28. May the faith of the Gospel ever profit
thus by the rash contentions of the ungodly to defend itself with the
weapons of their attack, and conquering with the arms prepared for its
destruction, prove that the words of the one Spirit are the doctrine of
the one faith! For Christ is none other than He is preached,
namely the true God, and abiding in the glory of the one true
God. Just as He proclaims Himself Lord out of the law, even when
He seems to deny the fact, so in the Gospels He proves Himself the true
God, even when He appears to confess the opposite. To escape the
acknowledgment that He is the true God, the heretics plead that He
said, And this is life eternal, that they should know Thee, the only
true God. and Him Whom Thou didst send, even Jesus Christ St. John xvii. 3.. When He says, Thee, the only true
God, they think He excludes Himself from the reality of God by the
restriction of solitariness; for the only true God cannot be understood
except as a solitary God. It is true the Apostolic faith does not
suffer us to believe in two true Gods, for nothing which is foreign to
the nature of the one God can be put on equality with the truth of that
nature; and there is more than one God in the reality of the one God,
if there exists outside the nature of the only true God a true God of
another kind, not possessing by virtue of His birth the same nature
with Him.