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and the merchandise of the Ethiopians and Paul, the servant of Christ, boasts of his Sabeans. Men of stature shall come over unto bonds. Let us see whether this prisoner Thee and shall be Thy servants, and shall of Jesus Christ' conforms in his teaching follow after Thce, bound in chains, and shall to the prophecies uttered by God concerning worship Thee and make supplication unto Thee, God His Son. God had said, They shall make for Ged is in Thee and there is no God beside supplication, for God is in Thee. Now mark Thee. For Thou art God, and we knew it not, and digest these words of the Apostle :--God O God of Israel, the Saviour. All that resist was in Christ, reconciling the world to HimHim shall be ashamed and confounded, and sha'l self. And then the prophecy continues, And walk in confusion 5. Is any opening left for there is no God beside Thee. The Apostle gainsaying, or excuse for ignorance? If blas- promptly matches this with For there is one phemy continue, is it not in brazen defiance that Jesus Christ, our Lord, through Whom are it survives? God from Whom are all things, all things 9. Obviously there can be none Who made all by His command, asserts that other but He, for He is One. The third He is the Author of the universe, for, unless prophetic statement is, Thou art God, and we He had spoken, nothing had been created. knew it not. But Paul, once the persecutor He asserts that He has raised up a righteous of the Church, says, Whose are the fathers, King, who builds for Himself, that is, for God, from Whom is Christ, Who is God over all. a city, and turns back the captivity of His Such is to be the message of these men in people, for no gift nor reward, for freely are chains; men of stature, indeed, they will be, we all saved. Next, He tells how after the and shall sit on twelve thrones to judge the labours of Egypt, and after the traffic of Ethio- tribes of Israel, and shall follow their Lord, pians and Sabeans, men of stature shall come witnesses to Him in teaching and in martyrover to Him. How shall we understand these dom. labours in Egypt, this traffic of Ethiopians and 40. Thus God is in God, and it is God in Sabeans? Let us call to mind how the Magi Whom God dwells. But how is There is no of the East worshipped and paid tribute to the God beside Thee true, if God be within Him? Lord; let us estimate the weariness of that Heretic! In support of your confession of long pilgrimage to Bethlehem of Judah. In a solitary Father you employ the words, There the toilsome journey of the Magian princes is no God beside Me; what sense can you we see the labours of Egypt to which the assign to the solemn declaration of God the prophet alludes. For when the Magi exe- Father, There is no God beside Thee, if your cuted, in their spurious, material way, the duty explanation of There is no God beside Me be ordained for them by the power of God, the a denial of the Godhead of the Son? whole heathen world was offering in their whom, in that case, can God have said, There person the deepest reverence of which its is no God beside Thee? You cannot suggest worship was capable. And these same Magi that this solitary Being said it to Himself. presented gifts of gold and frankincense and It was to the King Whom He summoned that myrrh from the merchandise of the Ethio- the Lord said, by the mouth of the men of pians and Sabeans; a thing foretold by another stature who worshipped and made suppliprophet, who has said, The Ethiopians shall cation, For God is in Thee. The facts are fall down before His face, and His enemies inconsistent with solitude. In Thee implies shall lick the dust. The Kings of Tharsis that there was One present within range, if shall offer presents, the Kings of the Arabians I may say so, of the Speaker's voice. The and Sabeans shall bring gifts, and there shall complete sentence, God is in Thee, reveals not be given to Him of the gold of Arabia. The only God present, but also God abiding in Magi and their offerings stand for the labour Him Who is present. The words distinguish of Egypt and for the merchandise of Ethio- the Indweller from Him in Whom He dwells, pians and Sabeans; the adoring Magi repre- but it is a distinction of Person only, not of sent the heathen world, and offer the choicest character. God is in Him, and He, in Whom gifts of the Gentiles to the Lord Whom they God is, is God. The residence of God cannot be within a nature strange and alien to His 39. As for the men of stature who shall own. He abides in One Who is His own, come over to Him and follow Him in chains, born from Himself. God is in God, because there is no doubt who they are. Turn to the God is from God. For Thou art God, and w Gospels; Peter, when he is to follow his knew it not, O God of Israel, the Saviour. Lord, is girded up. Read the Apostles:

