VIII. But since we do not admit your first
division, which declares that there is no mean between Begotten and
Unbegotten, at once, along with your magnificent division, away go your
Brothers and your Grandsons, as when the first link of an intricate
chain is broken they are broken with it, and disappear from your system
of divinity. For, tell me, what position will you assign to that
which Proceeds, which has started up between the two terms of your
division, and is introduced by a better Theologian than you, our
Saviour Himself? Or perhaps you have taken that word out of your
Gospels for the sake of your Third Testament, The Holy Ghost, which
proceedeth from the Father; John xv. 26. “It did not fall within
this Father’s (Greg. Naz.) province to develop the doctrine of
the Procession. He is content to shew that the Spirit was not
Generated, seeing that according to Christ’s own teaching He
Proceeds from the Father. The question of His relation to the Son
is alien to S. Gregory Nazianzen’s purpose; nor does it seem to
have once been raised in the great battle between Arianism and
Catholicity which was fought out at Constantinople during
Gregory’s Episcopate” (Swete on the Procession, p.
107). Who, inasmuch as He
proceedeth from That Source, is no Creature; and inasmuch as He is not
Begotten is no Son; and inasmuch as He is between the Unbegotten and
the Begotten is God. And thus escaping the toils of your
syllogisms, He has manifested himself as God, stronger than your
divisions. What then is Procession? Do you tell me what is
the Unbegottenness of the Father, and I will explain to you the
physiology of the Generation of the Son and the Procession of the
Spirit, and we shall both of us be frenzy-stricken for prying into the
mystery of God. Ecclus.
i. 2. And who are
we to do these things, we who cannot even see what lies at our feet, or
number the sand of the sea, or the drops of rain, or the days of
Eternity, much less enter into the Depths of God, and supply an account
of that Nature which is so unspeakable and transcending all
words?