37. Yet to prevent the declaration of one God
seeming to affirm that God is a solitary monad without offspring of His
own, it immediately condemns the rash suggestion that because God is
one, therefore God the Father is one and solitary, having in Himself
the name of Father and of Son: since in the Father who begets and
the Son who comes to birth one God must be declared to exist on account
of the substance of their nature being similar in each. The faith
of the saints knows nothing of the Son being incapable of birth:
because the nature of the Son only draws its existence from
birth. But the nature of the birth is in Him so perfect that He
who was born of the substance of God is born also of His purpose and
will. For from His will and purpose, not from the process of a
corporeal nature, springs the absolute perfection of the essence of God
born from the essence of God. It follows that we should now
consider that creed which was compiled not long ago when Photinus was
deposed from the episcopate.