If, they say, He were of the Father's substance, it could never come to pass that before the assumption of flesh He should be discerned as either visible or mutable: but rather He would have remained in that equality in which the Father is, from whose substance He was: because what is of the Father can be believed neither to be seen, nor changed, nor converted. There is added to the case that, when He glided into Mary, when He filled the Virgin's womb, surely something else was born of her than what had come. Whence now, they say, His substance being corrupted, He changes His state, loses His order, being forthwith by that very mutation to be formed from God into man, from spirit into flesh. And surely every transition is the destruction of the former thing. And by this, they say, if the Son were of the Father's substance,
then the Father too would seem to be made less by the surrender or by the diminution of His substance: and therefore they preferred to believe the Son to be of another substance, which might be converted, and changed, and seen; because this cannot lawfully be believed of the Father's substance. This is the cause of the error, this the origin of the Arian heresy, while they do not understand the power of God, nor acknowledge the dispensation of so great a sacrament, so that they compare God to human conditions. To these it must be answered, in the first place, that the Son of God was not seen as He was God, but as man was able to grasp of God. Next, that He is not mutable and convertible by reason of various figures, but that this is of the power of God, that when He deigns to reveal Himself to each as He wills, He changes His appearance, not alters His substance;
nor does He lose the property of His quality, but according to the merit of the beholder He applies a tempering of His majesty; yet He Himself, the same as He ever is, remains in the property of His own substance. As it is written: 'You shall change them and they shall be changed, but You are the same, and Your years shall not fail' (Ps. 102:26-27). For although there are many of the things which are seen in this world, which are converted from one thing into another, so that they cease to be what they were, and become what they were not before: as clay, when it is fashioned into a man, ceases now to be clay; as fishes or birds, when they come forth from the water, are thence now not water, because something else; as the potter's mud, when it is hardened into an earthen vessel; as stone, when, burned, it is dissolved into lime;
as sand, when it is changed into glass; and the rest, which it would be long to recount. But there is a great difference, you foolish heretic, between those things that have been made, and Him who made all things as He willed. The things that have been made are subject in bondage to their assigned condition; but He who made them is of His own will and of His own right. Nor can He be changed into anything other than what He is, under any compelling force, but He shows Himself as He wills, and to whom He wills. For if angels have often been seen in the figure of men, and yet are nothing other than what they know themselves to be, neither do they change their substance when they take on the form of a human body; how much more our Lord Himself, who made all things, who granted to those very angels by His own appointment that they should be able to do this?
To this is added that, if we approve the Son of God, as has already been said, to have been so seen by the Fathers that not all that is God might be seen in Him, but that the dispositions of things to come, which were to be fulfilled in their own several times, might be discerned in Him through an image. For who could see the Son of God before He took on, as it pleased Him, a material that could be looked upon, or deigned to put on man himself? Who, even if He was seen by Abraham (Gen. 18), yet was seen in the form of a human body, by which, namely, it might be shown that in the last times He was to come in man. Jacob too is seen elsewhere in an angel, elsewhere likewise in a man (Gen. 28). And He showed Himself in an angel for this reason, that He might declare Himself the messenger of great counsel.
But in a man, with whom He is described to have wrestled, that He might plainly indicate the image of the future wrestling which He was to have with Israel (Gen. 32:30), when He should have come according to man. But that he might believe Him to be the Lord, with whom in such a struggle he wrestled under the figure of a man, he received the name Israel, that is, a man seeing God. 'For I have seen,' he says, 'God face to face, and my soul has been saved' (Gen. 32:30). And surely he had seen the figure of a man, which God the Son of God had put on. To Moses He appeared in the bush in a flame of fire, that He might show light to those who believe, judgment to the unbelieving: because Christ is salvation to those who believe, but to those who do not believe a punishment, as the Apostle says:
'To some an odor of life unto life, to others an odor of death unto death' (2 Cor. 2:16). He went before the people of Israel by day in a pillar of cloud, and by night in a pillar of fire, as a guide of the way (Exod. 13:21), that He might show the grace of baptism through the cloud and the gift of the Holy Spirit through the fire: for the Apostle Paul writes that the Fathers were baptized in the cloud (1 Cor. 10:2). And the Acts of the Apostles declare that the Spirit is as fire (Acts 2:3). You see, then, heretic, through all these things, the characters of the divine dispensations foreshown to the Fathers in honor of God, yet God Himself, as He is, not properly revealed. Finally, when Moses prayed that he might see the face of God purely, what did God say to him at once?
