If our Lord the Image of the Father, He is from His substance.209 VI. σίου. Son, if not from Him? or wherefore Word and Wisdom, if not CHAP. ever proper to Him? When then was God without Him who is to Him? or how can a man consider that which is §. 20. proper proper, as foreign and alien1 in substance? for other things,' 20according to the nature of things generate, are without likeness τρίου. in substance with the Maker; but are external to Him, made supr. p. 150, by the Word at His grace and will, and thus admit of ceasing ref. 1. to be, if it so pleases Him who made them; for such is the nature of things generate. But as to what is proper to the infr. p. 223, Father's substance, (for this we have already found to be the note i." Son,) what daring is it and irreligion to say that "This comes from nothing," and that "It was not before generation," but was adventitious3, and can at some time cease to be again? 2 TITOK βέβηκε. p. 37, 6. Let a person only dwell upon this thought, and he will discern how the perfection and the plenitude of the Father's note y. substance is impaired by this heresy; however, he will see its extravagance still more clearly, if he considers that the Son is the Image and Radiance of the Father, and Expression, and Truth. For if, when Light exists, there be withal its Image, viz. Radiance, and a Subsistence existing, there be of it the entire Expression, and a Father existing, there be His Truth, viz. the Son; let them consider what depths"the of irreligion they fall into, who make time the measure omitted of the Image and Countenance of the Godhead. For if the by Son was not before His generation, Truth was not always in God, which it were a sin to say; for, since the Father was, there was ever in Him the Truth, which is the Son, who says, I am the Truth. And the Subsistence existing, of course there John14, was forthwith its Expression and Image; for God's Image is not delineated from without, but God Himself hath begotten eternity of the Image; rñs vxortársws ὑπαρχούσης, πάντως εὐθὺς εἶναι δεῖ τὸν xaganrñga xai sàv sinóva raúrns, §. 20. vid. also infr. §. 31. de Decr. §. 13. p. 21. §. 20. 23. pp. 35. 40. Theod. Hist. i. 3. p. 737. This was but the opposite aspect of the tenet of our Lord's consubstantiality or eternal generation. For if He came into being at the will of God, by the same will He might cease to be; but if His existence is unconditional and necessary, as God's attributes might be, then as He had no beginning, so can He have no end; for He P is in, and one with, the Father, who d Athan. argues from the very name Son" Montf. 6. I. Prov. 8, 30. DISC. it; in which seeing Himself, He has delight, as the Son Himself says, I was His delight. When then did the Father not see Himself in His own Image? or when had He not delight, that a man should dare to say, "The Image is out of nothing," and "The Father had not delight before the Image was generated?" and how should the Maker and Creator see Himself in a created and generated substance? for such as is §. 21. the Father, such must be the Image. Proceed we then to consider the attributes of the Father, and we shall come to know whether this Image is really His. The Father is eternal, immortal, powerful, light, King, Sovereign, God, Lord, Creator, and Maker. These attributes must be in the Image, to make John14, it true that he that hath seen the Son hath seen the Father. 9. I de Decr. §. If the Son be not all this, but, as the Arians consider, a thing generate, and not eternal, this is not a true Image of the Father, unless indeed they give up shame, and go on to say, that the title of Image, given to the Son, is not a token of a similar substance", but His name1 only. But this, on the other hand, O ye Christ's enemies, is not an Image, nor is it an 25.26. Expression. For what is the likeness of what is out of nothing to Him who brought what was nothing into being? or how can that which is not, be like Him that is, being short of Him in once not being, and in its having its place among things generate? 16, pp. 7. However, such the Arians wishing Him to be, have contrived arguments such as this;-" If the Son is the Father's 2010s offspring and image, and is like in all things to the Father, then it necessarily holds that as He is begotten, so He p. 115, begets, and He too becomes father of a son. And again, he infr. §. who is begotten from Him, begets in his turn, and so on κατά πάντα, note e. 40. p. 237. 76,3. Hilar. Trin. vii. 41 fin. Origen ob- for this is the nature of an Discourses. e iuoias ovcías. And so §. 20. init. ὅμοιον κατ ̓ οὐσίαν, and ὅμοιος τῆς οὐσίας, §. 26. uos nur voíav, iii. 26. and ὅμοιος κατὰ τὴν οὐσίαν τοῦ πατρός. Ερ. Eg. 17. Also Alex. Ep. Encycl. 2. Considering what he says in the de Syn. §. 38, &c. supr. p. 136, note g, in controversy with the Semi-arians a year or two later, this use of their formula, in preference to the pooσiov, (vid. foregoing note,) deserve our at tention. Why the Father only a Father and the Son only a Son. 211 V1. note n. Toμàs, p. 63, 3 ref. 2. without limit; for this is to make the Begotten like Him that CHAP. begat Him." Authors of blasphemy, verily, are these foes ofGod1! who, sooner than confess that the Son is the Father's1 bóμaImage', conceive material and earthly ideas concerning the 2, p. 6, Father Himself, ascribing to Him severings and effluences and influences. If then God be as man, let Him be also a parent as man, so that His Son should be father of another, 3¿æoppoíand so in succession one from another, till the series they note q as, p. 19, imagine grows into a multitude of gods. But if God be not p. 18. as man, as He is not, we must not impute to Him the attributes of man. For