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1999 (1) St. Cyril on 4th Gospel (introduction)

INTRODUCATION TO 

ST. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA'S 

COMMENTARIES ON 

THE FOURTH GOSPEL 

Preface, Chapter I & II 

by G. O. Mazur 


Introduction 


The biographies which we inherit of St. Cyril of Alexandria are not, by comparison to many other of the Church Fathers of his epoch, as extensive or as polished as many scholars today would hope. It is true that Evagrius Scholasticus does give an excellent historical account of the Christological controversies which started in late antiquity, yet these are not read with the same zeal with which the histories of Eusebius are read. For many readers, historians and scholars it is as if the debates and discussions of the first Ecumenical Councils settling decisively the Orthodox theology of the doctrine of the Trinity, could not easily find a rival to sustain their interest. Still, in every way, St. Cyril of Alexandria stood in importance to received Christian doctrine with historical status in no way inferior to the great fathers of the Church in its ecumenical period. 


It is true that by the time of St. Cyril and the Christological debates of his time the Ecumenical Councils were entering their fourth and fifth convocations. The earlier councils in which St. Athanasius, St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and St. Gregory Nazianzen formed a backbone of support with their previous writings, had established the essential principles as they are recorded for us in the Apostles Creed. The first part of the Creed which emphasized the monotheistic centrality of faith was written at the First Council, while the second half, emphasizing the respective roles of each of the persons of the Trinity, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, was written at the Second Council. This was the received doctrine which was accepted fully by St. Cyril of Alexandria without question. But the historical struggles for Christian doctrine were still very much a reality for him. Although much had formally been settled at the early Ecumenical Councils, many of the dissenting groups continued to prey upon the lack of theological education in numerous cities and communities throughout the Church's domain. Both schismatic and heretical groups continued to attract timid believers and seduce the spiritually weak to their own causes which were sometimes political, sometimes misguided, but often simply mischievous or dilatory in their intentions. Always these would sway away from Orthodox doctrine towards seductive and usually excessively subjective viewpoints which could stir a local following, but only rarely emerge beyond such provinces. Occasionally, more serious threats would mount, and by the time of St. Cyril of Alexandria these became serious threats indeed when significant breaks were found among the Church members themselves in the central Church matter of how to describe the very nature of the Son. 


The decisive doctrine of the Trinity had placed the importance of the Son as in no way inferior to the Father or the Holy Spirit. Still, there emerged more direct questions about the Son within the Trinity. The earlier fathers, like the Cappadocians, simply could not have anticipated the eventual emergence of these questions into historical reality. These differences which emerged turned out to be far from minor, and even came to seduce Church authorities of high standing at the time following the first three Ecumenical Councils. It is with great fortune that St. Cyril of Alexandria was present at this time to be able to launch himself into a selfless and passionate defense of Church doctrine which had not know a rival threat since the powerful heresiarch Arius, who had attempted to undermine the doctrine of the Trinity and attempted to wrestle control of Church Doctrine away from the Church Fathers of the first Ecumenical Council. As those earlier Fathers came to defend and preserve Christian monotheism and the doctrine of the Trinity from corruption, so it fell to St. Cyril to protect and proclaim the doctrine of the nature and essence of the Son. In a time when many believed the Son to be either fully physical in his reality, and many others insisted that He was always and only fully divine, it was St. Cyril of Alexandria who properly inferred that the essence of the Son incorporated both as a statement of the true reality of the Son. This doctrinal truth proclaiming the dyophysite nature of the Son, his two (dyo, duo) simultaneous natures, was the task of St. Cyril. And its detractors, especially among the monophysites, were numerous and gravely intent and gravely equipped to war, both polemically and by treachery, against St. Cyril and against the Orthodox Church. Whence came St. Cyril's greatness among the Church Fathers of the first five hundred years of the Church. 


Among the most important studies which St. Cyril left to his students at the time and to the generations of the Church which would follow him, are his extensive Commentaries on the Gospel of John. These were of the Gospel in its entirety and in the Greek ran into hundreds of pages of penetrating insights, sometimes exegetical, sometimes pastoral, sometimes historical, but always of a strength which was the equal of the earlier Church Fathers of the first three Ecumenical Councils and in no way inferior to the writings of St. Augustine of Hippo. The preface and first two chapters of St. Cyril's commentary on the Fourth Gospel are presented in translation in the following pages as an important record of the irreplaceable place which St. Cyril occupies among the Church Fathers. 


