instance, who, while
calling the Son God, declares Him to be vastly inferior to the Father
and of another substance. The Sabellians also have dared to affirm that
there are not three separate Persons but only One, saying that the
Father is the same as the Son and the Son the same as the Father and the
Holy Spirit the same as the Father and the Son; and so declaring that
there is but one divine Person expressed by different names.

The Manichaeans, too, who allow two coeternal and contrary principles,
do not believe in the Only-begotten Son of God. For they consider it a
thought unworthy of God that He should have a Son, since they entertain
the very carnal reflection that inasmuch as[47] human generation arises
from the mingling of two bodies, it is unworthy to hold a notion of this
sort in respect of the divine nature; whereas such a view finds no
sanction in the Old Testament and absolutely[48] none in the New. Yea,
their error which refuses this notion also refuses the Virgin birth of
the Son, because they would not have the God's nature defiled by the
man's body. But enough of this for the present; the points will be
presented in the proper place as the proper arrangement demands.

The divine nature then, abiding from all eternity and unto all eternity
without any change, by the exercise of a will known only to Himself,
determined of Himself to form the world, and brought it into being when
it was absolutely naught, nor did He produce it from His own substance,
lest it should be thought divine by nature, nor did He form it after any
model, lest it should be thought that anything had already come into
being which helped His will by the existence of an independent nature,
and that there should exist something that had not been made by Him and
yet existed; but by His Word He brought forth the heavens, and created
the earth[49] that so He might make natures worthy of a place in heaven,
and also fit earthly things to earth. But although in heaven all things
are beautiful and arranged in due order, yet one part of the heavenly
creation which is universally termed angelic,[50] seeking more than
nature and the Author of Nature had granted them, was cast forth from
its heavenly habitation; and because the Creator did not wish the roll
of the angels, that is of the heavenly city whose citizens the angels
are, to be diminished, He formed man out of the earth a