'You shall not be able,' He said, 'to see My face. For man shall not see My face, and live' (Exod. 33:20). By this very thing, that the sight is denied, the brightness is signified, which is, namely, as great as that which is shown to be invisible must be believed to be. When, therefore, Moses had set in order, indicated, expressed the position of the heaven, and the orders of the world, and the alternations of the elements, and finally the adornments of the whole globe—to whom the Lord Himself bore testimony, saying: 'There shall be none among the prophets like My servant Moses, to whom I have spoken face to face, mouth to mouth' (Num. 12:7-8)—yet he could not see God purely. Worthy indeed of all prophecy, but not to such a degree that he should be able to behold God, because he was only a man.
And surely here we defend all the words as belonging to the Son, whom we know to have spoken with Moses on Mount Sinai, who had come from the Father to carry out and unfold all things; because it had been agreed that from the beginning all things should be both ordered and unfolded and maintained through Him, so that this should be especially the reason for having a Son. And yet He is so received as seen, that, as I said, He was seen through the disposition of some material that could be looked upon, with His invisibility, of course, preserved, which majesty, interposed, set apart from the gaze of all. For He was not so revealed to human sight that the whole deity should appear in Him, but after the manner of a mirror, when it encloses the faces conceived within its own light as if into the full likeness of a man;
so, with the splendor of His majesty going before, it was seen within that which showed the image of the truth, not God Himself properly. So too, when He deigned to put on man, He brought no blemish upon His eternity, as though He changed spirit into flesh, but that He might grant to the man He had taken up immortality and the eternity of heavenly life. For although the Apostle says that He emptied Himself, by taking the form of a servant (Phil. 2:7), we do not by any means so understand Him to have been emptied that the same Spirit became anything other than what He had been, but that, His own honor of majesty being laid aside for the time, He put on a human body, by the taking up of which the salvation of the nations might come to be.
For just as the sun, when it is covered with a cloud, has its brightness compressed, not blinded, and that light which, diffused over the whole globe, floods all things with its bright splendor, is by the very small obstacle of a cloud shut in, not taken away: so also that man whom our Lord and Savior, that is, God and the Son of God, put on, He did not intercept the deity in Him, but hid it. Finally, when, after a short while, He had lifted Himself a little beyond the man himself, the apostles, almost blinded by the splendor of His light (Matt. 17)—for the men fell indeed to the ground—were in peril of their life, had not the Lord, mercifully, with the honor of His majesty again compressed, come to their aid, according to that saying: 'No one has seen God, and lived' (Exod. 33:20).
Therefore, just as the brightness of the sun, when it does not flash forth all the way to our sight, is yet safe in itself; because the fact that it is not seen belongs to our infirmity, whose eyes the darkness of clouds has veiled: so too that divine majesty, which (as I said) had put on a body, proves that it lay hidden not by any loss of its own splendor, but by the benefit, as I said, of the flesh, for whose sake the Son of God endured to be the Son of man. For surely the Virgin conceived of the Spirit of God, and what she conceived, this she brought forth, that is, God joined to His own man (as I have already said): as He Himself said: 'What is born of flesh is flesh, and what is born of spirit is spirit, because God is Spirit, and is born of God' (John 3:6). As also the angel says to the Virgin Mary:
'The Spirit of God shall come upon you, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow you. Therefore that which shall be born of you, holy, shall be called the Son of God' (Luke 1:35). You see, then, that the Spirit Himself, that is, the Son of God, came to the Virgin, and that thence the Son of God and of man proceeded? Nor yet was the Son of God changed by the very garment of flesh, but He was the very same in man who had been before the world with the Father, through whom all things were made, and without whom was made nothing, as the evangelist says: 'The world was made through Him, and the world knew Him not' (John 1:10). For the rest, it is the part of a madman to believe that one can be set free by Him who, in order to set free, was lost; that He might be born, was crushed; that He might restore immortality, passed over to death.
But far be it, far be it, heretic, that the sense of your iniquity should be admitted by Catholics. For we believe the Word and the Spirit, that is, the Son of God, to be immutable and unconvertible: who, when He put on man, did not pluck up His state, did not lose His order, did not change His substance, but illumined the defilements of that same body with the eternal light of His own brightness, that to us, through the channel of His body, the light of the Holy Spirit and the grace of eternal life might overflow. And although we believe Him to have suffered and been buried, yet it was that man who suffered whom the Son of God took up, whom He put on, whom He bore. But because whatever that man suffered was wholly referred to its Author, therefore it is declared to be the death and passion of the Lord.
