On the Synods

To my most beloved and most blessed brothers and fellow bishops of the province of First Germany and of Second Germany, of First Belgica and of Second Belgica, of First Lugdunensis and of Second Lugdunensis, of the province of Aquitania and of the province of Novempopulana, and to the laity and clergy of Toulouse in the Narbonensis, and to the bishops of the provinces of Britain: Hilary, servant of Christ, eternal greeting in God and our Lord.

I had resolved, dearest brothers, that during so long a silence on your part I would send you no letter of church discourse. For I had often informed you, from many cities of the Roman provinces, what faith and what zeal there was among our devout brothers the bishops of the East, and how much the devil, taking the occasion of the disturbances of the time, had hissed out with poisoned mouth and tongue the doctrine that brings death. And I feared that, amid so great a danger of disastrous impiety or error among so many bishops, your silence had been adopted out of despair of a polluted and defiled conscience (for, warned as often as you were, you could not be ignorant). So I thought that I too ought to keep silent toward you, mindful indeed of the Lord's saying, by which he commanded that those who remain disobedient after a first and a second meeting, even under the witness of the church, should be held as heathens and tax collectors.

But when I received the letter of your blessed faith, whose slowness and rarity I understand came about from the length and remoteness of my exile, I rejoiced in the Lord that you had remained uncontaminated and unharmed by every contagion of the detestable heresy; that you, sharers in my exile (into which Saturninus, fearing his own conscience, had thrust me after deceiving the emperor), by denying him communion to this very time, now for a full three years, hold fast with me in faith and spirit; and that the impiety of the faithless faith lately sent to you from the town of Sirmium you not only did not accept, but, once it was announced and made known to you, condemned. I understood that it was necessary and a duty of religion that I should now, as a bishop to bishops who are in communion with me in Christ, send a word of salvation and of faith; and that I, who before, through fear of what was uncertain, rejoiced only in my own conscience, that I was free of all these things, should now rejoice in the soundness of our common faith. O the unshaken steadfastness of your glorious conscience! O the house firm on the foundation of the faithful rock! O the unharmed and undisturbed constancy of an undefiled will! For it has remained, and even now remains, innocent, inviolate, and devout, since the profession made at the synod of Béziers, at which, with some of you as witnesses, I denounced the patrons of this heresy that was being forced upon us.

For you have awaited the glorious triumph of a holy and unchanging perseverance, by not yielding to the threats, powers, and wars of Saturninus. And when every struggle was set in motion to begin blasphemy against God, you, remaining faithful with me in Christ to this day, neither yielded before to the occasion of the heresy that was about to break out, nor have you now failed to break all its insolence in the conflict of its outbreak. For you have conquered, brothers, to the great rejoicing of the common faith; and the honor of your unharmed constancy has had a double glory: from the soundness of your conscience and from the authority of your example. For the report of your undisturbed and unshaken faith has moved certain bishops of the East, late indeed, to some shame for the heresy that had since been nursed and grown; and when they heard what had been most impiously written at Sirmium, they contradicted the audacity of the irreligious by certain decrees of their own judgments. And though they resisted not without some offense to the ears and some hurt to pious concern, yet they resisted so far as to compel those very men who at that time at Sirmium had agreed to the opinion of Potamius and Ossius, thinking and confirming the same, to profess ignorance and error, so that by subscribing again they condemned what they had done. This indeed they did in order to condemn something else beforehand.

But your unconquered faith still holds the conspicuous glory of its conscience. Content to do nothing deceitful, nothing ambiguous, nothing fearful, it persists securely in Christ in the profession of its freedom, abstaining from communion with those who keep in exile the bishops who contradict their blasphemies, and not joining itself, by the assent of deceitful pretense, to the guilt of an unjust judgment. For after great and grievous grief on the part of all of us over the things irreligiously done by the impious, the Lord's communion has been kept only among ourselves, ever since the church began to be troubled by these disturbances: bishops are exiled, priests are replaced, the people are terrified, the faith is endangered, the decrees of the Lord's teaching are fixed by human will and power. Your unharmed faith neither pretends not to know this nor professes that it can bear it, understanding that by the very assent of pretense it would not be free of the guilt of conscience.

And although in all that you have done and are doing you give witness to the constant freedom and security of your faith, yet you prove the ardor of a fervent spirit in this too: some of you, whose letters could be brought to me, have asked that the letter of my humble self should inform you what the Easterners have done since and are doing in their professions of faith. You add this burden too, out of the affection of love, on me, the least skilled and least learned of all, that I should tell you what I myself think about all their statements; though it is most difficult to set forth in speech the very sense of my own faith according to the feeling of inward understanding, still less is it easy to explain the meaning of what others say.

I beg you by the Lord's mercy, since in this letter I shall speak to you, as you wished, about divine things and about the undefiled conscience of our faith, that no one should judge me by the opening of the letter before the discourse is complete. For it is unjust, before the reasoning of what is said has been learned to the end, to bring a prejudged verdict from the beginnings, whose purpose is still unknown; since one must judge not from what is begun for the purpose of learning, but from what is finished for the purpose of knowing. For my fear is not about you, as the Lord knows my mind, but about some who are all too cautious and wise in their own eyes, who do not understand that the blessed Apostle commanded them not to be wiser than they ought. I fear that they will not wish to learn all that I must explain in full at the end, since they avoid understanding the truth from what will be explained. But whoever undertakes to read and learn these things, let him grant himself and me the patience of the faithful, and examine everything to its completion. For perhaps this whole discourse of my faith will bring it about that secret heretics will not deceive as they wish, and complete catholics will obtain what they desire.

I therefore comply with the most impatient wish of Your Love, and I have sent you all the faiths that have been published at various times and places since the holy synod of Nicaea, with explanations added by me of all their meanings and even of their words. If anything is understood to be faulty in them, no one can attribute the fault of what is said to me, for I am, as you wished, the messenger, not the author. But if anything is found right and laid down from the apostolic teachings, no one doubts that the glory for it belongs not to the interpreter but to the author. I have, however, transmitted faithfully what was done; you, by the judgment of your faith, decide whether they are catholic or heretical.

It was indeed necessary to answer your letter, in which you had sent me in writing the Lord's communion of your faith; and some of you, summoned to the synod that was expected to be held in Bithynia, holding themselves with most firm constancy of faith within communion with me, abstained from the rest outside Gaul. And it was certainly worthy of the episcopal ministry and voice, in so great a fury of heretics, to share with you by letter some counsels of devout faith. For the word of God could not be exiled with our bodies, bound and detained, so as not to be able to be shared with you anywhere. But above all, when I learned that synods were to be assembled at Ancyra and Ariminum, and that two or one from each of the Gallic provinces were to come there, I thought that what is held between us and the Eastern bishops in mutual suspicion ought to be explained and published to you by me, who was confined in the regions of the East, though you already know it. My purpose was that, since you had condemned this heresy bursting out from Sirmium and they had judged it with an anathema, you might nevertheless know in the profession of what faith the very thing you had done had also been accomplished by the Eastern bishops; and that I might not allow you, whom I most wished to shine out as approved at the coming synods, while holding catholic views with one and the same sense of the apostolic faith, to differ at least somewhat from the purity of the catholic faith through not knowing the meaning of words.

I think it right and fitting, before I begin to discuss the suspicions and disagreements about words, to set out in words as clear as I can what the Eastern bishops said and decreed against the heresy written at Sirmium. Not that all this has not been published very plainly by others; but a word-for-word translation from Greek into Latin generally brings obscurity, since keeping the correspondence of words cannot preserve the same clarity for simple understanding.

For you remember that in that very blasphemy lately written at Sirmium the attempt and effort was this: that while the Father is proclaimed as the one and only God of all, the Son should be denied to be God; and while it is decreed that there be silence about homoousion and homoeusion, the decree was meant to confirm that the Son was born either from nothing, as a creature, or from another essence, as the creatures follow, and not as God from God the Father. Then further, in saying that the Father is greater in honor, dignity, glory, and majesty, the aim was that the Son should lack all those things in which the Father is greater. Finally, while his birth is asserted to be unknowable, by this decree of ignorance we were to be commanded not to know that he is from God; as though it could be commanded and decreed that someone should know what he is to be ignorant of, or be ignorant of what he knows. I have, though unwillingly, appended this pestilence of most impious blasphemy in full, so that the force and reasoning of the replies set against it by the Easterners might be known more completely; for it was their aim to oppose all the arts of the heretics according to the sense of their understanding. Copy of the blasphemy written at Sirmium by Ossius and Potamius.

"Since there was thought to be some dispute about the faith, everything was carefully discussed and examined at Sirmium, in the presence of our most holy brothers and fellow bishops Valens, Ursacius, and Germinius. It is agreed that there is one God, almighty and Father, as is believed throughout the whole world, and his only Son Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, begotten from him before the ages. But two gods neither can nor ought to be proclaimed, because the Lord himself said: 'I go to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.' Therefore there is one God of all, as the Apostle taught: 'Is he the God of the Jews only? Is he not of the Gentiles also? Yes, of the Gentiles also. Since indeed there is one God, who justifies the circumcision by faith and the uncircumcision through faith.' And they agreed on the other points also, and could have no disagreement. But as for what moved some or many concerning substance, which in Greek is called ousia, that is (to make it understood more explicitly), homoousion, or what is called homoeusion: there ought to be no mention of it at all, and no one should proclaim it, for this cause and reason, that it is not contained in the divine Scriptures, and that it is above human knowledge, and that no one can declare the birth of the Son, of whom it is written: 'Who shall declare his generation?' For it is plain that only the Father knows how he begot his Son, and the Son how he was begotten by the Father. There is no doubt that the Father is greater. No one can doubt that the Father is greater than the Son in honor, dignity, glory, majesty, and in the very name of Father, as he himself testifies: 'He who sent me is greater than I.' And no one is ignorant that this is catholic: that there are two persons of the Father and the Son; the Father greater, the Son subjected together with all the things that the Father subjected to him; that the Father has no beginning, is invisible, immortal, impassible; but that the Son was born from the Father, God from God, light from light; whose generation, as was said before, no one knows but his Father. And that the Son of God himself, our Lord and God, as we read, took flesh or a body, that is, a man, from the womb of the Virgin Mary, as the angel foretold. And as all the Scriptures teach, and especially the teacher of the Gentiles himself, the Apostle, he took a man from the Virgin Mary, through whom he suffered with us. And this is the conclusion and confirmation of the whole faith, that the Trinity must always be kept, as we read in the Gospel: 'Go and baptize all nations in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.' The number of the Trinity is whole and perfect. And the Paraclete, the Spirit, is through the Son; who was sent and came according to the promise, to instruct, teach, and sanctify the apostles and all believers."

