VII.  Will you then let me play a little upon this word Father, for your example encourages me to be so bold?  The Father is God either willingly or unwillingly; and how will you escape from your own excessive acuteness?  If willingly, when did He begin to will?  It could not have been before He began to be, for there was nothing prior to Him.  Or is one part of Him Will and another the object of Will?  If so, He is divisible.  So the question arises, as the result of your argument, whether He Himself is not the Child of Will.  And if unwillingly, what compelled Him to exist, and how is He God if He was compelled—and that to nothing less than to be God?  How then was He begotten, says my opponent.  How was He created, if as you say, He was created?  For this is a part of the same difficulty.  Perhaps you would say, By Will and Word.  You have not yet solved the whole difficulty; for it yet remains for you to shew how Will and Word gained the power of action.  For man was not created in this way.