5. Sabellius sweeps away the birth of the
Son, and then preaches the unity of God; but he does not doubt that the
mighty Nature, which acted in the human Christ, was God. He shuts
his eyes to the revealed mystery of the Sonship; the works done seem to
him so marvellous that he cannot believe that He who performed them
could undergo a true generation. When he hears the words, He
that hath seen Me hath seen the Father also St. John xiv. 9.,
he jumps to the blasphemous conclusion of an inseparable and
indistinguishable identity of nature in Father and Son, because he
fails to see that the revelation of the birth is the mode in which
Their unity of nature is manifested to us. For the fact that the
Father is seen in the Son is a proof of the Son’s Divinity, not a
disproof of His birth. Thus our knowledge of Each of Them is
conditioned by our knowledge of the Other, for there is no difference
of nature between them and, since in this respect they are One, a
reverent study of the character of Either will give us a true insight
into the nature of Both. For, indeed, it is certain that He, Who
was in the form of God, must in His self-revelation present Himself to
us in the exact aspect of the form of God Cf. Phil. ii. 6.. Again, this perverse and insane
delusion derives a further encouragement from the words, I and the
Father are One St. John x. 30.. From the
fact of unity in the same nature they have impiously deduced a
confusion of Persons; their interpretation, that the words signify a
single Power, contradicts the tenour of the passage. For I and
the Father are One does not indicate a solitary God. The use
of the conjunction and shews clearly that more than one Person
is signified; and are requires a plurality of subject.
Moreover, the One is not incompatible with a birth. Its
sense is, that the Two Persons have the one nature in common. The
One is inconsistent with difference; the are with
identity.