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 claim ing 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 thorough 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. me on. 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. 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 My eagerness to write has increased with the increasing numbers endangered and For, after a multitude of words enthralled by this heretical theory. There was in which an equally insincere devotion to a rich prospect of joy in the thought of mul- the Son is expressed, their confession contitudes who might be saved, if they could know tinues, "God's perfect creature, but not as the mysteries of the right faith in God, and one of His other creatures, His Handiwork, abandon the blasphemous principles of human but not as His other works." And again, folly, desert the heretics and surrender them after an interval in which true statements selves to God; if they would forsake the bait are occasionally interspersed in order to veil with which the fowler snares his prey, and their impious purpose of alleging, as by sosoar aloft in freedom and safety, following phistry they try to prove, that He came into Christ as Leader, prophets as instructors, existence out of nothing, they add, "He, apostles as guides, and accepting the perfect created and established before the worlds, faith and sure salvation in the confession of did not exist before He was born." And Father and of Son. So would they, in obedi- lastly, as though every point of their false ence to the words of the Lord, He that honour-doctrine, that He is to be regarded neither eth not the Son honoureth not the Father which hath sent Him1, be setting themselves to honour the Father, through honour paid to the Son. St. John v. 21 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 ex tends a part and, as it were, a development and separate from all; while the Son, put of that one substance, then the Father will forth by the Father outside time, and created be of a compound nature and divisible and and established before the worlds, did not changeable and corporeal, according to them; exist before He was born, but, being born. and thus, as far as their words go, the in- outside time before the worlds, came into corporeal God will be subjected to the pro- being as the Only Son of the Only Father. perties of matter." But, as we are now about For He is neither eternal, nor co-eternal, nor to cover the whole ground once more, em- co-uncreate with the Father, nor has He an ploying this time the language of the Gospels existence collateral with the Father, as some as our weapon against this most godless say who postulate two unborn principles. But heresy, it has seemed best to repeat here, God is before all things, as being indivisible in the sixth book, the whole heretical docu- and the beginning of all. Wherefore He is ment, though we have already given a full before the Son also, as indeed we have learnt copy of it in the fourth, in order that our from thee in thy public preaching. Inasmuch opponents may read it again, and compare it, then as He has His being from God, and His point by point, with our reply, and so be glorious perfections, and His life, and is enforced, however reluctant and argumentative, trusted with all things, for this reason God by the clear teaching of the Evangelists and is His Source. For He rules over Him, as Apostles, to recognise the truth. The here- being His God, since He is before Him. tical confession is as follows: As 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 7. Who can fail to see here the slimy windnot in semblance, but in truth, following His ings of the serpent's track: the coiled adder, own will, so that He is unchangeable and with forces concentrated for the spring, conunalterable, God's perfect Creature, but not cealing the deadly weapon of its poisonous as one of His other creatures, His Handiwork, fangs within its folds? Presently we shall but not as His other works; not, as Valen- stretch it out and examine it, and expose tinus maintained, that the Son is a develop the venom of this hidden head. For their ment of the Father, nor, as Manichæus has plan is first to impress with certain sound declared of the Son, a consubstantial part of statements, and then to infuse the poison the Father, nor, as Sabellius, who makes two of their heresy. They speak us fair, in out of One, Son and Father at once, nor, order to work us secret harm. Yet, amid as Hieracas, a light from a light, or a lamp all their specious professions, I nowhere hear with two flames, nor, as if He was previously God's Son entitled God; I never hear sonin being and afterwards born, or created ship attributed to the Son. They say much afresh, to be a Son, a notion often condemned about His having the name of Son, but no by thyself, blessed Pope, publicly in the thing about His having the nature. Church, and in the assembly of the brethren. is kept out of sight, that He may seem to But, as we have affirmed, we believe that He have no right even to the name. They make was created by the will of God before times a show of unmasking other heresies to conceal and worlds, and has His life and existence the fact that they are heretics themselves. from the Father, Who gave Him to share His They strenuously assert that there is One own glorious perfections. For, when the only, One true God, to the end that they Father gave to Him the inheritance of all may strip the Son of God of His true and things, He did not thereby deprive Himself personal Divinity. of attributes which are His without origination, 8. And therefore, although in the two last He being the source of all things. 