BOOK VII. 1. THIS is the seventh book of our treatise | Lord Jesus Christ is neither God, nor Son of against the wild extravagance of modern heresy. God. Its authors argue that He is permitted In order of place it must follow its predeces- to use the names of God and of Son by virtue sors; in order of importance, as an exposition of a certain adoption, though neither Godof the mysteries of the right faith, it precedes head nor Sonship be His by nature. They and excels them all. I am well aware how use the fact, true in itself, that God is immuthard and steep is the path of evangelical able and incorporeal, as an argument against instruction up which we are mounting. The the birth of the Son from Him. They value fears inspired by consciousness of my own the truth, that God the Father is One, only incapacity are plucking me back, but the as a weapon against our faith in the Godhead warmth of faith urges me on; the assaults of Christ; pleading that an incorporeal nature of heresy heat my blood, and the dangers cannot be rationally conceived as generating of the ignorant excite my compassion. I fear another, and that our faith in One God is to speak, and yet I cannot be silent. A double inconsistent with the confession of God from dread subdues my spirit; it may be that speech, God. But our earlier books have already it may be that silence, will render me guilty refuted and foiled this argument of theirs of a desertion of the truth. For this cunning by an appeal to the Law and the Prophets. heresy has hedged itself round with marvellous Our defence has followed, step by step, the devices of perverted ingenuity. First there course of their attack. We have set forth is the semblance of devotion; then the lan- God from God, and at the same time conguage carefully chosen to lull the suspicions fessed One true God; shewing that this preof a candid listener; and again, the accommo- sentation of the faith neither falls short of the dation of their views to secular philosophy; truth by ascribing singleness of Person to the and finally, their withdrawing of attention from One true God, nor adds to the faith by asserting manifest truth by a pretended explanation of the existence of a second Deity. For we conDivine methods. Their loud profession of fess neither an isolated God, nor yet two Gods. the unity of God is a fraudulent imitation Thus, neither denying that God is One nor of the faith; their assertion that Christ is the maintaining that He is alone, we hold the Son of God a play upon words for the de- straight road of truth. Each Divine Person lusion of their hearers; their saying that He is in the Unity, yet no Person is the One God. did not exist before He was born a bid for Next, our purpose being to demonstrate the the support of the world's philosophers; their irrefragable truth of this mystery by the eviconfession of God as incorporeal and immut-dence of the Evangelists and Apostles, our able leads, by a display of fallacious logic, first duty has been to make our readers acup 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, and mark how it is animated throughout by the one aim of propagating the belief that our The Epistola Arii ad Alexandrum; see Books iv. 12, vi. 5. quainted with the nature, truly subsisting and For 3. Nothing is more harassing to human nature than the sense of impending danger. If calamities unknown or unanticipated belall us, we may need pity, yet we have been free as we truly can, that the Son is God, we are from care; no load of anxiety has oppressed in danger, so they fondly imagine, of deserting Us. But he whose mind is full of possibilities the truth that God is One. We are in peril of trouble suffers already a torment in his on either hand; we may deny the unity or fear. I, who now am venturing out to sea, we may maintain the isolation. But it is am a mariner not unused to shipwreck, a a danger which has no terrors for the foolish traveller who knows by experience how bri- things of the world. Our adversaries are gands lurk in the forests, an explorer of blind to the fact that His assertion that He African deserts aware of the danger from is not alone is consistent with unity; that scorpions and asps and basilisks. I enjoy though He is One He is not solitary. no instant of relief from the knowledge and 4. But I trust that the Church, by the light fear of present danger. Every heretic is on of her doctrine, will so enlighten the world's the watch, noting every word as it drops from vain wisdom, that, even though it accept not my mouth. The whole progress of my argu- the mystery of the faith, it will recognise that ment is infested with ambuscades and pitfalls in our conflict with heretics we, and not they, and snares. It is not of the road, of its hard- are the true representatives of that mystery. ness or steepness, that I complain; I am For great is the force of truth; not only is following in the footsteps of the Apostles, not it its own sufficient witness, but the more choosing my own path. My trouble is the it is assailed the more evident it becomes; constant peril, the constant dread, of wander- the daily shocks which it receives only ining into some ambush, of stumbling into some crease its inherent stability. It is the pepit, of being entangled in