Letter to Paulinus of Tyre

"To my lord Paulinus, Eusebius sends greeting in the Lord. Neither the zeal of my lord Eusebius on behalf of the truth has been passed over in silence, but has reached even to us, nor your silence about it, my lord. And, as was fitting, we rejoiced over my [lord] Eusebius, but we grieve over you, reckoning that even the silence of such a man is a defeat for us.

I therefore urge you, knowing as you do how unbecoming it is for a man of understanding to think otherwise and to keep silent about the truth, to stir up your thinking in your spirit and to begin writing on this subject. It will profit both you and those who hear you, especially if you are willing to write following the sequence of Scripture and the tracks of its words and intentions.

For we have neither heard of two unbegotten beings, nor have we learned or believed that the one has been divided into two or has undergone anything bodily, my lord. Rather, we have believed that the unbegotten is one, and that there is one who has come into being from him truly, and not from his essence, in no way sharing in the unbegotten nature or being from his essence, but having come into being wholly other in nature and in power, made to perfect likeness of disposition and power to the one who made him; and we have believed that his beginning is not only indescribable in word but also incomprehensible in thought, not only to human beings but also to all beings above humans.

And we say these things not by laying down reasonings of our own, but having learned them from the holy Scripture. We have learned that he is created, and established, and begotten in his essence and in his unchangeable and ineffable nature and in his likeness to the one who made him, as the Lord himself says: "God created me as the beginning of his ways, and before the age he established me, and before all the hills he begets me."

But if he were from him, that is, of him, as a part of him or from an outflow of the essence, he could no longer be said to be created or established; and you yourself, my lord, are truly not unaware of this. For what exists from the unbegotten could not still be created by another, or by him, or established, since it exists unbegotten from the beginning.

But if his being called begotten gives some suspicion that he came into being from the Father's essence and has from it identity of nature, we know that Scripture says 'begotten' not of him alone but also of beings wholly unlike him in nature.

For it says even of human beings: "I begot sons and raised them up, but they rejected me"; and, "You forsook the God who begot you"; and in other places: "Who," it says, "is the one who has given birth to the clods of dew?" It does not describe nature born from nature, but the coming into being of each of the things that came to be by his will. For nothing is from his essence, but all things came into being by his will, each one being just as it came into being.

For there is God; and there are the things that will be like him in likeness by the Word, and the things that came into being by free choice; and all things came into being through him by God, and all things are from God. Take these points, work them out according to the grace given you from God, and be eager to write to my lord Alexander. For I am confident that if you write to him, you will make him think again. Greet all who are in the Lord. May the divine grace keep you in health and praying for us, my lord."