's own Soil; previously he had often 
spoken of Him as God's Son, or Son of God. And though many manuscripts, 
through a want of apprehension on the part of the translators, read in this 
passage His Son, instead of His own,  Son, yet the original Greek, the 
tongue in which the Apostle wrote, is more exactly rendered by His own than 
by His[1]. And though the casual reader may discern no great difference 
between His own and His, yet the Apostle, who in all his other statements 
had spoken of His Son, which is, in the Greek, to`n heautou^ huio'n, in 
this passage uses the words ho's ge tou^ idi'ou huio'n ouk ephei'sato, that 
is, Who spared not His own Son, expressly and emphatically indicating His 
true Divine nature. Previously he had declared that through the Spirit of 
adoption there are many sons; now his object is to point to God's own Son, 
God the Only-begotten.

    46. This is no universal and inevitable error; they who deny the Son 
cannot lay the fault upon their ignorance, for ignorance of the truth which 
they deny is impossible. They describe the Son of God as a creature who 
came into being out of nothing. If the Father has never asserted this, nor 
the Son confirmed it, nor the Apostles proclaimed it, then the dating which 
prompts their allegation is bred not of ignorance, but of hatred for 
Christ. When the Father says of His Son, This is[2], and the Son of 
Himself, It is He that talketh with Thee[3], and when Peter confesses Thou 
art[4], and John assures us, This is the true God[5], and Paul is never 
weary of proclaiming Him as God's own Son, I can conceive of no other 
motive for this denial than hatred. The plea of want of familiarity with 
the subject cannot be urged in extenuation of their guilt. It is the 
suggestion of that Evil One, uttered now through these prophets and 
forerunners of his coming; he will utter it himself hereafter when he comes 
as Antichrist. He is using this novel engine of assault to shake us m our 
saving confession of the faith. His first object is to pluck from our 
hearts the confident assurance of the Divine nature of the Son; next, he 
would fill our minds with the notion of Christ's adoption, and leave no 
room for the memory of His other claims. For they who hold that Christ is 
but a creature, must regard Christ as Antichrist, since a creature cannot 
be God's own Son, and therefore He must lie in calling Himself the Son of 
God. Hence also they who deny that Christ is the Son of God must have 
Antichrist for their Christ.

    47. What is the hope of which this futile passion of yours is in 
pursuit? What is the assurance of your salvation which emboldens you with 
blasphemous licence of tongue to maintain that Christ is a creature, and 
not a Son? It was your duty to know this mystery, from the Gospels, and to 
hold the knowledge fast. For though the Lord can do all things, yet He 
resolved that every one who prays for His effectual help must earn it by a 
true confession of Himself. Not, indeed, that the suppliant's confession 
could augment the power of Him, Who is the Power of God; but the earning 
was to be the reward of faith. So, when He asked Martha, who was entreating 
Him for Lazarus, whether she believed that they who had believed in Him 
should not die eternally, her answer expressed the trust of her soul;--Yea, 
Lord, I believe that Than art the Christ, the Son of God, Who art come into 
this world[6]. This confession is eternal life; this faith has immortality. 
Martha, praying for her brother's life, was asked whether she believed 
this. She did so believe. What life does the denier expect, from whom does 
he hope to receive it, when this belief, and this only, is eternal life? 
For great is the mystery of this faith, and perfect the blessedness which 
is the fruit of this confession.

    48. The Lord had given sight to a man blind from his birth; the, Lord 
of nature had removed a defect of nature. Because this blind man had been 
born for the glory of God, that God's work might be made manifest in the 
work of Christ, the Lord did not delay till the man had given evidence of 
his faith by a confession of it. But though he knew not at the time Who it 
was that had bestowed the great gift of eyesight, yet afterwards he earned 
a knowledge of the faith. For it was not the dispelling of his blindness 
that won him eternal life. And so, when the man was already healed and had 
suffered ejection from the synagogue, the Lord put to him the question, 
Dost thou believe on the Son of God[7]? This was to save him from the 
thought of loss, in exclusion from the synagogue, by the certainty that 
confession of the true faith had restored him to immortality. When the man, 
his soul still unenlightened, made answer, Who is He, Lord, that I may 
believe on Him[8]? The Lord's reply was, Thou hast bath seen Him, and it is 
He that talketh with thee. For He was minded to remove the ignorance of the 
man whose sight he had restored, and whom He was now enriching with the 
knowledge of so glorious a faith. Does the Lord demand from this man, as 
from others, who prayed Him to heal them, a confession of faith as the 
price of their recovery? Emphatically not. For the blind man could already 
see when he was thus addressed. The Lord asked the question in order to 
receive the answer, Lord, I believe[9]. The faith which spoke in that 
answer was to receive not sight, but life[1]. And now let us examine 
carefully the force of the words. The Lord asks of the man, Dost thou 
believe an the Son of God? Surely, if a simple confession of Christ, 
leaving His nature in obscurity, were a complete expression of the faith, 
the terms of the question would have been, 'Dost thou believe in Christ?' 
But in days to come almost every heretic was to make a parade of that name, 
confessing Christ and yet denying that He is the Son; and therefore He 
demands, as the condition of faith, that we should believe in what is 
peculiar to Himself, that is, in His Divine Sonship. What is the profit of 
faith in the Son of God, if it be faith in a creature, when He requires of 
us faith in Christ, not the creature, but the Son, of God.