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41. My next book is devoted to the refutation of your denial that God is in God; for the

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prophet continues, All that resist Him shall And He is Man, and Who shall know Him??

be ashamed and confounded and shall walk in Thus you have God seen on earth and dwelling confusion. This is God's sentence, passed among men. Now I ask you what sense you upon your unbelief. You set yourself in op- would assign to No one hath seen God at any position to Christ, and it is on His account time, save the Only begotten Son, which is in the that the Father's voice is raised in solemn bosom of the Father, when Jeremiah proclaims reproof; for He, Whose Godhead you deny, God seen on earth and dwelling among men? is God. And you deny it under cloak of The Father confessedly cannot be seen except reverence for God, because He says, There is by the Son; Who then is This who was seen no other God beside Me. Submit to shame and dwelt among men? He must be our God, and confusion; the Unoriginate God has no for He is God visible in human form, Whom need of the dignity you offer; He has never men can handle. And take to heart the asked for this majesty of isolation which you prophet's words, There shall be none other attribute to Him. He repudiates your officious likened to Him. If you ask how this can interpretation which would twist His words, be, listen to the remainder of the sentence, There is no other God beside Me, into a denial lest you be tempted to deny to the Father of the Godhead of the Son Whom He begat His share of the confession, Hear, O Israel, from Himself. To frustrate your purpose of the Lord thy God is One. The whole passage demolishing the Divinity of the Son by assign- is, There shall be none likened unto Him, Who ing the Godhead in some special sense to hath found out all the way of knowledge, and Himself, He rounds off the glories of the hath given it unto Jacob His servant and to Only-begotten by the attribution of absolute Israel His beloved. Afterward did He shew Divinity-And there is no God beside Thee. Himself upon earth and dwelt among men. Why make distinctions between exact equi- For there is one Mediator between God and valents? Why separate what is perfectly Men, Who is both God and Man; Mediator matched? It is the peculiar characteristic of both in giving of the Law and in taking of the Son of God that there is no God beside our body. Therefore none other can be Him; the peculiar characteristic of God the likened unto Him, for He is One, born from Father that there is no God apart from Him. God into God, and He it was through Whom Use His words concerning Himself; confess all things were created in heaven and earth, Him in His own terms, and entreat Him as through Whom times and worlds were made. King; For God is in Thee, and there is no God Everything, in fine, that exists owes its existbeside Thee. For Thou art God, and we knew ence to His action. He it is that instructs it not, O God of Israel, the Saviour. A con- Abraham, that speaks with Moses, that testifession couched in words so reverent is free fies to Israel, that abides in the prophets, that from the taint of presumption: its terms can was born through the Virgin from the Holy excite no repugnance. Above all, we must Ghost, that nails to the cross of His passion remember that to refuse it means shame and the powers that are our foes, that slays death ignominy. Brood in thought over these words in hell, that strengthens the assurance of our God; employ them in your confession of hope by His Resurrection, that destroys the Him, and so escape the threatened shame. corruption of human flesh by the glory of For if you deny the Divinity of the Son of His Body. Therefore none shall be likened God, you will not be augmenting the glory unto Him. For these are the peculiar powers of God by adoring Him in lonely majesty; of God the Only-begotten; He alone was born you will be slighting the Father by refusing to from God, the blissful Possessor of such grea: reverence the Son. In faith and veneration prerogatives. No second god can be likened confess of the Unoriginate God that there unto Him, for He is God from God, not born is no God beside Him; claim for God the from any alien being. There is nothing new Only-begotten that apart from Him there is or strange or modern created in Him. When no God. Israel hears that its God is one, and tha: 42. As you have listened already to Moses no second god is likened, that men may deem and Isaiah, so listen now to Jeremiah in him God, to God Who is God's Son, the culcating the same truth as they :-This is our revelation means that God the Father and God, and there shall be none other likened unto God the Son are One altogether, not by conHim, Who hath found out all the way of fusion of Person but by unity of substance. knowledge, and hath given it unto Jacob His For the prophet forbids us, because God the servant and to Israel His beloved. Afterward Son is God, to liken Him to some second did He shew Himself upon earth and dwelt deity.

among men2.