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." 6. "So there are three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Ghost. God, for His part, is the Cause of all things, utterly unoriginate Reading quarto instead of primo; but cf. v. § 3. That 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 3 The Epistola Arii ad Alexandrum, repeated from Book iv S$ 12. 13, where see the notes. The only difference in the text a that this copy omits alone true, at the beginning. and true God the Son, must be confessed other than God; that He became God not as One true God, by unity of nature and not by a new beginning of Deity but by birth by confusion of Persons, yet, for the complete from the existing God; and that every birth presentation of the faith, I must also adduce appears, as far as human faculties can judge, the teaching of the Evangelists and Apostles. to be a development, so that even that birth I must show from them that true God, the might be regarded as a development. And Son of God, is not of a different, an alien these considerations have induced them to nature from that of the Father, but possesses make an attack upon the Valentinian heresy the same Divinity while having a distinct of development as a means of destroying existence through a true birth. And, indeed, faith in the true birth of the Son. For the I cannot think that any soul exists so witless experience of common life leads worldly wisas to fancy that, although we know God's self- dom to suppose that there is no great dif revelations, yet we cannot understand them; ference between a birth and a development. that, if they can be understood, would not The mind of man, dull and slow to grasp wish to understand, or would dream that the things of God, needs to be constantly human reason can devise improvements upon reminded of the principle, which I have them. But before I begin to discuss the facts stated more than once, that analogies drawn contained in these saving mysteries, I must from human experience are not of perfect first humble the pride with which these here- application to the mysteries of Divine power; tics rebuke the names of other heresies. I that their only value is that this comparison shall hold up to the light this ingenious cloak with material objects imparts to the spirit for their own impiety. I shall shew that such a notion of heavenly things that we may this very means of concealing the deadliness rise, as by a ladder of nature, to an apprehenof their teaching serves rather to reveal and sion of the majesty of God. But the birth betray it, and is a widely effectual warning of God must not be judged by such developof the true character of this honeyed poison. ment as takes place in human births. When 9. For instance, these heretics would have One is born from One, God born from God, it that the Son of God is not from God; that the circumstances of human birth enable us God was not born from God out of, and in, to apprehend the fact; but a birth which the nature of God. To this end, when they presupposes intercourse and conception and have solemnly borne witness to "One God, time and travail can give us no clue to the alone true," they refrain from adding "The Divine method. When we are told that God Father." And then, in order to escape from was born from God, we must accept it as true confessing one true Godhead of Father and that He was born, and be content with that. of Son by a denial of the true birth, they We shall, however, in the proper place disproceed, "Not, as Valentinus maintained, that course of the truth of the Divine birth, as the Son is a development of the Father." the Gospels and the Apostles set it forth. Thus they think to cast discredit upon the Our present duty has been to expose this birth of God from God by calling it a "de- device of heretical ingenuity, this attack upon velopment," as though it were a form of the the true birth of Christ, concealed under Valentinian heresy. For Valentinus was the the form of an attack upon a so-called deauthor of foul and foolish imaginations; be- velopment. side the chief God, he invented a whole household of deities and countless powers called æons, 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 æons 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 10. And then, in continuation of this same fraudulent assault upon the faith, their confession proceeds thus :-"Nor, as Manichæus 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 