Against Praxeas.

 Chapter I.—Satan’s Wiles Against the Truth. How They Take the Form of the Praxean Heresy. Account of the Publication of This Heresy.

 Chapter II.—The Catholic Doctrine of the Trinity and Unity, Sometimes Called the Divine Economy, or Dispensation of the Personal Relations of the Godh

 Chapter III.—Sundry Popular Fears and Prejudices. The Doctrine of the Trinity in Unity Rescued from These Misapprehensions.

 Chapter IV.—The Unity of the Godhead and the Supremacy and Sole Government of the Divine Being. The Monarchy Not at All Impaired by the Catholic Doctr

 Chapter V.—The Evolution of the Son or Word of God from the Father by a Divine Procession. Illustrated by the Operation of the Human Thought and Consc

 Chapter VI.—The Word of God is Also the Wisdom of God. The Going Forth of Wisdom to Create the Universe, According to the Divine Plan.

 Chapter VII.—The Son by Being Designated Word and Wisdom, (According to the Imperfection of Human Thought and Language) Liable to Be Deemed a Mere Att

 Chapter VIII.—Though the Son or Word of God Emanates from the Father, He is Not, Like the Emanations of Valentinus, Separable from the Father.  Nor is

 Chapter IX.—The Catholic Rule of Faith Expounded in Some of Its Points.  Especially in the Unconfused Distinction of the Several Persons of the Blesse

 Chapter X.—The Very Names of Father and Son Prove the Personal Distinction of the Two. They Cannot Possibly Be Identical, Nor is Their Identity Necess

 Chapter XI.—The Identity of the Father and the Son, as Praxeas Held It, Shown to Be Full of Perplexity and Absurdity. Many Scriptures Quoted in Proof

 Chapter XII.—Other Quotations from Holy Scripture Adduced in Proof of the Plurality of Persons in the Godhead.

 Chapter XIII.—The Force of Sundry Passages of Scripture Illustrated in Relation to the Plurality of Persons and Unity of Substance. There is No Polyth

 Chapter XIV.—The Natural Invisibility of the Father, and the Visibility of the Son Witnessed in Many Passages of the Old Testament. Arguments of Their

 Chapter XV.—New Testament Passages Quoted. They Attest the Same Truth of the Son’s Visibility Contrasted with the Father’s Invisibility.

 Chapter XVI.—Early Manifestations of the Son of God, as Recorded in the Old Testament Rehearsals of His Subsequent Incarnation.

 Chapter XVII.—Sundry August Titles, Descriptive of Deity, Applied to the Son, Not, as Praxeas Would Have It, Only to the Father.

 Chapter XVIII.—The Designation of the One God in the Prophetic Scriptures. Intended as a Protest Against Heathen Idolatry, It Does Not Preclude the Co

 Chapter XIX.—The Son in Union with the Father in the Creation of All Things. This Union of the Two in Co-Operation is Not Opposed to the True Unity of

 Chapter XX.—The Scriptures Relied on by Praxeas to Support His Heresy But Few. They are Mentioned by Tertullian.

 Chapter XXI.—In This and the Four Following Chapters It is Shewn, by a Minute Analysis of St. John’s Gospel, that the Father and Son are Constantly Sp

 Chapter XXII.—Sundry Passages of St. John Quoted, to Show the Distinction Between the Father and the Son. Even Praxeas’ Classic Text—I and My Father a

 Chapter XXIII.—More Passages from the Same Gospel in Proof of the Same Portion of the Catholic Faith. Praxeas’ Taunt of Worshipping Two Gods Repudiate

 Chapter XXIV.—On St. Philip’s Conversation with Christ. He that Hath Seen Me, Hath Seen the Father. This Text Explained in an Anti-Praxean Sense.

