(27.) And in accurate delineation of the idea of Christianity we say this again; Whosoever shall not say that Christ is God, Son of God, as being before ages, and having subserved the Father in the framing of the Universe, but that from the time that He was ‘born of Mary, from thence He was called Christ and Son, and took an origin of being God, be he anathema.
28. Casting aside the whole of this, as if they had discovered something better, they 8 This and the following Canon are Catholic in their main doctrine, and might be illustrated, if necessary, as the foregoing.
9 It was an expedient of the later Macedonians to deny that the Holy Spirit was God because it was not usual to call Him Ingenerate. They asked the Catholics whether the Holy Spirit wes Ingenerate, generate, or created, for into these three they divided all things. vid. Basil. zz Sabell. et Ar. Hom. xxiv. 6. But, as the Arians had first made the alternative only between Ingenerate and created, and Athan. de Decry. § 28. shews that generate is a third idea really distinct from one and the other, so S. Greg. Naz. adds, processive, éxmopevroy, as an intermediate idea, contrasted with /ugenerate, yet distinct from generate. Orat, xxi. 8. In other words /7gexerave means, not only not generate, but zot from any origin. vid. August. de Trin. xv. 26.
h propound another faith, and write at Sirmium in Latin what is here translated into Greek 3.
Whereas it seemed good that there should be some discussion concerning faith, all points were carefully investigated and discussed at Sirmium in the presence of Valens, and Ursacius, and Germinius, and the rest.
It is held for certain that there is one God, the Father Almighty, as also is preached in all the world.
And His One Only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, generated from Him before the ages; and that we may not speak of two Gods, since the Lord Himself has said, ‘I go to My Father and your Father, and My God and your God’ (John xx. 17). On this account He is God of all, as also the Apostle taught: ‘Is He God of the Jews only, is He not also of the Gentiles? yea of the Gentiles also: since there is one God who shall justify the circumcision from faith, and the uncircumcision through faith’ (Rom. iii. 29, 30); and every thing else agrees, and has no ambiguity. _ But since many persons are disturbed by questions concerning what is called in Latin ‘ Substantia,’ but in Greek ‘ Usia,’ that is, to make it understood more exactly, as to ‘ Coessential,’ or what is called, ‘Likein-Essence,’ there ought to be no mention of any of these at all, nor exposition of them in the Church, for this reason and for this consideration, that in divine Scripture nothing is written about them, and that they are above men’s knowledge and above men’s understanding; and because no one can declare the Son’s generation, as it is written, ‘Who shall declare His generation’ (Is. liii. 8)? for it is plain that the Father only knows how He generated the Son, and again the) Son how He has been generated by the Father. And to none can it be a question that the Father is greater: for no one can doubt that the Father is greater in honour and dignity and Godhead, and in the very name of Father, the Son Himself testifying, ‘The Father that sent Me is greater than I’ (John x. 29, Ib. xiv. 28). And no one is ignorant, that it is Catholic doctrine, that there are two Persons of Father and Son, and that the Father is greater, and the Son subordinated to the Father together with all things which the Father has subordinated to Him, and that the Father has no beginning, and is invisible, and immortal, andimpassible; but that the Son has been generated from the Father, God from God, Light from Light, and that His origin, as aforesaid, no one knows, but the Father only. And that the Son Himself and our Lord and God, took flesh, that is, a body, that is, man, from Mary the Virgin, as the Angel preached beforehand; and as all the Scriptures teach, and especially the Apostle himself, the doctor of the Gentiles, Christ took man of Mary the Virgin, through which He has suffered. And the whole faith is | summed up §, and secured in this, that a Trinity should ever be preserved, as we read in the Gospel, ‘Go ye and baptize all the nations in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost’ (Matt. xxviii. 19). And entire and perfect is the number of the Trinity; but the Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, sent forth through the Son, came according to the promise, that He might teach and sanctify the Apostles and all believers ®.