some net. My culiar property of the Church that when she purpose is to proclaim the unity of God, is buffeted she is triumphant, when she is in the sense of the Law and Prophets and assaulted with argument she proves herself Apostles. Sabellius is at hand, eager with in the right, when she is deserted by her cruel kindness to welcome me, on the strength supporters she holds the field. It is her wish of this unity, and swallow me up in his own that all men should remain at her side and destruction. If I withstand him, and deny in her bosom; if it lay with her, none would that, in the Sabellian sense, God is One, become unworthy to abide under the shelter a fresh heresy is ready to receive me, pointing of that august mother, none would be cast out that I teach the existence of two Gods. out or suffered to depart from her calin reAgain, if I undertake to tell how the Son treat. But when heretics desert her or she of God was born from Mary, Photinus, the expels them, the loss she endures, in that she Ebion of our day, will be prompt to twist this cannot save them, is compensated by an inassertion of the truth into a confirmation of creased assurance that she alone can offer his lie. I need mention no other heresies, bliss. This is a truth which the passionate save one; all the world knows that they are zeal of rival heresies brings into the clearest alien from the Church. It is one that has prominence. The Church, ordained by the been often denounced, often rejected, yet Lord and established by His Apostles, is one it preys upon our vitals still. Galatia 3 has for all; but the frantic folly of discordant reared a large brood of godless assertors of sects has severed them from her. And it the unity of God. Alexandria has sown is obvious that these dissensions concerning 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, 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 61 Cor. i. 27. already shattered, in another instance, by the assertion that the Father is the greater. They Church's condemnation. There is no point will plead against Sabellius that Christ is of union between them, and the outcome of a Son, in so far as One can be a Son who their internecine struggles is the confirmation is inferior to the Father and needs to ask of the faith. for restoration to His glory, and fears to die 5. Sabellius sweeps away the birth of the and indeed did die. In reply Sabellius will Son, and then preaches the unity of God; adduce His deeds in evidence of His Divine but he does not doubt that the mighty Nature, nature; and while our novel heresy, to escape which acted in the human Christ, was God. the admission of Christ's true Sonship, will He shuts his eyes to the revealed mystery of heartily agree with him that God is One, the Sonship; the works done seem to him Sabellius will emphatically assert the same so marvellous that he cannot believe that He article of the faith, in the sense that no Son who performed them could undergo a true exists. The one side lays stress upon the generation. When he hears the words, He that action of the Son; the other urges that in hath scen Me hath seen the Father also, he that action God is manifest. The one will jumps to the blasphemous conclusion of an demonstrate the unity, the other disprove the inseparable and indistinguishable identity of identity. Sabellius will defend his position nature in Father and Son, because he fails thus: "The works that were done could to see that the revelation of the birth is the have been done by no other nature than the mode in which Their unity of nature is mani- Divine. Sins were remitted, the sick were fested to us. For the fact that the Father healed, the lame ran, the blind saw, the dead is seen in the Son is a proof of the Son's lived. God alone has power for this. The Divinity, not a disproof of His birth. Thus words I and the Father are One could only our knowledge of Each of Them is condi- have been spoken from self-knowledge; no tioned by our knowledge of the Other, for nature, outside the Father's, could have there is no difference of nature between them; uttered them. Why then suggest a second and, since in this respect they are One, a substance, and urge me to believe in a second reverent study of the character of Either will God? These works are peculiar to God; give us a true insight into the nature of Both the One God wrought them His adversaries, For, indeed, it is certain that He, Who was animated by a hatred, equally venomous, for in the form of God, must in His self-reve- the faith, will argue that the Son is unlike lation present Himself to us in the exact in nature to God the Father:-" You are aspect of the form of God 8. Again, this ignorant of the mystery of your salvation. perverse and insane delusion derives a further You must believe in a Son through Whom encouragement from the words, I and the the worlds were made, through Whom man Father are One9. From the fact of unity was fashioned, Who gave the Law through in the same nature they have impiously de- Angels, Who was born of Mary, Who was duced a confusion of Persons; their inter- sent by the Father, was crucified, dead and pretation, that the words signify a single buried, Who rose again from the dead and Power, contradicts the tenour of the