    49. Did devils fail to understand the full meaning of this name of Son?  
For we are valuing the heretics at their true worth if we refute them no 
longer by the teaching of Apostles, but out of the mouth of devils. They 
cry, and cry often, What have I to do with Thee, Jesus, Thou Son of God 
most High[2]? Truth wrung this confession from them against their will; 
their reluctant obedience is a witness to the force of the Divine nature 
within Him. When they fly from the bodies they have long possessed, it is 
His might that conquers them; their confession of His nature is an act of 
reverence. These transactions display Christ as the Son of God both in 
power and in name. Can you hear, amid all these cries of devils confessing 
Him, Christ once styled a creature, or God's condescension in adopting Him 
once named?

    50. If you will not learn Who Christ is from those that know Him, learn 
it at least from those that know Him not. So shall the confession, which 
their ignorance is forced to make, rebuke your blasphemy. The Jews did not 
recognise Christ, come in the body, though they knew that the true Christ 
must be the Son of God. And so, when they were employing false witnesses, 
without one word of truth in their testimony, against Him, their priest 
asked Him, Art Thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed[3]? They knew not 
that in Him the mystery was fulfilled; they knew that the Divine nature was 
the condition of its fulfilment. They did not ask whether Christ be the Son 
of God; they asked whether He were Christ, the Son of God. They were wrong 
as to the Person, not as to the Sonship, of Christ. They did not doubt that 
Christ is the Son of God; and thus, while they asked whether He were the 
Christ, they asked without denying that the Christ is the Son of God. What, 
then, of your faith, which leads you to deny what even they, in their 
blindness, confessed?  The perfect knowledge is this, to be assured that 
Christ, the Son of God, Who existed before the worlds, was also born of the 
Virgin. Even they, who know nothing of His birth from Mary, know that He is 
the Son of God. Mark the fellowship with Jewish wickedness in which your 
denial of the Divine Sonship has involved you! For they have put on record 
the reason of their condemnation:--And by our Law He aught to die, because 
He made Himself the Son of God[4]. Is not this the same charge which you 
are blasphemously bringing against Him, that, while you pronounce Him a 
creature, He calls Himself the Son? He confesses Himself the Son, and they 
declare Him guilty of death: you too deny that He is the Son of God. What 
sentence do you pass upon Him? You have the same repugnance to His claim as 
had the Jews. You agree with their verdict; I want to know whether you will 
quarrel about the sentence. Your offence, in denying that He is the Son of 
God, is exactly the same as theirs, though their guilt is less, for they 
sinned in ignorance. They knew not that Christ was born of Mary, yet they 
never doubted that Christ must be the Son of God. You are perfectly aware 
of the fact that Christ was born of Mary, yet you refuse Him the name of 
Son of God. If they come to the faith, there awaits them an unimperilled 
salvation, because of their past ignorance. Every gate of safety is shut to 
you, because you persist in denying a truth which is obvious to you. For 
you are not ignorant that He is the Son of God; you know it so well that 
you allow Him the name as a title of adoption, and feign that He is a 
creature adorned, like others, with the right to call Himself a Son. You 
rob Him, as far as you can, of the Divine nature; if you could, you would 
rob Him of the Divine name as well. But, because you cannot, you divorce 
the name from the nature; He is called a Son, but He shall not be the true 
Son of God.