brutes and men, after a Creator has begun them, are begotten by succession; and the son, having been begotten of a father who was a son, becomes accordingly in his turn a father to a son, in inheriting from his father that by which he himself has come to be. Hence in such instances there is not, properly speaking, either father or son, nor do the father and the son stay in their respective characters, for the son himself becomes a father, being son of his father, but father of his son. But it is not so in 1 The objection is this, that, if our Lord be the Father's Image, He ought to resemble Him in being a Father. S. Athanasius answers that God is not as man; with us a son becomes a father because our nature is ρευστή, transitive and without stay, even shifting and passing on into new forms and relations; but that God is perfect and ever the same, what He is once that He continues to be; God the Father remains Father, and God the Son remains Son. Moreover men become fathers by detachment and transmission, and what is received is handed on in a succession; whereas the Father, by imparting Himself wholly, begets the Son; and a perfect nativity finds its termination in itself. The Son has not a Son, because the Father has not a Father. Thus the Father is the only true Father, and the Son only true Son; the Father only a Father, the Son only a Son; being really in Their Persons what human fathers are but by office, character, accident, and name; vid.supr. p. 18, note o. And since the Father is unchangeable as Father, in nothing does the Son more fulfil the idea of a perfect Image than in being unchangeable too. Thus S. Cyril. also Thesaur. 10. p. 124. And this perhaps may illustrate a strong and almost startling ῥοίας I. 212 Because the Father the only Father and the Son the only Son. DISC. the Godhead; for not as man is God; for the Father is not from father; therefore doth He not beget one who shall beget; nor is the Son from effluence of the Father, nor is He begotten from a father that was begotten; therefore neither is He begotten so as to beget. Thus it belongs to the Godhead alone, that the Father is properly father, and the Son properly son, and in Them, and Them only, does it hold that §. 22. the Father is ever Father and the Son ever Son. Therefore he who asks why the Son has not a son, must inquire why the Father had not a father. But both suppositions are indecent and irreligious exceedingly. For as the Father is ever Father and never could be Son, so the Son is ever Son and never could be Father. For in this rather is He shewn to be the Father's Expression and Image, remaining what He is and not changing, but thus receiving from the Father to be one and the same. If then the Father change, let the Image 2 or change; for so is the Image and Radiance in its relation towards Him who begat It. But if the Father is unalterable, and what He is that He continues, necessarily does the Image also continue what He is, and will not alter. Now He is Son from the Father; therefore He will not become other than is proper to the Father's substance. Idly then have the foolish ones devised this objection also, wishing to separate the Image from the Father, that they might level the Son with things generated. xvgiws, vid. p. 18, note o. Else where Athan. says, "The Father being one and only is Father of a Son one and only; and in the instance of Godhead only have the names Father and Son stay, and are ever; for of men if any one be called father, yet he has been son of another; and if he be called son, yet is he called father of another; so that in the case of men the names father and son do not properly, zugiws, hold." ad Serap. i. 16. also ibid. iv. 4 fin. and 6. vid. also xvgías, Greg. Naz. Orat. 29.5. news, Orat. 25, 16. övrws, Basil. contr. Eunom. i. 5. p. 215. CHAP. VII. OBJECTIONS TO THE FOREGOING PROOF. Whether, in the generation of the Son, God made One that was already, or VII. ref. 6. 1. RANKING Him among these, according to the teaching of CHAP. Eusebius, and accounting Him such as the things which come into being through Him, the Arians revolted from the truth, and used, when they commenced this heresy, to go about with dishonest phrases which they had got together1; nay, up to this 'p. 193, time some of them", when they fall in with boys in the marketplace, question them, not out of divine Scripture, but thus, as if bursting with the abundance of their heart;—"He who is, Mat. 12, did He make him who was not, from Him who is, or him who was? therefore did He make the Son, whereas He was, or a This miserable procedure, of making sacred and mysterious subjects a matter of popular talk and debate, which is a sure mark of heresy, had received a great stimulus about this time by the rise of the Anomoans. Eusebius's testimony to the profaneness which attended Arianism upon its rise, has been given above, p. 75, note h. The Thalia is another instance of it. S. Alexander speaks of the interference, even judicial, in its behalf against himself, of disobedient women, d'ivruxías γυναικαρίων ἀτάκτων ἃ ἠπάτησαν, and of the busy and indecent gadding about of the younger, ἐκ τοῦ περιτροχάζειν πᾶσαν ȧyviav åσsuvas. ap. Theod. Hist. i. 3. p. 730. also p. 747. also of the men's buffoon conversation, p. 731. Socrates says that "in the Imperial Court, the officers of the bedchamber held disputes with the women, and in the city in every house there was a war of dialectics." Hist. ii. 2. This mania raged especially in Constantinople, and S. Gregory Naz. speaks of "Jezebels in as thick a crop as hemlock in a field." Orat. 35. 3. vid. supr. p. 91, note q. He speaks of the heretics as aiming at every market-place resound with their 34. |