Chapter II.
How greatly the foolishness and misfortune of the Arians are considered, who say: There was a time when the Son did not exist, the reader understands. For how could there be a time when the Father, without life, without wisdom, without virtue, without the Word, which is Christ, existed? God forbid; since the Father himself declares clearly saying: My heart has brought forth the good Word (Psalm 44:2). Blessed John, confirming this, says: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. Whatever is incorporeal and invisible cannot be separated by a diversity of places. For if our speech, or virtue, or wisdom cannot be separated from us unless we depart from the body, how can these things be separated from the immortal and omnipotent God, who made all things out of nothing through His Word? Whose Father will be the Father of the impious heretics if the nature of the Son is separated from Him? And again, whose Son will He be if His origin is not referred to the Father, so that He may be both the one who begets and the one who is begotten? Therefore, the Father, who is the origin of deity and goodness, is rightly understood and felt both in the Son and in the Holy Spirit: in Him, that is, in the Son, as the Word, by virtue and wisdom; and in the Holy Spirit, as proceeding from Him. So it is right and catholic that we acknowledge one God according to the truth of substance, and that we feel the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit in their respective subsistences. Therefore, the divinity of the Holy Trinity must be believed without any end, and it is also difficult for the mind itself to feel. And this alone is what we comprehend from it, because it cannot be comprehended. Therefore, there is one deity in three, and there are three in which deity exists. Therefore, in the unity there is no confusion, nor in the divinity is there division. And therefore the mixture of the foolish Sabellius and the separation of the impious Arius must be equally rejected; for they have proposed opposing but equally impious doctrines. For Sabellius, while he thinks that everything is named, designates nothing to be each thing; indeed, since it ceases to be what it is, it is transferred into the other, that which is said to be the essence of each one: but Arius impiously asserts that the Son, a creature of the Father, and the Holy Spirit, a creature of the Son, are created beings.