Exegetical Commentary on
the Gospel according to St. John 

of our Holy Father St. Cyril 

Archbishop of Alexandria 


Preface to the First Chapter 


In perfect parity with the truth, and inspired by God is the understanding of the holy Evangelists, from the splendor of their power to behold, as from some lofty mountain-peak and light-tower, on all sides observing what is of profit to his audience, and tracking with intent zeal whatever may seem to be of profit to those who thirst after the truth of the Divine dogmas and with good purpose search after the understanding that is enclosed within the Divine Scriptures, and not in those who search too curiously, and take pleasure in the many-tangled wiles of reasoning, rather than rejoice in the truth, does the Spirit make His revelation, since in the truth, does the Spirit make His revelation. Neither does He enter into a malicious soul, nor otherwise does he suffer his precious pearls to be rolled at the feet of swine. But with great pleasure does He have fellowship with purer minds, as having a more guileless motion, and shunning superfluous subtleties, for who are especially fearful of deviating from the straight and royal road. For he that walketh simply walketh surely, as states Solomon. 


But while the holy Evangelists have a marvelous exactness in writing (for it is not they that speak, as the Savior says, but the Spirit of the Father which is in them), reasonably may one grant that the Book of John has been composed beyond all marvel, looking both to the loftiness of his thoughts, the keenness of his intellect, and the constant and concise accumulation of conceptions. For fellow charioteers are the Gospel writers one with another in the exposition of the Divine dogmas, and charging as it were from the starting line they guide other charioteers to one goal. But a diverse fashion of speech is central to them, and they appear to me to resemble persons, who are ordered to come together into one city, but do not care to approach it by one and the same beaten road. Thus one may see the other Evangelists with precision giving the account of our Savior's genealogy in the Flesh, and bringing down successively those from Abraham unto Joseph, or again tracing up those from Joseph to Adam. But we find the blessed John not caring to be repetitive, but with a most fervent and enkindled intellect trying to lay hold of those very things that are revealed to the human mind, and daring to explain the unspeakable and unutterable generation of God the Word. For he knew that the glory of God often defies speech, and the dignity befitting God is greater than our conception and utterance, and it is difficult to articulate the often inscrutable properties of the Divine Nature. 


But since it was necessary in some way to measure heaven as if with a ruler, and to suffer the insufficiency of human nature to approach that which is by all accounts unattainable and hard to explain (that the approach might not be opened up for those who teach otherwise to confront the more simple) in that no voice of the saints who have been eyewitnesses and ministers of the word respecting their trepidations, comes close to the very essence of the divine dogmas, crying aloud, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God, The Same was in the beginning with God. 


But I think that those who study the Holy Scriptures ought to accept all writings that are honest and good and free from harm. For thus collating the various thoughts of many and collecting them into one scope and understanding, they will be prudent in knowledge, and imitating the scrupulous bee, will compact the sweet honeycomb of the Spirit. 


Some then of the most learned, say that after our Savior's cross and ascension into heaven, certain unseemly teachers, falling like beasts on the Savior's flocks and unsettling them, speak only selfishly, as it is written. And not out of the mouth of the Lord, but rather, not merely out of their own heart, but out of the teachings of their own father, I mean the devil. For if no one can call Jesus anathema, but for Beelzebub, how is what we say of false teachers to be denied? What things then do these men promulgate against their own fate? They ignorantly and impiously affirmed that the only-begotten Word of God, the eternal light, in whom we live, was then first called into being, when He was born a man of the holy virgin, and taking upon Himself this our common form, showed Himself upon earth, as it is written, and conversed with men. On those then who are thus disposed, and who dare to slander the ineffable and eternal generation of the Son, the word of the prophet comes heavily, saying that, But draw near hither, ye sons of the sorceress, the seed of the adulteress and the whore, against whom do ye sport yourselves, against whom make ye a wide mouth and draw out the tongue, not bringing forth good things out of a good heart, but spewing forth the venom of the blood-defiled serpent, of whom says the Psalmist unto the one God that is over all, Thou brakest the heads of the serpents in the waters. 


