30. While we were thus engaged, there
suddenly arose a cloud full of hail, with destructive roar,
overwhelming every Church upon which it burst and seized: an
Emperor, An Emperor,
Valens. most fond of gold
and most hostile to Christ, infected with these two most serious
diseases, insatiate avarice and blasphemy; a persecutor in succession
to the persecutor, and, in succession to the apostate, not indeed an
apostate, though no better to Christians, or rather, to the more devout
and pure party of Christians, who worship the Trinity, which I call the
only true devotion and saving doctrine. For we do not measure out
the Godhead into portions, nor banish from Itself by unnatural
estrangements the one and unapproachable Nature; nor cure one evil by
another, destroying the godless confusion of Sabellius by a more
impious severance and division; which was the error of Arius, whose
name declares his madness, Madness, cf.
ii. 37, Note. the disturber and
destroyer of a great part of the Church. For he did not honour
the Father, by dishonouring His offspring with his unequal degrees of
Godhead. But we recognize one glory Glory.
The word δόξα
means both “doctrine” and “glory.” of
the Father, the equality of the Only-begotten; and one glory of the
Son, that of the Spirit. And we hold that, to subordinate any of
the Three, is to destroy the whole. For we worship and
acknowledge Them as Three in their properties,
Properties. ἰδιότητες.
Petav. de Trin. iv. Proem. § 2 gives other Greek equivalent
terms. The Latin terms are “notiones” (S.
Thom. Aq. Summa. I. xxxii. qu. 2), “proprietates” or
relationes. They denote those relative “attributes
ad intra” which distinguish the Persons, if they do not actually
constitute the Personality of each of the Three Divine Persons.
They are five in number, Unbegottenness, Paternity, Filiation, active
and passive Spiration. Perhaps the nearest English equivalent is
“characteristic (or distinctive) relations.”—Cf.
Orat. xlii. 15.
but One in their Godhead. He however had no such idea, being
unable to look up, but being
debased by those who led him, he dared to debase along with himself
even the Nature of the Godhead, and became a wicked creature reducing
Majesty to bondage, and aligning with creation the uncreated and
timeless Nature.