    51. The confession of the Apostles, for whom by a word of command the 
raging wind and troubled sea were restored to calm, was an opportunity for 
you. You might have confessed, as they did, that He is God's true Son; you 
might have borrowed their very words, Of a truth, this is the Son of 
God[5]. But an evil spirit of madness is driving you on to shipwreck of 
your life; your reason is distracted and overwhelmed, like the ocean 
tormented by the fury of the storm.

    52. If this witness of the voyagers seem inconclusive to you because 
they were Apostles,--though to me it comes with the greater weight for the 
same reason, though it surprises me the less,--accept at any rate a 
corroboration given by the Gentiles. Hear how the soldier of the Roman 
cohort, one of the stern guard around the Cross, was humbled to the faith. 
The centurion sees the mighty workings of Christ's power; and this is the 
witness borne by him:--Truly this was the Son of God[6]. The truth was 
forced upon him, after Christ had given up the ghost, by the torn veil of 
the Temple, and the earth that shook, and the rocks that were rent, and the 
sepulchres that were opened, and the dead that rose. And it was the 
confession of an unbeliever. The deeds that were done convinced him that 
Christ's nature was omnipotent; he names Him the Son of God, being assured 
of His true Divinity. So cogent was the proof, so strong the man's 
conviction, that the force of truth conquered his will, and even he who had 
nailed Christ to the Cross was driven to confess that He is the Lord of 
eternal glory, truly the Son of God.


BOOK VII

    1. This is the seventh book of our treatise against the wild 
extravagance of modern heresy. In order of place it must follow its 
predecessors; in order of importance, as an exposition of the mysteries of 
the right faith, it precedes. and excels them all. I am well aware how hard 
and steep is the path of evangelical instruction up which we are mounting. 
The fears inspired by consciousness of my own incapacity are plucking me 
back, but the warmth of faith urges me on; the assaults of heresy heat my 
blood, and the dangers of the ignorant excite my compassion. I fear to 
speak, and yet I cannot be silent. A double dread subdues my spirit; it may 
be that speech, it may be that silence, will render me guilty of a 
desertion of the truth. For this cunning heresy has hedged itself round 
with marvellous devices of perverted ingenuity. First there is the 
semblance of devotion; then the language carefully chosen to lull the 
suspicions of a candid listener; and again, the accommodation of their 
views to secular philosophy; and finally, their withdrawing of attention 
from manifest truth by a pretended explanation of Divine methods. Their 
loud profession of the unity of God is a fraudulent imitation of the faith; 
their assertion that Christ is the  Son of God a play upon words for the 
delusion of their hearers; their saying that He did not exist before He was 
born a bid for the support of the world's philosophers; their confession of 
God as incorporeal and immutable leads, by a display of fallacious logic, 
up to a denial of the birth of God from God. They turn our arguments 
against ourselves; the Church's faith is made the engine of its own 
destruction. They have contrived to involve us in the perplexing position 
of an equal danger, whether we reason with them or whether we refrain. For 
they use the fact that we allow certain of their assumptions to pass 
unchallenged as an argument on behalf of those which we do contradict.

    2. We call to mind that in the preceding books the reader has been 
urged to study the whole of that blasphemous manifesto[1], and mark how it 
is animated throughout by the one aim of propagating the belief that our 
Lord Jesus Christ is neither God, nor Son of God. Its authors argue that He 
is permitted to use the names of God and of Son by virtue of a certain 
adoption, though neither Godhead nor Sonship be His by nature. They use the 
fact, true in itself, that God is immutable and incorporeal, as an argument 
against the birth of the Son from Him. They value the truth, that God the 
Father is One, only as a weapon against our faith in the Godhead of Christ; 
pleading that an incorporeal nature cannot be rationally conceived as 
generating another, and that our faith in One God is inconsistent with the 
confession of God from God. But our earlier books have already refuted and 
foiled this argument of theirs by an appeal to the Law and the Prophets. 
Our defence has followed, step by step, the course of their attack. We have 
set forth God from God, and at the same time confessed One true God; 
shewing that this presentation of the faith neither falls short of the 
truth by ascribing singleness of Person to the One true God, nor adds to 
the faith by asserting the existence of a second Deity. For we confess 
neither an isolated God, nor yet two Gods. Thus, neither denying that God 
is One nor maintaining that He is alone, we hold the straight road of 
truth. Each Divine Person is in the Unity, yet no Person is the One God. 
Next, our purpose being to demonstrate the irrefragable truth of this 
mystery by the evidence of the Evangelists and Apostles, our first duty has 
been to make our readers acquainted with the nature, truly subsisting and 
truly born, of the Son of God; to demonstrate that He has no origin 
external to God, and was not created out of nothing, but is the Son, born 
from God. This is a truth which the evidence adduced in the last book has 
placed beyond all doubt. The assertion that He bears the name of Son by 
virtue of adoption has been put to silence, and He stands forth as a true 
Son by a true birth. Our present task is to prove from the Gospels that, 
because He is true Son, He is true God also. For unless He be true Son He 
cannot be true God, nor true God unless He be true Son.