passage. is at the right hand of God, Who is the Judge For I and the Father are One does not indi- of quick and dead. Unto Him we must rise cate a solitary God. The use of the conjunc-again, we must confess Him, we must earn tion and shews clearly that more than one our place in His kingdom." Each of the two P'erson is signified; and are requires a plu- enemies of the Church is fighting the Church's rality of subject. Moreover, the One is not battle. Sabellius displays Christ as God by incompatible with a birth. Its sense is, that the witness of the Divine nature manifested the Two Persons have the one nature in com-in His works; Sabellius' antagonists confess mon. The One is inconsistent with difference; Christ, on the evidence of the revealed faith, the are with identity. to be the Son of God. 6. Set our modern heresy in array against the 7. Again, how glorious a victory for our delusion, equally wild, of Sabellius; let them faith is that in which Ebion-in other words, make the best of their case. The new heretics Photinus-both wins the day and loses it! will advance the passage. The Father is He castigates Sabellius for denying that the greater than I'. Neglecting the mystery of Son of God is Man, and in his turn has to the Divine birth, and the mystery of God's submit to the reproaches of Arian fanatics for emptying Himself and taking flesh, they will argue the inferiority of His nature from His 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 some thing more than the Son of Mary. Sabellius Gospels, those who deny the subsistence of denies that there is a Son of God; against God the Son by a true birth from God; my him Photinus elevates man to the place of present duty is to shew that He, Who in the Son. Photinus will hear nothing of a Son truth of His nature is Son of God, is also born before the worlds; against him, Arius in the truth of His nature God. But this denies that the only birth of the Son of God proof must not degenerate into the fatal was His human birth. Let them defeat one profession of a solitary God, or of a second another to their hearts' content, for every God. It shall manifest God as One yet not victory which each of them wins is balanced alone; but in its care to avoid the error of by a defeat. Our present adversaries are making Him lonely it shall not fall into the routed in the matter of the Divine nature error of denying His unity. of the Son; Sabellius in the matter of the 9. Thus we have all these different assurSon's revealed existence; Photinus is con ances of the Divinity of our Lord Jesus victed of ignorance, or else of falsehood, in Christ:-- His name, His birth, His nature, his denial of the Son's birth before the worlds. His power, His own assertion. As to the Meanwhile the Church, whose faith is based name, I conceive that no doubt is possible. upon the teaching of Evangelists and Apostles, It is written, In the beginning was the Word, holds fast, against Sabellius, her assertion that and the Word was with God, and the Word the Son exists; against Arius, that He is God was God2. What reason can there be for by nature; against Photinus, that He created suspecting that He is not what His name the universe. And she is the more convinced indicates? And does not this name clearly of her faith, in that they cannot combine to describe His nature? If a statement be concontradict it. For Sabellius points to the tradicted, it must be for some reason. What works of Christ in proof of the Divinity of reason, I demand, is there in this instance Him Who wrought them, though he knows for denying that He is God? The name is not that the Son was their Author. The given Him, plainly and distinctly, and unArians grant Him the name of Son, though qualified by any incongruous addition which they coness not that the true nature of God might raise a doubt. The Word, we read, dwelt in Him. Photinus maintains His man- which was made flesh, was none other than hood, though in maintaining it he forgets that God. Here is no loophole for any such Christ was born as God before the worlds. conjecture as that He has received this name Thus, in their several assertions and denials, as a favour or taken it upon Himself, so there are points in which each heresy is in possessing a titular Godhead which is not the right in defence or attack; and the result His by nature. of their conflicts is that the truth of our contession is brought into clearer light. 10. Consider the other recorded instances in which this name was given by favour or 8. I felt that I must spare a little space assumed. To Moses it was said, I have made to point this out. It has been from no love thee a god to Pharaoh 3. Does not this adfor amplification, but that it might serve as dition, to Pharaoh, account for the title? Did a warning. First, I wished to expose the God impart to Moses the Divine nature? Did vague and confused character of this crowd He not rather make Moses a god in the sight of heresies, whose mutual feuds turn, as we of Pharaoh, who was to be smitten with terror have seen, to our advantage. Secondly, in when Moses' serpent swallowed the magic my warfare against the blasphemous doctrines serpents and returned into a rod, when he of modern heresy; that is, in my task of drove back the venomous flies which he had proclaiming that both God the Father and called forth, when he stayed the hail by the God the Son are God,-in other words, that same power wherewith he had summoned it, Father and Son are One in name, One in and made the locusts depart by the same nature, One in the kind of Divinity which might which had brought them; when in the they possess, I wished to shield myself from wonders that he wrought the magicians saw any charge which might be brought against the finger of God? That was the sense in me, either as an advocate of two Gods or of which Moses was appointed to be god to 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 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 2 St. John i. 1. 