But since there was disturbance in regard to these things among them that had believed, and the ill of the scandal thereof was consuming the souls of the simpler (for some drawn away from the true doctrines by their prattle imagined that the Word was then only called to the beginning of Being when he became man), those of the believers who were wiser, being assembled together, came to the disciple of the Savior (I mean this John) and declared these slanders, unfolding to him the prattle of them that teach otherwise, and urged that he would both strenuously assist them with illumination through the Spirit, and rescue those who were already within the devil's meshes. 


The disciple, grieving then over them that were lost and corrupted in mind, and conscious of the continuing threat, undertakes himself to making the book, while leaving the more human side, the genealogy of the legal and natural birth according to the flesh, he left to the other Evangelists to tell at fuller length, himself single-mindedly springs upon the slander of those who are introducing such things, saying, In the beginning was the Word. 



Chapter One 


That The Only-Begotten is Everlasting and Before the Ages 


What do the heretics say to this (namely, In the beginning was the Word) who introduce to us the Son, as one recently born and recently died, in order that the Son may no longer be believed to be even God at all. As, says the Divine Scripture, there shall no new God be in you. How then is the Son not new, if he were begotten only recently. How did the Son not speak falsely when he said to the Jews, Verily I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am. For it is plain and confessed by all, that many ages after the blessed Abraham was Christ born of the holy virgin. How then will the words, 'was in the beginning,' remain and come to anything, if the only-begotten came into being only recently? See, I pray, by the following arguments the great absurdity yielded by this cutting short the eternal being of the Son, and imagining that He came into being only recently. 

But this same word of the evangelist shall be more finely reconsidered below. 


In the Beginning was the Word. 


Than the beginning is there nothing older, if it has, retained to itself, the definition of the beginning (for a beginning of beginning there cannot be), or it will wholly depart from being in truth a beginning, if something else be imagined before it and arise before it. Otherwise, if anything can precede what is truly beginning, our language respecting it will recede indefinitely, another beginning ever rearing its head, and making secondary the one under investigation. 


There will then be no beginning of beginning, according to responsible reasoning, but the account of it will recede into the dubious and incomprehensible. And since its infinitesimal retraction has no end, and reaches to the limit of the ages, the Son will be found to have been not made in time, but rather invisibly existing with the Father, for He 'was in the beginning.' But if the Son was in the beginning, what mind, tell me, can ignore the force of the was. When will the was stay as if at its terminus, seeing that it persistently runs before the pursuing reasoning, and springs forward before the conception that follows it. 


Astonishment stricken are they when the prophet Isaiah says, Who shall declare His generation, for His Life is lifted from the earth. For certainly lifted from the earth is the tale of the generation of the only- begotten, that is, it is above all understanding of those who are on the earth and above all reason, so as to be in short inexplicable. But if it is above our mind and speech, how will He be originate, seeing that our understanding is not powerless to clearly define both as to time and manner things originate. 


To look in another way at the same, In the Beginning was the Word. 


It is not possible to take beginning of the only-begotten, to be understood in any way dealing with time, seeing that the Son is before all time and has His Being before the ages, and, yet more, the divine nature shuns such a boundary. For it (that which shuns the limit) will be ever the same, according to what is sung in the Psalms, But Thou are the Same and Thy years shall have no end. From what beginning then measured in respect to time and dimension will the Son proceed, who does not answer to any terminus, in that He is God in essence, and therefore cries, I am the Life? For no beginning will ever be conceived of by itself that does not look to its own end, since beginning is so called in reference to end, end again in reference to beginning.  But the beginning we are pointing to in this instance is that relating to time and dimension. Hence, since the Son is older than the ages themselves, He will be free of any generation in time, and He always was in the Father as in a source, according to that which He Himself said, I came forth from the Father and am come. The Father then being considered as the Source, the Word was in the Son, being His wisdom, power, express image, radiance, and likeness. If there was no time when the Father was without Word, wisdom, direct image, radiance, and likeness, it is needful to confess also that the Son Who is all these to the everlasting Father, is everlasting. For how at all is the Son the direct image, how the exact likeness, except that He be plainly formed after that beauty, whose likeness the Son also is. 