    3. Nothing is more harassing to human nature than the sense of 
impending danger. If calamities unknown or unanticipated befall us, we may 
need pity, yet we have been free from care; no load of anxiety has 
oppressed us. But he whose mind is full of possibilities of trouble suffers 
already a torment in his fear. I who now am venturing out to sea, am a 
mariner not unused to shipwreck, a traveller who knows by experience holy 
brigands lurk in the forests, an explorer of African deserts aware of the 
danger from scorpions and asps and basilisks[2]. I enjoy no instant of 
relief from the knowledge and fear of present danger. Every heretic is on 
the watch, noting every word as it drops from my mouth. The whole progress 
of my argument is infested with ambuscades and pitfalls and snares. It is 
not of the road, of its hardness or steepness, that I complain; I am 
following in the footsteps of the Apostles, not choosing my own path. My 
trouble is the constant peril, the constant dread, of wandering into some 
ambush, of stumbling into some pit, of being entangled in some net. My 
purpose is to proclaim the unity of God, in the sense of the Law and 
Prophets and Apostles. Sabellius is at hand, eager with cruel kindness to 
welcome me, on the strength of this unity, and swallow me up in his own 
destruction. If I withstand him, and deny that, in the Sabellian sense, God 
is One a fresh heresy is ready to receive me, pointing out that I teach the 
existence of two Gods. Again, if I undertake to tell holy the Son of God 
was born from Mary, Photinus, the Ebion of our day, will be prompt to twist 
this assertion of the truth into a confirmation of his lie. I need mention 
no other heresies save one; all the world knows that they are alien from 
the Church. It is one that has been often denounced, often rejected, yet it 
preys upon our vitals still. Galatia[3] has reared a large brood of godless 
assertors of the unity of God. Alexandria[4] has sown broadcast, over 
almost the whole world, her denial, which is an affirmation, of the 
doctrine of two Gods. Pannonia[5] upholds her pestilent doctrine that the 
only birth of Jesus Christ was from the Virgin. And the Church, distracted 
by these rival faiths, is in danger of being led by means of truth into a 
rejection of truth. Doctrines are being forced upon her for godless ends, 
which, according to the use that is made of them, will either support or 
overthrow the faith. For instance, we cannot, as true believers, assert 
that God is One, if we mean by it that He is alone; for faith in a lonely 
God denies the Godhead of the Son. If, on the other hand, we assert, as we 
truly can, that the Son is God, we are in danger, so they fondly imagine, 
of deserting the truth that God is One. We are in peril on either hand; we 
may deny the unity or we may maintain the isolation. But it is a danger 
which has no terrors for the foolish things of the word[6]. Our adversaries 
are blind to the fact that His assertion that He is not alone is consistent 
with unity; that though He is One He is not solitary.

    4. But I trust that the Church, by the light of her doctrine, will so 
enlighten the world's vain wisdom, that, even though it accept not the 
mystery of the faith, it will recognise that in our conflict with heretics 
we, and not they, are the true representatives of that mystery. For great 
is the force of truth; not only is it its own sufficient witness, but the 
more it is assailed the more evident it becomes; the daily shocks which it 
receives only increase its inherent stability. It is the peculiar property 
of the Church that when she is buffeted she is triumphant, when she is 
assaulted with argument she proves herself in the right, when she is 
deserted by her supporters she holds the field. It is her wish that all men 
should remain at her side and in her bosom; if it lay with her, none would 
become unworthy to abide under the shelter of that august mother, none 
would be cast out or suffered to depart from her calm retreat. But when 
heretics desert her or she expels them, the loss she endures, in that she 
cannot save them, is compensated by an increased assurance that she alone 
can offer bliss. This is a truth which the passionate zeal of rival 
heresies brings into the clearest prominence. The Church, ordained by the 
Lord and established by His Apostles, is one for all; but the frantic folly 
of discordant sects has severed them from her. And it is obvious that these 
dissensions concerning the faith result from a distorted mind, which twists 
the words of Scripture into conformity with its opinion, instead of 
adjusting that opinion to the words of Scripture. And thus, amid the clash 
of mutually destructive errors, the Church stands revealed not only by her 
own teaching, but by that of her rivals. They are ranged, all of them, 
against her; and the very fact that she stands single and alone is her 
sufficient answer to their godless delusions. The hosts of heresy assemble 
themselves against her; each of them can defeat all the others, but not one 
can win a victory for itself. The only victory is the triumph which the 
Church celebrates over them all. Each heresy wields against its adversary 
some weapon already shattered, in another instance, by the Church's 
condemnation. There is no point of union between them, and the outcome of 
their internecine struggles is the confirmation of the faith.