3 Exod. vii. 1. 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. of the name being given as a title; that where as a property; a property is necessarily init is written, I have said, Ye are gods. But herent in some being and can have no inthis is obviously the granting of a favour. dependent existence. But it was to save us I have said proves that it is no definition, but from concluding that the Son is alien from only a description by One Who chooses to the Divine nature of His Father that He, the speak thus. A definition gives us knowledge Only-begotten from the eternal God His of the object defined; a description depends Father, born as God into a substantial exon the arbitrary will of the speaker. When istence of His own, has had Himself revealed a speaker is manifestly conferring a title, that to us under these names of properties, of titie has its origin only in the speaker's words, which the Father, out of Whom He came not in the thing itself. The title is not the into existence, has suffered no diminution. name which expresses its nature and kind. Thus He, being God, is nothing else than 11. But in this case the Word in very truth God. For when I hear the words, And the is God; the essence of the Godhead exists in Word was God, they do not merely tell me the Word, and that essence is expressed in the that the Son was called God; they revel Word's name. For the name Word is in- to my understanding that He is God. In herent in the Son of God as a consequence those previous instances, where Moses was of His mysterious birth, as are also the names called god and others were styled gods, there Wisdom and Power. These, together with the was the mere addition of a name by way of 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 12. And now let us see whether the consaid so often, the mystery which we preach fession of Thomas the Apostle, when he cried, is that of a Son Who owes His existence not My Lord and My God, corresponds with this to division but to birth. He is not a segment assertion of the Evangelist. We see that he cut off, and so incomplete, but an Offspring speaks of Him, Whom he confesses to be born, and therefore perfect; for birth involves God, as My God. Now Thomas was unno diminution of the Begetter, and has the doubtedly familiar with those words of the possibility of perfection for the Begotten. And Lord, Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is therefore the titles of those substantive pro- One. How then could the faith of an Apostle perties are applied to God the Only-begotten, become so oblivious of that primary command for when He came into existence by birth it as to confess Christ as God, when life is conwas they which constituted His perfection; ditional upon the confession of the Divine and this although they did not thereby desert unity? It was because, in the light of the the Father, in Whom, by the immutability Resurrection, the whole mystery of the faith of His nature, they are eternally present. For had become visible to the Apostle. He had instance, the Word is God the Only-begotten, often heard such words as, I and the Father and yet the Unbegotten Father is never with- are One, and, All things that the Father hath out His Word. Not that the nature of the are Mine, and, I in the Father and the Father Son is that of a sound which is uttered. He in Me; and now he can confess that the is God from God, subsisting through a true name of God expresses the nature of Christ, birth; God's own Son, born from the Father, without peril to the faith. Without breach indistinguishable from Him in nature, and of loyalty to the One God, the Father, his therefore inseparable. This is the lesson which devotion could now regard the Son of God His title of the Word is meant to teach us. as God, since he believed that everything conAnd in the same way Christ is the Wisdom tained in the nature of the Son was truly of and the Power of God; not that He is, as He the same nature with the Father. No longer is often regarded 7, the inward activity of the need he fear that such a confession as his was Father's might or thought, but that His nature, the proclamation of a second God, a treason possessing through birth a true substantial ex-against the unity of the Divine nature; for istence, is indicated by these names of inward it was not a second God Whom that perfect forces. For an object, which has by birth an existence of its own, cannot be regarded 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; 8 St. John x. 30, xvi. 15, xiv. 11. |