7 Is. Ixvi. 2. a 8 paOwy ebéSacxev, implying the traditional nature of the teach- ing. And so See himself, r Cor. xv. 3, vid. for an illustration, 3 Vid. also infr. § 20. de Synod. § 17.
end. And thus a Mediator being’ ever in request, never will the creation be constituted, because nothing originate, as you say, can bear the absolute hand of the Unoriginate+. And if, on your perceiving the extravagance of this, you begin to say that the Son, though a crea- ture, was made capable of being made by the Unoriginate, then it follows that other things also, though originated, are capable of: being wrought immediately by the Unoriginate; for the Son too is but a creature in your judg- ment, as all of them. And accordingly the origination of the Word is superfluous, according to your irreligious and futile imagination, God being sufficient for the immediate forma- tion of all things, and all things originate being capable of sustaining His absolute hand. _ These irreligious men then having so little mind amid their madness, let us see whether this particular sophism be not even more irra- tional than the others. Adam was created alone by God alone through the Word; yet no one would say that Adam had any’ pre- rogative over other men, or was different from those who came after him, granting that he alone was made and fashioned by God alone, and we all spring from Adam, and consist according to succession of the race, so long as he was fashioned from the earth as others, and at first not being, after- wards came to be.
9. But though we were to allow some prerogative to the Protoplast as having been deemed worthy of the hand of God, still 1t must be one of honour not of nature. For he came of the earth, as other men; and the hand which then fashioned Adam, is also both now and ever fashioning and giving entire con- sistence to those who come after him. And God Himself declares this ‘to Jeremiah, as I said before; ‘Before I formed thee in the womb, I knew thee5;’ and so He says of all, ‘All those things hath My hand made°;’ and again by Isaiah, ‘Thus saith the Lord, thy redeemer, and He that formed thee from the womb, I am the Lord that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by Myself?’ And David, knowing this, says in the Psalm, ‘Thy hands have made me and fashioned me®;’ and he who says in Isaiah, ‘Thus saith the Lord who formed me from the womb to be His servant 9,’ signifies the same, ‘Therefore, in respect of nature, he differs nothing from us though he precede us in time, so long as we all consist and are created by the same hand. If then these be your thoughts, O Arians, about a & Ps. cxix. 73 OrIsh xlixt 5: 7 Ib. xliv. 24.
DE DECRETIS, OR the Son of God too, that thus He subsists and came to be, then in your judgment He will differ nothing on the score of nature from others, so long as He too was not, and came to be, and the name was by grace united to Him in His creation for His virtue’s sake. For He Himself is one of those, from what you say, of whom the Spirit says in the Psalms, ‘He spake the word, and they were made; He commanded, and they were created*.’ If so, who was it by whom God gave com- mand? for the Son’s creation? for a Word there must be by whom God gave command, and in whom the works are created; but you have no other to shew than the Word you deny, unless indeed you should devise again some new notion.
“Yes,” they will say, ‘we have another;” (which indeed I formerly heard Eusebius and his fellows use), “on this score do we consider that the Son of God has a prerogative over others, and is called Only-begotten, because He alone partakes the Father, and all other things partake the Son.” Thus they weary themselves in changing and in varying their phrases like colours3; however, this shall not save them from an exposure, as men that are of the earth, speaking vainly, and wallowing in their own conceits as in mire.
to. For if He were called God’s Son, and we the Son’s sons, their fiction were plausible; but if we too are said to be sons of that God, of whom He is Son, then we too partake the Father+, who says, ‘I have begotten and ex- alted childrens.’ For if we did not partake Him, He had not said, ‘I have begotten;’ but if He Himself begat us, no other than He is our Father®. And, as before, it matters not, whether the Son has something more and was made first, but we something less, and were made afterwards, as long as we all partake, and are called sons, of the same Father7. For t Ps, cxlviii. 5 (LXX).
2 In like manner, ‘Men were made through the Word, when the Father Himself willed.’ Ovat. i. 63. ‘The Word forms matter as injoined by, and ministering to, God.’ mpoorarromevos Kat Umoupyav. ibid. ii. § 22. contr. Gent. 46. vid. note on Orat. li. 22.
3 ad Serap. i. 3.