3 [The ‘blasphemia’ of Potamius, bishop of Lisbon; see Prolege. ch. ii. § 8 (2), Hil. de Sym. 11; Socr. ii. 30).
6 It will be observed that this Confession; 1. by denying ‘two Gods,’ and declaring that the One God is the God of Christ, implies that our Lord is not God. 2. It says that the word ‘substance,’ and its compounds, ought not to be used as being unscriptural, mysterious, and leading to disturbance; 3. it holds that the Father is greater than the Son ‘in honour, dignity, and godhead;’ 4. that the Son is subordinate to the Father w7¢/ all other things; 5. that itis the Father’s characteristic to be invisible and impassible, They also say that our Lord, hominem suscepisse per!
a een ee 29. After drawing up this, and then becoming dissatisfied, they composed the faith which to their shame they paraded with ‘the Consulate.’ And, as is their wont, condemning this also, they caused Martinian the notary to seize it from the parties who had the copies of it7. And having got the Emperor Constantius to put forth an edict against it, they form another dogma afresh, and with the addition of certain expressions, according to their wont, they write thus in Isauria.
We decline® not to bring forward the authentic faith published at the Dedication at Antioch®; though certainly our fathers at the time met together for a particular subject under investigation. But since ‘ Coessential’ and ‘ Like-in-essence,’ have troubled many persons in times past and up to this day, and since moreover some are said recently to have devised the Son’s ‘ Unlikeness’ to the Father, on their account we reject ‘Coessential’ and ‘Like-in-essence,’ as alien to the Scriptures, but ‘Unlike’ we anathematize, and account all who profess it as aliens from the Church. And we distinctly confess the ‘Likeness’ of the Son to the Father, according-to the Apostle, who says of the Son, ‘Who is the Image of the Invisible God’ And we confess and believe in one God, the Father Almighty, the Maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.
And we believe also in our Lord Jesus Christ, His Son, generated from Him impassibly before all the ages, God the Word, God from God, Only-begotten, light, life, truth, wisdom, power, through whom all things were made, in the heavens and on the earth, whether visible or invisible. He, as we believe, at the end of the world, for the abolishment of sin, took flesh of the Holy Virgin, and was made man, and suffered for our sins, and rose again, and was taken up into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father, and is coming again in glory, to judge quick and dead.
We believe also in the Holy Ghost, which our Saviour and Lord named Paraclete, having promised to send Him to the disciples after His own departure, as He did send; through whom He sanctifieth those in the Church who believe, and are baptized in the Name of Father and Son and Holy Ghost.
But those who preach aught beside this faith the Catholic Church regards as aliens. And that to this faith that is equivalent which was published lately at Sirmium, under sanction of his religiousness the Emperor, is plain to all who read it.
30. Having written thus in Isauria, they quem conzpassus est, a word which Phcebadius condemns in his remarks on this Confession; where, by the way, he uses the word “spiritus’ in the sense of Hilary and the Ante-Nicene Fathers, in a connection which at once explains the obscure words of the supposititious Sardican Confession (vid. above, § 9, note 3), and turns them into another evidence of this additional heresy involved in Arianism. ‘ Impassibilis Deus,’ says Phaebadius, ‘quia Deus Sfiritus...non ergo passibilis Dei Spiritus, licet in homine suo passus.’ Now the Sardican Confession is thought ignorant, as well as unauthoritative, e.g. by Natalis Alex. Sec. 4. Diss. 29, because it imputes to Valens and Ursacius the following belief, which he supposes to be Patripassianism, but which exactly answers to this aspect and representation of Arianism: 671 6 Aoyos Kai OTL TO TYEUHLA Kai EoTaYpHOH Kai Eahayyn Kal amébavey Kal avéoTn.
_, 7 Socrates[wrongly] connects this with the ‘ blasphemia.’ Hist. li. 30. 8 oth Confession, at Seleucia A.D. 359.