    5. Sabellius sweeps away the birth of the Son, and then preaches the 
unity of God; but he does not doubt that the mighty Nature,  which acted in 
the human Christ, was God. He shuts his eyes to the revealed mystery of the 
Sonship; the works done seem to him so marvellous that he cannot believe 
that He who performed them could undergo a true generation. When he hears 
the words, He that hath, seen Me hath seen the Father also[7], he jumps to 
the blasphemous conclusion of an inseparable and indistinguishable identity 
of nature in Father and Son, because he fails to see that the revelation of 
the birth is the mode in which Their unity of nature is manifested to. us. 
For the fact that the Father is seen in the Son is a proof of the Son's 
Divinity, not a disproof of His birth. Thus our knowledge of Each of Them 
is conditioned-by our knowledge of the Other, for there is no difference of 
nature between them and, since in this respect they are One, a reverent 
study of the character of Either will give us a true insight into the 
nature of Both For, indeed, it is certain that He, Who was in the form of 
God, must in His self-revelation present Himself to us in the exact aspect 
of the form of God[8]. Again, this perverse and insane delusion derives a 
further encouragement from the words, I and the Father are One[9]. From the 
fact of unity in the same nature they have impiously deduced a confusion of 
Persons; their interpretation, that the words signify a single Power, 
contradicts the tenour of the passage. For I and the Father are One does 
not indicate a solitary God. The use of the conjunction and shews clearly 
that more than one Person is signified; and are requires a plurality of 
subject. Moreover, the One is not incompatible with a birth. Its sense is, 
that the Two Persons have the one nature in common. The One is inconsistent 
with difference; the are with identity.

    6. Set our modern heresy in array against the delusion, equally wild, 
of Sabellius; let them make the best of their case. The new heretics will 
advance the passage. The Father is greater than I[1]. Neglecting the 
mystery of the Divine birth, and the mystery of God's emptying Himself and 
taking flesh, they will argue the inferiority of His nature from His 
assertion that the Father is the greater. They will plead against Sabellius 
that Christ is a Son, in so far as One can be a Son who is inferior to the 
Father and needs to ask for restoration to His glory, and fears to die and 
indeed did die. In reply Sabellius will adduce His deeds in evidence of His 
Divine nature; and while our novel heresy, to escape the admission of 
Christ's true Sonship, will heartily agree with him that God is One, 
Sabellius will emphatically assert the same article of the faith, in the 
sense that no Son exists. The one side lays stress upon the action of the 
Son; the other urges that in that action God is manifest. the one will 
demonstrate the unity, the other disprove the identity. Sabellius will 
defend his position thus:--"The works that were done could have been done 
by no other nature than the Divine. Sins were remitted, the sick were 
healed, the lame ran, the blind saw, the dead lived. God alone has power 
for this. The words I and the Father are One could only have been spoken 
from self-knowledge; no nature, outside the Father's, could have uttered 
them. Why then suggest a second substance, and urge me to believe in a 
second God? These works are peculiar to God; the One God wrought them." His 
adversaries, animated by a hatred, equally venomous, for the faith, will 
argue that the Son is unlike in nature to God the Father:--"You are 
ignorant of the mystery of your salvation. You must believe in a Son 
through Whom the worlds were made, through Whom man was fashioned, Who gave 
the Law through Angels, Who was born of Mary, Who was sent by the Father, 
was crucified, dead and buried, Who rose again from the dead and is at the 
right hand of God, Who is the Judge of quick and dead. Unto Him we must use 
again, we must confess Him, we must earn our place in His kingdom." Each of 
the two enemies of the Church is fighting the Church's battle. Sabellius 
displays Christ as God by the witness of the Divine nature manifested in 
His works; Sabellius' antagonists confess Christ, on the evidence of the 
revealed faith, to be the Son of God.

