Chapter XI.
Therefore, we believe in this one God, the Father Almighty, the creator of visible and invisible things, whose judgments and hidden counsels are never unjust. And yet this Father is a Father to Himself without any other father: and therefore the Son, begotten of Him, whose generation human speech cannot explain, cannot be inferior to Him; because, as it has been said, He is His Word, His Power, and His Wisdom. Therefore, we confess that He is the Lord God, the Son of God the Most High, the unique and only-begotten, and we acknowledge that He is one God with the Father and the Holy Spirit; although the human speech cannot explain His equality, we have come to know the sacred and venerable mysteries of His incarnation from the holy archangel Gabriel speaking to the holy Virgin Mary, who, being informed by words, conceives by the Holy Spirit, and remains a virgin. For he says: The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore, the child who will be born will be called the Son of God (Luke 1:35). Therefore, this generation, in which he was born of a virgin for our salvation, does not make him inferior to the Father either in time or in power; for he is not a temporal father, so as to be born before the Son in time, because the eternal Father begot the coeternal Son; nor was he born or made from outside, as the heretics claim, but the true faith holds that he was begotten from the Father's own substance. Therefore, it is honorable to confess the true Son, who exists in the eternity and omnipotence of the perfect and holy Trinity. And just as we are obliged to believe in the Father, so too in the Son; for he is truly begotten by the one who has begotten. We also believe in the Holy Spirit, whose majesty, power, and equality, which he possesses with the Father and the Son, we have already shown above, proceeding from the Father, and possessing a common deity, operation, and substance with the Father and the Son, and distinguishing the persons in their properties. Nevertheless, we confess the inseparable deity of the holy Trinity; for what we distinguish by names and persons, we unite by power, deity, and unity. Therefore, the name of the Holy Trinity is a great mystery and secret; and therefore when we speak of spiritual things, nothing of the physical should be proposed at all before the eyes of the heart. Therefore, to the Holy and inseparable Trinity belongs an invisible light, an inseparable power, an incomprehensible substance, an endless life, to which eternal peace is present in every way, which no created being ever penetrates, nor disturbs. Therefore, if anyone calls upon the Father's majesty, or the Son, or the Holy Spirit, it seems that they are seeking hope from themselves, that is, from something similar and not from a higher nature; for everything that is created, insofar as it is concerned, is made from something that was not, and is similar to itself. Therefore, to the Lord Christ God the Father belongs his own generation, but to us belongs voluntary adoption; to him is Father by nature, to us by grace; to him is God by the unity of mystery, to us by power. Therefore, let anyone who holds anything other than this, and does not believe in this way, be anathema.