4 His argument is, that if the Son but partook the Father in the sense in which we partake the Son, then the Son would not impart to us the Father, but Himself, and would be a separating as well as uniting medium between the Father and us; whereas He brings us so near to the Father, that we are the Father's child- ren, not His, and therefore He must be Himself one with the Father, or the Father must be in Him with an incomprehensible completeness, vid. de Synod. § 51. contr. Gent. 46. fm. Hence S, Augustin says, ‘As the Father has life in Himself, so hath He given also to the Son to have life in Himself, zo¢ 6y participating, but in Himself. For we have not life in ourselves, but in our God. But that Father, who has life in Himself, begat a Son such, as to have life in Himself, not to become partaker of life, but zo be Himself life; and of that life to make us partakers’ Serm. 127. de Verb, Evang. 9.
6 *To say God is wholly partaken, is the same as saying that God begets.’ Orat.i.§ 16. And in like manner, our inferior par- ticipation involves such sonship as is vouchsafed to us.
7 And so in Orat. li. $}19—22. ‘Though the Son surpassedy other things on a comparison, yet He were equally a creature with the more or less does not indicate a different nature; but attaches to each according to the practice of virtue; and one is placed over ten cities, another over five; and some sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel; and others hear the words, ‘Come, ye blessed of My Father,’ and, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant®.’ With such ideas, how- ever, no wonder they imagine that of such a Son God was not always Father, and such a Son was not always in being, but was genera- ted from nothing as a creature, and was not before His generation; for such an one is other than the True Son of God.
But to persist in such teaching does not consist with piety9, for it is rather the tone of thought of Sadducees and the Samosatene’°; it remains then to say that the Son of God is so called according to the other sense, in which Isaac was son of Abraham; for what is naturally begotten from any one and does not accrue to him from without, that in the nature of things is a son, and that 1s what the name impliest. Is then the Son’s generation one of human affection? (for this perhaps, as their predecessors’, they too will be ready to object in their ignorance;)—in no wise; for God is not as man, nor men as God. Men were created of matter, and that passible; but God is immaterial and incorporeal. And if so be the same terms are used of God and man in divine Scripture, yet the clear-sighted, as Paul enjoins, will study it, and thereby dis- criminate, and dispose of what is written ac- cording to the nature of each subject, and avoid any confusion of sense, so as neither to conceive of the things of God in a human way, nor to ascribe the things of man to God3, them; for even in those things which are of a created nature, we may find some things surpassing others. Star, for instance, differs from star in glory, yet it does not follow that some are sovereign, and others serve, &c.’ ii. § 20. And so Gregory Nyssen contr. Eunom. iii. p. 132 D. Epiph. Her. 76. p. 9706 9 i.e. since it is impossible they can persist in evasions so manifest as these, nothing is left but to take the other sense of the word.
10 Paul of Samosata [see Prolegg. ch. ii. § 3 (2) a.]
t The force lies in the word voce, ‘naturally,’ which the Council expressed still more definitely by ‘essence.’ Thus Cyril says, ‘the term ‘*Son” denotes the essential origin from the Father.’ Dial. 5. p. 573. And Gregory Nyssen, ‘the title ‘‘ Son” does not simply express the being /vomz another’ vid. infra.§ 19.), but relationship according to nature. contr. Eunom. ii. p. 91. Again S. Basil says, that Father is ‘a term of relationship,’ oikeroews. contr. Exnom. ii. 24. init. And hence he remarks, that we too are properly, cupiws, sons of God, as becoming related to Him through works of the Spirit. il. 23. So also Cyril, oc. cit. Elsewhere S. Basil defines father ‘one who gives to another the origin of being according to a nature like his own;’ and a son “one who possesses the origin of being from another by genera- tion,’ contr. Eun. ii. 22. On the other hand, the Arians at the first denied that ‘by nature there was any Son of God.’ Theod.
2 vid. Eusebius, in his Letter, supr. p. 73 sg.: also Socr. Hist. i. 8. Epiphan. Her. 69. n. 8. and x5.
3 One of the characteristic points in Athanasius is his constant attention to the sewse of doctrine, or the meaning of writers, in preference to the words used. Thus he scarcely uses the symbol opMoovcroy, one in substance, throughout his Ovadzonus, and in the de Synod. acknowledges the Semiarians as brethren. Hence DEFENCE OF THE NICENE DEFINITION.
For this were to mix wine with water‘, and to place upon the altar strange fire with that which is divine.
