5. In the earlier books, then, while
maintaining the profession of a faith, I trust, sincere, and a truth
uncorrupted, we arranged the method of our answer throughout, so that
(though such are our limitations, that human language can never be safe
from exception) no one could contradict us without an open profession
of godlessness. For so completely have we demonstrated the true
meaning of those texts which they cunningly filch from the Gospels and
appropriate for their own teaching, that if any one denies it, he
cannot escape on the plea of ignorance, but is condemned out of his own
mouth of godlessness. Further, we have, according to the gift of
the Holy Ghost, so cautiously proceeded throughout in our proof of the
faith, that no charge could possibly be trumped up against us.
For it is their way to fill the ears of the unwary with declarations
that we deny the birth of Christ i.e. The generation
of the second Person from the first Person of the Trinity., when we
preach the unity of the Godhead; and they say that by the text, I
and the Father are one St. John x. 30., we confess that God
is solitary: thus, according to them, we say that the Unbegotten
God descended into the Virgin, and was born man, and that He
refers Supply,
‘referat.’ the opening word
‘I’ to the dispensation of His flesh, but adds to it the
proof of His divinity, And the Father, as being the Father of
Himself as man; and further, that, consisting of two Persons, human and
divine, He said of Himself, We are one The Arians accused the
Catholics of a Sabellian denial of the Trinity and a Patripassian view
of the Incarnation, i.e. that the unborn God became man..