After so many and such great professions of impiety had been published, the Eastern bishops, gathered together, in turn drew up against them these definitions of their judgments. But since we must often name essence and substance, we must understand what essence means, lest, when about to speak of things, we do not know the thing the words mean. Essence is a thing that is, or that from which it is, and which subsists in that it abides. It may be called the essence, the nature, the kind, and the substance of each thing. But it is properly called essence because it always is. It is also substance for this reason: a thing that is must subsist in itself; and whatever subsists without doubt abides in a kind or nature or substance. When, therefore, we say that essence means nature or kind or substance, we understand that thing which subsists so as always to be in all these. Now, then, let us review the definitions of faith drawn up by the Easterners. I. "If anyone, hearing that the Son is the image of the invisible God, says that the image of God is the same as the invisible God, as though not confessing him truly Son, let him be anathema."

This excludes the assertion of those who would proclaim Father and Son in names only; since every image is of a form not differing from that of him to whom it is made like. For no one is an image to himself; an image must show him whose image it is. An image, then, is a likeness, imaged and undistinguished, of one thing to be made equal to another. There is therefore a Father, and there is a Son, because the Son is the image of the Father; and he who is an image, in order to be the image of a thing, must have in himself the form, nature, and essence of its author, insofar as he is its image. II. "And if anyone, hearing the Son say, 'For as the Father has life in himself, so he has given to the Son also to have life in himself,' says that he who received life from the Father, who also confesses, 'I live because of the Father,' is the same as he who gave it, let him be anathema."

The person of the one who receives is distinguished from that of the one who gives, so that the same one is not one and alone. For since he is under anathema who believes in a solitary and single being in professing the receiver and the giver, it cannot be understood that the one who gave received from himself, as one and the same. For he who lives and he through whom he lives are not one alone; for the one living for himself is one, the one professing that he lives through his author is another; and no one will profess that he who enjoys life and he through whom is the cause of living are one and the same. III. "And if anyone, hearing that the only-begotten Son is like the invisible God, does not say that the Son, who is the image of the invisible God, is like in essence, whose image he is understood to be even according to essence, as though not truly calling him Son, let him be anathema."

A nature undistinguished and not unlike is confirmed. For since the only-begotten Son of God is also the image of the invisible God, he must by form and nature be of like essence. Or how is nature distinguished between Son and Father, of a kind not differing, when the Son subsists by a nature begotten in him in the things proper to the Father, namely glory, power, might, invisibility, and essence? And so in these equal goods of divinity he is understood neither to be less, though he is the Son, nor the other to excel, though he is the Father, since the Son is made like the Father in form and is not unlike in kind; for the likeness of a Son begotten from the substance of the Father does not admit difference of substance, and the Son and image of the invisible God embraces in himself the whole form of the Father's divinity, such and as great as it is. And this is truly to be a Son: to have reproduced in himself the truth of the Father's form by the perfect likeness of a nature imaged in him. IV. "And if anyone, hearing this, 'For as the Father has life in himself, so he has given to the Son also to have life in himself,' does not say that the Son is like the Father even according to essence, though he testifies that he has it just as he said, let him be anathema. For it is plain that since the life understood in the Father signifies substance, and the life of the Only-begotten, which is begotten from the Father, is understood as essence, it thus signifies the likeness of essence to essence."

With such a confession of his origin is joined the perfect birth of an undivided nature. For what is life in each, that is signified in each as essence. And in the life that is begotten from life, that is, the essence that is born from essence, since it is not born unlike (because it is life from life), it holds in itself a nature not unlike its origin; for there is no discrepancy in the likeness of the essence born and the essence begetting, that is, of the life which is possessed and which was given (given, that is, by the Father to the Son). For what God begot from himself, out of the likeness of his own nature, he did not abandon, in whom the likeness is unbegotten, the property of his natural substance. For he has nothing other than what he gave; and as he has life, so he gave life to be had. And thus, what is born from essence, as life from life, like itself according to essence, admits no difference or unlikeness between the essence of the one born and the one begetting. V. "If anyone, hearing from the same speaker 'he founded' or 'created me' and 'he begot me', does not understand this 'he begot me' rather from likeness of essence, but says that 'he begot me' and 'he founded me' are the same, as though not saying that the perfect Son from God is signified as Son by two names (but, through the two names, that is, 'he founded me' and 'he begot', saying only a making and in no way a Son), as Wisdom set forth a devout understanding from the two: let him be anathema."

Against those who say that the Son of God is a creature or a thing made, it is opposed by the reasoning appended. For the profane presumption of the heretics' impiety comes from this: they say they have read, "The Lord founded" or "created me"; and this itself seems to be understood as a making or creation. But withdrawing the following sentence, from which the former takes its meaning, they seize from the first the authority for their impiety, so as to call him a creature, because Wisdom said she was created. But if she was created, how could she also be born? For every birth, of whatever kind, consists in its own nature from the begetting nature; but creation takes its beginning from the power of the creator, since a Creator is able to make a creature out of nothing. Wisdom, then, who said she was created, said in the same passage, following, that she was also begotten: referring creation to the unchangeable nature of the parent, which, beyond the form and custom of human birth, without any diminution or change of itself, created from itself what it begot. For the work of one who creates involves no suffering, whether of mingling or of birth. For what is created out of nothing begins at some time to be. And he who creates makes by his power what he founds; and creation is a work of power, not the birth of a nature from a begetting nature. But birth is the perfect issue of a lawful origin and a true nature; for the begotten nature took its nature from the begetting nature. But because the Son of God was not begotten after the pattern of bodily childbirth, but was born perfect God from perfect God, therefore Wisdom says that she was created, excluding from her begetting every nature of bodily suffering.

But to show that the nature in him is not of creation but of birth, she added "begotten", so that by confessing herself both created and begotten she might give a complete understanding of her birth: by "creation" signifying the unchangeable nature of the Father, and showing that the substance of her own nature begotten from God the Father is lawful and proper to it. And so the language of creation and of begetting has brought the understanding of a perfect birth: the one being without change, the other in the property of nature. And both become one, and the one is perfect in both: since the Son, born from God and without change in God, is so born from the Father as to be created; and the Father, unchangeable in himself and natural to the Son, so founds the Son as to beget him. The heresy, therefore, that dares to profess that the Son of God is a creature is condemned, because the following profession of natural begetting extinguishes the impious opinion of a creature made from nothing, since the impassible perfection of the Godhead has been shown by it. VI. "And if anyone, conceding in the Son the likeness of the Father according to essence, as the Son himself reveals by what he says, 'For as the Father has life in himself, so he has given to the Son also to have life in himself', and according to working by what he teaches, 'For whatever the Father does, the Son also does likewise', yet grants only a likeness according to working, and defrauds the Son of the likeness according to essence, which is the most principal point of our faith, as though defrauding himself of the knowledge of eternal life, which is in the Father and the Son: let him be anathema."

When the heretics are shut in by the authorities of the Scriptures, they usually grant the Son only this, that he is like the Father in power alone, but they take from him the likeness of nature: foolish and impious, not understanding that there is no likeness of power except from likeness of nature. For an inferior nature never attains the power of a nature higher and stronger than itself. Or what will those who assert this profess about God the almighty Father, if the power of an inferior nature is made equal to his power? For it cannot be denied that the Son is able to do the same, since he said, "Whatever the Father does, the Son also does likewise." But likeness of nature follows on likeness of power, when he says, "As the Father has life in himself, so he has given to the Son also to have life in himself." In "life" there is the meaning of nature and essence; and as it is had, so it is taught to have been given to be had. The likeness of life therefore holds the likeness of power; for the likeness of power cannot belong to an unlike nature. And so likeness of essence must follow on likeness of power; because as the Son does the same things the Father does, so, as the Father has life, so he has given life to the Son to be had. The rashness of an impious profession is therefore condemned, which, confessing likeness of power, has dared to proclaim unlikeness of nature; since the principal faith of our hope is to confess the substance of divinity in the Father and the Son as not differing. VII. "And if anyone, professing that he believes in the Father and the Son, says that the Father is the father of one unlike himself in essence but like in working, as though speaking profane and novel words against the essence of the Son and destroying his being truly Son of God: let him be anathema."

By confused and mingled words the heretics very often evade the truth and catch the ears of the unwary by the sound of common terms, proclaiming Father and Son in names only, and not also in the truth of a natural and genuine essence; for they know that God is called the Father of all created things, and they remember that all the saints are named sons of God. On this pattern they confess Father and Son according to names common to the universe, so that they are called Father and Son rather than are. For they are called so, but are not, if in them there is a distinct nature of different essence; since the truth of the name of Father can be acquired only from the offspring of his own nature. The Father, then, cannot be called the father of a substance foreign to and unlike himself, because a perfect birth does not have a discordant difference from the original substance. All this impiety is therefore rejected, which speaks of the Father not as the father of a Son begotten from himself according to his own nature. For God will not be called Father on account of having a creation like his power and working, but if he has begotten a nature of an essence not unlike and not foreign to himself; for natural birth does not admit difference from the Father's nature. And for this reason they are anathema who assert that the Father is the father of a nature unlike himself, so that something other than God is born from God, and who think that the essence of the Father degenerated from itself in the Son by begetting. For they destroy, as far as in them lies, that very unbegettable and unchangeable essence of the Father, who have dared to thrust upon him, in the birth of his Only-begotten, the unlikeness of a degenerated natural essence. VIII. "And if anyone, understanding that the Son is like in essence to him whose Son he is understood to be, says that the Son is the same as the Father, or a part of the Father, or that the incorporeal Son subsists from the incorporeal Father by emanation or some passion, as bodily sons do: let him be anathema."

In all points there is a guard against the faults of each perversity, and no occasion for deceit is admitted. For many of the heretics say that the Son is like the Father according to the Godhead for this reason: that by the property of likeness they may confirm that the Father is the same as the Son, since an undistinguished likeness seems to admit an occasion for a single and solitary being. For what does not differ in kind seems to remain in a unity of nature.

But birth does not admit this fable, because a union has no birth. For what is born has a father of its birth. Nor, because the divinity of the one born is undistinguished from that of the one begetting, is the same one therefore both begetter and begotten; since begetter and born cannot but be one and another, and again, born and begetter cannot be unlike. He is anathema, then, who will proclaim likeness of nature in the Father and the Son so as to abolish the personal meaning of the Son; because, though one does not differ from the other in anything, through their mutual likeness, yet likeness itself, not admitting union, confesses Father and Son through this, that the Son is the unchangeable likeness of the Father. For the Son is not a part of the Father, so that one could be called both born and begetter. Nor is he an emanation, so that by a continuous flow, through a bodily and undivided going forth, the flow itself, retained in its source, should be to itself, in a connected series and stream, both source and flow. But it is a perfect birth, abiding with likeness of nature: not begun bodily by bodily conception and childbirth, but the incorporeal Son subsisting from the incorporeal Father according to the likeness of the same nature. IX. "And if anyone, because the Father is never understood to be the Son and the Son is never understood to be the Father, says that the Son is other than the Father, because the Father is one and the Son another, according to what was said, 'There is another who bears witness to me, the Father who sent me', and on account of this property of the person of the Father and the Son, to be devoutly understood in the church, fearing lest the Son and the Father should ever be understood to be the same, does not say that he is like the Father even according to essence: let him be anathema."