11. For God creates, and to create is also ascribed to men; and God has being, and men are said to be, having received from God this gift also. Yet does God create as men do? or is His being as man’s being? Perish the thought; we understand the terms in one sense of God, and in another of men. For God creates, in that He calls what is not into being, needing nothing thereunto; but men work some existing material, first praying, and sO gaining the wit to make, from that God who has framed all things by His proper Word. And again men, being incapable of self-exist- ence, are enclosed in place, and consist in the Word of God; but God is self-existent, en- closing all things, and enclosed by none; within all according to His own goodness and power, yet without all in His proper natures. As then men create not as God creates, as their being is not such as God’s being, so men’s generation is in one way, and the Son is from the Father in another®. For the offspring of men are portions of their fathers, since the very nature of bodies is not uncompounded, infr. § 18. he says, that orthodox doctrine ‘is revered by all though expressed in strange language, provided the speaker means religiously, and wishes to convey by it a religious sense.’ vid. also § 2t. He says, that Catholics are able to ‘speak freely,’ or to expatiate, rappyovagéuea, ‘out of Divine Scripture.’ Oraz.1. § 9. vid. de Sent. Dionys. § 20. init. Again: ‘The devil spoke from Scripture, but was silenced by the Saviour; Paul spoke from profane writers, yet, being a saint, he has a religious meaning,’ de Syn. § 39. also ad Zp. 4#g.8. Again, speaking of the apparent contrariety between two Councils, ‘It were unseemly to make the one conflict with the other, for all their members are fathers; end it were profane to decide that these spoke well and those ill, for all of them have slept in Christ.’ § 43. also § 47. Again: ‘Not the phrase, but the meaning and the religious life, is the recommendation of the faithful.’ ad Zp. 4g. § 9.
4 vid. Orat. ili. § 35, and Isa. i. 22.
5 Vid. also Jncarn. § 17. This contrast is not commonly found im ecclesiastical writers, who are used to say that God is present everywhere, in substance as well as by energy or power. S. Cle- ment, however, expresses himself still more strongly in the same way, ‘In substance far off (for how can the originate come close to the Unoriginate?), but most close in power, in which the universe is embosomed.’ Strom. 2. circ. init. but the parenthesis explains his meaning. Vid. Cyril. Ziesaur. 6. p. 44. The common doc- trine of the Fathers is, that God is present everywhere in substance. Vid. Petav. de Deo, iii. 6. and 9. It may be remarked, that S. Clement continues ‘ xeither enclosing nor enclosed.’
6 In Almighty God is the perfection and first pattern of what is seen in shadow in human nature, according to the imperfection of the subject matter; and this remark applies, as to creation, so to generation. Athanasius is led to state this more distinctly in another connection in Orat. i. § 21. fin. ‘It belongs to the Godhead alone, that the Father is properly (kupiws) Father, and the Son properly (xvpiws) Son; and in Them and Them only does it hold that the Father is ever Father, and the Son ever Son.’ Accordingly he proceeds, shortly afterwards, as in the text, to argue, ‘Hor God does not make men His pattern, but rather we men, for that God zs Jroferly and alone truly Father of His own Son, are also called fathers of our own children, for “ of Him is every father-hood in heaven and on earth named,”’ § 23. The Semiarians at Ancyra quote the same text for the same doctrine. Epiphan. Her. 73. 5. As do Cyril in Joan. i. p. 24. Thesaur. 32. p. 281. and Damascene de Fid. Orth. i. 8. The same parallel, as existing between creation and gene- ration, is insisted on by Isidor. Pel. 2. iil. 355. Basil contr. Eun, iv. p. 280 A., Cyril Thesaur. 6. p. 43. Epiph. Her. 69. 36. and Gregor. Naz. Ovat. 20. 9. who observes that God creates with a word, Ps. cxlviii. 5, which evidently transcends hun.an creations. Theodorus Abucara, with the same object, draws out the parallel of life, ¢w, as Athan. that of being, elvar. Opzse. iii. p. 420— but in a state of flux7, and composed of parts; and men lose their substance in begetting, and again they gain substance from the accession of food. And on this account men in their time become fathers of many children; but God, being without parts, is Father of the Son without partition or passion; for there is neither effluence’: of the Immaterial, nor in- flux from without, as among men; and being uncompounded in nature, He is Father of One Only Son. This is why He is Only- begotten, and alone in the Father’s bosom, and alone is acknowledged by the Father to ‘be from Him, saying, ‘This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased9.’ And He too is the Father’s Word, from which may be understood theimpassible andimpartitive nature of the Father, in that not even a human word is begotten with passion or partition, much less the Word of Godt. Wherefore also He sits, as Word, at the Father’s right hand; for where the Father is, there also is His Word; but we, as His works, stand in judgment before Him; and, while He is adored, because He is Son of the adorable Father, we adore, con- fessing Him Lord and God, because we are creatures and other than He.