For previously he had said,

2 Baruch iii. 35-37.

3 Jer. xvii. 9 (LXX.).

4 St. John i. 18.

BOOK V.

true Gospel faith, which states in precise terms the unity of God, or else they cast in the opponent's teeth that he has fallen into the contrary heresy, which allows but one Person of Father and of Son 2. Such is the deadly artifice, wearing the aspect of an attractive innocence, which the world's wisdom, which is folly with God, has forged to beguile us in this first article of their faith, which we can neither confess nor deny without risk of blasphemy. We walk between dangers on either hand; the unity of God may force us into a denial of the Godhead of His Son, or, if we confess that the Father is God and the Son is God, we may be driven into the heresy of interpreting the unity of Father and of Son in the Sabellian sense. Thus their device of insisting upon the One God would either shut out the Second Person from the Godhead, or destroy the Unity by admitting Him as a second God, or else make the unity merely nominal. For unity, they would plead, excludes a Second; the existence of a Second is destructive of unity; and Two cannot be One.

1. OUR reply, in the previous books, to the mad and blasphemous doctrines of the heretics has led us with open eyes into the difficulty that our readers incur an equal danger whether we refute our opponents, or whether we forbear. For while unbelief with boisterous ir reverence was thrusting upon us the unity of God, a unity which devout and reasonable faith cannot deny, the scrupulous soul was caught in the dilemma that, whether it asserted or denied the proposition, the danger of blasphemy was equally incurred. To human logic it may seem ridiculous and irrational to say that it can be impious to assert, and impious to deny, the same doctrine, since what it is godly to maintain it must be godless to dispute; if it serve a good purpose to demolish a statement, it may seem folly to dream that good can come from supporting it. But human logic is fallacy in the presence of the counsels of God, and folly when it would cope with the wisdom of heaven; its thoughts are fettered by its limitations, its philosophy confined by the feebleness of natural reason. It must be foolish in its own eyes before it can be wise unto God; that is, it must learn the poverty 2. But we who have attained this wisdom of its own faculties and seek after Divine of God, which is folly to the world, and wisdom. It must become wise, not by the purpose, by means of the sound and saving standard of human philosophy, but of that profession of true faith in the Lord, to unmask which mounts to God, before it can enter into the snake-like treachery of their teaching; His wisdom, and its eyes be opened to the we have so laid out the plan of our underfolly of the world. The heretics have in- taking as to gain a vantage ground for the geniously contrived that this folly, which passes display of the truth without entangling ourfor wisdom, shall be their engine. They em- selves in the dangers of heretical assertion. ploy the confession of One God, for which We carefully avoid either extreme; not denythey appeal to the witness of the Law and ing that God is One, yet setting forth disthe Gospels in the words, Hear, O Israel, the tinctly, on the evidence of the Lawgiver who Lord thy God is One1. They are well aware proclaims the unity of God, the truth that of the risks involved, whether their assertion there is God and God. We teach that it is be met by contradiction or passed over in by no confusion of the Two that God is One; silence; and, whichever happens, they see an we do not rend Him in pieces by preaching opening to promote their heresy. If sacred a plurality of Gods, nor yet do we profess truth, pressed with a blasphemous intent, be a distinction only in name. But we present met by silence, that silence is construed as Him as God and God, postponing at present consent; as a confession that, because God for fuller discussion hereafter the question is One, therefore His Son is not God, and of the Divine unity. For the Gospels tell us God abides in eternal solitude. If, on the that Moses taught the truth when he proother hand, the heresy involved in their bold claimed that God is One; and Moses by his argument be met by contradiction, this op- proclamation of One God confirms the lesson position is branded as a departure from the of the Gospels, which tell of God and God.