It was said to the apostles of the Lord: "Be wise as serpents and simple as doves." By this he wished the nature of animals differing from each other to be in us; but in such a way that the simplicity of the dove should temper the serpent's wisdom, and the serpent's wisdom should instruct the dove's simplicity, and there should be both a simple wisdom and a wise simplicity. This precept has been kept in the exposition of this faith. For the preceding judgment, of which we spoke, guarded against proclaiming a personal union through likeness of essence, lest the sameness of nature should destroy the birth of the Son, and he should be one and solitary in our thought because the one did not differ from the other in kind. But by the following judgment that serpent's wisdom, to which we are commanded to be conformed together with the dove's simplicity, is met again by a simple and apostolic wisdom: lest perhaps, because personal union is not accepted (since the Father is one and the Son another), the proclaiming of an unlike nature might creep in again; lest, because the one who sent is one and the one sent is another (since sender and sent are not one), the sent and the sender should be thought to be of distinct and unlike nature, though born and begetter cannot be of different essence. So in the Father and the Son the likeness of an undiffering nature is retained through the birth of the essence; yet the likeness of nature does no damage to the person so as to make sender and sent one. Nor again, in the property of person, since one cannot be called both Son and Father to himself, is likeness of nature taken away. And thus both the truth of the birth advances to the likeness of essence, and the likeness of essence does not lose the personal truth of the birth. Nor again does the confession of begetter and begotten exclude the likeness of essence; for though begetter and begotten cannot be one, yet born and begetter are not of different nature. X. "And if anyone understands God the Father of the only-begotten Son to be Father at some time, and not that the only-begotten Son existed without passion above times and above all human reckoning, as though going beyond the gospel proclamation, which rejected an interval of times concerning the Father and the Son and faithfully taught us that 'in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God': let him be anathema."

It is a devout confession that the Father is not contained within times; for the timeless truth of the name of Father exceeds every sense of understanding. Although the confession of the very name of Father, through which he is the impassible origin of the one born, is a matter of religion, yet it is not held in time; for God the Father, eternal and infinite, cannot be understood as temporal; and according to the gospel proclamation the only-begotten God the Word is known rather to be already in the beginning with God than to be born. XI. "And if anyone says that the Father is older in time than the Son only-begotten from him, and the Son younger than the Father: let him be anathema."

The likeness of essence, conformed in kind, is taught also to be undiffering in time: lest he who is the image of God, who is the Word, who is God with God in the beginning, who is like the Father, should not have in himself perfectly that he is image, Word, and God, because a time intervened between himself and the Father. For if he is proclaimed younger in time, he has lost the truth both of image and of likeness; for there would no longer be a likeness that is found unlike in time. Because the very fact that God is Father cannot have a time in which he was not Father, so in the Son there can be no time in which he was not Son. And for that reason neither should the Father be called older than the Son nor the Son younger than the Father, because the truth of each name cannot be without the other. XII. "And if anyone refers the timeless substance of the only-begotten Son from the Father to the unbegettable essence of God, as though calling the Son the Father: let him be anathema."

The preceding definition seemed to have given the heretics an occasion when it denied a time to the Son's birth (because it would be wicked if the Father were in time, and he would be in time if the Son were subjected to time): namely that, by this opportunity of a denied time, under the name of Son, the Father, who is unbegettable, should be proclaimed single and alone, himself both father and son to himself. For where a time of being born is excluded, there the opinion of unbegottenness seems to be admitted, so that one whose birth is not in time might be thought not to be born. Therefore, lest by this occasion of a denied time the (Sabellian) heresy of union should creep in, this impiety is condemned which dares to refer a timeless birth to the single and solitary substance of the unbegettable essence; since it is one thing to be timeless and another to be unborn. The one has birth (though outside time); the other is to itself, for what it is, the sole and same eternal author.

We have gone through, dearest brothers, all the published definitions of faith of the Eastern bishops, which they drew up, when gathered in synod, against the heresy that lately emerged. And we, as far as we could, have fitted the language of our exposition to the sense of their meaning, serving their words rather than wishing to be thought the authors of others' words. By these definitions they decree, against a new and profane impiety, these principles of their conscience and of a doctrine long since received; and they compelled those who had written this heresy at Sirmium, or had accepted it when written, to confess their ignorance and subscribe to such decrees. In them the Son is the perfect image of the Father; in them, under the property of an undiffering image, the Son is not abolished by a profane deceit … so as to be the Father; in them the Son, proclaimed the image of the Father through the truth of likeness, does not differ by difference of substance from the substance of the Father whose image he is; in them, through the life had by the Father and received by the Son, the Father has nothing different in substance, which is signified by "life", from what the Son received to have; in them the begotten Son is not a creature but is a substance undistinguished from the nature of the Father; in them, as there is undiffering power between the Father and the Son, so their essence admits no difference between them; in them the Father, by begetting the Son, does not degenerate from himself in him by a difference of nature; in them, though the likeness of nature differs in nothing in either, yet the property of the likeness rejects a union of the personal names, so that the one subsisting should not be one who is called both Father and Son; in them, because both the Father who sends and the Son who is sent are devoutly spoken of, yet no distinction of essence is made in anything between the Father and the Son, that is, between the one sent and the one sending; in them the truth of the name of Father is not contained within times; in them the Son is not later in time than the Father; in them a perfect birth beyond all time does not admit in itself the error of unbegottenness.

And this whole teaching of faith that has been published, dearest brothers, came forth from a few Easterners, few in proportion to the whole number, in almost the very days in which you rejected the heresy forced upon you. The reason for explaining it was that silence about the one substance was being decreed. But already at earlier and various times, many causes demanding it, it was necessary for other creeds to be written; what they are like will be understood from themselves. For when everything they have done is known, we shall the more easily and fully give a devout explanation, fitting for unity, of the matters about which there is a question among us. Exposition of the church's faith, set forth at the synod held at the dedication of the completed church of Antioch. The bishops present, ninety-seven, set it forth, since one of the bishops had come under suspicion of holding wrong views.

"We believe, in accordance with the gospel and apostolic tradition, in one God the Father almighty, the builder, maker, and provider of all things that are, from whom are all things; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, his only-begotten Son, God, through whom are all things, who was begotten from the Father, God from God, whole from whole, one from one, perfect from perfect, king from king, Lord from Lord, the Word, the Wisdom, the Life, the true Light, the true Way, the Resurrection, the Shepherd, the Door, unchangeable and immutable, the unvarying image of the Godhead, essence, power, and glory, the firstborn of all creation, who always was in the beginning with God, God the Word, according to what is said in the Gospel, 'And the Word was God', through whom all things were made and in whom all things hold together; who in the last days came down from above and was born of a virgin according to the Scriptures, and became the Lamb, the mediator between God and men, foreordained for our faith, and the leader of life. For he said: 'I have not come down from heaven to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.' Who suffered and rose for us on the third day, and ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of the Father, and will come again with glory to judge the living and the dead. And in the Holy Spirit, who was given to believers for comfort, sanctification, and perfection, as also the Lord Jesus Christ commanded the disciples, saying: 'Go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit': clearly, that is, of the Father who is truly Father, and certainly of the Son who is truly Son, and of the Holy Spirit who is truly Holy Spirit; these names not being set forth simply or idly, but carefully signifying the proper substance, order, and glory of each of those named, so that they are three in substance but one in agreement.

"Holding, then, this faith, and holding it from the beginning and to the end in the sight of God and of Christ, we anathematize every heretical and perverse sect. And if anyone teaches, beyond the sound and right faith of the Scriptures, saying that there either is or was a time, or a space, or an age before the Son was begotten: let him be anathema. And if anyone says that the Son is a thing made as one of the things made, or a birth as other births are, or a work as works are, and not as the divine Scriptures have handed down each of the things said above; and if anyone teaches or preaches anything other than what we have received: let him be anathema. For all that has been handed down in the divine Scriptures by the prophets and apostles we truly and with fear both believe and follow."

Perhaps this faith seems to have spoken less explicitly about the undiffering likeness of the Father and the Son, especially since it held, concerning the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, that the names signified the proper substance, order, and glory of each of those named, so that they are three in substance but one in agreement.

First, it must be known that the council at Antioch met not against the heresy that dared to proclaim the Father and the Son of unlike substance, but against the one which, after the holy synod of Nicaea, had broken out so far as to wish to ascribe three names to the Father; of this we shall treat in its place. For I remember that at the beginning of my discourse I asked for the patience and fairness of readers and hearers until all I have said is complete, so that no one should rashly become my judge before learning the whole discourse. The assembled synod of saints, then, wishing to destroy that impiety which evaded the truth of the names of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit by their number (so that, there being no subsisting reality behind each name, the threefold naming should hold a union under the falsehood of the names, and the Father alone and one should himself have the name both of Holy Spirit and of Son), said for that reason that there are three substances, teaching by "substances" the persons of those who subsist, not separating the substance of the Father and the Son by the difference of an unlike essence. And what was said, "so that they are three in substance but one in agreement", gives no ground for slander; because, since the Spirit, that is, the Paraclete, is named with them, it is fitting that the unity be proclaimed as one of agreement rather than of essence through likeness of substance.

Besides, the whole preceding statement in no way separated the Father and the Son by a difference of essence and nature. For where it says "God from God, whole from whole", there is no doubt that the whole God was born from the whole God. For the nature of God from God does not differ; and the whole from the whole is himself in those things in which the Father is. "One from one" excludes the sufferings of human childbirth and conception, so that, being one from one, he who is one from one, perfect from perfect, is not from elsewhere, nor different, nor other. Birth does not differ from unbegottenness except in the cause of origin, since the perfection of each does not differ. "King from King": a power named by one and the same name does not admit unlikeness of power. "Lord from Lord": lordship too is equal in the Lord, and a dominion confessed in both without difference does not admit difference. And what is added after many other things, "unchangeable and immutable, the unvarying image of the Godhead, essence, power, and glory", is complete. For since God from God, whole from whole, one from one, perfect from perfect, king from king, Lord from Lord, the Son also, being born, subsists in all that glory and nature of divinity in which the Father abides, he has this too from the Father's substance, that he does not become changeable. For in his being born, the nature from which he was born was not changed; but the one born obtained an unchangeable essence from the authority of an unchangeable nature. For though he is an image, yet he is an unvarying image (that is, the nature in him was not changed by unlikeness to the Father's essence from which he was begotten), because the image of the Father's essence was born in him. And further, when he is taught to be the firstborn of all creation, and he himself is said always to have been in the beginning with God, God the Word: in that he is firstborn, he is shown to have been born; in that he always was, he is not separated from the Father by time. The division of substances, then, cannot seem to have been introduced to separate a different substance in the Son and in the Father, since this synod sought nothing else than to exclude, by the name of three substances, the union of a threefold name; for the exposition of the whole faith does not distinguish the Father and the Son, the unbegettable and the only-begotten, by time, name, essence, dignity, or dominion. It is worthy of our common conscience to know also the other creeds of the same Eastern bishops, written at various places and times, so that the sincerity of their conscience may be understood through several confessions. The creed according to the synod of the East. The holy synod gathered at Serdica from various provinces of the Eastern regions, Thebais, Egypt, Palestine, Arabia, Phoenicia, Coele-Syria, Mesopotamia, Cilicia, Cappadocia, Pontus, Paphlagonia, Galatia, Bithynia, Hellespont, Asia, the two Phrygias, Pisidia, the Cyclades islands, Pamphylia, Caria, Lydia, Europa, Thrace, Haemimontus, Moesia, and the two Pannonias: we have set forth this faith.