12. The case being thus, let who will among them consider the matter, so that one may abash them by the following question; Is it right to say that what is God’s offspring and proper to Him is out of nothing? or is it reasonable in the very idea, that what is from God has accrued to Him, that a man should dare to say that the Son is not always? For in this again the generation of the Son exceeds and transcends the thoughts of man, that we become fathers of our own children in time, since we ourselves first were not and then came into being; but God, in that He ever is, is ever Father of the Son?. And the origination — 7 Vid. de Synod. § 51. Ovat.i. § 15,16. pevorn. vid. Orat. i. § 28. Bas. in Lun. ii. 23. pvow. Bas. in Luz, ii. 6. Greg. Naz. Ovat, 28, 22. Vid. contr. Gentes, §§ 41, 42; where Athan. without reference to the Arian controversy, draws out the contrast between the Godhead and human nature.
8 S, Cyril, Dial. iy. init. p. 505 E. speaks of the OpvAdoupevn amoppon, and disclaims it, 7hesaur, 6. p. 43. Athan. disclaims it, Expos. § 1. Orat. i. § 21. So does Alexander, ap. Theod. Hst¢. i. 3. p- 743. Onthe other hand, Athanasius quotes it in a passage which he adduces from Theognostus, 7#/r. § 25. and from Diony- sius, de Sent. D. § 23. and Origen uses it, Periarchon, i. 2. It is derived from Wisd. vii. 25. 9 Matt. iii. 17.
1 The title ‘Word’ implies the ineffable mode of the Son’s generation, as distinct from material parallels, vid. Gregory Nys- sen, contr. Eunom. iii. p. 107. Chrysostom in Joan. Home, 2. § 4. Cyril Alex. Thesaur. 5. p- 37+ Also it implies that there is but One Son, vid. infr. § 16. ‘As the Origin is one essence, so its Word and Wisdom is one, essential and subsisting.’ Ovat. iv. 1. fin, 2 ‘Man,’ says S. Cyril, ‘inasmuch as he had a beginning of being, also has of necessity a beginning of begetting, as what is from him is a thing generate, but...if God’s essence tran- scend time, or origin, or interval, His generation too will transcend these; nor does it deprive the Divine Nature of the power ot generating, that it doth not this in time. For other than human is the manner of divine generation; and together with God’s existing is His generating implied, and the Son was in Him by generation, nor did His generation precede His existence, but He was always, and that by generation.’ Thesaur. v. p. 35- DET DECK TIS) Oly of mankind is brought home to us from things that are parallel; but, since ‘no one knoweth the Son but the Father, and no one knoweth the Father but the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him3,’ therefore the sacred writers to whom the Son has revealed Him, have given us a certain image from things visible, saying, ‘Who is the brightness of His glory, and the Expression of His Person‘4;’ and again, ‘For with Thee is the well of life, and in Thy light shall we see light5;’ and when the Word chides Israel, He says, ‘Thou hast forsaken the Fountain of wisdom®;’ and this Fountain it is which says, ‘They have forsaken Me the Fountain of living waters7.’ And mean indeed and very dim is the illustration® com- pared with what we desiderate; but yet it is possible from it to understand something above man’s nature, instead of thinking the Son’s generation to be on a level with ours. For who can even imagine that the radiance of light ever was not, so that he should dare to say that the Son was not always, or that the Son was not before His generation? or who is capable of separating the radiance from the sun, or to conceive of the fountain as ever void of life, that he should madly say, ‘The Son is from nothing,’ who says, ‘I am the life9,’ or ‘alien to the Father’s essence,’ who says, ‘He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father'??’ for the sacred writers wishing us thus to understand, have given these illustra- tions; and it is unseemly and most irreligious, when Scripture contains such images, to form ideas concerning our Lord from others which are neither in Scripture, nor have any religious bearing.
13. Therefore let them tell us, from what teacher or by what tradition they derived these notions concerning the Saviour? ‘We have read,” they will say, “in the Proverbs, ‘The Lord created me a beginning of His ways unto His works';’” this Eusebius and his fellows used to insist on?, and you write me word, that the present men also, though over- thrown and confuted by an abundance of arguments, still were putting about in every quarter this passage, and saying that the Son was one of the creatures, and reckoning Him 3 Matt. xi. 27.
