4. For this mad heresy does deny; it denies
the mystery of the true faith by means of statements borrowed from our
confession, which it employs for its own godless ends. The
confession of their misbelief, which I have already cited in an earlier
book, begins thus:—”We confess one God, alone unmade, alone
eternal, alone unoriginate, alone true, alone possessing immortality,
alone good, alone mighty.” Thus they parade the opening
words of our own confession, which runs, “One God, alone unmade
and alone un-originate,” that this semblance of truth may serve
as introduction to their blasphemous additions. For, after a
multitude of words in which an equally insincere devotion to the Son is
expressed, their confession continues, “God’s perfect
creature, but not as one of His other creatures, His Handiwork, but not
as His other works.” And again, after an interval in which
true statements are occasionally interspersed in order to veil their
impious purpose of alleging, as by sophistry they try to prove, that He
came into existence out of nothing, they add, “He, created and
established before the worlds, did not exist before He was
born.” And lastly, as though every point of their false
doctrine, that He is to be regarded neither as Son nor as God, were
guarded impregnably against assault, they continue:—“As to
such phrases as from Him, and from the womb, and I went out from the
Father and am come, if they be understood to denote that the Father
extends a part and, as
it were, a development of that one substance, then the Father will be
of a compound nature and divisible and changeable and corporeal,
according to them; and thus, as far as their words go, the incorporeal
God will be subjected to the properties of matter.” But, as
we are now about to cover the whole ground once more, employing this
time the language of the Gospels as our weapon against this most
godless heresy, it has seemed best to repeat here, in the sixth book,
the whole heretical document, though we have already given a full copy
of it in the fourth Reading
quarto instead of primo; but cf. v. § 3., in order that
our opponents may read it again, and compare it, point by point, with
our reply, and so be forced, however reluctant and argumentative, by
the clear teaching of the Evangelists and Apostles, to recognise the
truth. The heretical confession is as follows:—