15. One concise proclamation of our teaching, an
inscription intelligible to all, is this people, which so sincerely
worships the Trinity, that it would sooner sever anyone from this life,
than sever one of the three from the Godhead: of one mind, of
equal zeal, and united to one another, to us and to the Trinity by
unity of doctrine. Briefly to run over its details: That
which is without beginning, and is the beginning, and is with the
beginning, is one God. For the nature of that which is without
beginning does not consist in being without beginning or being
unbegotten, for the nature of anything lies, not in what it is not but
in what it is. It is the assertion of what is, not the denial of
what is not. And the Beginning is not, because it is a beginning,
separated from that which has no beginning. For its beginning is
not its nature, any more than the being without beginning is the nature
of the other. For these are the accompaniments of the nature, not
the nature itself. That again which is with that which has no
beginning, and with the beginning, is not anything else than what they
are. Now, the name of that which has no beginning is the Father,
and of the Beginning the Son, and of that which is with the Beginning,
the Holy Ghost, and the three have one Nature—God. And the
union is the Father from Whom and to Whom the order of Persons runs its
course, not so as to be confounded, but so as to be possessed, without
distinction of time, of will, or of power. For these things in
our case produce a plurality of individuals, since each of them is
separate both from every other quality, and from every other individual
possession of the same quality. But to Those who have a simple
nature, and whose essence is the same, the term One belongs in its
highest sense.