IX. "If any man says that the man alone born of Mary is the Son: let him be anathema.
X. "If any man though saying that God and Man was born of Mary, understands thereby the Unborn God: let him be anathema.
XI. "If any man hearing The Word was made Flesh thinks that the Word was transformed into Flesh, or says that He suffered change in taking Flesh: let him be anathema.
XII. "If any man hearing that the only Son of God was crucified, says that His divinity suffered corruption, or pain, or change, or diminution, or destruction: let him be anathema.
XIII. "If any man says Let us make man was not spoken by the Father to the Son, but by God to Himself: let him be anathema.
XIV. "If any man says that the Son did not appear to Abraham, but the Unborn God, or a part of Him: let him be anathema.
XV. "If any man says that the Son did not wrestle with Jacob as a man, but the Unborn God, or a part of Him: let him be anathema.
XVI. "If any man does not understand The Lord rained from the Lord to be spoken of the Father and the Son, but that the Father rained from Himself: let him be anathema. For the Lord the Son rained from the Lord the Father.
XVII. "If any man says that the Lord and the Lord, the Father and the Son are two Gods. because of the aforesaid words: let him be anathema. For we do not make the Son the equal or peer of the Father, but understand the Son to be subject. For He did not come down to Sodom without the Father's will, nor rain from Himself but from the Lord , to wit by the Father's authority; nor does He sit at the Father's right hand by His own authority, but He hears the Father saying. Sit thou on My, right hand .
XVIII. "If any man says that the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost are one Person: let him be anathema.
XIX. "If any man speaking of the Holy Ghost the Paraclete says that He is the Unborn God: let him be anathema.
XX. "If any man denies that, as the Lord has taught us, the Paraclete is different from the Son; for He said, And the Father shall send you another Comforter, whom I shall ask : let him be anathema.
XXI. "If any man says that the Holy Spirit is a part of the Father or of the Son: let him be anathema.
XXII. "If any man says that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are three Gods: let him be anathema.
XXIII. "If any man after the example of the Jews understands as said for the destruction of the Eternal Only-begotten God the words, I am the first God, and I am the last God, and beside Me there is no God , which were spoken for the destruction of idols and them that are no gods: let him be anathema.
XXIV. "If any man says that the Son was made by the will of God, like any object in creation: let him be anathema.
XXV. "If any man says that the Son was born against the will of the Father: let him be anathema. For the Father was not forced against His own will, or induced by any necessity of nature to beget the Son: but as soon as He willed, before time and without passion He begat Him of Himself and shewed Him forth.
XXVI. "If any man says that the Son is incapable of birth and without beginning, saying as though there were two incapable of birth and unborn and without beginning, and makes two Gods: let him be anathema. For the Head, which is the beginning of all things, is the Son; but the Head or beginning of Christ is God: for so to One who is without beginning and is the beginning of all things, we refer the whole world through Christ.
XXVII. "Once more we strengthen the understanding of Christianity by saying, If any man denies that Christ who is God and Son of God, personally existed before time began and aided the Father in the perfecting of all things; but says that only from the time that He was born of Mary did He gain the name of Christ and Son and a beginning of His deity: let him be anathema."
39. The necessity of the moment urged the Council to set forth a wider and broader exposition of the creed including many intricate questions, because the heresy which Photinus was reviving was sapping our Catholic home by many secret mines. Their purpose was to oppose every form of stealthy subtle heresy by a corresponding form of pure and unsullied faith, and to have as many complete explanations of the faith as there were instances of peculiar faithlessness. Immediately after the universal and unquestioned statement of the Christian mysteries, the explanation of the faith against the heretics begins as follows.
I. "But those who say that the Son is sprung from things non-existent, or from another substance and not from God, and that there was a time or age when He was not, the holy Catholic Church regards as aliens."
40. What ambiguity is there here? What is omitted that the consciousness of a sincere faith could suggest? He does not spring from things non-existent: therefore His origin has existence. There is no other substance extant to be His origin, but that of God: therefore nothing else can be born in Him but all that is God; because His existence is not from nothing, and He draws subsistence from no other source. He does not differ in time: therefore the Son like the Father is eternal. And so the Unborn Father and the Only-begotten Son share all the same qualities. They are equal in years, and that very similarity between the sole-existing paternal essence and its offspring prevents distinction in any quality.
II. "If any man says that the Father and the Son are two Gods: let him be anathema.
III." And if any man says that God is one, but does not confess that Christ who is God and eternal Son of God ministered to the Father in the creation of all things: let him be anathema."
41. The very statement of the name as our religion states it gives us a clear insight into the fact. For since it is condemned to say that the Father and the Son are two Gods, and it is also accursed to deny that the Son is God, any opinion as to the substance of the one being different from that of the other in asserting two Gods is excluded. For there is no other essence, except that of God the Father, from which God the Son of God was born before time. For since we are compelled to confess God the Father, and roundly declare that Christ the Son of God is God, and between these two truths lies the impious confession of two Gods: They must on the ground of their identity of nature and name be one in the kind of their essence if the name of their essence is necessarily one.