Nor is there any objection to conceiving of the Son being in the Father as in a source, for the word source here only means the 'whence.' But the Son is in the Father, and of the Father, not as made externally, nor in time, but being in the essence of the Father and flashing forth from Him, as from the sun flashes forth its radiance, or as from fire its innate heat. For in such examples, one may see one thing generated of another, but still perpetually co-existing and inseparable, so that one of them cannot exist without the other, and yet preserve the true condition of its own essence. For how can there be sun which does not radiate, or how radiance without sun being within to irradiate it; how fire, if it have not heat, whence heat save from fire, or from some other thing not removed from the essential quality of fire. As then in these, the inexistence of the things that are of them does not take away their coexistence, but indicates the things generated always keeping pace with their generators and possessed of one essence with them, so too is it with the Son and the Father. For even if the Son is conceived and said to be in the Father and of the Father, the Son will not come before us as alien and strange and a being second to the Father, but as always in Him, and shining forth from Him, according to the ineffable mode of the divine generation. 


But that God the Father is spoken of by the saints too as the beginning of the Son in the sense only of 'whence,' hear the Psalmist through the Holy Spirit foretelling the second appearance of our Savior and saying as to the Son, With Thee the Beginning in the Day of Thy Power in the beauty of Thy Saints. For the day of the Son's power is that when He shall judge the world and render to every one according to his works. Certainly shall the Son then come, Himself in the Father, and having in Himself the Father, the so to say 'unbeginning Beginning' of His Nature in regard only to the 'whence,' by reason of His being of the Father. 


In the Beginning was the Word. 


Unto many and various ideas does our discourse respecting the above elaborated word 'beginning' diversify itself, always zealous to capture profitable things, and after the manner of a hound, tracking the true apprehension of the divine dogmas, and exactitude in the mysteries. For search, says the Savior, the Holy Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and they are they which testify of Me. The Blessed Evangelist, then, seems here to name the Father Arche (Sovereignty), that is the power over all, that the divine reality which is over all may be shown, having under its feet every thing which is originate, and borne above those things which are by it called into being. 


In this Arche that is above all, and over all, was the Word, not with all things under its feet, but apart from all things; being in it by its essence as its co-eternal fruit, having the essence of Him who begat His, as it were - the most ancient place of all. Wherefore the Son begotten free of the free Father, will with him possess the sovereignty over all. What additionally will be the essential argument in this, it is important to see. 


Portentously, be certain, as stated above, having asserted that the Word of God was then first called into being, when taking the temple that is of the holy virgin the Son became man for us. What then will be 



the consequence, if the Son's nature be thus, or originate and made, and of like nature with all things else, to which may be added birth out of non-being, between its past, history, and its future? The potentiality of the present is borne in energy which is by the applications and action of force. The movement of potentialities into and the name and fact of servitude, are rightfully and truly predicated. For what things created can with impunity escape servitude under the God That is Lord of all, and what does not stoop under the sovereignty, power and lordship that is over all, which Solomon himself too signifies to us when he says, For the throne of Sovereignty is established with righteousness. For ever-righteousness is the Throne of the Sovereignty, which is over all. And of this throne of which we are now speaking, hear God saying, by one of the Saints, The Heaven is My Throne. Poised for righteousness is the heaven, that is, the holy spirits that are in the heavens.


Therefore one must confess that the Son is with the rest of the creatures subject to God the Father, as having the position of a servant, and together with the rest falling under the authority of the Arche, if He be, according to them, late in birth and one of those who have been made in time. Of necessity does the Blessed Evangelist spring with energy on those who teach this, and withdraw the Son from all bondage. He shows that He is of the essence that is free and sovereign over all, and declares that He is in Him in reality saying, In the beginning was the Word.


But to the word Arche he aptly annexes the was, that the Son may be thought of as not only of renown, but also before the ages. For the word was is here placed to urge the cogitation of the thinker to some deep and incomprehensible generation, the ineffable generation that is outside of time. For that was, spoken indefinitely at what point will it rest, its essence being ever to push forward before the pursuing mind, and whatever reference it has, that it makes its starting point? The Word was then in the Arche, that is in Sovereignty over all things, and possessing the dignity of the Lord, as being by essence from it. But if this be true, how is the Son any longer originate or made? And where the was wholly is, how will the 'was not' come in, or what place will it have at all as regards the Son? 



Chapter Two 


That the Son being Consubstantial with the Father is also God in His Own Person, even as also the Father. 