    7. Again, how glorious a victory for our faith is that in which Ebionin 
other words, Photinus--both wins the day and loses it! He castigates 
Sabellius for denying that the Son of God is Man, and in his turn has to 
submit to the reproaches of Arian fanatics for failing to see that this Man 
is the Son of God. Against Sabellius he calls the Gospels to his aid, with 
their evidence concerning the Son of Mary; Arius deprives him of this ally 
by proving that the Gospels make Christ something more than the Son of 
Mary. Sabellius denies that there is a Son of God; against him Photinus 
elevates man to the place of Son. Photinus will hear nothing of a Son born 
before the worlds; against him, Arius denies that the only birth of the Son 
of God was His human birth. Let them defeat one another to their hearts' 
content, for every victory which each of them wins is balanced by a defeat 
Our present adversaries are ranted in the matter of the Divine nature of 
the Son; Sabellius in the matter of the Son's revealed existence; Photinus 
is convicted of ignorance, or else of falsehood, in his denial of the Son's 
birth before the worlds. Meanwhile the Church, whose faith is based upon 
the teaching of Evangelists and Apostles, holds fast, against Sabellius, 
her assertion that the Son exists; against Arius, that He is God by nature; 
against Photinus, that He created the universe. And she is the more 
convinced of her faith, in that they cannot combine to contradict it. For 
Sabellius points to the works of Christ in proof of the Divinity of Him Who 
wrought them, though he knows not that the Son was their Author. The Arians 
grant Him tile name of Son, though they confess not that the true nature of 
God dwelt in Him. Photinus maintains His manhood, though in maintaining it 
he forgets that Christ was born as God before the worlds. Thus, in their 
several assertions and denials, there are points in which each heresy is in 
the right in defence or attack; and the result of their conflicts is that 
the truth of our confession is brought into clearer light.

    8. I felt that I must spare a little space to point this out. It has 
been from no love for amplification, but that it might serve as a warning. 
First, I wished to expose the vague and confused character of this crowd of 
heresies, whose mutual feuds turn, as we have seen, to our advantage. 
Secondly, in my warfare against the blasphemous doctrines of modern heresy; 
that is, in my task of proclaiming that both God the Father and God the Son 
are God,--in other words, that Father and Son are One in name, One in 
nature, One in the kind of Divinity which they possess,--I wished to shield 
myself from any charge which might be brought against me, either as an 
advocate of two Gods or of one lonely and isolated Deity. For in God the 
Father and God the Son, as I have set them forth, no confusion of Persons 
can be detected; nor in my exposition of Their common nature can any 
difference between the Godhead of the One and of the Other be discerned. In 
the preceding book I have sufficiently refuted, by the witness of the 
Gospels, those who deny the subsistence of I God the Son by a true birth 
from God; my present duty is to shew that He, Who in the truth of His 
nature is Son of God, is also in the truth of His nature God. But this 
proof must not degenerate into the fatal profession of a solitary God, or 
of a second God. It shall manifest God as One yet not alone; but in its 
care to avoid the error of making Him lonely it shall not fall into the 
error of denying His unity.

    9. Thus we have all these different assurances of the Divinity of our 
Lord Jesus Christ:--His name, His birth, His nature, His power, His own 
assertion. As to the name, I conceive that no doubt is possible. It is 
written, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the 
Word was God(2). What reason can there be for suspecting that He is not 
what His name indicates? And does not this name clearly describe His 
nature? If a statement be contradicted, it must be for some reason. What 
reason, I demand, is there in this instance for denying that He is God? The 
name is given Him, plainly and distinctly, and unqualified by any 
incongruous addition which might raise a doubt. The Word, we read, which 
was made flesh, was none other than God. Here is no loophole for any such 
conjecture as that He has received this name as a favour or taken it upon 
Himself, so possessing a titular Godhead which is not His by nature.

