42. To believe, therefore, that Jesus Christ
is the Son of God is true salvation, is the acceptable service of an
unfeigned faith. For we have no love within us towards God the
Father except through faith in the Son. Let us hear Him speaking
to us in the words of the Epistle;—Every one that loveth the
Father loveth Him that is born from Him 1 John v. 1.. What, I ask, is the meaning of
being born from Him? Can it mean, perchance, being created by
Him? Does the Evangelist lie in saying that He was born from God,
while the heretic more correctly teaches that He was created? Let
us all listen to the true character of this teacher of heresy. It
is written, He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the
Son Ib. ii.
22.. What will you do now, champion of
the creature, conjurer up of a novel Christ out of nothing? Hear
the title which awaits you, if you persist in your assertion. Or
do you think that perhaps you may still describe the Father and the Son
as Creator and Creature, and yet by an ingenious ambiguity of language
escape being recognised as antichrist? If your confession
embraces a Father in the true sense, and a Son in the true sense, then
I am a slanderer, assailing you with a title of infamy which you have
not deserved. But if in your confession all Christ’s
attributes are spurious and nominal, and not His own, then learn from
the Apostle the right description of such a faith as yours; and hear
what is the true faith which believes in the Son. The words which
follow are these;—He that denieth the Son, the same hath not
the Father: he that confesseth the Son hath both the Son and the
Father Ib.
23.. He that
denies the Son is destitute of the Father; he that confesses and has
the Son has the Father also. What room is there here for adoptive
names? Does not every word tell of the Divine nature? Learn
how completely that nature is present.