Manichæus, 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 Manichæus, 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 4 E.g. i. § 10, iv. § 2; reading non semel. substance, and that by the Son we must confess a birth; we reject this confusion of understand a certain piece of God's substance, two Persons in One, while yet we cleave to which was cut off, and made its appearance the Divine unity. That is, we hold that God in the flesh. And so they make the most from God means unity of nature; for that of this heresy that in the birth of the Son Being, Who, by a true birth from God, bethere was a division of the one substance, came God, can draw His substance from no and use it as a means of evading the doctrine other source than the Divine. And since He of the birth of the Only-begotten, and the continues to draw His being, as He drew it very name of the unity of substance. Because at first, from God, He must remain true God it is sheer blasphemy to speak of a birth re- for ever; and hence They Two are One, sulting from division of the one substance, for He, Who is God from God, has no other they deny any birth; all forms of birth are than the Divine nature, and no other than joined in the condemnation which they pass the Divine origin. But the reason why this upon the Manichæan notion of birth by sever- blasphemous Sabellian confusion of two Perance. And again, they abolish the unity of sons into One is here condemned is that they substance, both name and thing, because the wish to rob the Church of her true faith in heretics hold that the unity is divisible; and Two Persons in One God. But now I must deny that the Son is God from God, by refus-examine the remaining instances of this pering to believe that He is truly possessed of verted ingenuity, to save myself from the reputhe Divine nature. Why does this mad heresy tation of a censorious judge of sincere enprofess a fictitious reverence, a senseless anxi- quirers, moved rather by dislike than genuine ety? The faith of the Church does, as these fear. I shall shew, by the terms with which insane propounders of error remind us, con- they wind up their confession, what is the demn Manichæus, for she knows nothing of deadly conclusion which they have skilfully the Son as a portion. She knows Him as contrived shall be its inevitable issue.. whole God from whole God, as One from 12. Their next clause is:-" Nor, as HierOne, not severed but born. She is assured acas, a light from a light, or a lamp with two that the birth of God involves neither im- flames, nor as if He was previously in being, poverishment of the Begetter nor inferiority and afterwards born, or created afresh, to be of the Begotten. If this be the Church's own a Son." Hieracas ignores the birth of the imagining, reproach her with the follies of Only-begotten, and, in complete unconsciousa wisdom falsely claimed; but if she have ness of the meaning of the Gospel revelations, learned it from her Lord, confess that the talks of two flames from one lamp. Begotten knows the manner of His begetting. symmetrical pair of flames, fed by the supply She has learnt from God the Only-begotten of oil contained in one bowl, is His illusthese truths, that Father and Son are One, tration of the substance of Father and Son. and that in the Son the fulness of the God- It is as though that substance were something head dwells. And therefore she loathes this separate from Either Person, like the oil in attribution to the Son of a portion of the one the lamp, which is distinct from the two substance; and, because she knows that He flames, though they depend upon it for their was truly born of God, she worships the Son existence; or like the wick, of one material as rightful Possessor of true Divinity. But, throughout and burning at both ends, which for the present, let us defer our full answer to is distinct from the flames, yet provides them these several allegations, and hasten through and connects them together. All this is a the rest of their denunciations. mere delusion of human folly, which has 11. What follows is this:-"Nor, as Sabel- trusted to itself, and not to God, for knowlius, who makes two out of One, Son and ledge. But the true faith asserts that God Father at once." Sabellius holds this in wil is born from God, as light from light, which ful blindness to the revelation of the Evan-pours itself forth without self-diminution, gelists and Apostles. But what we see here giving what it has yet having what it gave. is not one heretic honestly denouncing an- It asserts that by His birth He was what He other. It is the wish to leave no point of is, for as He is so was He born; that His union between Father and Son that prompts birth was the gift of the existing Life, a gitt them to reproach Sabellius with his division which did not lessen the store from which of an indivisible Person; a division which it was taken; and that They Two are One, does not result in the birth of a second Person, for He, from Whom He is born, is as Himself, but cuts the One Person into two parts, one