    10. Consider the other recorded instances in which this name was given 
by favour or assumed. To Moses it was said, I have made thee a god to 
Pharaoh(3). Does not this addition, to Pharaoh, account for the title? Did 
God impart to Moses the Divine nature? Did He not rather make Moses a god 
in the sight of Pharaoh, who was to be smitten with terror when Moses' 
serpent swallowed the magic serpents and returned into a rod, when he drove 
back the venomous flies which he had called forth, when he stayed the hail 
by the same power wherewith he had summoned it, and made the locusts depart 
by the same might which had brought them; when in the wonders that he 
wrought the magicians saw the finger of God? That was the sense in which 
Moses was appointed to be god to Pharaoh; he was feared and entreated, he 
chastised and healed. It is one thing to be appointed a god; it is another 
thing to be God. He was made a god to Pharaoh; he had not that nature and 
that name wherein God consists. I call to mind another instance of the name 
being given as a title;  that where  it is written, I have said, Ye are 
gods(4). But this is obviously the granting of a favour. I have said proves 
that it is no definition, but only a description by One Who chooses to 
speak thus, A definition gives us knowledge of the object defined; a 
description depends on the arbitrary will of the speaker. When a speaker is 
manifestly conferring a title, that title has its origin only in the 
speaker's words, not in the thing itself. The title is not the name which 
expresses its nature and kind.

    11. But in this case the Word in very truth is God; the essence of the 
Godhead exists in the Word, and that essence is expressed in the Word's 
name. For the name Word is inherent in the Son of God as a consequence of 
His mysterious birth, as are also the names Wisdom and Power. These, 
together with the substance which is His by a true birth, were called into 
existence to be the Son of God(5); yet, since they are the elements of 
God's nature, they are still immanent in Him in undiminished extent, 
although they were born from Him to be His Son. For, as we have said so 
often, the mystery which we preach is that of a Son Who owes His existence 
not to division but to birth. He is not a segment cut off, and so 
incomplete, but an Offspring born, and therefore perfect; for birth 
involves no diminution of the Begetter, and has the possibility of 
perfection for the Begotten. And therefore the titles of those substantive 
properties(6) are applied to God the Only-begotten, for when He came into 
existence by birth it was they which constituted His perfection; and this 
although they did not thereby desert the Father, in Whom, by the 
immutability of His nature, they are eternally present. For instance, the 
Word is God the Only-begotten, and yet the Unbegotten Father is never 
without His Word. Not that the nature of the Son is that of a sound which 
is uttered. He is God from God, subsisting through a true birth; God's own 
Son, born from the Father, indistinguishable from Him in nature, and 
therefore inseparable. This is the lesson which His title of the Word is 
meant to teach us. And in the same way Christ is the Wisdom and the Power 
of God; not that He is, as He is often regarded(7), the inward activity of 
the Father's might or thought, but that His nature, possessing through 
birth a true substantial existence, is indicated by these names of inward 
forces. For an object, which has by birth an existence of its own, cannot 
be regarded as a property; a property is necessarily inherent in some being 
and can have no independent existence. But it was to save us from 
concluding that the Son is alien from the Divine nature of His Father that 
He, the Only-begotten from the eternal God His Father, born as God into a 
substantial existence of His own, has had Himself revealed to us under 
these names of properties, of which the Father, out of Whom He came into 
existence, has suffered no diminution. Thus He, being God, is nothing else 
than God. For when I hear the words, And the Word was God, they do not 
merely tell me that the Son was called God; they reveal to my understanding 
that He is God. In those previous instances, where Moses was called god and 
others were styled gods, there was the mere addition of a name by way of 
title. Here a solid essential truth is stated; The Word was God. That was 
indicates no accidental title, but an eternal reality, a permanent element 
of His existence, an inherent character of His nature.