9 The Semi-Arian majority in the Council had just before been confirming the Creed of the Dedication; hence this beginning. vid, supr, § 11. The present creed, as if to propitiate the Semi-Arian majoxity, adds an anathema upon the Anomeean as well as on the Homoiision and Homceusion.
went up to Constantinople*, and there, as if dissatisfied, they changed it, as is their wont, and with some small additions against using even ‘Subsistence’ of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, they transmitted it to those at Ariminum, and compelled even those in the said parts to subscribe, and those who contradicted them they got banished by Constantius. And it runs thus:— We believe? in One God, Father Almighty, from whom are all things; And in the Only-begotten Son of God, begotten from God before all ages and before every beginning, by whom all things were made, visible and invisible, and begotten as only-begotten, only from the Father only3, God from God, like to the Father that begat Him according to the Scriptures; whose origin no one knows, except the Father alone who begat Him. He as we acknowledge, the Only-begotten Son of God, the Father sending Him, came hither from the heavens, as it is written, for the undoing of sin and death, and was born of the Holy Ghost, of Mary the Virgin according to the flesh, as it is written, and conversed with the disciples, and having fulfilled the whole Economy according to the Father’s will, was crucified and dead and buried and descended to the parts below the earth; at whom hades itself shuddered: who also rose from the dead on the third day, and abode with the disciples, and, forty days being | fulfilled, was taken up into the heavens, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father, to come in the last day of the resurrection in the Father’s glory, that He may render to every man according to his works.
And in the Holy Ghost, whom the Only-begotten Son of God Himself, Christ, our Lord and God, promised to send to the race of man, as Paraclete, as it is written, ‘the Spirit of truth’ (Joh. xvi. 13), which He sent unto them when He had ascended into the heavens.
But the name of ‘ Essence,’ which was set down by the Fathers in simplicity, and, being unknown by the people, caused offence, because the Scriptures contain it not, it has seemed good to abolish, and for the future to make no mention of it at all; since the divine Scriptures have made no mention of the Essence of Father and Son. For neither ought Subsistence to be named concerning Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. But we say that the Son is Like the Father, as the divine Scriptures say and teach; and all the heresies, both those which have been afore condemned already, and whatever are of modern date, being contrary to this published statement, be they anathema 4.: 31. However, they did not stand even to this; for coming down from Constantinople to 1 These two sections seem to have been inserted by Athan. after his Letter was finished, and contain later occurrences in the history of Ariminum, than were contemplated when he wrote sur. 8 x1. vid. note 7 iz /oc. It should be added that at this Council Ulfilas the Apostle of the Goths, who had hitherto followed the Council of Niczea, conformed, and thus became the means of spreading through his countrymen the Creed of Ariminum.
2 zoth Confession at Niké and Constantinople, a.D. 359, 360.
3 povos ék povov. This phrase may be considered a symptom of Anomcean influence; movos mapd, or vr0, Uovov being one special formula adopted by Eunomuus, explanatory of ovoyevys, in accordance with the print Arian theory, mentioned de Decr. § 7. supr. p. 154, that the Son was the one instrument of creation. Eunomius said that He alone was created by the Father alone; all other things being created by the Father, not alone, but through Him whom alone He had_ first created. vid. Cyril. Thesaur. 25. Basil contr. Lunom. i. 21. Acacius ap. Epiph.
eas betsse: instead of speaking of Arianism, the Confession anathematizes @// heresies, vid. spr. § 23, n. 4.
Antioch, they were dissatisfied that they had written at all that the Son was ‘Like the Father, as the Scriptures say;’ and putting their ideas upon paper 5, they began reverting to their first doctrines, and said that ‘ the Son is altogether unlike the Father,’ and that the ‘Son is in no manner like the Father,’ and so much did they change, as to admit those who spoke the Arian doctrine nakedly and to deliver to them the Churches with licence to bring forward the words of blasphemy with impunity®. Because then of the extreme hamelessness of their blasphemy they were called by all Anomeeans, having also the name of Exucontian 7, and the heretical Constantius for the patron of their irreligion, who persisting up to the end in irreligion, and on the point of death, thought good to be baptized 8; not however by religious men, but by Euzoius 9, who for his Arianism had been deposed, not once, but often, both when he was a deacon, and when he was in the see of Antioch.
