70. Let us now go further, and gather the
truth in conclusion from arguments. For although arguments
usually give place, even to human evidence, i.e. à
priori determinations respecting any matter cannot be maintained if
they are traversed by the statements of eye-witnesses and participators
in the affair.
still, heretic, argue as thou wilt. “Experience teaches
us,” you say, “that the being which generates is prior to
that which is generated.” I answer: Follow our
customary experience through all its departments, and if the rest agree
herewith, I oppose not your claim that your point be granted; but if
there be no such agreement, how can you claim assent on this one point,
when in all the rest you lack support? Seeing, then, that you
call for what is customary, it comes about that the Son, when He was
begotten of the Father, was a little child. You have seen Him an
infant, crying in the cradle. As the years passed, He has gone
forward from strength to strength—for if He was weak with the
weakness of things begotten, He must also have fallen under the
weakness, not only of birth, but of life also.