"We believe in one God the Father almighty, creator and maker of all things, from whom every fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named. We believe also in his only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who was begotten from the Father before all ages, God from God, light from light, through whom all things were made in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible; who is the Word, and Wisdom, and Power, and Life, and the true Light; and who in the last days was made flesh for our sake, and was born of the holy Virgin; who was crucified, and died, and was buried, and rose from the dead on the third day, and was received into heaven, and sits at the right hand of the Father, and will come to judge the living and the dead and to render to each according to his works; whose kingdom endures without ceasing to boundless ages. For he sits at the right hand of the Father not only in this age but also in the age to come. We believe also in the Holy Spirit, that is, the Paraclete, whom, having promised him to the apostles, he sent after his return to heaven to teach them and to remind them of all things; through whom also the souls of those who sincerely believe in him are sanctified. But those who say that the Son of God is from things that did not exist, or from another substance and not from God, and that there was a time or an age when he was not, the holy and catholic church knows to be strangers. Likewise those who say that there are three gods, or that Christ is not God, and not before the ages, and that he is neither Christ nor the Son of God; or that he himself is Father and Son and Holy Spirit; or an unbegettable Son; or that the Father begot the Son neither by counsel nor by will: these the holy and catholic church anathematizes."

The exposition of this faith used brief but most complete definitions. For in condemning those who said that the Son is from things that did not exist, it gave him an origin not begun but abiding. And lest this abiding origin from which he was born should be understood to be some other substance rather than God's, it also pronounces blasphemers those who said that the Son was born from some other substance and not from God. And so, since he did not come to subsist from nothing, nor came to exist from anywhere other than from God, who is, there can be no doubt that he was born in the things that are God's; for the only-begotten essence of the Son is begotten neither from things that did not exist nor from anything other than the unbegettable and eternal substance of the Father. It rejects also intervals of times and ages, so that he who does not differ by nature cannot be separable by time.

On every side to which concern could turn itself, access is blocked to the ingenuity of the heretics, lest any difference be proclaimed in the Son. For it anathematizes those who say there are three gods, because, according to the truth of nature, this substance does not admit a number of names, except as happens among men and angels, when the name is given out of the honor of merits, while the substance of nature differs between them and God; and for that reason there are many gods. But in the nature of God, God is one; yet in such a way that the Son also is God, because in him the nature is not different; and since he is God from God, both cannot but be God, whose essence is not distinguished, through the sameness of kind. But a number in the name is rejected in naming, because there is no difference in the quality of nature. Since, then, he is anathema who speaks of gods, and he is anathema who denies that the Son is God, it is shown completely that the unity of the one name for both comes from the property of an undiffering substance; since in confessing the unbegettable God the Father and the only-begotten God the Son, neither differing from the other by unlikeness of essence, though each is God, yet God is one, to be believed and proclaimed. The faith of the bishops, then, with great and careful caution, guards the sameness of the begotten and begetting nature, confirming it by the unity of the name.

Yet lest, in turn, the proclaiming of one God should seek to affirm a single substance of a solitary God without his offspring, it at once condemns the rashness which, because God is one, would confess God the Father as one and solitary, having in himself the name both of Father and of Son; whereas in the begetting Father and the born Son one God is to be proclaimed on account of the substance of a nature not differing in either. The faith of the saints also knows nothing of an unbegettable Son, because the nature of the Son exists only from birth. And the nature of the birth in him is so perfect that he who was born from the substance of God is also born from his counsel and will. For it is from will and counsel, not from the passion of a bodily nature, that the essence of God begotten from the essence of God has its complete perfection. It follows that we should now review the faith that was written not long ago, when Photinus was deposed from the episcopate. Copy of the creed written at Sirmium by the Easterners against Photinus.

"We believe in one God the Father almighty, creator and maker, from whom every fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named. And in his only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who was born from the Father before all ages, God from God, light from light, through whom all things were made in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible; who is the Word, and Wisdom, and Power, and Life, and the true Light; who in the last days took a body for our sake, and was born of the holy Virgin, and was crucified, and died, and was buried; who also rose from the dead on the third day, and ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of the Father, and will come at the end of the age to judge the living and the dead and to render to each according to his works; whose kingdom, continuing without end, endures to everlasting ages. For he will be sitting at the right hand of the Father not only in this age but also in the age to come. And in the Holy Spirit, that is, the Paraclete, whom, having promised him to the apostles, he sent after he ascended into heaven, to teach them and remind them of all things; through whom also the souls of those who believe sincerely in him are sanctified. I. But those who say: the Son is from nothing existing, or from another substance and not from God; and that there was a time or an age when he was not: the holy and catholic church knows to be strangers. II. If anyone says that the Father and the Son are two gods: let him be anathema. III. And if anyone, saying that God is one, does not confess that Christ, God before the ages, the Son of God, served the Father in the creation of all things: let him be anathema. IV. And if anyone dares to say that the unbegettable God, or a part of him, was born of Mary: let him be anathema. V. And if anyone says that the Son is from Mary according to foreknowledge or predestination, and not born from the Father before the ages and with God, and that all things were made through him: let him be anathema. VI. If anyone says that the substance of God expands and contracts: let him be anathema. VII. If anyone says that the expanded substance of God makes the Son, or calls the Son the expansion of his substance, as he thinks fit: let him be anathema. VIII. If anyone calls the Son of God the indwelling or the uttered word: let him be anathema. IX. If anyone says that the Son from Mary is only a man: let him be anathema. X. If anyone, saying that God and man was born of Mary, understands thereby the unbegettable God: let him be anathema. XI. If anyone, hearing 'The Word became flesh', thinks that the Word was changed into flesh, or says that he took flesh by undergoing change: let him be anathema. XII. If anyone, hearing that the only Son of God was crucified, says that his deity underwent corruption, or passibility, or change, or diminution, or death: let him be anathema. XIII. If anyone says that 'Let us make man' was said not by the Father to the Son, but that God spoke to himself: let him be anathema. XIV. If anyone says that it was not the Son who was seen by Abraham, but the unbegettable God, or a part of him: let him be anathema. XV. If anyone says that it was not the Son who wrestled with Jacob as a man, but the unbegettable God, or a part of him: let him be anathema. XVI. If anyone does not understand 'The Lord rained from the Lord' of the Son and the Father, but says that he rained from himself: let him be anathema. For the Lord the Son rained from the Lord the Father. XVII. If anyone, because 'the Lord from the Lord', says that the Lord and the Lord, the Father and the Son, are two gods: let him be anathema. For we do not make the Son equal or comparable to the Father, but understand him as subject. For he did not come down to Sodom without the Father's will, nor did he rain from himself but from the Lord, that is, by the Father's authority; nor does he sit at the right hand of himself, but hears the Father saying, 'Sit at my right hand.' XVIII. If anyone says that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one person: let him be anathema. XIX. If anyone, calling the Holy Spirit the Paraclete, calls him the unbegettable God: let him be anathema. XX. If anyone does not say, as the Lord taught us, that the Paraclete is other than the Son, for he said, 'And the Father will send you another Paraclete, whom I will ask': let him be anathema. XXI. If anyone says that the Holy Spirit is a part of the Father or of the Son: let him be anathema. XXII. If anyone says that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three gods: let him be anathema. XXIII. If anyone understands in a Jewish way what was said, 'I am God the first, and I am God the last, and besides me there is no God', which was said to destroy idols and those who are not gods, so as to destroy the only-begotten God before the ages: let him be anathema. XXIV. If anyone says that the Son was made by the will of God as one of the creatures: let him be anathema. XXV. If anyone says that the Son was born against the Father's will: let him be anathema. For the Father was not compelled against his will, or led by natural necessity, to beget the Son when he did not wish; but as soon as he willed, he showed him begotten from himself without time and without passion. XXVI. If anyone says that the Son is unbegettable and without beginning, as though saying two without beginning and two unbegettable and two unbegotten, and so makes two gods: let him be anathema. For the head, which is the beginning of all things, is the Son; and the head, which is the beginning of Christ, is God: for so, to the one who is without beginning, the beginning of all things, we refer all things through the Son. XXVII. And again, confirming the understanding of Christianity, we say: if anyone does not say that Christ, God, the Son of God, subsisted before the ages and served the Father in the perfecting of all things, but says that from the time he was born of Mary he was named Christ and Son and received the beginning of being God: let him be anathema."

Necessity and the times urged those who had then assembled to arrange the exposition of the faith more broadly and fully through many questions, because the heresy that was being renewed through Photinus was trying to creep into the catholic house by many hidden tunnels; so that, by each kind of undefiled and unharmed faith, each kind of heretical and furtive deceit might be opposed, and there might be as many clarifications of the faith as there were occasions sought for unbelief. And first, after that general and undoubted exposition of the mysteries, the setting forth of the faith against the heretics begins here. I. "But those who say: the Son is from nothing existing, or from another substance and not from God; and that there was a time or an age when he was not: the holy and catholic church knows to be strangers."

What room is there here for ambiguity? Or what is left wanting to the conscience of a sincere faith? He is not from things that did not exist, so that his origin is existing. No other substance exists for his origin except only the one that is God's, so that nothing else can have been born in him than all that is God's; because, existing not from nothing, he does not subsist from elsewhere. He does not differ in time, so that the Son is timeless with the Father. Everything is inseparable, then, between the unbegettable Father and the only-begotten Son, whom, equal in time, the very sameness of the one and only existing paternal essence, from which the birth is taken, distinguishes in nothing. II. "But if anyone says that the Father and the Son are two gods: let him be anathema. III. And if anyone, saying that God is one, does not confess that Christ, God before the ages, the Son of God, served the Father in the creation of all things: let him be anathema."

The devout profession of the name itself gives us a complete understanding of the matter. For since it is under condemnation to call the Father and the Son two gods, and again it is anathema to deny that the Son is God, the opinion of a substance differing one from the other is excluded in proclaiming two gods. For there is no other essence than that of God the Father, from which the Son of God, God, was born without time. For since we necessarily confess God the Father, and absolutely proclaim Christ the Son of God as God, and between these lies the irreligious confession of two gods, they cannot, according to the sameness of nature and of name, not be one in the kind of essence, whose name of essence may only be one. IV. "If anyone dares to say that the unbegettable God, or a part of him, was born of Mary: let him be anathema."

