17. My soul has been burning to answer these
insane attacks. I call to mind that the very centre of a saving
faith is the belief not merely in God, but in God as a Father; not
merely in Christ, but in Christ as the Son of God; in Him, not as a
creature, but as God the Creator, born of God. My prime object is
by the clear assertions of prophets and evangelists to refute the
insanity and ignorance of men who use the unity of God (in itself a
pious and profitable confession) as a cloak for their denial either
that in Christ God was born, or else that He is very God. Their
purpose is to isolate a solitary God at the heart of the faith by
making Christ, though mighty, only a creature; because, so they allege,
a birth of God widens the believer’s faith into a trust in more
gods than one. But we, divinely taught to confess neither two
Gods nor yet a solitary God, will adduce the evidence of the Gospels
and the prophets for our confession of God the Father and God the Son,
united, not confounded, in our faith. We will not admit Their
identity nor allow, as a compromise, that Christ is God in some
imperfect sense; for God, born of God, cannot be the same as His
Father, since He is His Son, nor yet can He be different in nature.