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

But you must not suppose that only the works which relate to the (creation of the) world were made by the Son, but also whatsoever since that time has been done by God. For “the Father who loveth the Son, and hath given all things into His hand,”194    John iii. 35. Tertullian reads the last clause (according to Oehler), “in sinu ejus,” q.d. “to Him who is in His bosom.” loves Him indeed from the beginning, and from the very first has handed all things over to Him. Whence it is written, “From the beginning the Word was with God, and the Word was God;”195    John i. 1. to whom “is given by the Father all power in heaven and on earth.”196    Matt. xxviii. 18. “The Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment to the Son”197    John v. 22.—from the very beginning even. For when He speaks of all power and all judgment, and says that all things were made by Him, and all things have been delivered into His hand, He allows no exception (in respect) of time, because they would not be all things unless they were the things of all time. It is the Son, therefore, who has been from the beginning administering judgment, throwing down the haughty tower, and dividing the tongues, punishing the whole world by the violence of waters, raining upon Sodom and Gomorrah fire and brimstone, as the Lord from the Lord.  For He it was who at all times came down to hold converse with men, from Adam on to the patriarchs and the prophets, in vision, in dream, in mirror, in dark saying; ever from the beginning laying the foundation of the course of His dispensations, which He meant to follow out to the very last. Thus was He ever learning even as God to converse with men upon earth, being no other than the Word which was to be made flesh. But He was thus learning (or rehearsing), in order to level for us the way of faith, that we might the more readily believe that the Son of God had come down into the world, if we knew that in times past also something similar had been done.198    See our Anti-Marcion, p. 112, note 10. Edin. For as it was on our account and for our learning that these events are described in the Scriptures, so for our sakes also were they done—(even ours, I say), “upon whom the ends of the world are come.”199    Comp. 1 Cor. x. 11. In this way it was that even then He knew full well what human feelings and affections were, intending as He always did to take upon Him man’s actual component substances, body and soul, making inquiry of Adam (as if He were ignorant),200    See the treatise, Against Marcion. ii. 25, supra. “Where art thou, Adam?”201    Gen. iii. 9.—repenting that He had made man, as if He had lacked foresight;202    Gen. vi. 6. tempting Abraham, as if ignorant of what was in man; offended with persons, and then reconciled to them; and whatever other (weaknesses and imperfections) the heretics lay hold of (in their assumptions) as unworthy of God, in order to discredit the Creator, not considering that these circumstances are suitable enough for the Son, who was one day to experience even human sufferings—hunger and thirst, and tears, and actual birth and real death, and in respect of such a dispensation “made by the Father a little less than the angels.”203    Ps. viii. 6. But the heretics, you may be sure, will not allow that those things are suitable even to the Son of God, which you are imputing to the very Father Himself, when you pretend204    Quasi. that He made Himself less (than the angels) on our account; whereas the Scripture informs us that He who was made less was so affected by another, and not Himself by Himself. What, again, if He was One who was “crowned with glory and honour,” and He Another by whom He was so crowned,205    Ps. viii. 6.—the Son, in fact, by the Father? Moreover, how comes it to pass, that the Almighty Invisible God, “whom no man hath seen nor can see; He who dwelleth in light unapproachable;”206    1 Tim. vi. 16. “He who dwelleth not in temples made with hands;”207    Acts xvii. 24. “from before whose sight the earth trembles, and the mountains melt like wax;”208    Joel ii. 10; Ps. xcvii. 5. who holdeth the whole world in His hand “like a nest;”209    Isa. x. 14. “whose throne is heaven, and earth His footstool;”210    Isa. lxvi. 1. in whom is every place, but Himself is in no place; who is the utmost bound of the universe;—how happens it, I say, that He (who, though) the Most High, should yet have walked in paradise towards the cool of the evening, in quest of Adam; and should have shut up the ark after Noah had entered it; and at Abraham’s tent should have refreshed Himself under an oak; and have called to Moses out of the burning bush; and have appeared as “the fourth” in the furnace of the Babylonian monarch (although He is there called the Son of man),—unless all these events had happened as an image, as a mirror, as an enigma (of the future incarnation)? Surely even these things could not have been believed even of the Son of God, unless they had been given us in the Scriptures; possibly also they could not have been believed of the Father, even if they had been given in the Scriptures, since these men bring Him down into Mary’s womb, and set Him before Pilate’s judgment-seat, and bury Him in the sepulchre of Joseph. Hence, therefore, their error becomes manifest; for, being ignorant that the entire order of the divine administration has from the very first had its course through the agency of the Son, they believe that the Father Himself was actually seen, and held converse with men, and worked, and was athirst, and suffered hunger (in spite of the prophet who says: “The everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, shall never thirst at all, nor be hungry;”211    Isa. xl. 28. much more, shall neither die at any time, nor be buried!), and therefore that it was uniformly one God, even the Father, who at all times did Himself the things which were really done by Him through the agency of the Son.