Lest the fact that the name of the essence named in the Father and the Son is one, through a not unlike nature, should give the heretics an occasion to proclaim that the unbegettable God, or a part of him, was born of Mary, this was met by the definition of a saving judgment, that he who confesses this should be anathema. For the devout unity of the name, established from the essence of an undiffering nature, has not taken away the person of the begotten essence, so that the substance of a single and solitary God should be understood through the union of the name; since the one name of both essences, that is, one God, is proclaimed on account of the not unlike substance of the undistinguished nature in each. V. "If anyone says that the Son is before Mary according to foreknowledge and predestination, and not born from the Father before the ages and with God, and that all things were made through him: let him be anathema."

Some, about to deny that the God of us all, the Son of God, existed before he was born in a body, yet affirm that he existed according to foreknowledge and predestination, not according to the essence of a subsisting nature: that is, that through the Father's foreknowledge, because he predestined him to exist at some time, namely to be begotten of the Virgin, he was announced to us, rather than that he was born and existed before the ages in the substance of the divine nature; and that all that he himself spoke in the prophets concerning the mysteries of his taking a body and of his passion were said of him by the Father according to foreknowledge. The perversity of this doctrine is therefore condemned, so that the only-begotten Son of God is known to us as born from the Father before the ages, and as founding the ages themselves with all creatures, rather than as predestined to be begotten. VI. "If anyone says that the substance of God expands and contracts: let him be anathema."

To contract and to expand is a bodily passion; but God, who is spirit and breathes where he wills, neither expands nor contracts himself by change of substance. For remaining free, outside the necessity of a bodily nature, he provides from himself what he wills, when he wills, and where he wills. It is impious, then, to ascribe change of substance to the freedom of so great a power. VII. "If anyone says that the expanded substance of God makes the Son, or calls the Son the expansion of his substance: let him be anathema."

The preceding judgment, though it meant to teach that God is unchangeable, prepared the way for this following heresy. For some have dared to extend the unbegettable God, by an expansion of substance, as far as the holy Virgin, so that the expansion, drawn out by a certain stretching of his nature and taking a man, should be called Son; and that it is not the Son, born perfect God before the ages, who afterwards was also born man. The catholic faith therefore condemns all this, in which the Father is said to be changeable and the born Son is denied. VIII. "If anyone calls the Son of God the indwelling and uttered word: let him be anathema."

The heretics, destroying the Son of God as far as lies in them, confess that he is only a word: that is, speech coming forth from the speaker's mouth, the bodiless sound of an unsubstantial voice; so that the Son is a word to God the Father of the same kind as every word is uttered into voice through the nature of speaking implanted in us. All this deceit, then, is under condemnation, which affirms that God the Word, who was in the beginning with God, is like the word of a voice indwelling and uttered. IX. "If anyone says that the Son from Mary is only a man: let him be anathema." We do not proclaim the Son of God from Mary unless we proclaim him both man and God. But lest our proclaiming him God and man should give an occasion for deceit, it at once added: X. "If anyone, saying that God and man was born of Mary, understands thereby the unbegettable God: let him be anathema."

Both the name and the power of the substance are preserved. For since he is under anathema who says that the Son of God from Mary is a man without God, and he is under the same judgment who says that the unbegettable God is in the man, the God who is in the man is not said not to be God; but it is denied that he is the unbegettable God, the Father being distinguished from the Son not by the name of nature, since not by difference of substance, but only by the authority of unbegottenness. XI. "If anyone, hearing 'The Word became flesh', thinks that the Word was changed into flesh, or says that he took flesh by undergoing change: let him be anathema."

The dignity of the divinity is preserved: so that in the Word's becoming flesh, while the Word becomes flesh, he did not lose through the flesh what the Word was, nor was he changed into flesh so as to cease to be the Word; but the Word became flesh so that the flesh might rather begin to be what the Word is. Otherwise, where did the flesh get powers in its works, glory on the mountain, knowledge of the thoughts of human hearts, freedom from fear in the passion, life in death? But God, who knows no change, lost nothing of the goods of his substance by becoming flesh. XII. "If anyone, hearing that the only Son of God was crucified, says that his deity underwent corruption, or passibility, or change, or diminution, or death: let him be anathema."

It is shown completely why the Word, though he became flesh, was not changed into flesh. For although these kinds of sufferings affect the weakness of the flesh, yet God the Word, having become flesh, could not become changeable from himself by suffering. For to suffer and to be changed are not the same thing, since suffering of every kind changes all flesh by sensation, pain, and endurance. But the Word that became flesh, though he subjected himself to suffering, was not changed by a capacity to suffer. For he could suffer, and yet could not be passible; because passibility signifies a weak nature, whereas suffering is the enduring of things inflicted. These, because God is unchangeable, though the Word became flesh, had in him the matter of suffering without the weakness of passibility. And so the nature remains unchangeable even in suffering, because the substance born from an impassible essence does not differ from its author. XIII. "If anyone says that 'Let us make man' was said not by the Father to the Son, but that God spoke to himself: let him be anathema." XIV. "If anyone does not say that it was the Son who was seen by Abraham, but the unbegettable God, or a part of him: let him be anathema." XV. "If anyone says that it was not the Son who wrestled with Jacob as a man, but the unbegettable God, or a part of him: let him be anathema." XVI. "If anyone does not understand 'The Lord rained from the Lord' of the Son and the Father, but says that he rained from himself: let him be anathema. For the Lord the Son rained from the Lord the Father."

Because Photinus, against whom they had then assembled, denied these things, they had to be inserted into the creed: lest anyone should dare not to proclaim the Son of God before the Son of the Virgin, and, by the most foolish perversity of heretical madness, should fit all the preceding things that are proper to the Son of God to the unbegettable God, and, while referring them to the Father, deny substance to the Son. Since these points are complete, they leave us no need to interpret. XVII. "If anyone, because 'the Lord from the Lord', says that the Lord and the Lord, the Father and the Son, are two gods: let him be anathema. For we do not make the Son equal or comparable to the Father, but understand him as subject. For he did not come down to Sodom without the Father's will, nor did he rain from himself but from the Lord, that is, by the Father's authority; nor does he sit at the right hand of himself, but hears the Father saying, 'Sit at my right hand.'"

Both what precedes and what follows wholly exclude any suspicion that may seem to be in these words, lest a difference of unlike deities be proclaimed in the Lord and the Lord. And in this he is not compared, because it would be impious to speak of two gods; but the Son is not therefore not compared or made equal to the Father in order that he should be believed not to be God himself. For since he is anathema who denies that Christ is God, it cannot seem profane to name two gods together for the purpose of not proclaiming Christ God; since, by the property of natural essence, God is one for this reason: that the only-begotten Son, God, born from the unbegettable God the Father, who is the one God, has from nowhere else than from God that he is God; and since the essence of the begotten does not differ from that of the begetter, the one name of a nature that does not differ cannot but be one. And indeed the Son is not compared or made equal to the Father chiefly in this: that he is subject through the compliance of obedience; that the Lord rained from the Lord, not, as Photinus or Sabellius would have it, from himself, as the Lord from the Lord; that he sat down at the right hand of God when it was said to him that he should sit; that he is sent, that he receives, that in all things he obeys the will of him who sent him. But the subjection of devotion is not a diminution of essence, nor does the duty of religion make the nature degenerate: since, though both the unbegettable Father is God and the only-begotten Son of God is God, yet God is one; and both the subjection and the dignity of the Son are taught, since the Son, in being so named, is subject to that very name which, though it is God the Father's, is yet his own name by nature. Having the name, but the name of him whose Son he is, he becomes subject to the Father both by obedience and by name; yet in such a way that the subjection of the name testifies to the property of a natural and undiffering essence. XVIII. "If anyone says that the Father and the Son are one person: let him be anathema."

Sheer perversity needs no contradiction; and yet the foolish fury of some has broken out so far as to dare to proclaim one person with two names. XIX. "If anyone, calling the Holy Spirit the Paraclete, calls him the unbegettable God: let him be anathema."

The addition of "Paraclete" now makes liable to anathema the proclaiming of the unbegettable God in him. For it is most impious to call him the unbegettable God who was sent by the Son for our comfort. XX. "If anyone does not say, as the Lord taught us, that the Paraclete is other than the Son, for he said, 'And the Father will send you another Paraclete, whom I will ask': let him be anathema."

We remember that the Paraclete was sent by the Son, and the creed itself set this out at the beginning. But because the Son often said, through the power of an undiffering nature, that his works were the works of the Father, saying, "I do the works of my Father", so too, when about to send the Paraclete, as he often promised, he sometimes said that he would be sent by the Father, since he was accustomed devoutly to refer to the Father all that he did. From this the heretics often seize an occasion to say that the Son himself is the Paraclete; whereas, in saying that he will pray that another Paraclete be sent by the Father, he signifies the difference between the one sent and the one asking. XXI. "If anyone says that the Holy Spirit is a part of the Father or of the Son: let him be anathema."

The folly of heretical fury, not any real question, forced them to put this into writing. For since the name of the Holy Spirit has its own meaning, and the Holy Spirit the Paraclete has the office and order of his own substance, and since the Father and the Son are everywhere proclaimed unchangeable, how is the Holy Spirit asserted to be a part either of the Father or of the Son? But because this too, among other kinds of madness, is commonly put forward by the impious, it had to be rejected by the saints. XXII. "If anyone says that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three gods: let him be anathema."

Since it is irreligious to profess two gods, because we remember that nowhere has anything but one God been proclaimed, and we proclaim one: how much more is the naming of three gods in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to be condemned? Yet because heretics say it, catholics rightly condemn it. XXIII. "If anyone understands what was said, 'I am God the first, and I am God the last, and besides me there is no God', which was said to destroy idols and those who are not gods, as said in a Jewish way to destroy the only-begotten God before the ages: let him be anathema."

When a plurality of gods has been condemned and only one God proclaimed, God the Son of God cannot be denied. Indeed, the genuine property of nature brings it about that the name denied to number is owed to essence, and that "there is no God besides me" cannot take from the Son that he is God; because there is no other God besides him who is from God. And by this word of God the Father he cannot but be God who was born from him in an essence not differing from his own nature. The Jews refer this to a union of God because they do not know the only-begotten God. But when we deny two gods, we abhor a difference of natural essence in the Father and the Son; because "there is no God besides me" destroys the impious opinion of false gods. But when, confessing one God, we also call the Son God, we proclaim nothing different in substance in either under the one name. XXIV. "If anyone says that the Son was made by the will of God as one of the creatures: let him be anathema."

God's will gave substance to all creatures; but a perfect birth from an impassible and unborn substance gave the Son his nature. For all created things are such as God willed them to be; but the Son, born from God, subsists such as God also is. Nor did nature bring forth a nature unlike itself; but, begotten from the substance of God, he brought an essence of will that is according to his origin in nature, not according to the creatures. XXV. "If anyone says that the Son was born against the Father's will: let him be anathema. For the Father was not compelled against his will, or led by natural necessity, to beget the Son when he did not wish; but as soon as he willed, he showed him only-begotten from himself without time and without passion."

