52. Thus God out of regard for human
weakness has not set forth the faith in bare and uncertain
statements. For although the authority of our Lord’s mere
words of itself compelled their acceptance, He nevertheless has
informed our reason by a revelation which explains their meaning, that
we might learn to know His words, I and the Father are
one St. John x. 30., by means of that which was itself the
cause of the unity in question. For in saying that the Father
speaks in His words, and works through His working, and judges through
His judgment, and is seen in His manifestation, and reconciles through
His reconciliation, and abides in Him, while He in turn abides in the
Father,—what more fitting words, I ask, could He have employed in
His teaching to suit the faculties of our reason, that we might believe
in Their unity, than those by which, through the truth of the birth and
the unity of the nature, it is declared that whatever the Son did and
said, the Father said and did in the Son? This says nothing of a
nature foreign to Himself, or added by creation to God, or born into
Godhead by a partition of God, but it betokens the divinity of One Who
by a perfect birth is begotten perfect God, Who has so confident an
assurance of His nature that He says, I in the Father and the Father
in Me Ib. xiv.
11., and again, All
things whatsoever the Father hath are Mine Ib. xvi.
15.. For nought of the Godhead is lacking in Him, in Whose
working and speaking and manifestation God works and speaks and is
beheld. They are not two Gods, Who in their working and words and
manifestation put on a semblance of unity. Neither is He a
solitary God. Who in the works and words and sight of God,
Himself worked and spoke and was seen as God. The Church
understands this. The Synagogue does not believe, philosophy does
not know, that being One of One, Whole of Whole, God and Son, He has
neither by His birth deprived the Father of His completeness, nor
failed to possess the same completeness in Himself by right of His
birth. And whosoever is caught in this folly of unbelief is a
disciple either of the Jews or of the heathen.