32. The forementioned parties then had proceeded thus far, when they were stopped and deposed. But well I know, not even under these circumstances will they stop, as many as have now dissembled *, but they will always be making parties against the truth, until they return to themselves and say, ‘ Let us rise and go to our fathers, and we will say unto them, We anathematize the Arian heresy, and we acknowledge the Nicene Council;’ for against this is their quarrel, Who then, with ever so little understanding, will bear them any longer? who, on hearing in every Council some things taken away and others added, but perceives that their mind is shifty and treacherous against Christ? who on seeing them embodying to so great a length both their professions of faith, and their own exculpation, but sees that they are giving sentence against themselves, and studiously writing much which may be likely by their officious display and abundance of words to seduce the simple and 5 r1th Confession at Antioch, a.p. 361. [Socr. ii. 45. The occasion was the installation of Euzoius in place of Meletius.]
6 Acacius, Hudoxius, and the rest, after ratiiying at Constantinople the Creed framed at Niké and subscri.ed at Ariminum, appear next at Antioch a year and a half later, when they throw off the mask, and, avowing the Anomcean Creed, ‘revert,’ as S. Athanasius says, ‘to their first doctrines,’ i.e. those with which Arius started. Hy y 7 From é£.ov« évrwy, ‘ out of nothing,’ one of the original Arian positions concerning the Son. Theodoret says that they were also called Hexakionitz, from the nature of their place of meeting, Har. iv. 3. and Du Cange confirms it so far as to shew that there was a place or quarter of Constantinople Hexakionium, [Cf. Soph. Lex. s.v.] p; i 8 ‘This passage shews that Athanasius did not insert these sections till two years after the composition of the work itself; for Constantine died A.D. 361. P 9 Euzoius, now Arian Bishop of Antioch, was excommunicated with Arius in Egypt and at Nicea, and was restored with him to the Church at the Council of Jerusalem.;: 10 Ymexpivavto. Hypocrites is almost a title of the Arians (with an apparent allusion to r ‘lim, iv. 2. vid. Socr. i. p. 5, Ovat. i. § 8).
Hh2 hide what they are in point of heresy? But as the heathen, as the Lord said, using vain words in their prayers (Mat. vi. 7), are nothing profited; so they too, after all this outpouring, were not able to quench the judgment pronounced against the Arian heresy, but were convicted and deposed instead; and rightly; for which of their formularies is to be accepted by the hearer? or with what confidence shall they be catechists to those who come to them? for if they all have one and the same meaning, what is the need of many? But if need has arisen of so many, it follows that each by itself is deficient, not complete; and they establish this point better than we can, by their innovating on them all and remaking them. And the number of their Councils, and the difference of their statements is a proof that those who were present at them, while at variance with the Nicene, are yet too feeble to harm the Truth.
PARESALE ON THE SYMBOLS ‘OF THE ESSENCE’ AND ‘ COESSENTIAL.’
We must look at the sense not the wording. The offence excited is at the sense; meaning of the Symbols; the question of their not being in Scripture. Those who hesitate only at ‘coessential,’ not to be considered Arians. Reasons why ‘ coessential’ is better than ‘like-in-essence,’ yet the latter may be interpreted in a good sense. Explanation of the rejection of ‘ coessential’ by the Council which condemned the Samosatene; use of the word by Dionysius of Alexandria; parallel variation in the use of Unoriginate; quotation from Ignatius and another; reasons for using ‘ coessential;” objections to it; examination of the word itself; further documents of the Council of Ariminum.