And the Word was with God. 


Having sufficiently shown as anachronistic and obscured those who hold such opinions, and having, by saying In the beginning was the Word, closed every loophole to those who say that the Son is of the things that are not, and having discounted the nonsense in these words, he goes to another related and most perverse heresy. And like a good gardener, delights much in the toils of the mattock, and girding his loins, and in his working-dress, gives all diligence to a presentable garden free from the unseemliness of thorns, and continues to prune the garden, so the blessed John too, bearing in his mind the quick and powerful and most sharp word of God (Heb. 4:12) and considering with keenest glance and clearest attention the bitter shoots of the deviance of those who think otherwise, comes upon them so to speak at a run, and with mighty resolution cuts them off on every side, to those who read his books responsibly. 


For now again I pray, observe the vigilance of him who bears the Holy Spirit within. He taught in the foregoing, that the Word was in Arche, that is, in God the Father, as we said. But since, with the eye of his understanding illumined, he was not ignorant (as we may suppose) that certain ones would arise, saying in their great ignorance that the Father and Son are "one and the same," and distinguishing the Holy Trinity only by name and ignoring Their several Persons, he deems it necessary to arm himself too against this heresy as already confronting him, which was mooted at that time, or about to be so, for its destruction and so that the Father should be conceived of as in truth Father and not Son, the Son again to be Himself Son, not Father, as the word of truth is, by the side of In the beginning was the Word he states directly that And the Word was with God, everywhere adding of necessity the was on account of His Generation before the ages, yet by saying that the Word was with God, showing that the Son is One, having existence by Himself, God the Father again, with Whom was the Word, Another. For how can that which is one in number be conceived of as itself with itself, or beside itself? But that the reasoning of the heretics about these things also will be found to be without learning, we will teach by the considerations below, making an exact test of the questions regarding it. 


Proof by demonstration and Scripture testimonies, that
the Father is in His Own Person, and the Son likewise,
the Holy Spirit being counted with Them as God, even 

though nothing is for the present
inquired regarding Him. 


Consubstantial is the Son with the Father and the Father with the Son, wherefore They arrive at an unchangeable Likeness, so that the Father is seen in the Son, the Son in the Father, and Each is manifest in the Other, even as the Saviour Himself says, He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father, and again, I am in the Father and the Father in Me. But even though He be in the Father, and have again the Father in Him, Himself full well, as has been already said, perfectly exact unto the Form of Him Who begat Him, and depicting again in Himself without any shortcoming the Father whence he is, therefore will He not be deprived of His separate existence, nor will the Father lose His own special Being, but neither will the surpassing Likeness and Resemblance work any confusion of Persons, so that the Father Who begat and the Son Who is Begotten of Him should be considered as one in number. Sameness of Nature will be evidenced of Both, yet the Individual Existence of Each will surely follow, so that simultaneously the Father should be conceived of as indeed Father, and the Son as Son. For thus, the Holy Spirit being numbered with them and counted as God, the Holy and Adorable Trinity will have Its Proper Fullness. 


Another. If the Son Himself is Father too, what place has the distinction of names. For if He begat not at all, why is He called Father. How Son, if He were not begotten of the Father. For the Names ask as of necessity such a pertinent question. But since the Divine Scriptures preach that the Son was Begotten, and the truth is so, He has therefore an existence by Himself. The Father too is again by Himself, if indeed that which is begotten is plainly one thing from another as regards that which begets. 


Another. The blessed Paul writing his letter to the Philippians says of the Son, Who being in the Form of God, thought it not robbery to be Equal with God (Phil. 2:64). Who then is He Who would not have that His being Equal with God should be thought robbery? For must not one say that One is He Who is in the Form of God, Another again He Whose Form it was? But this is clear and confessed by all. Therefore not one and the same in number are Father and Son, but of distinct Being and beheld in One Another, according to sameness of Essence, even if They be One of One, to wit the Son of the Father. 


Another. I and My Father are One, said the Saviour, as knowing that is that He Himself has a separate existence and the Father too. But if the truth of the fact be not so, why did He not, keeping what belongs to oneness, say, I and My Father am One? But since He explains what He means by the plural number clearly He overthrows the surmise of those who think otherwise. For we are will not be reasonably taken as one.