It is established that what is of God is immortal, what is of man is perishable. On the third day, too, He rose again, not God into man, but rather man into God. He ascended into the heavens, He offered to His Father that most welcome gift, that man. He sat down at the right hand of the Father, according to what is written: 'The Lord said to my Lord: Sit at My right hand' (Ps. 110:1). He sent us the Holy Spirit, from His own and one same substance, a protector, a sanctifier, and a leader into eternal life; as it is written from the voice of God: 'I will pour out of My Spirit upon My servants and My handmaids' (Joel 2:29). And again: 'The Spirit shall go forth from Me' (Isa. 57:16). And the Lord and our Savior Himself:
'Of Mine,' He says, 'shall He receive' (John 16:14), namely from that which is the Son's, because the Son too is of that which is the Father's. Thence, at a foreappointed time, He is to come to judge the living and the dead, that He may render to those who believe rewards, but to those who do not believe punishments. Whose kingdom is eternal, immortal, having neither beginning nor end: to whom be honor and glory unto the ages of ages. Amen. LETTER OF THE COUNCIL OF AQUILEIA TO THE BISHOPS OF GAUL. The council which met at Aquileia, to the most beloved brethren, the bishops of the province of the Viennenses and of the Narbonenses, the first and the second. We give thanks to your holy unanimity, that in our lords and brethren Constantius and Proculus you have conferred upon us the presence of you all:
and at the same time, following the prescriptions of our forefathers, you have added no slight weight to our judgments, with which the profession of your holiness also agrees, most beloved lord brethren. Therefore, as we have gladly received the aforesaid holy men from your and our fellowship, so also we dismiss them with abundant thanksgiving. But how necessary this assembly was, is made plain by the very facts, since the adversaries and enemies of God, the interpreters and defenders of the Arian sect, Palladius and Secundianus—the only two who dared to come to the council—present, received their due sentence, being convicted of impiety. May our almighty God guard you safe and most flourishing, most beloved lord brethren.
LETTER OF THE SAME COUNCIL TO THE EMPERORS GRATIAN, VALENTINIAN, AND THEODOSIUS. To the most clement emperors and most blessed Christian princes, Gratian, and Valentinian, and Theodosius, the holy council which met at Aquileia. Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave to you the Roman empire:
and blessed be our Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, who by His own goodness guards your kingdom, with whom we give thanks to you (most clement princes) that you have both proved the zeal of your faith, in that to remove disputes you determined to gather together a council of priests, and have reserved by your gracious favor the honor due to bishops, so that no one willing should be absent, no one be compelled unwilling. And so, according to the statutes of your gentleness, we came together without the envy of a multitude, and with a disposition for debate: nor were any of the heretics found to be bishops, except Palladius and Secundianus, men of long-standing perfidy, on whose account they demanded that a council be gathered from the farthest part of the Roman world.
Behold, no one weighed down by the years of old age, whose hoary head alone would have been worthy of reverence, was compelled to come from the farthest recess of the Ocean sea, and nothing was lacking to the council. No one, dragging a feeble body laden with the toils of fasting, was forced by the hardship of the journey to bewail the losses of strength now lost. No one, finally, destitute of the means of coming, groaned over the poverty—glorious in priests. Whence it has been fulfilled in you, most clement of princes, Gratian, what the divine Scripture has praised: 'Blessed is he who understands concerning the needy and the poor' (Ps. 41:1). But how grievous it would have been, if, on account of two men rotten with perfidy, throughout the whole world the Churches were left destitute of priests?
And even those who could not come on account of the length of the journey, nevertheless nearly all from almost all the Western provinces were present through the legates they had sent; and by clear arguments they showed that they held what we assert, and that it agreed with the proceedings of the Council of Nicaea, as the appended documents declare. Everywhere, then, the vows of the peoples now harmonize on behalf of your empire. Nor yet were defenders of the faith lacking to your judgment. For although the prescriptions of the forefathers were evident, from which it is impious and sacrilegious to deviate, yet we offered the opportunity of debate. And first we discussed the very beginning of the question that had arisen, and we thought that the letter of Arius ought to be read out, who is found to be the author of the Arian heresy.