Deut. vi. 4; St. Mark xii. 29.

a Reading recideretve.

Thus we do not contradict our authorities, the nature and the power of God? He had at but base our teaching upon them, proving His disposal the powers of the Divine nature, that the revelation to Israel of the unity of to bring into being the non-existent and to God gives no sanction to the refusal of Divinity create at His pleasure. For God saw that they to the Son of God; since he who is our were good. authority for asserting that there is One God is our authority also for confessing the Godhead of His Son.

5. When the Law says, And God said, Let there be a firmament, and then adds, And God made the firmament, it introduces no other distinction than that of P'erson. It indicates no difference of power or nature, and makes no change of name. Under the one title of God it reveals, first, the thought of Him Who spoke, and then the action of Him Who created. The language of the narrator says nothing to deprive Him of Divine nature and power; nay rather, how precisely does it inculcate His true Godhead. The power to give effect to the word of creation belongs only to that Nature with Whom to speak is the same as to fulfil. How then is He not true God, Who creates, if He is true God, Who commands? If the word spoken was truly Divine, the deed done was truly Divine also. God spake, and God created; if it was true God Who spake, He Who created was true God also; unless indeed, while the presence of true Godhead was displayed in the speech of the One, its absence was manifested in the action of the Other. Thus in the Son of God we behold the true Divine nature. He is God, He is Creator, He is Son of God, He is omnipotent. It is not merely that He can do whatever He will, for will is always the concomitant of power; but He can do also whatever is commanded Him. Absolute power is this, that its possessor can execute as Agent whatever His words as Speaker can express. When unlimited power of expression is combined with unlimited power of execution, then this creative power, commensurate with the

3. And so the arrangement of our treatise follows closely the order of the objections raised. Since the next article of their blasphemous and dishonest confession is, Ile confess One true God3, the whole of this second book is devoted to the question whether the Son of God be true God. For it is clear that the heretics have ingeniously contrived this arrangement of first naming One God and then One true God, in order to detach the Son from the name and nature of God; since the thought must suggest itself that, truth being inherent in the One God, it must be strictly confined to Him. And therefore, since it is clear beyond a doubt that Moses, when he proclaimed the unity of God, meant therein to assert the Divinity of the Son, let us return to the leading passages in which his teaching is conveyed, and enquire whether or no he wishes us to believe that the Son, Who, as he has taught us, is God, is also true God. It is clear that the truth, or genuineness, of a thing is a question of its nature and its powers. For instance, true wheat is that which grows to a head with the beard bristling round it, which is purged from the chaff and ground to flour, compounded into a loaf and taken for food, and renders the nature and the uses of bread. Thus natural powers are the evidence of truth; and let us see, by this test, whether He, Whom Moses calls God, be true God. We will defer for the present our discourse concerning this One God, Who is also true God, lest, if I fail commanding word, possesses the true nature at once to take up their challenge and uphold the One True God in the two Persons of Father and of Son, eager and anxious souls be oppressed by dangerous doubts.

4. And now, since we accept as common ground the fact that God recognises His Son as God, I ask you: how does the creation of the world disprove our assertion that the Son is true God? There is no doubt that all things are through the Son, for, in the Apostle's words, All things are through Him, and in Him 5. If all things are through Him, and all were made out of nothing, and none otherwise than through Him, in what element of true Godhead is He defective, Who possesses both

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of God. Thus the Son of God is not false God, nor God by adoption, nor God by gift of the name, but true God. Nothing would be gained by the statement of the arguments by which His true Godhead is opposed. His possession of the name and of the nature of God is conclusive proof. He, by Whom all things were made, is God. So much the creation of the world tells me about Him. He is God, equal with God in name; true God, equal with true God in power. The might of God is revealed to us in the creative word; the might of God is manifested also in the creative act. And now again I ask by what authority you deny, in your confession of Father and Son, the true Divine nature of

6 i.e. His freedom of action is proved by His satisfaction with the result.

