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| The Catholic Doctrine of the Trinity and Unity, Sometimes Called the Divine Economy, or Dispensation of the Personal Relations of the Godhead.
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Chapter II.—The
Catholic Doctrine of the Trinity and Unity, Sometimes Called the Divine
Economy, or Dispensation of the Personal Relations of the
Godhead.
In the course of time, then, the Father forsooth was
born, and the Father suffered, God Himself, the Lord Almighty, whom in
their preaching they declare to be Jesus Christ. We, however, as we
indeed always have done (and more especially since we have been better
instructed by the Paraclete, who leads men indeed into all truth),
believe that there is one only God, but under the following
dispensation, or οἰκονομία
, as it is called, that this one only God has also a Son, His Word, who
proceeded7779
| 7779 The Church
afterwards applied this term exclusively to the Holy Ghost. [That is,
the Nicene Creed made it technically applicable to the Spirit,
making the distinction marked between the generation of the Word
and the procession of the Holy Ghost.] | from Himself, by
whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made. Him we
believe to have been sent by the Father into the Virgin, and to
have been born of her—being both Man and God, the Son of Man and
the Son of God, and to have been called by the name of Jesus Christ;
we believe Him to have suffered, died, and been buried,
according to the Scriptures, and, after He had been raised again by the
Father and taken back to heaven, to be sitting at the right hand of the
Father, and that He will come to judge the quick and the dead;
who sent also from heaven from the Father, according to His own
promise, the Holy Ghost, the Paraclete,7780
the sanctifier of the faith of those who believe in the Father, and in
the Son, and in the Holy Ghost. That this rule of faith has come down
to us from the beginning of the gospel, even before any of the older
heretics, much more before Praxeas, a pretender of yesterday,
will be apparent both from the lateness of date7781
| 7781 See our
Anti-Marcion, p. 119, n. 1. Edin. |
which marks all heresies, and also from the absolutely novel character
of our new-fangled Praxeas. In this principle also we must henceforth
find a presumption of equal force against all heresies
whatsoever—that whatever is first is true, whereas that is
spurious which is later in date.7782
| 7782 See his De
Præscript. xxix. | But keeping
this prescriptive rule inviolate, still some opportunity must be given
for reviewing (the statements of heretics), with a view to the
instruction and protection of divers persons; were it only that it may
not seem that each perversion of the truth is condemned without
examination, and simply prejudged;7783
| 7783 Tertullian uses
similar precaution in his argument elsewhere. See our
Anti-Marcion, pp. 3 and 119. Edin. | especially in
the case of this heresy, which supposes itself to possess the pure
truth, in thinking that one cannot believe in One Only God in any other
way than by saying that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are the
very selfsame Person. As if in this way also one were not All, in that
All are of One, by unity (that is) of substance; while the mystery of
the dispensation7784
is still guarded,
which distributes the Unity into a Trinity, placing in their
order7785
the three Persons—the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Ghost: three, however, not in condition,7786
but in degree;7787
| 7787 See The
Apology, ch. xxi. |
not in substance, but in form; not in power, but in aspect;7788
yet of one substance, and of one condition,
and of one power, inasmuch as He is one God, from whom these degrees
and forms and aspects are reckoned, under the name of the Father, and
of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.7789
| 7789 See Bull’s
Def. Fid. Nic., and the translation (by the translator of this
work), in the Oxford Series, p. 202. | How they are
susceptible of number without division, will be shown as our treatise
proceeds.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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