of which enters the Virgin's womb 5. But we 5 Reading virginem. This 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 as to suppose that a Son can come into exthe teeth of those who confess Light from istence otherwise than through birth? Who Light. Because the phrase has been used so void of reason as to say that the birth of in an heretical sense, and condemned both God resulted in anything else than in God now and in earlier days, they want to persuade being born? The abiding God was not born, us that there is no true sense in which it can but God was born from the abiding God; the be employed. Let heresy forthwith abandon nature bestowed in that birth was the very these groundless fears, and refrain from claim- nature of the Begetter. And God by His ing to be the protector of the Church's faith birth, which was from God into God, received, on the score of a reputation for zeal earned because His was a true birth, not things newso dishonestly. For we allow nothing bodily, created but things which were and are the nothing lifeless, to have a place among the permanent possession of God. Thus it is attributes of God; whatever is God is perfect not the pre-existent God that was born; yet God. In Him is nothing but power, life, God was born, and began to exist, out of and light, blessedness, Spirit. That nature con- with the properties of God. And thus we see tains no dull, material elements; being im- how heresy, throughout this long prelude, has mutable, it has no incongruities within it. been treacherously leading up to this most God, because He is God, is unchangeable; blasphemous doctrine. Its object being to and the unchangeable God begat God. Their deny God the Only-begotten, it starts with bond of union is not, like that of two flames, what purports to be a defence of truth, to two wicks of one lamp, something outside go on to the assertion that Christ is born Themselves. The birth of the Only-begotten not from God but out of nothing, and that Son from God is not a prolongation in space, His birth is due to the Divine counsel of but a begetting; not an extension 6, but Light creation from the non-existent. from Light. For the unity of light with light is a unity of nature, not unbroken continuation. 14. And then again, after an interval designed to prepare us for what is coming, their heresy delivers this assault;-"While the Son, 13. And again, what a wonderful example put forth outside time, and created and esof heretical ingenuity is this :-" Nor as if He tablished before the worlds, did not exist bewere previously in being, and afterwards born, fore He was born." This "He did not exist or created afresh, to be a Son." God, since before He was born" is a form of words by He was born from God, was assuredly not which the heresy flatters itself that it gains born from nothing, nor from things non-ex- two ends; support for its blasphemy, and istent. His birth was that of the eternally a screen for itself if its doctrine be arraigned. living nature. Yet, though He is God, He A support for its blasphemy, because, if He is not identical with the pre-existing God; did not exist before He was born, He cannot God was born from God Who existed before be of one nature with His eternal Origin, Him; in, and by, His birth He partook of He must have His beginning out of nothing, the nature of His Source. If we are speaking if He have no powers but such as are coeval words of our own, all this is mere irreverence; with His birth. And a screen for its heresy, but if, as we shall prove, God Himself has for if this statement be condemned, it furtaught us how to speak, then the necessity nishes a ready answer. He that did exist, is laid upon us of confessing the Divine birth it will be said, could not be born; being in in the sense revealed by God. And it is this existence already, He could not possibly come unity of nature in Father and in Son, this into being by passing through the process of ineffable mystery of the living birth, which birth, for the very meaning of birth is the the madness of heresy is struggling to banish entry into existence of the being that is born. from belief, when it says, "Nor as if He Fool and blasphemer! Who dreams of birth were previously in being, and afterwards born, in the case of Him Who is the unborn and or created afresh, to be a Son." Now who eternal? How can we think of God, Who is?, is senseless enough to suppose that the Father being born, when being born implies the proceased to be Himself; that the same Person cess of birth? It is the birth of God the Who had previously existed was afterwards Only-begotten from God His Father that you born, or created afresh, to be the Son? That are striving to disprove, and it was your purGod disappeared, and that His disappearance pose to escape the confession of that truth was followed by an emergence in birth, when, by means of this "He did not exist before in fact, that birth is evidence of the continuous He was born;" the confession that God, existence of its Author? Or who is so insane from Whom the Son of God was born, did |