are a different nature, a nature that needeth to be saved; they know that they are a different
nature, a nature that needeth to be enlightened. No one says, “I and God are one.” Whatsoever
progress he may make, howsoever he may surpass others in holiness, with how great emin-
ence soever of virtue he may excel, he never saith, “I and God are one;” for if he have excel-
lence, and therefore saith it; by saying it, he loseth what he had.
5. Believe then that the Son is equal with the Father; but yet that the Son is of the Father;
but the Father not of the Son. The Original is with the Father, equality with the Son. For if
He be not equal, He is not a true Son. For what are we saying, Brethren? If He is not equal,
He is less; if He is less, I ask the nature that needeth to be saved, in its misbelief, “how is He
born less?” Answer, Doth He as being less grow or not? If He groweth, then the Father
groweth old. But if He will ever be what He was born; if He was born less, He will continue
less; with this His loss He will be perfect; born perfect with this loss of the Father’s Form,
He is never to attain to the Father’s Form. Thus do ye ungodly assail4182 the Son; thus do
ye heretics blaspheme the Son. What then saith the Catholic faith? The Son is God, of God
the Father; God the Father, not God of the Son. But God the Son equal with the Father, Born
equal; not Born less, not made equal, but Born equal. What the Father is, That is He also
who was born. Was the Father ever without the Son? God forbid! Take away your “ever,”
where there is no time. The Father always, the Son always. The Father without beginning
of time, the Son without beginning of time; the Father never before the Son, the Father
never without the Son. But yet because the Son is God of God the Father, and the Father
God, but not of God the Son; let not the honouring of the Son in the Father displease us.
For the honouring of the Son giveth honour to the Father, it diminisheth not His Own Di-
vinity.
6. Because then I was speaking of what I had brought forward, “And I knew,” saith He,
“that His commandment is everlasting life.”4183 Mark, Brethren, what I am saying; “I know
that His commandment is everlasting life.” And we read in the same John concerning Christ,
“He is The True God and Everlasting Life.”4184 If the Father’s commandment is “everlasting
Life,” and Christ the Son Himself is “everlasting Life;” the Son is Himself the Father’s
Commandment. For how is not That the Father’s Commandment, which is the Father’s
Word? Or if you take the commandment given to the Son by the Father in a carnal sense,
as if the Father said to the Son, “I command Thee this, I wish Thee to do that;” in what
words spake He to the Only Word? When He gave commandment to the Word, did He
look for words? That the Father’s Commandment then is “Life everlasting,” and that the
Son Himself is “Life everlasting,” believe ye and receive, believe and understand, for the
4182 Addicitis.
4183 John xii. 50.
4184 1 John v. 20.
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On the words of the Gospel, John xii. 44, ‘He that believeth on me, believeth…