5 Ps. xxxvi. 9. 6 Bar. ili. 12.
J Jer. ii. 13. Vid. z2fr. passim. All these titles, © Word, Wisdom, Light,’ &c., serve to guard the title ‘Son’ from any notions of parts or dimensions, e.g. ‘He is not composed of parts but being impassible and single, He is impassibly and indivisibly Father of the Son...for...the Word and Wisdom is neither creature, nor part of Him Whose Word He is, nor an offspring passibly begotten.’ Ovat. i. § 28.
8 Ad Serap. 20. 9 John xiv. 6.
% Prov. vili. 22, and cf. Ovaz. ii. throughout 2 Eusebius of Nicomedia quotes it in his Letter to Paulinus, ap. Theodor. “7st. i. 5. And Eusebius of Cxesarea, Demonstr, “Evang. Vv. 1.
with things originated. But they seem to me to have a wrong understanding of this passage also; for it has a religious and very orthodox sense, which had they understood, they would not have blasphemed the Lord of glory. For on comparing what has been above stated with this passage, they will find a great difference between them3, For what man of right under- standing does not perceive, that what are created and made are external to the maker; but the Son, as the foregoing argument has shewn, exists not externally, but from the Father who begat Him? for man too both builds a house and begets a son, and no one would reverse things, and say that the house or the ship were begotten by the builder4, but the son was created and made by him; nor again that the house was an. image of the maker, but the son unlike him who begat him; but rather he will confess that the son is an image of the father, but the house a work of art, unless his mind be disordered, and he beside himself. Plainly, divine Scripture, which knows better than any the nature of everything, says through Moses, of the crea- tures, ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earths;’ but of the Son it introduces not another, but the Father Himself saying, ‘I have begotten Thee from the womb before the morning star®;’ and again, ‘Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten Thee?.’ And the Lord says of Himself in the Proverbs, ‘Before all the hills He begets me®;’ and concerning things originated and created John speaks, ‘ All things were made by Him9;’ but preaching of the Lord, he says, ‘The Only-be- gotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He declared Him*.’ If then son, therefore not creature; if creature, not son; for great is the difference between them, and son and creature cannot be the same, unless His essence be considered to be at once from God, and external to God.
14. ‘Has then the passage no meaning?’ for this, like a swarm of gnats, they are droning about us*%. No surely, it is not without mean- ing, but has a very apposite one; for it is true to say that the Son was created too, but this took place when He became man; for creation 3 i.e. ‘Granting that the J77#@ facie impression of this text is in favour of our Lord’s being a creature, yet so many arguments have been already brought, and may be added, against His creation, that we must interpret this text by them. It cannot mean that our Lord was simply created, decause we have already shewn that He is not external to His Father.’
4 Sevap. 2,6. Sent. Dion.} 4. 5 Gen. i. x. ONPESCxe ae fi Pst ii. 72 8 Prov. viii. 25. 9 Johni. 3. ro Ib. 18, I reptBoppodvo.. Soin ad Afros. 5. init. And Sent. D.% 10. meprepxovTat mepiBouBovvres. And Gregory Nyssen. contr. Eun. vili. p. 234 C. os dv Tovs amelpous Tals TAaTwYLKals KaAALwviaLs Tepe pope nce vid. also meprépyovtas ws ot xdvOapor. Orat. iii. fin.
DEFENCE OF THE NICENE DEFINITION.
‘belongs to ‘man. And any one may find this sense duly given in the divine oracles, who, instead of accounting their study a secondary matter, investigates the time and characters?, and the object, and thus studies and ponders what he reads. Now as to the season spoken of, he will find for certain that, whereas the Lord always is, at length in fulness of the ages He became man; and whereas He is Son of God, He became Son of man also. And as to the object he will understand, that, wishing to annul our death, He took on Himself a body from the Virgin Mary; that by offering this unto the Father a sacrifice for all, He might |, deliver us all, who by fear of death were all our life through subject to bondage3._ And as to the character, it is indeed the Saviour’s, but is said of Him when He took a body and said, ‘The Lord created me a beginning of His ways unto His works#.’ For as it properly belongs to God’s Son to be everlasting, and in the Father’s bosom, so on His becoming man, the words befitted Him, ‘The Lord created me.’ For then it is said of Him, as also that He hungered, and thirsted, and asked where Lazarus lay, and suffered, and rose again5, And as, when we hear of Him as Lord and God and true Light, we under- stand Him as being from the Father, so on hearing, ‘The Lord created,’ and ‘Servant,’ and ‘He suffered,’ we shall justly ascribe this, not to the Godhead, for it is irrelevant, but we must interpret it by that flesh which He bore for our sakes: for to it these things are proper, and this flesh was none other’s than the Word’s. And if we wish to know the object attained by this, we shall find it to be as follows: that the Word was made flesh in order to offer up this body for all, and that we, partaking of His Spirit, might be deified °, a gift which we could not otherwise have gained than by His clothing Himself in our created body 7, for hence we derive our name of “men of God” and “men in Christ.” But as we, by receiving the Spirit, do not lose our own proper substance, so the Lord, when made man for us, and bearing a body, was no less God; for He was not lessened by the envelopment of the body, but rather deified it and rendered it immortal ®, 2 mpocwma., vid. Ovat. i. $54.11. $8 Sent. D. 4. not persons, but characters; which must also be considered the meaning of the word, contr. Agoll. ii. 2. and 10; though it there approximates (even in phrase, ov« év dcaipévet mpoownwyv) to its ecclesiastical use, which seems to have been later. Yet persona occurs in Ter- tull. 2 Prax. 27; it may be questioned, however, whether in any genuine Greek treatise til! the Apollinarians.
