30. I will ask this objector in reply, whether he
remembers my calling Him anything else than born, and whether I did not
say that existence before times eternal and birth have the same meaning
in the case of Him that was. For the birth of One already
existing is not really birth, but a self-wrought change through birth,
and the eternal existence of One Who is born means that in His birth He
is prior to any conception of time, and that there is no room for the
mind to suppose that at any time He was unborn. And so an eternal
birth before times eternal is not the same as existence before being
born. But to have been born always before times eternal excludes
the possibility of having had no existence before birth.