Since it was taught that the Son does not subsist by will, as other things do, lest he should have his essence according to will only and not also according to nature, an occasion seemed to be given to the heretics to ascribe to God the Father a necessity of begetting the Son from himself, as though he brought him forth unwillingly under the compulsion of a law of nature. But this condition of passions is not in God the Father: since, in the indescribable and perfect birth of the Son, neither did will alone beget the Son, nor was the essence changed or compelled by the command of a natural law. Nor was a substance sought for the begetting, nor is the nature of the begetter different in the begotten, nor is there a solitude in time of the name of Father; but before all times the Father, from the essence of his nature, impassibly willing, gave the Son the essence of a natural birth. XXVI. "If anyone says that the Son is unbegettable and without beginning, as though saying two without beginning and two unbegettable and two unbegotten, and so makes two gods: let him be anathema. For the head, which is the beginning of all things, is the Son; and the head, which is the beginning of Christ, is God: for so, to the one without beginning, the beginning of all things, we refer all things through the Son."

To confess the Son unbegettable is most impious. For then God will no longer be one, since the nature of the one unbegettable God requires that one God be proclaimed. Since, then, God is one, there cannot be two unbegettable; since God is one for this reason (though both the Father is God and the Son of God is God), that unbegottenness belongs to one alone. And the Son is God for this reason, that he exists born from the unbegettable essence. The holy faith therefore rejects the proclaiming of an unbegettable Son, so that through the one unbegettable God it may proclaim one God, and may embrace the only-begotten nature, begotten from the unbegettable essence, in the one name of the unbegettable God. For the Son is the head of all things, but the head of the Son is God. And by this order and this confession all things are referred to one God, since all things take their beginning from him to whom he himself is the beginning. XXVII. "And again, confirming the understanding of Christianity, we say: if anyone does not say that Christ, God, the Son of God, subsisted before the ages and served the Father in the perfecting of all things, but says that from the time he was born of Mary he was named Christ and Son and received the beginning of being God: let him be anathema."

The condemnation of the heresy because of which they had assembled had to be concluded with an exposition of the whole faith that it opposed: a heresy that falsely claimed that the Son of God began with the Virgin's childbearing. For this is the principal point of our faith according to the gospel and apostolic teaching: that our Lord Jesus Christ, God and Son of God, is not separated from the Father by confession of honor, by power of might, by difference of substance, or by interval of time.

In many ways, as is understood, the truth has been sought by the counsels and judgments of the bishops, and the reasoning of understanding has been set out in each profession of written faith, each kind of impious preaching being extinguished in turn. For the infinite and immeasurable God could not be understood or shown by brief utterances of human speech. For brevity of words very often deceives both hearers and teachers; and by compressed speech either what is sought cannot be understood, or what is signified rather than narrated is even corrupted, being not established by a complete account. And so the bishops, speaking with the sense of understanding, because of the difficulty of understanding the nature, used both very many definitions and fuller words for teaching, so as both to imbue the minds of their hearers with the truth set out distinctly through many things, and to say nothing else dangerous or obscure about divine things in this manifold clarification of many judgments.

It should not seem at all strange to you, dearest brothers, that creeds have begun to be set out so often; heretical fury imposes this necessity. For so great is the danger of the Eastern churches that it is rare to find either priests or people of this faith (what kind of faith it is, you judge). For through certain men authority has wickedly been given to impiety; and by the exile of bishops, whose cause you know, the strength of the profane has grown. I speak of nothing foreign, nor write of things unknown: I have heard and seen the faults of those present, not of laymen but of bishops. For apart from Bishop Eleusius and a few with him, the greater part of the ten Asian provinces, within which I am staying, truly do not know God. And would that they knew him not at all; for they would be ignorant with readier pardon than they now slander. But the grief of these bishops, not keeping itself within silence, seeks the unity of this faith, which it long since lost through others. For that first creed in the exposition gathered here had this necessity: that at Sirmium, through Ossius, forgetful of his own deeds and words, the doctrine of a new and yet long-festering impiety had broken out. But of him I say nothing; he was kept alive for this reason, that human judgment should not be ignorant of how he had lived before. Everywhere there are scandals, everywhere schisms, everywhere unbelief. Hence it is that some of those who had written otherwise before were compelled to a profession of subscribing the faith. Nor do I complain of the most patient men, the Eastern bishops, who were satisfied, after the will to blaspheme, with at least a profession of compelled faith; for it seems a matter for rejoicing, amid so great a heretical obstinacy of blaspheming bishops, that some of them are received as penitents. But amid all this, O how blessed you are in the Lord and glorious, who, keeping the perfect and apostolic faith in the profession of your conscience, have until now not known written creeds! For you did not need the letter, since you abounded in the Spirit. Nor did you need the service of the hand to write, since what you believed with the heart you professed with the mouth for salvation. Nor did you as bishops need to read what you held as reborn neophytes. But necessity has brought in the custom that creeds be set out, and that they be subscribed when set out. For where the sense of conscience is in danger, there the letter is demanded. Nor indeed does anything prevent writing down what it is salutary to confess.

We confess indeed, always kept innocent by the gift of the Holy Spirit, and we write willingly: not two gods but one God; nor do we therefore deny that the Son of God is also God, for he is God from God. Not two unbegettable, because God is one by the authority of unbegottenness; nor do we therefore deny that the Only-begotten is God, for his origin is the unbegettable substance. Not one subsisting being, but a substance not differing. Not one name of God in unlike natures, but a not unlike essence of one name and nature. Not one excelling another in the kind of substance, but one subject to the other by the birth of nature. The Father greater in that he is Father; the Son not less in that he is Son. The difference is in meaning, not in nature. We confess that the Father is not within times, and we do not deny that the Son is co-timeless with the Father. We proclaim the Father in the Son, because the Son has nothing in himself unlike the Father; we confess the Son in the Father, because what the Son is comes from nowhere else. We are not ignorant that their nature is mutual and alike to each other, because it is equal; we do not suppose that they are one person, because they are one; we proclaim them one through the sameness of a not unlike nature in such a way that they are not one person.

I have set out, dearest brothers, as far as the custom of human speech allowed and as far as the Lord, always entreated by me, as he knows, granted me, the conscience of our common faith. And if anything is too little, or rather, since what has been said is too little and almost nothing, remember that it is not understanding but words that I lack. Perhaps I shall reproach my nature for this, yet I shall not reproach my will; and I pardon my nature if it cannot say what it would of God, for whose salvation it is enough to have believed the things of God.

Now, since my faith and yours, as far as I am conscious, is not in danger before God, and I have shown you, as you wished, what creeds were earlier set out by the Eastern bishops, though few (I will repeat it: in proportion to the number of the Eastern churches, this is the faith of few bishops), and I myself have also professed what I think about divine things according to the apostolic teaching, it remains that you should learn, without any suspicion, the things that bring error upon us out of the security of simplicity; for now no room for suspicion in hearing is left. And though I no longer fear being judged by the exposition of the whole faith, yet allow me still to wish not to be judged until everything is complete.

Many of us, dearest brothers, proclaim the one substance of the Father and the Son in such a way that they may seem to proclaim it no more devoutly than impiously. For this word has in itself both the conscience of faith and deceit ready at hand. For if we proclaim one substance according to the property and likeness of nature, so that the likeness does not bring the appearance only but holds the kind, we proclaim one substance religiously, provided we understand one substance as the likeness of property, so that their being one signifies not a solitary being but equals. I say equality, that is, a likeness without difference, so that the likeness is held to be equality; and equality is called one for this reason, that it is equal; but the one in which equality is signified is not to be claimed for a solitary being. One substance, then, will be proclaimed religiously, if it neither destroys the subsisting person nor divides one substance, partitioned, into two: a substance which, from the property of birth and the likeness of nature, is so without difference that it is called one.

But if the Father and the Son are said to be of one substance for this reason, that the one subsisting, though under the meaning of two names, is one and alone, then we do not hold in conscience the Son whom we confess in name, if, confessing one substance, we say that one single and solitary being is to himself both Father from himself and Son. Moreover, the occasion of this error at once presents itself, that the Father is understood as divided from himself and as having cut off a part which should be his son. For this is what the heretics contend who proclaim one substance; and the language of our devout confession flatters them greatly, so that, while this word is doubtful through undefined brevity, it serves error. There is besides this a third error: that when the Father and the Son are said to be of one substance, a prior substance is thought to be meant, which the two equals hold between them; and so the word signifies three things: one substance, and two as it were co-heirs of the one substance. For as co-heirs are two, and the inheritance of which the two are co-heirs is prior, so the two equals can seem to be sharers of one prior substance. And so, when one substance of the Father and the Son is proclaimed, it signifies either one subsisting being with two names; or one substance divided, which has made two imperfect substances; or a third, prior substance, taken and assumed by the two, which is called one because the one was cut into two. And where after this is the birth? Where are the Father and the Son understood, if a cutting, or the sharing of a prior substance, rather than the birth of a nature, will proclaim Father and Son?

Amid so many and so grave dangers to the faith, then, brevity of words must be moderated, lest what is understood devoutly be thought to be said impiously, and lest, with a secure and innocent conscience, the language be guilty through a heretical occasion. Let the catholic who is going to say one substance of the Father and the Son not begin from there, nor hold it as the greatest point, as though without it there were no true faith. He will safely say one substance when he has first said: the Father is unbegotten; the Son is born; he subsists from the Father; he is like the Father in power, honor, and nature; he is subject to the Father as to his author; he did not by robbery make himself equal to God, in whose form he remained; he was obedient unto death. He is not from nothing, but is a birth. He is not unbegettable, but co-timeless. He is not the Father, but is the Son from him. He is not some portion, but is whole. He is not himself the author, but is the image: the image of God born from God into God. He is not a creature, but is God. Not another God in the kind of substance, but one God through the essence of an undiffering substance. God is one not in person but in nature, because the one born and the one begetting have nothing in themselves different or unlike. And after this, in saying one substance of the Father and the Son he does not err; or rather, in denying one substance he now sins.

Let no one think, then, that we deny the one substance: its reasoning is shown precisely so that it may not be denied. Let no one think that one substance should be proclaimed in brief and bare speech, if it is to be said religiously that there is one substance. For I do not hear "Christ was born of Mary" unless I also hear "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God." I will not hear "Christ hungered" unless, after the forty days' fast, I hear "Man does not live by bread alone." I will not hear "he thirsted" unless I hear "Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst." I will not hear "Christ suffered" unless I hear "Now is the hour for the Son of Man to be glorified." I will not hear "he died" unless I hear "he rose." Let us bring forward nothing in isolation from the divine mysteries, to the suspicion of hearers and the occasion of blasphemers. The birth of the Son, his subjection, and the likeness of nature must first be proclaimed, so that it may not be impiously proclaimed that the Father and the Son are of one substance. And I do not understand why that should be proclaimed before everything else as the greatest, chief, and solitary point, which cannot be devoutly proclaimed before everything else, and which it would then be impious to deny after everything else.