    12. And now let us See whether the confession of Thomas the Apostle, 
when he cried, My Lord and My God, corresponds with this assertion of the 
Evangelist. We see that he speaks of Him, Whom he confesses to be God, as 
My God. Now Thomas was undoubtedly familiar with those words of the Lord, 
Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is One. How then could the faith of an 
Apostle become so oblivious of that primary command as to confess Christ as 
God, when life is conditional upon the confession of the Divine unity? It 
was because, in the light of the Resurrection, the whole mystery of the 
faith had become visible to the Apostle. He had often heard such words as, 
I and the Father are One, and, All things that the Father hath are Mine, 
and, I in the Father and the Father in Me(8); and now he can confess that 
the name of God expresses the nature of Christ, without peril to the faith. 
Without breach of loyalty to the One God, the Father, his devotion could 
now regard the Son of God as God, since he believed that everything 
contained in the nature of the Son was truly of the same nature with the 
Father. No longer need he fear that such a confession as his was the 
proclamation of a second God, a treason against the unity of the Divine 
nature; for it was not a second God Whom that perfect birth of the Godhead 
had brought into being. Thus it was with full knowledge of the mystery of 
the Gospel that Thomas confessed his Lord and his God. It was not a title 
of honour; it was a confession of nature. He believed that Christ was God 
in substance and in power. And the Lord, in turn, shews that this act of 
worship was the expression not of mere reverence, but of faith, when He 
says, Because than hast seen, thou hast believed; blessed are they which 
have not seen, and have believed. For Thomas had seen before he believed. 
But, you ask, What was it that Thomas believed? That, beyond a doubt, which 
is expressed in his words, My Lord and my God. No nature but that of God 
could have risen by its own might from death to life; and it is this fact, 
that Christ is God, which was confessed by Thomas with the confidence of an 
assured faith. Shall we, then, dream that His name of God is not a 
substantial reality, when that name has been proclaimed by a faith based 
upon certain evidence? Surely a Son devoted to His Father, One Who did not 
His own will but the will of Him that sent Him, Who sought not His own 
glory but the glory of Him from Whom He came, would have rejected the 
adoration involved in such a name as destructive of that unity of God which 
had been the burden of His teaching. Yet, in fact, He confirms this 
assertion of the mysterious truth, made by the believing Apostle; He 
accepts as His own the name which belongs to the nature of the Father. And 
He teaches that they are blessed who, though they have not seen Him rise 
from the dead, yet have believed, on the assurance of the Resurrection, 
that He is God.

    13. Thus the name which expresses His nature proves the truth of our 
confession of the faith. For the name, which indicates any single 
substance, points out also any other substance of the same kind; and, in 
this instance, there are not two substances but one substance, of the one 
kind. For the Son of God is God; this is the truth expressed in His name. 
The one name does not embrace two Gods; for the one name God is the name of 
one indivisible nature. For since the Father is God and the Son is God, and 
that name which is peculiar to the Divine nature is inherent in Each, 
therefore the Two are One. For the Son, though He subsists through a birth 
from the Divine nature, yet preserves the unity in His name; and this birth 
of the Son does not compel loyal believers to acknowledge two Gods, since 
our confession declares that Father and Son are One, both in nature and in 
name. Thus the Son of God has the Divine name as the result of His birth. 
Now the second step in our demonstration was to be that of shewing that it 
is by virtue of His birth that He is God. I have still to bring forward the 
evidence of the Apostles that the Divine name is used of Him in an exact 
sense; but for the present I purpose to continue our enquiry into the 
language of the Gospels.

    14. And first I ask what new element, destructive of His Godhead, can 
have been imported by birth into the nature of the Son? Universal reason 
rejects the supposition that a being can become different in nature, by the 
process of birth, from the being to which its birth is due; although we 
recognise the possibility that from parents, different in kind, an 
offspring sharing the nature of both, yet diverse from either, may be 
propagated. The fact is familiar in the case of beasts, both tame and wild. 
But even in this case there is no real novelty; the new qualities already 
exist, concealed in the two different parental natures, and are only 
developed by the connexion. The birth of their joint offspring is not the 
cause of that offspring's difference from its parents. The difference is a 
gift from them of various diversities, which are received and combined in 
one frame. When this is the case as to the transmission and reception even 
of bodily differences, is it not a form of madness to assert that the birth 
of God the Only-begotten was the birth from God of a nature inferior to 
Himself? For the giving of birth is a function of the true nature of the 
transmitter of life; and without the presence and action of that true 
nature there can be no birth. The object of all this heat and passion is to 
prove that there was no birth, but a creation, of the Son of God; that the 
Divine nature is not His origin and that He does not possess that nature in 
His personal subsistence, but draws, from what was non-existent, a nature 
different in kind from the Divine. They are angry because He says, That 
which is barn of the flesh is flesh, and that which is barn of the Spirit 
is Spirit(9). For, since God is a Spirit, it is clear that in One born from 
Him there can be nothing alien or different froth that Spirit from which He 
was born. Thus the birth of God constitutes Him perfect God. And hence also 
it is clear that we must not say that He began to exist, but only that He 
was born. For there is a sense in which beginning is different from birth. 
A thing which begins to exist either comes into existence out of nothing, 
or developes out of one state into another, ceasing to be what it was 
before; so, for instance, gold is formed out of earth, solids melt into 
liqu