 Chapter XXV.—The Paraclete, or Holy Ghost. He is Distinct from the Father and the Son as to Their Personal Existence. One and Inseparable from Them as

 Chapter XXVI.—A Brief Reference to the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke. Their Agreement with St. John, in Respect to the Distinct Personality of t

 Chapter XXVII.—The Distinction of the Father and the Son, Thus Established, He Now Proves the Distinction of the Two Natures, Which Were, Without Conf

 Chapter XXVIII.—Christ Not the Father, as Praxeas Said. The Inconsistency of This Opinion, No Less Than Its Absurdity, Exposed. The True Doctrine of J

 Chapter XXIX.—It Was Christ that Died.  The Father is Incapable of Suffering Either Solely or with Another. Blasphemous Conclusions Spring from Praxea

 Chapter XXX.—How the Son Was Forsaken by the Father Upon the Cross. The True Meaning Thereof Fatal to Praxeas. So Too, the Resurrection of Christ, His

 Chapter XXXI.—Retrograde Character of the Heresy of Praxeas. The Doctrine of the Blessed Trinity Constitutes the Great Difference Between Judaism and

Chapter VIII.—Though the Son or Word of God Emanates from the Father, He is Not, Like the Emanations of Valentinus, Separable from the Father.  Nor is the Holy Ghost Separable from Either. Illustrations from Nature.

If any man from this shall think that I am introducing some προβολή—that is to say, some prolation79    “The word προβολή properly means anything which proceeds or is sent forth from the substance of another, as the fruit of a tree or the rays of the sun. In Latin, it is translated by prolatio, emissio, or editio, or what we now express by the word development. In Tertullian’s time, Valentinus had given the term a material signification.  Tertullian, therefore, has to apologize for using it, when writing against Praxeas, the forerunner of the Sabellians” (Newman’s Arians, ii. 4; reprint, p. 101). of one thing out of another, as Valentinus does when he sets forth Æon from Æon, one after another—then this is my first reply to you: Truth must not therefore refrain from the use of such a term, and its reality and meaning, because heresy also employs it. The fact is, heresy has rather taken it from Truth, in order to mould it into its own counterfeit. Was the Word of God put forth or not? Here take your stand with me, and flinch not. If He was put forth, then acknowledge that the true doctrine has a prolation;80    προβολή. and never mind heresy, when in any point it mimics the truth. The question now is, in what sense each side uses a given thing and the word which expresses it. Valentinus divides and separates his prolations from their Author, and places them at so great a distance from Him, that the Æon does not know the Father:  he longs, indeed, to know Him, but cannot; nay, he is almost swallowed up and dissolved into the rest of matter.81    See Adv. Valentin. cc. xiv. xv. With us, however, the Son alone knows the Father,82    Matt. xi. 27. and has Himself unfolded “the Father’s bosom.”83    John i. 18. He has also heard and seen all things with the Father; and what He has been commanded by the Father, that also does He speak.84    John viii. 26. And it is not His own will, but the Father’s, which He has accomplished,85    John vi. 38. which He had known most intimately, even from the beginning. “For what man knoweth the things which be in God, but the Spirit which is in Him?”86    1 Cor. ii. 11. But the Word was formed by the Spirit, and (if I may so express myself) the Spirit is the body of the Word. The Word, therefore, is both always in the Father, as He says, “I am in the Father;”87    John xiv. 11. and is always with God, according to what is written, “And the Word was with God;”88    John i. 1. and never separate from the Father, or other than the Father, since “I and the Father are one.”89    John x. 30. This will be the prolation, taught by the truth,90    Literally, the προβολή, “of the truth.” the guardian of the Unity, wherein we declare that the Son is a prolation from the Father, without being separated from Him.  For God sent forth the Word, as the Paraclete also declares, just as the root puts forth the tree, and the fountain the river, and the sun the ray.91    [Compare cap. iv. supra.] For these are προβολαί, or emanations, of the substances from which they proceed. I should not hesitate, indeed, to call the tree the son or offspring of the root, and the river of the fountain, and the ray of the sun; because every original source is a parent, and everything which issues from the origin is an offspring.  Much more is (this true of) the Word of God, who has actually received as His own peculiar designation the name of Son. But still the tree is not severed from the root, nor the river from the fountain, nor the ray from the sun; nor, indeed, is the Word separated from God.  Following, therefore, the form of these analogies, I confess that I call God and His Word—the Father and His Son—two. For the root and the tree are distinctly two things, but correlatively joined; the fountain and the river are also two forms, but indivisible; so likewise the sun and the ray are two forms, but coherent ones. Everything which proceeds from something else must needs be second to that from which it proceeds, without being on that account separated.  Where, however, there is a second, there must be two; and where there is a third, there must be three. Now the Spirit indeed is third from God and the Son; just as the fruit of the tree is third from the root, or as the stream out of the river is third from the fountain, or as the apex of the ray is third from the sun. Nothing, however, is alien from that original source whence it derives its own properties.  In like manner the Trinity, flowing down from the Father through intertwined and connected steps, does not at all disturb the Monarchy,92    Or oneness of the divine empire. whilst it at the same time guards the state of the Economy.93    Or dispensation of the divine tripersonality. See above ch. ii.