Whence it also took the name of the heresy, for this reason, namely, that since they were accustomed to deny that they were Arians, they should either condemn the blasphemies of Arius by accusing them, or defend them by building them up, or at least not refuse the name of him whose impiety and perfidy they followed. But because they could neither condemn their author nor approve him, when they themselves had challenged to a debate three days before, and, the place and time appointed, had come forth not waiting for the meeting: suddenly those who had said that, since they were Christians, they would easily prove it (which we gladly accepted, and wished that they would prove it), began at once to flee the encounter and to decline the debate. Yet there was much discussion with these men:
the divine Scriptures being set forth in the midst: for debating, abundant opportunity was given from the first rising of the day until the seventh hour, and patience was extended. And would that they had said few things, or at least that we could abolish the things we heard. For with sacrilegious words (since Arius, by saying that the Father alone is everlasting, alone good, alone the true God, alone having immortality, alone wise, alone powerful, had wished the Son to be understood, by an impious admonition, to be devoid of these things), these men chose rather to follow Arius than to confess God the Son of God to be everlasting, and true God, and good God, and wise, and powerful, and having immortality. We consumed many hours in vain. Their impiety grew, nor could it be corrected in any way.
Finally, when they saw themselves pressed hard by the sacrileges of Arius' letter (which we have therefore appended, that your clemency too might shudder at it), drawing back from the reading in the middle of the letter, they asked that we should answer their propositions, although it was neither of order nor of reason that we should interrupt the things set forth: and it was answered by us that they should condemn the impieties of Arius, and that, order and place being preserved, we would answer their contentions concerning whatever they wished; yet we yielded to their preposterous will. Then there, falsifying the writings of the Gospel, they put forth to us that the Lord had said: 'He who sent Me is greater than I'—whereas the context of the Scriptures teaches it written otherwise. They were refuted of their falsity, so that they confessed it, yet were not corrected by reason.
For when we said that, according to the assumption of flesh, the Son is called less than His Father; but according to the divinity, by the testimonies of the Scriptures, He is proved equal and coequal; and that there can be no degrees of any distinction or of magnitude there, where there is unity of power: not only did they refuse to amend their error, but they even began to increase their madness, so that they said He was even subject according to the divinity—as though any subjection of God according to the divinity could exist. Finally, they refer death not to the sacrament of our salvation, but to a certain infirmity of the divinity. We shudder, most clement princes, at sacrileges so dire;
and these depraved teachers, lest they should any further deceive the peoples whom they held, we judged ought to be deposed from the priesthood. For neither is it fitting that they should claim for themselves His priesthood whom they denied. We beseech your faith, your glory, that you may show reverence to the Author of your empire: and that you may decree that the assertors of impiety and the adulterers of the truth, by the writs of your clemency being given to the competent tribunals, ought to be barred from the thresholds of the Church, so that into the place of the condemned, through the legates of our littleness, holy priests may be substituted. Let an equal sentence also comprehend Attalus the presbyter, confessed of prevarication, and openly clinging to sacrileges. For what shall we say of his master Valens?
who, when he was near at hand, turned away from the priestly council, lest he be compelled to render to the priests the accounts of his ruined fatherland and of its lost citizens: who also, as is asserted, profaned by a collar and an armband, polluted with Gothic impiety, clothed after the manner of the Gentiles, dared to go forth into the sight of the Roman army. Which without doubt is sacrilegious not only in a priest, but even in any Christian whatsoever. For indeed it is abhorred according to Roman custom; unless perhaps the idolatrous priests of the Goths are wont so to go forth. Let the priestly name move your piety, which that sacrilegious man defames; who is also accused of an abominable crime by the voices of his own people, such as nevertheless are able to survive.
Let him assuredly return to his own home, and not contaminate the most flourishing cities of Italy—he who now by unlawful ordinations associates to himself men like himself, and seeks to leave behind a seedbed of his impiety and perfidy through every lost man—he who did not even begin to be a bishop. For first at Poetovio he had been set over the holy man Mark of admirable memory, a priest: and after he had been disgracefully cast down by the people, he who could not be at Poetovio, now at Milan, after the overthrow of his fatherland (not to say its betrayal), rode in. Concerning all these things, therefore, let your piety deign to console us, lest, obeying the statutes of your tranquillity, we should seem to have assembled in vain.
For not only must it be guarded against that our decrees, but also that yours, should be mocked. We ask, therefore, that your clemency may deign likewise to hear the legates of the council, holy men, and may command that, with the effect of the things we request, they return more speedily: so that you may receive a reward from the Lord God Christ, whose Churches you have purged from every stain of the sacrilegious. The Photinians also, whom by a former law you decreed ought to hold no assemblies, and whom you removed by that law which was given concerning the gathering of a council of priests;
we ask, since we have learned that in the town of Sirmium they still attempt assemblies, that your clemency, the gathering being even now interdicted, may command reverence to be shown first to the Catholic Church, then also to your own laws: so that you too, under God as president, may triumph, you who take counsel for the peace and quiet of the Churches. NAMES OF THE BISHOPS WHO SUBSCRIBED. Valerianus, Ambrosius, Constantius, Justus, Abundantius, Eventius, Limenius, Eusebius, Savinus, Exsuperantius, Macedonius, Bassianus, Anemius, Constantius, Maximus, Almachius, Januarius, Theodorus, Domninus, Diogenes, Procidas, Heliodorus, Philaster, Jovinus, Felix, Maximus.