Him Whose name reveals His power, Whose power proves His right to the Name.

of Him to Whom He said, After Our own image and likeness. How is He falsely called God, 6. My reader must bear in mind that I am to Whom the true God says, After Our own silent about the current objections through no image and likeness? Our is inconsistent with forgetfulness, and no distrust of my cause. isolation, and with difference either in purpose For that constantly cited text, The Father is or in nature. Man is created, taking the greater than I, and its cognate passages are words in their strict sense, in Their common perfectly familiar to me, and I have my inter- image. Now there can be nothing common pretation of them ready, which makes them to the true and to the false. God, the Speaker, witness to the true Divine nature of the Son. is speaking to God; man is being created in But it serves my purpose best to adhere in reply to the order of attack, that our pious effort may follow close upon the progress of their impious scheme, and when we see them diverge into godless heresy we may at once obliterate the track of error. To this end we postpone to the end of our work the testimony of the Evangelists and Apostles, and join battle with the blasphemers for the present on the ground of the Law and the Prophets, silencing their crooked argument, based on misinterpretation and deceit, by the very texts with which they strive to delude us. The sound method of demonstrating a truth is to expose the fallacy of the objections raised against it; and the disgrace of the deceiver is complete if his own lie be converted into an evidence for the truth. And, indeed, the universal experience of mankind has learned that falsehood and truth are incompatible, and cannot be reconciled or made coherent; that by their very nature they are among those opposites which are eternally repugnant, and can never combine or agree.

the image of Father and of Son. The Two are One in name and One in nature. It is only one image after which man is made. The time has not yet come for me to discuss this matter; hereafter I will explain what is this image of God the Father and of God the Son into which man was created. For the present we will stick to the question, was, or was not, He true God, to Whom the true God said, Let Us make man after Our own image and likeness? Separate, if you can, the true from the false elements in this image common to Both; in your heretical madness divide the indivisible. For They Two are One, of Whose one image and likeness man is the one copy.

9. But now let us continue our reading of this Scripture, to shew how the consistency of truth is unaffected by these dishonest ob jections. The next words are, And God made man; after the image of God made He him. The image is in common; God made man after the image of God. I would ask him who denies that God's Son is true God, in 7. This being the case, I ask how a dis- what God's image he supposes that God made tinction can be made in the words, Let Us man? He must bear constantly in mind that make man after Our own image and likeness, all things are through the Son; heretical between a true God and a false. The words ingenuity must not, for its own purposes, express a meaning, the meaning is the out- twist this passage into action on the part come of thought; the thought is set in motion of the Father. If, therefore, man is created by truth. Let us follow the words back to through God the Son after the image of God their meaning, and learn from the meaning the Father, he is created also after the image the thought, and from the thought attain to of the Son; for all admit that the words the underlying truth. Thy enquiry is, whether After Our image and likeness were spoken to He to Whom the words Let Us make man after the Son. Thus His true Godhead is as exOur own image and likeness were spoken, was plicitly asserted by the Divine words as maninot thought of as true by Him Who spoke; fested in the Divine action; so that it is God for they undoubtedly express the feeling and Who moulds man into the image of God, Who thought of the Speaker. In saying Let Us reveals Himself as God, and, moreover, as true make, He clearly indicates One in no discord God. For His joint possession of the Divine with Himself, no alien or powerless Being, image proves Him true God, while His but One endowed with power to do the thing of which He speaks. His own words assure us that this is the sense in which we must understand that they were spoken.

creative action displays Him as God the Son.

10. What wild insanity of abandoned souls! What blind audacity of reckless blasphemy! You hear of God and God; you hear of 8. To assure us still more fully of the true Our image. Why suggest that One is, and Godhead manifested in the nature and work One is not, true God? Why distinguish beof the Son, He, Who expressed His meaning tween God by nature and God in name? in the words I have cited, shews that His Why, under pretext of defending the faith, thought was suggested by the true Divinity do you destroy the faith? Why struggle to

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