act remains that Paul
declares it was Christ who was tempted, and Moses makes him the one
eternal and true God. Moreover, Christ was not at that time born; no,
nor were Mary and David. Nevertheless, the apostle plainly says, They
tempted Christ, let us not also tempt him.

8. Certainly enough, then, Christ is the man to whom Moses refers as
God. Thus the testimony of Moses long before is identical with that
of Paul. Though employing different terms, they both confess Christ
as the Son of God, born in eternity of the Father, in the same divine
essence and yet distinct from him. You may call this difference what
you will; we indicate it by the term "person." True, we do not make a
wholly clear explanation of the mystery; we but stammer when speaking
of a "Trinity." But what are we to do? we cannot better the attempt.
So, then, the Father is not the Son, but the Son is born of the
Father in eternity; and the Holy Spirit proceeds from God the Father
and God the Son. Thus there are three persons, and yet but one God.
For what Moses declares concerning God Paul says is spoken of Christ.

9. The same argument substantially Paul employs in Acts 20, 28, when,
blessing the Church of Miletus and exhorting the assembled ministers
concerning their office, he says: "Take heed unto yourselves, and to
all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit hath made you bishops, to
feed the church of the Lord which he purchased with his own blood."
This, too, is a significant text, proving beyond all controversy that
Christ our Lord, who purchased the Church with his blood, is truly
God, and to him the Church belongs. For the apostle plainly asserts
it was God who bought the Church with his blood and that the Church
is his own.

Now, in view of the fact already established that the persons are
distinct, and of the further statement that God has purchased the
Church through his own blood, we inevitably conclude that Christ our
Saviour is true God, born of the Father in eternity, and that he also
became man and was born of the Virgin Mary in time.

10. If such blood--the material, tangible, crimson blood, shed by a
real man--is truly to be called the blood of God, then he who shed it
must be actually God, an eternal, almighty person in the one divine
essence. In that case we truly can say the blood flowing from the
side of the crucified One and spilled upon the ground is not merely
the blood of an ordinary man, but God's own. Paul does not indulge i