CAPUT XVI.

Nec putes sola opera mundi per Filium facta, sed et quae a Deo exinde gesta sunt. Pater enim qui diligit Filium, et omnia tradidit in manuejus; utique a primordio diligit, et a primordio tradidit. Ex quo, a primordio Sermo erat apud Deum, et Deus erat Sermo (Joan., I, 1), cui data est omnis potestas a Patre in coelis et in terra (Matth., XXVIII, 8). Non judicat 0174CPater quemquam; sed omne judicium tradidit Filio (Joan., V, 22); a primordio tamen. Omnem enim dicens potestatem, et omne judicium, et omnia per eum facta, et omnia tradita in manu ejus, nullam exceptionem temporis permittit: quia omnia non erunt, si non omnis temporis fuerint. Filius itaque est qui ab initio judicavit, turrim superbissimam elidens, linguasque dispertiens , orbem totum aquarum violentia puniens, pluens super Sodomam et Gomorrham ignem et sulphurem ; Dominusa Domino (Gen., XIX, 24). Ipse enim et ad humana semper colloquia descendit, ab Adam usque ad Patriarchas et Prophetas, in visione, in somnio , in 0175A speculo, in aenigmate, ordinem suum praestruens ab initio semper, quem erat persecuturus in finem . Ita semper ediscebat , et Deus in terris cum hominibus conversari non alius potuit quam Sermo, qui caro erat futurus. Ediscebat autem, ut nobis fidem sterneret, ut facilius crederemus Filium Dei descendisse in saeculum, si et retro tale quid gestum cognosceremus. Propter nos enim sicut scripta sunt, ita et gesta sunt, in quos aevorum fines decucurrerunt. Sic etiam affectus humanos sciebat jam tunc, suscepturus etiam ipsas substantias hominis, carnem et animam; interrogans Adam quasi nesciens, Ubi es Adam? poenitens quod hominem fecisset, quasi non praesciens; tentans Abraham, quasi ignorans quid sit in homine; offensus, reconciliatus 0175B eisdem. Et si qua haeretici apprehendunt quasi Deo indigna, ad destructionem Creatoris, ignorantes haec in Filium competisse, qui etiam passiones humanas, et sitim, et esuriem, et lacrymas, et ipsam nativitatem, ipsamque mortem erat subiturus: Propter hoc minoratus a Patre modicum quidcitra angelos (Ps. VIII, 6). Sed haeretici quidem nec Filio Dei deputabunt convenire, quae tu ipsi Patri inducis, quasi ipse se denominaverit propter nos; cum Scriptura alium dicat ab alio minoratum, non ipsum a semetipso. Quid si et alius qui coronabatur gloria et honore , alius qui coronabat, utique Filium Pater? Caeterum, quale est, ut Deus omnipotens ille invisibilis, quem nemo vidit hominum, nec videre potest: ille qui inaccessibilem lucem habitat: ille qui non habitat 0175Cin manufactis; a cujus conspectu terra contremiscit, montes liquescunt ut cera; qui totum orbem manu apprehendit velut nidum; cui coelum thronus, et terra scabellum; in quo omnis locus, non ipse in loco; qui universitatis extrema linea est; ille Altissimus, in paradiso ad vesperam deambulaverit, quaerens Adam; et arcam post introitum Noe clauserit; et apud Abraham sub quercu refrigeraverit; et Moysen de rubo ardenti vocarit; et in fornace Babylonii regis quartus apparuerit (quanquam Filius hominis est dictus), in haec in imagine , et speculo, et aenimate fuissent? Scilicet et haec nec de Filio Dei credenda 0176A fuisse , si scripta non essent; fortasse non credenda de Patre, licet scripta, quem isti in vulvam Mariae deducunt, et in Pilati tribunal imponunt, et in monumento Joseph concludunt. Hinc igitur apparet error illorum. Ignorantes enim, a primordio omnem ordinem divinae dispositionis per Filium decucurrisse, ipsum credunt Patrem et visum, et congressum, et operatum, et sitim et esuriem passum, adversus Prophetam dicentem: Deus aeternus non sitiet, nec esuriet omnino (quanto magis nec morietur, nec sepelietur!); et ita unum Deum semper egisse, id est Patrem, quae per Filium gesta sunt.