论三位一体（De Trinitate）

The equality of the Trinity maintained against objections drawn from those texts which speak of the sending of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, . 42 BOOK III. The appearances of God to the Old Testament saints are discussed, . .79 BOOK IV. Augustine explains for what the Son of God was sent ; but, however, that the Son of God, although made less by being sent, is not therefore less because the Father sent Him ; nor yet the Holy Spirit less because both the Father sent Him and the Son, 107 BOOK V. He proceeds to refute those arguments which the heretics put forward, not out of the Scriptures, but from their own conceptions. And first he refutes the objection, that to beget and to be begotten, or that to be begotten and not-begotten, being different, are therefore difierent substances, and shows that these things are spoken of God relatively, and not according to substance, 145 BOOK VI. In reply to the argument alleged against the equality of the Son from the apostle's words, saying that Christ is the "power of God and the wisdom of God," he propounds the question whether the Father Himself is not wisdom. But deferring for a while the answer to this, he adduces xii CONTENTS. further proof of the unity and equality of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit ; and that God ought to be said and believed to be a Trinity, not threefold. And he adds an explanation of the saying of Hilary — Eternity in the Father, Appearance in the Image, and Use in the Gift, 165 BOOK VIl. He resolves the question he had deferred, and teaches us that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is one power and one wisdom, no otherwise than one God and one essence. And he then inquires how it is that, in speaking of God, the Latins say, One essence, three persons ; but the Greeks, One essence, three substances or hypostases, BOOK VIII.