It need scarcely be said, that ‘perfect from perfect’ is a symbol on which the Catholics laid stress, Athan. Orat. ii. 35. Epiph. Hær. 76. p. 945. but it admitted of an evasion. An especial reason for insisting on it in the previous centuries had been the Sabellian doctrine, which considered the title ‘Word’ when applied to our Lord to be adequately explained by the ordinary sense of the term, as a word spoken by us. In consequence they insisted on His τὸ τέλειον, perfection, which became almost synonymous with His personality. (Thus the Apollinarians, e.g. denied that our Lord was perfect man, because His person was not human. Athan. contr. Apoll. i. 2.) And Athan. condemns the notion of ‘the λόγος ἐν τῷ θεῷ ἀτελὴς, γεννηθεὶς τέλειος, Orat. iv. 11. The Arians then, as being the especial opponents of the Sabellians, insisted on nothing so much as our Lord’s being a real, living, substantial, Word. vid. Eusebius passim. ‘The Father,’ says Acacius against Marcellus, ‘begat the Only-begotten, alone alone, and perfect perfect; for there is nothing imperfect in the Father, wherefore neither is there in the Son, but the Son’s perfection is the genuine offspring of His perfection, and superperfection.’ ap. Epiph. Hær. 72. 7. Τέλειος then was a relative word, varying with the subject matter, vid. Damasc. F. O. i. 8. p. 138. and when the Arians said that our Lord was perfect God, they meant, ‘perfect, in that sense in which He is God’—i.e. as a secondary divinity.—Nay, in one point of view, holding as they did no real condescension or assumption of a really new state, they would use the term of His divine Nature more freely than the Catholics sometimes had. ‘Nor was the Word,’ says Hippolytus, ‘before the flesh and by Himself, perfect Son, though being perfect Word, Only-begotten; nor could the flesh subsist by itself without the Word, because that in the Word it has its consistence: thus then He was manifested One perfect Son of God.’ contr. Noet. 15.