The one substance of the Father and the Son, dearest brothers, is not to be denied, but neither is it to be proclaimed without reason. Let it be one substance from the property of a begotten nature; let it not be from a portion, or from a union, or from a sharing. One substance can be devoutly spoken and devoutly left unspoken. You have the birth, you have the likeness. Why do we suspiciously hold to a quarrel over a word, when we do not disagree in understanding the thing? Let us believe and say that there is one substance, but by the property of nature, not to signify an impious union. Let it be one from likeness, not from solitude.

But perhaps likeness may seem to have too little propriety in itself. If so, I ask how I can make one equal to another except through likeness. Or is it not the same thing to be like as to be equal? If I say "one", it carries the suspicion of a solitary being; if I say "like", it carries a comparison without difference. I ask what place "equal" has between "like" and "one", and I ask whether it belongs rather to likeness or to solitude. There is no equality among unlike things, nor is there likeness within one. Or how do "like" and "equal" differ, that "equal" should again be distinguished from "one"? Unlike things, then, are not equal. And what else can like things be but equal, since there is no equality among unlike things?

In proclaiming, then, dearest brothers, that the Son is like the Father in all things, we proclaim nothing other than that he is equal. Likeness carries the meaning of perfect equality, and this is to be understood from the holy Scriptures. For we read: "And Adam lived two hundred and thirty years and begot a son according to his own image and according to his own likeness, and called his name Seth." I ask what kind of likeness and image of himself Adam begot in Seth. Take away the weaknesses of bodies, take away the beginning of conception, take away the pains of childbirth and every human necessity: I ask whether this likeness that is in Seth differs by nature from its author, or whether there was an essence of another kind in each, so that Seth, when born, did not have Adam's natural essence. But it is Adam's likeness, even if we deny it, because it is not unlike in nature. And the likeness of nature did not have in Seth a nature of another kind, because Seth was born from nowhere else. So likeness makes the natural realities equal, through the likeness of an essence that does not differ. Every son, then, according to natural birth, is the equality of his father, because he is also the likeness of his nature. And the blessed John teaches that this same likeness, which Moses speaks of in Seth and Adam, is in the nature of the Father and the Son an equality of nature; for he says: "For this reason the Jews sought all the more to kill him, because he not only broke the Sabbath but also called God his own Father, making himself equal to God." Why do we bring into the teachings and words of such great men minds dulled by grievous sins, and why do we impiously weary our dull and rash senses against teachings that cannot be undone? Through Moses, Seth is the likeness of Adam; through John, the Son is equal to the Father; and we seek some third thing between the Father and the Son which nature does not admit. He is like the Father, he is the Son of the Father, he was born from him: by this alone can it be devoutly proclaimed that they are one.

Nor am I unaware, dearest brothers, that there are some who, confessing likeness, deny equality. But let them speak as they will and pour the poison of their blasphemy into the ignorant. If they say that likeness and equality differ, I ask where equality is to be gained from. For if the Son is like the Father according to essence, power, glory, and time, I ask in what respect he would not seem equal. For in the earlier creed this condemnation too was laid down: that he should be anathema who said that the Father is the father of an essence unlike himself. If, then, he gave to the one he impassibly begot a nature neither other nor unlike, he cannot have given another but his own. So likeness is propriety, propriety is equality, and equality differs in nothing. And things that differ in nothing are one: not by union of person, but by equality of nature.

Although, both by common sense and by divine authorities, likeness and equality are understood to differ in nothing, since according to Moses and John the Son is both like and equal to the Father, yet let us see whether the Lord, when the Jews were angry that by calling God his Father he had made himself equal to God, taught that he was equal to God. For he says: "The Son can do nothing of himself except what he sees the Father doing." He distinguished the author when he said, "He can do nothing of himself"; he signifies obedience when he adds, "except what he sees the Father doing." For it is not a difference of power to be unable unless he sees, because nature rather than sight provides power; but it is obedience to be able then when he sees. And so, by being able when he sees, he signifies that he does not receive power from sight, but takes up his power on the authority of the sight. The power of nature, then, does not differ in the Father and the Son, since what gives the Son the ability to do what the Father can do is not any increase of nature but the example of the author. Finally, the honor that subjection preserved, the power of nature made equal. For he added: "For whatever he does, the Son also does likewise." Is likeness not equal? It is plainly equal, even if we deny it: for he does the same things likewise. Are things done likewise not the same? Or do the same things not admit equality? Or does anything else differ between like and equal, when things done likewise are understood to be done the same? Unless perhaps someone will deny that things that are the same are equal, so that like things are not called equal; whereas things done likewise are proclaimed not only to be done equally but to be the same.

The likeness of nature, then, brothers, is free from the suspicion of insult; nor can the Son seem not to be in the property of the Father's nature because he is like, since there is no likeness except from equality of nature; and there cannot be equality of nature unless it is one; and one not by unity of person but of kind. This is the devout faith, this the religious conscience, this the saving word: not to deny the one substance of the Father and the Son, because he is like; and to proclaim him like, because they are one.

Having set out, dearest brothers, a faithful and devout understanding of "one substance", which in Greek is called homoousion, and of "like substance", which is called homoeusion, and having shown most completely the faults that can arise either from a deceitful brevity of words or from a dangerous bareness, I must direct the rest of my discourse to the holy men, the Eastern bishops; so that, since no suspicion about our faith now remains between us, the things that still come under suspicion from words may be cleared away. And they will pardon me, who am about to speak to them more freely out of the faith of our common conscience.

O men at last zealous for the apostolic and gospel teaching, whom the warmth of faith has kindled in such darkness of the heretical night! What hope of recalling the true faith you have brought by steadfastly beating back the onset of an audacious unbelief! For before, in the dark and in corners, it was denied that the Lord Christ is the Son of God by nature, and it was proclaimed that, lacking the Father's essence, he had received his origin with the creatures from things that did not exist. But now the heresy, breaking out with the profession of public authority, boasted not secretly, as victor, of what it had before been muttering in stealth. By what tunnels had it not tried before to creep into the catholic church? What powers of the world had it not put forward with the allurement of a false religion? For perverse men had broken out so far that, though they did not dare to proclaim this publicly themselves, they deceived the emperor into hearing it. For they deceived the king in his ignorance, so that, busy with wars, he set out a creed of this unbelief and, not yet reborn, imposed a form of believing on the churches. They forced the bishops who contradicted into exile. Indeed they forced us into the will to be exiled, while they imposed the necessity of impiety. But let us be exiles always, provided the truth begins to be proclaimed. For thanks be to the Lord that the emperor, warned through you, recognized his ignorance, and through these judgments of your faith recognized the error as not his own but that of those who urged him; and he freed himself from the odium of an impious will before God and men when, receiving your embassy with honor and being compelled by you to profess his ignorance, he learned the falsehood of those by whose authority he was being led into odium.

For they deceive, as far as I both fear and think, dearest brothers, they deceive, because they have always deceived; and even this present subscription is not without falsehood. For they excuse themselves by saying that they wished homoousion and homoeusion to be passed over in silence because they thought that one and the same thing was meant by both words. Unskilled bishops, I suppose, ignorant of the meaning of homoousion, as though there had never been a synod or disputes about it! But suppose they did not know homoousion, or did not know that homoeusion means "of like essence". If they did not know this, why did they wish the begetting of the Son not to be known? Is it, if it is indescribable, therefore also unknowable? But if how he was born is not known, can even this be unknown, that the Son, God, not from another substance but born from God, does not have a different essence? Have they not read that the Son is to be honored as the Father is, that they should prefer the Father in honor? Was it unknown to them that the Father is seen in the Son, that among them the Son should differ in dignity, glory, and majesty? Or did this too come from ignorance, that the Son is subject to the Father together with the rest, so that, being subjected with the rest, he is not distinguished from the rest? whereas the Son's subjection is the devotion of nature, but the subjection of the rest is the weakness of creation. They knew indeed that he suffered; but let them say, I beg, when did they learn that he "suffered with"? They avoid homoousion and homoeusion because it is nowhere written: I ask where they got the presumption that he "suffered with". Or do they wish there to be two who suffered? For "suffering with" testifies to this. Where is that saying, "Jesus Christ the Son of God"? Or is Jesus Christ one and the Son of God another? If the Son of God is not the same and one within and without, then believe their ignorance of homoousion, if these things may be unknown. But if in these very things that ignorance is impious, which yet cannot be excused even falsely, I fear that their profession lies also about ignorance of homoeusion. I do not complain much of the pardon you have granted: it is a matter of religion to reserve to God what is his, and the error of ignorance is human. But let the two bishops, Valens and Ursacius, pardon me now, for, given their age and experience, I do not believe they were ignorant. And it is very hard that those should not be thought to lie who cannot clear themselves in another matter except by a lie. But may the Lord rather grant that we think ill of them than that they were not ignorant. For I would rather be judged as thinking ill than have your faith violated by communion with a heretical conscience.

I beg you, most holy men, to weigh my anxieties with kind indulgence. For the Lord is witness of my conscience that I do not wish in any point to overturn these expositions of your faith which you brought to Sirmium. But pardon me if I cannot understand some things, and I will console myself, because I have read: "The spirit of the prophets is subject to the prophets." From this perhaps it is not shamelessly presumed by me too that I may understand what another does not know. Not that I have dared to say that you are ignorant of anything, according to the measure of knowledge; but concerning the unity of the catholic faith, allow that there are no fewer anxieties in us than in you.

The letter that Valens, Ursacius, and Germinius asked to be read from you at Sirmium about the explanation of homoousion and homoeusion I understand to be in some points no less circumspect than frank. And the demonstration itself of homoousion and homoeusion left no difficulty. About homoeusion, that is, "of like essence", our judgment is common. But in treating of homoousion, that is, "of one essence", you declared, first, that it should be rejected because by uttering this word a prior substance would be understood, which the two had divided between them. I understand the fault in the understanding. This sense is indeed profane, and to be rejected by the church in common judgment. Secondly, you added that our fathers, when Paul of Samosata was pronounced a heretic, also repudiated homoousion, because by this naming of one essence he proclaimed that the Father and the Son were solitary and single to himself. And this too the church even now recognizes as most profane: to reduce the Father and the Son, in these professions of names, to the solitude of a union and a single being, denying the property of the persons. Thirdly, this cause for rejecting homoousion was also mentioned by you: that at the synod held at Nicaea our fathers were compelled, because of those who called the Son a creature, to put in the name homoousion; and that it should not be received because it is found written nowhere. At this statement of yours I am much surprised. For if homoousion is to be rejected because of its novelty, I fear that homoeusion too is in danger, since it is found written nowhere.