Another. At the creation of man the voice of God is introduced saying, Let Us make man in Our Image, after Our likeness (Gen. 1:26). If then the amplitude, if I may so call it, of the Holy Trinity is contracted into a One in number, and they impiously take away from the Father and the Son Their separate Existence, who is he who says, and to whom, Let us make man in Our Image. For He ought instead to say, if it be as they in their nonsense say, Let us make man in my image, after my likeness. But now the writer of the Book, not saying this indeed, but allotting the creation to the plural number and adding Our image, proclaims clearly the enumeration of the Holy Trinity to be above One. 


Another. If the Son is the Brightness of the Father as Light of Light (Heb. 1:3), how is He not other than Him, as of distinct Being. For that which is the embrightened, is so in very deed from other, that namely which brightens it, and not itself from itself.


Another. If the Son showing Himself of the Essence of God the Father says again, I came forth from the Father and am come, again I go to the Father. How then will He not be Other than the Father in Person and number, when all reason persuades us to conceive of that which proceeds from ought as other than that from whence it proceeded. Incorrect therefore is the contrary argument.


Another. Believing in God the Father, in His Only-Begotten Son, and in the Holy Spirit we are justified. Wherefore the Savior Himself too enjoins his own disciplines saying Go ye therefore and teach all nations baptizing them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Matt. 28:19). If then the difference of that Names is to contribute nothing to our understanding, but when one says the Father, he means the Son, and in naming the Son makes mention of the Father, what need was there of requiring that the believers should be baptized not into Unity but into Trinity? But since the tale of the Divine Nature runs forth into the number three, it is I suppose wholly manifest to all that Each of those so numbered exists in His Own Person, but by reason of there being no change in the Nature, It arrives at One Godhead and has the same worship.


Another. The Divine Scripture says that the cities of the Sodomites were burned by the anger of God, and explaining how the Divine wrath was brought upon them, and clearly describing the mode of the destruction, The Lord, it says, rained upon Sodom brimstone and fire from the Lord, since this too is the portion of the cup most befitting those who commit such sins. What Lord then from what Lord sent the fire on and consumed the cities of the Sodomites? It is clear that it was the Father Who worketh all things through the Son, since He is too His Might and His Arm, Who caused Him to rain the fire upon the Sodomites. Since therefore the Lord sends the fire from the Lord upon them, how is not the Father Other, in respect to His own Being, than the Son, and the Son again than the Father? For the One is here signified as being from One.


Another. Moved by prophetic spirit, and through it foreknowing things to come, the blessed Psalmist had perceived that the human race could not be saved otherwise, except by the singular appearance of the Son of God, Who is able easily to change all things to whatsoever He will. Wherefore he besought that the Son might be sent to us, as alone able to save those who were under subjection and oppression of the devil, and said, as though to God the Father, O send out Thy Light and Thy Truth. What then the Light is, and what the Truth is, hear the Son Himself saying, I am the Light and I am the Truth. But if the Light and the Truth of the Father, that is the Son, be sent to us, how is He not Other than He, as far as His own Being, even if He be One with Him as regards Sameness of Essence. For if any imagine that it is not so, but that Father and Son are one and the Same, why does not he who bears within him the Spirit make the fashion of his prayer different and cry, Come to us, O Light and Truth. But since he says O send out, plainly he knew that One is the Sender, Another the Sent, by the mode of the sending conceived of as befits God. 


Another. The Divine Scriptures say, that through the Son were made all things that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible (Col. 1:16), and thus believing, we the worshippers of the truth go on our way with correct understanding, and within the dogmas of piety. Let us then scrutinize the expression through the Son, and examine what sense it gives us. It is clear that it would have us conceive of the Doer and Worker as One, Him through Whom all things are wrought as Another. For the expression through the Son gives, as of necessity, a sort of exhibition of two Persons. Else let them say how the words through the Son, in His being said to do anything, will rightly and truly admit the one in number, if none other be conceived of with Him and concurring with Him. But I suppose that our opponent will be wholly at a loss. But since both the Divine Scriptures proclaim that the Father hath wrought all things through the Son, and we believe it and I suppose that they do too, how is it not of necessity to conceive that the Father exists separately and by Himself, and in like manner the Son, nor does this in any way overthrow the fact that the Holy Trinity is seen to be of the same Essence. 



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