20.  For godliness it sufficeth thee to know, as we have said, that God hath One Only Son, One naturally begotten; who began not His being when He was born in Bethlehem, but Before All Ages.  For hear the Prophet Micah saying, And thou, Bethlehem, house of Ephrata, art little to be among the thousands of Judah.  Out of thee shall come forth unto Me a Ruler, who shall feed My people Israel:  and His goings forth are from the beginning, from days of eternity Micah v. 2; on the various readings ὀλγιοστὸς εἶ, μὴ ὀλ, εἶ οὐκ ὀλ. εἶ, found in the mss. of Cyril, see the Commentaries on the quotation of the passage in Matt. ii. 6..  Think not then of Him who is now come forth out of Bethlehem Codd. Roe, Casaub. have a different reading—“Think not then of His having now been born in Bethlehem, and (nor) suppose Him as the Son of Man to be altogether recent, but worship, &c.”  This is rightly regarded by the Benedictine and other Editors as an interpolation intended to avoid the apparent tendency of Cyril’s language in the received text to separate the Virgin’s Son from the Eternal Word.  Had Cyril so written after the Nestorian controversy arose, he would have appeared to favour the Nestorian formula that “Mary did not give birth to the Deity.”  Compare Swainson (Nicene Creed, Ch. ix. § 7.)  What Cyril really means is that we are not to think of Christ simply as man, but to worship Him as God., but worship Him who was eternally begotten of the Father.  Suffer none to speak of a beginning of the Son in time, but as a timeless Beginning acknowledge the Father.  For the Father is the Beginning of the Son, timeless, incomprehensible, without beginning Compare § 4, note 3..  The fountain of the river of righteousness, even of the Only-begotten, is the Father, who begat Him as Himself only knoweth.  And wouldest thou know that our Lord Jesus Christ is King Eternal?  Hear Him again saying, Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it, and was glad John viii. 56..  And then, when the Jews received this hardly, He says what to them was still harder, Before Abraham was, I am Ib. viii. 58..  And again He saith to the Father, And now, Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine own self, with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was Ib. xvii. 5..  He says plainly, “before the world was, I had the glory which is with Thee.”  And again when He says, For Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world John xvii. 24., He plainly declares, “The glory which I have with thee is from eternity.”