15. It is here insisted that the nature is
indistinguishable and entirely similar. For since He is the
Only-begotten Son of God and the image of the invisible God, it is
necessary that He should be of an essence similar in species and
nature. Or what distinction can be made between Father and Son
affecting their nature with its similar genus, when the Son subsisting
through the nature begotten in Him is invested with the properties of
the Father, viz., glory, worth, power, invisibility, essence? And
while these prerogatives of divinity are equal we neither understand
the one to be less because He is Son, nor the other to be greater
because He is Father; since the Son
is the image of the Father in species, and not dissimilar in genus;
since the similarity of a Son begotten of the substance of His Father
does not admit of any diversity of substance, and the Son and image of
the invisible God embraces in Himself the whole form of His
Father’s divinity both in kind and in amount: and this is
to be truly Son, to reflect the truth of the Father’s form by the
perfect likeness of the nature imaged in Himself.