CAPUT VIII.

Hoc si qui putaverit me προβολὴν aliquam 0163A introducere, id est, prolationem rei alterius ex altera, quod facit Valentinus, alium atque alium Aeonem de Aeone producens; primo quidem dicam tibi, non ideo non utitur et veritas vocabulo isto, et re ac censu ejus, quia et haeresis potius ex veritate accepit, quod ad mendacium suum strueret. Prolatus est sermo Dei, annon? Hic mecum gradum fige. Si prolatus est, cognosce probolam veritatis, et viderit haeresis si quid de veritate imitata est. Jam nunc quaeritur, quis quomodo utatur aliqua re, et vocabulo ejus. Valentinus probolas suas discernit et separat ab auctore: et ita longe ab eo ponit, ut Aeon patrem nesciat. Denique, desiderat nosse, nec potest; imo et pene devoratur, et dissolvitur in reliquam substantiam. Apud nos autem solus Filius Patrem novit0163B (Matt. XI, 27), et sinum Patris ipse exposuit (Joan. I, 18), et omnia apud Patrem audivit et vidit, etquae mandatus est a Patre, ea et loquitur (Joan. VIII, 26). Nec suam, sed Patris perfecit voluntatem (Joan. VI, 38), quam de proximo, imo de initio noverat. Quis enim scit quae sint in Deo, nisi spiritus qui in ipso est (I Cor. II, 11). Sermo autem spiritu structus est, et ut ita dixerim, sermonis corpus est spiritus. Sermo ergo et in Patre semper, sicut dicit: Ego in Patre (Joan. XIV, 11). Et apud Deum semper, sicut scriptum est: Et Sermo erat apud Deum (Joan. I, 1). Et nunquam separatus a Patre, aut alius a Patre, quia, Ego et Pater unum sumus (Joan. X, 30). Haec erit probola veritatis, custos unitatis, qua prolatum dicimus Filium a Patre, sed non separatum , Protulit enim Deus Sermonem, quemadmodum etiam 0163C Paracletus docet, sicut radix fruticem, et fons fluvium, et sol radium. Nam et istae species probolae sunt earum substantiarum, ex quibus prodeunt. Nec dubitaverim Filium dicere, et radicis fruticem, et fontis fluvium, et solis radium; quia omnis origo patens est; et omne quod ex origine profertur, progenies est, multo magis Sermo Dei, qui etiam proprie nomen Filii accepit: nec frutex tamen a radice, nec fluvius a fonte, nec radius a sole discernitur, sicut nec a Deo Sermo. Igitur secundum horum exemplorum formam, profiteor me duos dicere, Deum et Sermonem ejus, Patrem et Filium ipsius. Nam et radix et frutex duae res sunt, sed conjunctae. Et fons et flumen duae species sunt, sed indivisae. Et sol et radius duae formae sunt, sed cohaerentes. Omne quod prodit ex aliquo, 0163D secundum sit ejus necesse est de quo prodit, non ideo tamen est separatum. Secundus autem ubi est, duo sunt. Et tertius ubi est, tres sunt. Tertius enim 0164A est spiritus a Deo et Filio, sicut tertius a radice fructus ex frutice. Et tertius a fonte, rivus ex flumine. Et tertius a sole, apex ex radio. Nihil tamen a matrice alienatur, a qua proprietates suas ducit. Ita trinitas per consertos et connexos gradus a Patre decurrens, et monarchiae nihil obstrepit, et oeconomiae statum protegit.