Amatus, Felix, Viator, Maximinus, Ephesius, Numidius, Artemius, Felix—the bishops subscribed. A TREATISE OF VIGILIUS, BISHOP OF THAPSUS, ON THE NICENE FAITH AGAINST THE ARIANS, BY SOME ASCRIBED TO GREGORY OF NAZIANZUS: WHICH IS ANOTHER EDITION OF BOOK II AGAINST PALLADIUS, WITH A NEW PREFACE. The Faith drawn up at Nicaea by the rightly-believing bishops, three hundred and eighteen. We believe in God, the Father almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible, and in one Lord our Jesus Christ, the Son of God, born of the Father, the only-begotten, that is, of the substance of the Father: God of God, light of light, true God of true God, born not made: of one substance with the Father, which the Greeks call homoousion:
through whom all things were made, whether the things that are in heaven or the things that are on earth. Who for us men and for our salvation came down, and was incarnate, and was made man, suffered, rose again on the third day, ascended into heaven, and from thence shall come to judge the living and the dead. And in the Holy Spirit. But those who say: 'There was a time when He was not,' and 'Before He was begotten He was not,' and that the Son of God is mutable or changeable — these the catholic and apostolic Church anathematizes. Amen. Led by love of the catholic faith, I had already some time ago published a little book against the Arians; and when I had given it to a friend to read, since it pleased him, he resolved to have it copied out.
Of him I earnestly requested that, the author meanwhile being concealed, he should let learned and prudent men read it; so that if anything therein seemed to be set down too much or too little, and gave anyone offence, it might be corrected by the counsel of many. For there is no one who so arrogantly claims for himself the height of heavenly doctrine as to suppose that he grasps and holds clearly all the mysteries, since the Apostle Paul says: 'He therefore who thinks that he knows something, does not yet know as he ought to know' (1 Cor. VIII, 2); and 'Now we see through a glass in a riddle, but then face to face' (1 Cor. XIII, 12). But if to all men all the things that were written there should seem to stand firm according to the true faith, then he himself would not deny it to those who asked.
And that it was so done is manifest. And because the matter was judged by the verdict of all to be as worthy of the catholic confession as it was an answer to heretical reply, many wished either to keep it or to copy it out. But there was not lacking one who, whether from zeal for doctrine or from the office of charity, examined more scrupulously the things that had been said by us; and he declared certain things to be either superfluous or ambiguous, which could be taken by some otherwise than they were said by me. Therefore I have once again set forth those very things in plainer speech in this little book, that I might both show the simplicity of my meaning and remove the scruple from the readers.
For this is what they say can be censured: that where we placed the Word of God in the person of the Son, we suppose this word to be understood such as the grammarians hand down — a sharp impulse of the breath of the mouth, perceptible to the hearing. But we have come to know not the wisdom of this world, which is being destroyed, but that wisdom which is from God, which declares the Word of God to be God, when it says: 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was made nothing' (John I, 1-3). Wherefore I confess that I marvel that it could be so understood, as though we denied the proper person of the Word, which is the Son. No one names in word only Him whom he often professes truly to be in His own person:
for how have we confessed either a true Son or a true Father, if we have not truly preserved the propriety of the persons both of the Father and of the Son? But because we have used the term of one God, we are thought to have denied the persons. And hence what we set down has seemed plausible. We name the Father and the Son in such a way that we assign one God in these persons and names. Furthermore again, the Father and the Son, although they are called by two names, are nevertheless one in respect of reason and substance. And when I establish the Father and the Son, I assign unity of kind. All these things have been judged capable of being understood as though these terms were so placed between the Father and the Son as is a name and a surname, yet of one person;
whereas from the things said above or below, this suspicion could not be admitted. For since I had said that the Son of God was born from no other source than properly from the Father — whole from whole, entire from entire, perfect from perfect, and consummate power — how could I make the Father Himself to be His own Son, and in this way call one person by two names? Especially since in the same book I both condemned this sect, that is, the Sabellian, and wrote of the distinction of the persons according to the term. For no one can say of one person 'they are one,' nor assign unity of kind except to persons.