33. Bur since they are thus minded both towards each other and towards those who preceded them, proceed we to ascertain from them what absurdity they have seen, or what they complain of in the received phrases, that they have proved ‘disobedient to parents’ (Rom. 1. 30), and contend against an Ecumenical Councilt? ‘The phrases ‘‘of the essence” and ‘‘coessential,”’ say they, ‘do not please us, for they are an offence to some and a trouble to many.’ This then is what they allege in ' their writings; but one may reasonably answer them thus: If the very words were by themselves a cause of offence to them, it must have followed, not that some only should have been offended, and many troubled, but that we also and all the rest should have been affected by them in the same way; but 1 The subject before us, naturally rises out of what has gone before. The Anomoean creed was hopeless; but with the Semi-Arians all that remained was the adjustment of phrases. Accordingly, Athan. goes on to propose such eaflavations as might clear the way for a re-union of Christendom. § 47, note.
A ee eee A ee eee if on the contrary all men are well content with the words, and they who wrote them were no ordinary persons but men who came together from the whole world, and to these testify in addition the 400 Bishops and more who now met at Ariminum, does not this plainly prove against those who accuse the Council, that the terms are not In fault, but the perverseness of those who misinterpret them? How many men read divine Scripture wrongly, and as thus conceiving it, find fault with the Saints? such were the former Jews, who rejected the Lord, and the present Manichees who blaspheme the Law3; yet are not the Scriptures the cause to them, but their own evil humours. If then ye can shew the terms to be actually unsound, do so and let the proof proceed, and drop the pretence of offence created, lest you come into the condition of the Pharisees of old. For when they pretended offence at the Lord’s teaching, He said, ‘Every plant, which My heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up’ (Matt. xy. 13). By which He shewed that not the words of the Father planted by Him were really an offénce to them, but that they misinterpreted what was well said, and offended themselves. And in like manner they who at that time blamed the Epistles of the Apostle, impeached, not Paul, but their own deficient learning and distorted minds.
34. For answer, what is much to the purpose, Who are they whom you pretend are offended and troubled at these terms? of those who are religious towards Christ not one; on the contrary they defend and maintain them. But if they are Arians who thus feel, what wonder they should be distressed at words which destroy their heresy? for it is not the terms which offend them, but the proscription of their irreligion which afflicts them. ‘Therefore let us have no more murmuring against the Fathers, nor pretence of this kind; or next 4 you will be making complaints of the Lord’s Cross, because it 1s ‘to Jews an offence and to Gentiles foolishness,’ as said the Apostle 5 (t Cor. i. 23, 24). But as the Cross is not faulty, for to us who believe it is ‘Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God,’ though Jews rave, so neither are the terms of the Fathers faulty, but profitable to those who honestly read, and subversive of all irreligion, though the Arians so often burst with rage as being condemned by them. Since then the pretence that persons are offended does not hold, tell us yourselves, why is it you are 4 dpa, vid. Ovat. i. $153 iv. $10; Serafp. ii. 1. kaipos. de Decr.
5 “The Apostle’ is a common title of S. Paul in antiquity. Cf. August ad Boniface, iii. 3.
not pleased with the phrase ‘of the essence’ (this must first be enquired about), when you yourselves have written that the Son is generated from the Father? If when you name the Father, or use the word ‘God,’ you do not signify essence, or understand Him according to essence, who is that He is, but signify something else about Him®, not to say inferior, then you should not have written that the Son was from the Father, but from what 1s about Him or in Him7; and so, shrinking from saying that God is truly Father, and making Him compound who is simple, in a material way, you will be authors of a newer blasphemy. And, with such ideas, you must reeds consider the Word, and the title ‘Son,’ not as an essence but as a name 7# only, and in consequence hold your own views as far as names only, and be talking, not of what you believe to exist, but of what you think not to exist.
