Part
II.—Dubious or Spurious Writings.
————————————
A Sectional Confession of
Faith.271
| 271
Edited in Latin by Gerardus Vossius, Opp. Greg. Thaum.,
Paris, 1662, in fol.; given in Greek from the Codex Vaticanus by
Cardinal Mai, Script. Vet., vii. p. 170. Vossius has the
following argument: This is a second Confession of Faith, and one
widely different from the former, which this great Gregory of ours
received by revelation. This seems, however, to be designated
an ἔκθεσις τῆς
κατὰ μέρος
πίστεως, either
because it records and expounds the matters of the faith only in
part, or because the Creed is explained in it by
parts. The Jesuit theologian Franc. Torrensis (the
interpreter and scholiast of this ἔκθεσις) has, however,
rendered the phrase ἡ
κατὰ
μέρος
πίστις, by the Latin fides non
universa sed in parte. And here we have a fides non
universa sed in parte, according to him,—a creed not of all
the dogmas of the Church, but only of some in opposition to the
heretics who deny them. [The better view.] |
————————————
I.
Most hostile and alien to
the Apostolic Confession are those who speak of the Son as assumed to
Himself by the Father out of nothing, and from an emanational
origin;272
| 272
οἱ τὸν
Υἱὸν ἐξ οὐκ
ὄντων καὶ
ἀποστελλομένης
ἀρχῆς εἶναι
ἐπίκτητον
λέγοντες τῷ
Πατρί. [Note, Exucontians = Arians.] |
and those who
hold the same sentiments with respect to the
Holy Spirit; those who say
that the Son is constituted
divine by
gift and
grace, and that the Holy
Spirit is made holy; those who regard the name of the Son as one common
to
servants, and assert that thus He is the first-
born of the creature,
as becoming, like the creature, existent out of non-existence, and as
being first made, and who refuse to admit that He is the only-begotten
Son,—the only One that the
Father has, and that He has given
Himself to be reckoned in the number of
mortals, and is thus reckoned
first-
born; those who circumscribe the generation of the Son by the
Father with a measured interval after the fashion of man, and refuse to
acknowledge that the æon of the Begetter and that of the Begotten
are without beginning; those who introduce three separate and diverse
systems of
divine worship,
273
| 273
ἀκοινωνήτους
καὶ ξένας
εἰσάγοντες
λατρείας. |
whereas there is but one form of legitimate service which we have
received of old from the
law and the
prophets, and which has been
confirmed by the
Lord and
preached by the
apostles. Nor less
alienated from the true confession are those who hold not the
doctrine
of the
Trinity according to
truth, as a relation consisting of three
persons, but impiously conceive it as implying a triple being in a
unity (Monad), formed in the way of synthesis
274
| 274
ἐν μονάδι τὸ
τριπλοῦν
ἀσεβῶς κατὰ
σύνθεσιν. |
and think that the Son is the wisdom in
God, in the same manner as the human wisdom subsists in man whereby the
man is wise, and represent the Word as being simply like the word which
we utter or conceive, without any hypostasis
whatever.
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