But I do not make a quarrel of this. For I would rather have mentioned something new than impiously rejected it. Leaving aside, then, the question of novelty, there remains no question even in those things that are condemned by the common judgment of us all. For who of sound mind will proclaim a third substance common to the Father and the Son? Or who, reborn in Christ and confessing both Son and Father, will confess with the Samosatene that Christ is in himself both father and son to himself? Our judgment, then, is the same in condemning the impieties of the heretics; and it not only rejects this understanding of homoousion but hates it. And so no question of a faulty understanding is left, where there is common assent in condemning the fault.

As I am about to speak at last of the third question, I beg you that where there is peace of conscience there may be no battle of suspicions, and that you will think I bring forward nothing except for the advance of unity. For it is idle to fear a quarrel over a word when the thing itself, whose word it is, has no difficulty. Is anyone displeased that homoousion was accepted at the synod of Nicaea? If anyone is displeased, he must be pleased by what was denied by the Arians. For homoousion was denied so that God the Son would be proclaimed not born from the substance of God the Father, but made from nothing like the creatures. We say nothing new: the very unbelief of the Arians, published in many writings, is its own witness. If, on account of the impiety of those who denied it, the understanding of those who confessed it was then devout, I ask why what was then devoutly accepted, because it was impiously denied, is today overthrown. If it was devoutly accepted, why is the ordinance of piety brought under accusation, which devoutly extinguished impiety by the very things by which it was impiously attacked?

Let us see, then, what the synod of Nicaea aimed at in confessing homoousion, that is, "of one substance": certainly not to give birth to the heresy that is conceived from a faulty opinion of homoousion. They will not, I think, say that the Father and the Son divided one prior substance by sharing it into their own substance. And the faith itself, devoutly written then, we will now also, not irreligiously, insert in this discourse of ours: "We believe in one God the Father almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, born from the Father, only-begotten, that is, from the substance of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, born not made, of one substance with the Father, which in Greek they call homoousion, through whom all things were made in heaven and on earth; who for our salvation came down, was made flesh, and became man, and suffered, and rose on the third day, and ascended into heaven, and will come to judge the living and the dead. And in the Holy Spirit. But those who say, 'There was when he was not', and 'Before he was born he was not', and that he was made from things that did not exist, or from another substance or essence, saying that God is convertible and changeable: these the catholic church anathematizes." Here the most holy synod of religious men does not introduce some prior substance divided into two, but the Son born from the substance of the Father. Do we too deny this? Or what else do we confess? And after the other expositions of the common faith it says: "born not made, of one substance with the Father, which in Greek they call homoousion." What occasion for a faulty understanding is there here? The Son is proclaimed born from the substance of the Father, not made, lest the birth of the Godhead should be the making of a creation. And of one substance for this reason: not that he should subsist as one or alone, but that, born from the substance of God, he should not subsist from elsewhere, nor subsist in any difference of a dissenting substance. Or is this not our faith, that he does not subsist from elsewhere, and that he subsists not unlike? Or does homoousion here testify anything other than that the essence of the two is one and not unlike according to the offspring of nature, because the essence of the Son is not from elsewhere? And because it is not from elsewhere, both will rightly be believed to be of one essence, since the Son has the substance of his birth only from the authority of the Father's nature.

But perhaps it will be said on the other side that it ought to be rejected for this reason, that it is commonly understood in a faulty way. If we fear this, let us delete in the Apostle what is said, "The mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus", because Photinus uses it as authority for his heresy; and let it not be read by us, because it is badly understood by him. Let the letter written to the Philippians perish too, by fire or sponge, lest Marcion read in it again, "And being found in form as a man", and confess that it was the appearance of a body, not a body. Let the Gospel of John not exist, lest Sabellius learn, "I and the Father are one." Nor let these present preachers of a creature have it written, "The Father is greater than I." Nor let those who wish to affirm that the Son is unlike the Father read, "But of that day and hour no one knows, not the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone." Let there be no books of Moses either, lest darkness be coeval with God, who dwells in unbegotten light, because in Genesis the day began after the night; lest the years of Methuselah exceed the time of the flood, and not only eight souls be preserved; lest God, hearing the cry of Sodom when its sins were already full, should come down, as though not knowing the cry, to see whether the sins were full according to the cry, and God be found not to know what he knew; lest anyone of those who buried Moses should know the tomb of the buried Moses; lest by these things, as the heretics think, the law itself be at enmity with itself. And because these things are not understood by them, let them not be read by us. Let there perish too, if it seems good (which I would not say, but the necessity of reply says it), all those divine and holy Gospels of human salvation, lest they fight one another by the apparent contradiction of their sayings: lest the Lord who is to send the Holy Spirit be read as himself born of the Holy Spirit; lest he who is to threaten death by the sword to those who will use it should, when about to suffer, command a sword to be bought; lest he who is to descend to the underworld be in paradise with the thief; lest, finally, the apostles be found guilty, who, commanded to baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, baptized only in the name of Jesus. For I say to you, brothers, who are no longer fed with milk but are strong on solid food: because the wise of the world do not understand these things and they are foolish to them, shall we be wise with the world, so as to believe them foolish? And because these things are blind to the impious, shall we not shine with the understood truth of the teaching? Holy things are wrongly prejudged if, because some do not hold them holy, they ought not to exist. Let us not, then, glory in the cross of Christ, because it is a scandal to the world; nor proclaim death in the living God, lest God be accused by the impious of being dead.

Homoousion is badly understood: what is that to me, who understand it well? The Samosatene confessed homoousion badly; but did the Arians deny it any better? Eighty bishops once rejected it; but three hundred and eighteen lately received it. And to me that very number is holy, the number with which Abraham, victor over the impious kings, is blessed by him who is the type of the eternal priesthood. Those disapproved it against a heretic; did not these also approve it against a heretic? The authority of the ancients is weighty; is the holiness of these light? If they held contrary views, we must as judges approve the better; but if, by approving and disapproving, both established one and the same thing, why do we overthrow what was well established?

But perhaps it will be said to me: some today of those who were present at that synod have decreed that there should be silence about homoousion. And I will reply, though unwillingly, to the speaker: Do they not also decree that there should be silence about homoeusion? I beg you, let no one else be found among them, except the old man Ossius, and he too fond of his tomb, who thinks there should be silence about both. And where at last shall we fall, amid such fury of heretics, if, while not receiving both, we retain neither? For it cannot seem impious to say that, since neither is found written, either neither should be confessed or both.

By homoousion, most holy men, I understand God from God, not of unlike essence, not divided but born, and an only-begotten birth, co-begotten in the Son from the substance of the unbegettable God, according to likeness. Understanding it so before, I was not a little confirmed in it by homoousion. Why do you condemn my faith in homoousion, which you cannot but approve through the profession of homoeusion? For you condemn my faith, or rather yours, when you condemn its understanding in the name. But someone else understands it badly? Let us condemn in common the faulty understanding; let us not take away the security of faith. Do you think one should subscribe to the synod of Samosata, lest anyone claim homoousion in the sense of the Samosatene? Let us subscribe also to the synod of Nicaea, lest the Arians reject homoousion. But is it to be feared that homoousion may seem not to mean homoeusion according to the faith? Let it be decreed that there is no difference between being of one and of like substance. But can homoousion be badly understood? Let it be laid down how it can be well understood. We think one and the same thing devoutly; I ask that we may wish the one and the same thing we think to be devout among us. Pardon me, brothers, as I have often asked: you are not Arians; why, by denying homoousion, are you reckoned Arians?

But you say: the ambiguity of homoousion troubles me with scandal. Hear in turn, I beg, without scandal: the bareness of homoeusion troubles me too. Many things that are alike often deceive. I fear the gold of gilt leaf, because it can deceive me within; and yet what is seen is like gold. I fear the likeness of milk, lest the milk offered me be not sheep's milk, since cow's milk also seems like it. For sheep's milk to be like sheep's milk, it cannot be like unless it is from a sheep. True likeness lies in the truth of nature. And where there is truth of nature in both, homoousion is not denied. For this is likeness according to essence: if one mass, quite like another, does not deceive in the gilding; if milk of the same color is not different in taste. Nothing can be like gold except gold; nothing can be like milk unless it is of its kind. The color of wine has often deceived me; and yet by tasting I recognized a liquor of another kind. I have seen meat like meat, but afterwards the taste betrayed to me the unlikeness of nature. These likenesses, which do not come from unity of nature, I fear.

For I fear, brothers, the heresies of the East sprouting up at every moment; and what I say I fear, I have already read. In what you, the ministers of the embassy you undertook, brought to Sirmium to be subscribed with the assent of certain Easterners, no ground for suspicion indeed was left; but from the beginning they contained no small offense, which I believe you, most holy men Basil, Eustathius, and Eleusius, passed over in silence so as to abolish it, lest any scandal be caused. If those things were rightly written, they ought not to have been passed over. But if they are now passed over because they were not rightly written, care must be taken that they are never said again. Sparing you, I say nothing about them as yet; yet you recognize with me that the whole creed written at Ancyra did not stand so. I do not speak a rumor; I hold the evidence of a document, not received from laymen but given by bishops.

I beg you, brothers, remove suspicion, exclude the occasion. So that homoeusion may be approved, let us not disapprove homoousion. Let us think of so many holy priests now at rest: what will the Lord judge of us if they are now anathematized by us? What will become of us, who carry the matter so far that, because they were not bishops, we too have not begun to be? For we were ordained by them and are their successors. Let us renounce the episcopate, since we took its office from men under anathema. Pardon my grief, brothers: what you dare is impious. I cannot endure this saying, that he who confesses homoousion according to a religious understanding should be under anathema. A name has nothing criminal in it that does not disturb the sense of religion. I do not know or understand homoeusion except only from the confession of like essence. I call to witness the God of heaven and earth that, though I had heard neither, I always held both: that by homoousion homoeusion must be understood, that is, that nothing can be like itself according to nature except what is from the same nature. Long since reborn, and remaining for some time in the episcopate, I never heard the Nicene creed until I was about to go into exile; but the Gospels and the Apostles had made known to me the meaning of homoousion and homoeusion. What we wish is devout. Let us not condemn the fathers, let us not encourage the heretics, lest while we drive out heresy we nourish heresy. Our fathers after the synod of Nicaea interpreted the proper sense of homoousion religiously; the books exist, the conscience remains. If anything is to be added to the interpretation, let us consult in common. The best state of faith can be established among us, so that what was well established may not be harassed and what was badly understood may be cut away.

I have gone beyond the modesty of human conscience, dearest brothers, and, forgetful of my lowliness, compelled by love of you, I have written these things about matters so great and so hidden, untried and unspoken until this our age, and I have spoken what I myself believed; conscious that I owed this service to the church as the wage of my warfare, to send through this letter the voice of my episcopate in Christ, according to the gospel teachings. It is yours to discuss in common, to provide, and to act, so that, as you have until now remained in inviolable faith, you may preserve it with religious conscience and hold what you hold. Remember my exile in your holy prayers. After setting out this faith, I do not know whether it would be as pleasant to return from it to you in the Lord Jesus Christ as it would be safe to die. I pray that our God and Lord may keep you uncontaminated and unharmed until the day of revelation, dearest brothers.