3. And so the arrangement of our treatise
follows closely the order of the objections raised. Since the
next article of their blasphemous and dishonest confession is, We
confess One true God From the beginning
of the Arian Creed, Book iv. § 12., the whole of
this second The first three
books are regarded as preliminary. The direct refutation began
with Book iv. book is devoted
to the question whether the Son of God be true God. For it is
clear that the heretics have ingeniously contrived this arrangement of
first naming One God and then One true God, in order to
detach the Son from the name and nature of God; since the thought must
suggest itself that, truth being inherent in the One God, it must be
strictly confined to Him. And therefore, since it is clear beyond
a doubt that Moses, when he proclaimed the unity of God, meant therein
to assert the Divinity of the Son, let us return to the leading
passages in which his teaching is conveyed, and enquire whether or no
he wishes us to believe that the Son, Who, as he has taught us, is God,
is also true God. It is clear that the truth, or genuineness, of
a thing is a question of its nature and its powers. For instance,
true wheat is that which grows to a head with the beard bristling round
it, which is purged from the chaff and ground to flour, compounded into
a loaf and taken for food, and renders the nature and the uses of
bread. Thus natural powers are the evidence of truth; and let us
see, by this test, whether He, Whom Moses calls God, be true God.
We will defer for the present our discourse concerning this One God,
Who is also true God, lest, if I fail at once to take up their
challenge and uphold the One True God in the two Persons of Father and
of Son, eager and anxious souls be oppressed by dangerous
doubts.