35. But this is more like the crime of the Sadducees, and of those among the Greeks who had the name of Atheists. It follows that you will deny that even creation is the handywork of God Himself that is; at least, if ‘Father’ and ‘God’ do not signify the very essence of Him that is, but something else, which you imagine: which is irreligious, and most shocking even to think of. But if, when we hear it said, ‘I am that I am,’ and, ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,’ and, ‘ Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord,’ and, ‘Thus saith the Lord Almighty’ (Ex. ili. 14; Gen. i. 1; Deut. vi. 4), we understand nothing else than the very simple, and blessed, and incomprehensible essence itself of Him that is, (for though we be unable to master what He is, yet hearing ‘Father,’ and ‘God,’ and ‘ Almighty,’ we understand nothing else to be meant than the very essence of Him that is®); and if ye too have said, that the Son is from God, it follows that you have said that He is from the ‘essence’ of the Father. And since the Scriptures precede you which say, that the Lord is Son of the Father, and the Father Himself precedes them, who says, ‘ This is My beloved Son’ (Matt. iii. 17), and a son is no other than the offspring from his father, is it not evident that the Fathers have suitably said that the Son is from the Father’s essence? considering that it is all one to say rightly ‘from God,’ and to say ‘from the essence.’ For all the creatures, though they be said to have come into being from God, yet are not from God ee 6 Cf. de Decr. 22, note 1. 7 De Decr. 24, note 9.
as the Son is; for they are not offsprings in their nature, but works. Thus, it is said, ‘in the beginning God,’ not ‘generated,’ but ‘made the heaven and the earth, and all that is in them’ (Gen. i. 1). And not, ‘who generates,’ but ‘who maketh His angels spirits, and His ministers a flame of fire’ (Ps. civ. 4). And though the Apostle has said, ‘One God, from whom all things’ (1 Cor. viii. 6), yet he says not this, as reckoning the Son with other things; but, whereas some of the Greeks con- | sider that the creation was held together by chance, and from the combination of atoms 9, and spontaneously from elements of similar structure, and has no cause; and others consider that it came from a cause, but not through the Word; and each heretic has imagined things at his will, and tells his fables about the creation; on this account the Apostle was obliged to introduce ‘from God,’ that he might thereby certify the Maker, and shew that the universe was framed at His will. And accordingly he straightway proceeds: ‘And one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom all things’ (1 Cor. viii. 6), by way of excepting the Son from that ‘all’ (for what is called God’s work, is all done through the Son; and it is not possible that the things framed should have one origin with their Framer), and by way of teaching that the phrase ‘of God,’ which occurs in the passage, has a different sense in the case of the works, from what it bears when used of the Son; for He is offspring, and they are works: and therefore He, the Son, is the proper offspring of His essence, but they are the handywork of his will.
36. The Council, then, comprehending this’, and aware of the different senses of the same word, that none should suppose, that the Son was said to be ‘from God’ like the creation, wrote with greater explicitness, that the Son was ‘from the essence.’ For this betokens the true genuineness of the Son towards the Father; whereas, by the simple phrase ‘from God,’ only the Creator’s will in framing is signified. If then they too had this meaning, when they wrote that the Word was ‘from the Father,’ they had nothing to complain of in the Council; but if they meant ‘of God,’ in the instance of the Son, as it is used of the creation, then as understanding it of the creation, they should not name the Son, or they will be manifestly mingling blasphemy with religiousness; but either they have to cease reckoning the Lord with the creatures, or at least to refrain from unworthy and unbecoming statements about 9 Democritus, or Epicurus. to Anaxagoras.