3 Heb. ii. 15. 4 Prov. viii. 22.
6 [See de Incar. § 54. 3, and note.]
8 Cf. Orc? il. 6. [See also de Incar. § 17.)
CHAPTER IV: PROOF OF THE CATHOLIC SENSE OF THE WORD SON, Power, Word or Reason, and Wisdom, the names of the Son, imply eternity; as well as the Father's title of Fountain...The Arians reply that these do not formally belong to the essence of the Son, but are names given Him; that God has many words, powers, &c. Why there 1s but one Son and Word, &¢. All the titles of the Son coincide in Him.
15. THis then is quite enough to expose the infamy of the Arian heresy; for, as the Lord has granted, out of their own words is irreligion brought home to them". But come now and let us on our part act on the offensive, and call on them for an answer; for now is fair time, when their own ground has failed them, to question them on ours; perhaps it may abash the perverse, and disclose to them whence they have fallen. We have learned from divine Scripture, that the Son of God, as was said above, is the very Word and Wisdom of the Father. For the Apostle says, ‘ Christ the power of God and the Wisdom of God?;’ and John after saying, ‘And the Word was made flesh,’ at once adds, ‘And we. saw His glory, the glory as of the Only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth3,’ so that, the Word being the Only-begotten Son, in this Word and in Wisdom heaven and earth and all that is therein were made. And of this Wisdom that God is Fountain we have learned from# Baruch, by Israel’s being charged with having forsaken the Fountain of Wisdom. If then they deny Scripture, they are at once aliens to their name, and may fitly be called of all men atheists5, and Christ’s enemies, for they have brought upon themselves these names. But if they agree with us that the sayings of Scripture are divinely inspired, let them dare to say openly what they think in secret that God was once wordless and wisdomless®; and 1 The main argument of the Arians was that our Lord was a Son, and therefore was not eternal, but of a substance which had a beginning. [Prolegg. ch. ii. § 3 (2) a.] Accordingly Atha- nasius says, ‘Having argued with them as to the meaning of their own selected term ‘‘Son,” let us go on to others, which on the very face make for us, such as Word, Wisdom, &c.?
3 Johni. 14.
6 dAoyos, acopos. Vid. infr.,§26. ‘This isa frequent argument in the controversy, viz. that to deprive the Father of His Son or substantial Word (Adyos), is as great a sacrilege as to deny His Reason, Adyos, from which the Son receives His name. Thus Ovat. i. § 14. fin. Athan. says, ‘imputing to God's nature an absence of His Word (aAoyiay or irrationality), they are most irreligious.’ Vid. § 19. fin. 24. Elsewhere, he says, ‘Is a man not mad himself, who even entertains the thought that God is word-less and wisdom-less? for such illustrations and such images Scripture hath proposed, that, considering the inability of human nature to comprehend concerning God, we mignt even from these, however poorly and dimly, discern as far as is attain- able.’ Ovat. ii. 32, vid. also iii. 63. iv. t4. Sevag, ii 2.
DE DECRETIS, OR DE DECRETIS, OR let them in their madness? say, ‘There was once when He was not,’ and, ‘before His generation, Christ was not®;’ and again let them declare that the Fountain begat not Wisdom from itself, but acquired it from without, till they have the daring to say, ‘The Son came of nothing;’ whence it will follow that there is no longer a Fountain, but a sort of pool, as if receiving water from without, and usurping the name of Fountain®.