the Son. For if He is a Son, He is not a creature; but if a creature, then not a Son. Since these are their views, perhaps they will be denying the Holy Laver also, because it is administered into Father and into Son; and not into Creator and Creature, as they account it. ‘But,’ they say, ‘all this is not written: and we reject, these words as un-| scriptural.’ But this, again, is an unblushing excuse in their mouths. For if they think everything must be rejected which is not written, wherefore, when the Arian party invent such a heap of phrases, not from Scripture ’, ‘ Out of nothing,’ and ‘the Son was not before His generation,’ and ‘Once He was not,’ and ‘He is alterable,’ and ‘the Father is ineffable and invisible to the Son,’ and ‘ the Son knows not even His own essence;’ and all that Arius has vomited in his light and irreligious ‘Thalia, why do not they speak against these, but rather take their part, and on that account contend with their own Fathers? And, in what Scripture did they on their part find ‘Unoriginate,’ and ‘the term essence,’ and ‘there are three subsistences,’ and ‘ Christ is not very God,’ and ‘ He is one of the hundred sheep,’ and ‘ God’s Wisdom is ingenerate and without beginning, but the created powers are many, of which Christ is one?’ Or how, when in the so-called Dedication, Acacius and Eusebius and their fellows used expressions not in Scripture, and said that ‘the First-born of the creation’ was ‘the exact Image of the essence and power and will and glory,’ do they complain of the Fathers, for making mention of unscriptural expressions, and especially of essence? For they ought either to complain of themselves, or to find no fault with the Fathers.
37. Now, if certain others made excuses of the expressions of the Council, it might perhaps have been set down, either to ignorance or to caution. There is no question, for instance, about George of Cappadocia 3, who was expelled from Alexandria; a man, with-.
out character in years past, nor a Christian in any respect; but only pretending to the name to suit the times, and thinking ‘ religion to be a’ means of ‘gain’ (1 Tim. vi. 5). And therefore there is no reason to complain of his making mistakes about the faith, considering he knows neither what he says, nor whereof he affirms; but, according to the text, ‘goeth after all,as a bird’ (1 Tim. i. 7; Prov. vii. 22, 23, not LXX.?) But when Acacius, and Eudoxius, and Patrophilus say this, do not they deserve the strongest reprobation? for while they write what is unscriptural themselves, and have accepted many times the term ‘essence’ as suitable, especially on the ground of the letter of Eusebius, they now blame their predecessors for using terms of the same kind. Nay, though 'they say themselves, that the Son is ‘God from God,’ and ‘ Living Word,’ ‘ Exact Image of the Father’s essence;’ they accuse the Nicene Bishops of saying, that He who was begotten is ‘of the essence’ of Him who begat Him, and ‘Coessential’ with Him. But what marvel if they conflict with their predecessors and their own Fathers, when they are inconsistent with themselves, and fall foul of each other? For after publishing, in the socalled Dedication at Antioch, that the Son is exact Image of the Father’s essence, and swearing that so they held and anathematizing those who held otherwise, nay, in Isauria, writing down, ‘ We do not decline the authentic faith published in the Dedication at Antioch 4,’ where the term ‘ essence ’ was introduced, as if forgetting all this, shortly after, in the same Isauria, they put into writing the very contrary, saying, We reject the words ‘ coessential,’ and ‘like-in-essence,’ as alien to the Scriptures, and abolish the term ‘ essence,’ as not contained therein 4.
38. Can we then any more account such men Christians? or what sort of faith have they who stand neither to word nor writing, but alter and change every thing according to the times? For if, O Acacius and Eudoxius, you ‘do not decline the faith published at the Dedication,’ and in it is written that the Son is ‘Exact Image of God’s essence,’ why is it ye write in Isauria, ‘we reject the Like in essence?’ for if the Son is not like the Father according to essence, how is He ‘ exact image of the essence?’ But if you are dissatisfied at having written ‘ Exact Image of the essence,’ how is it that ye ‘anathematize those who say that the Son is Unlike?’ for if He be not according to essence like, He is surely unlike: and the Unlike cannot be an Image. And if so, then it does not hold that ‘he that hath seen the Son, hath seen the Father’ (John xiv. 9), there being then the greatest possible difference between Them, or rather the One being wholly Unlike the Other. And Unlike cannot possibly be called Like. By what artifice then do you call. Unlike like, and consider Like to be unlike, and pretend to say that the Son is the Father’s Image? for if the Son be not like the Father in essence, something is wanting to the Image, and it is not a complete Image, nor a perfect radiance 5.