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| The second book declares the Incarnation of God the Word, and the faith delivered by the Lord to His disciples, and asserts that the heretics who endeavour to overthrow this faith and devise other additional names are of their father the devil.
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Book II.
§1. The second book
declares the Incarnation of God the Word, and the faith delivered by
the Lord to His disciples, and asserts that the heretics who endeavour
to overthrow this faith and devise other additional names are of their
father the devil.
The Christian Faith, which in
accordance with the command of our Lord has been preached to all
nations by His disciples, is neither of men, nor by men, but by our
Lord Jesus Christ Himself, Who being the Word, the Life, the Light, the
Truth, and God, and Wisdom, and all else that He is by nature, for this
cause above all was made in the likeness of man, and shared our nature,
becoming like us in all things, yet without sin. He was like us in all
things, in that He took upon Him manhood in its entirety with soul and
body, so that our salvation was accomplished by means of
both:—He, I say, appeared on earth and “conversed with
men242
,” that men might no longer have
opinions according to their own notions about the Self-existent,
formulating into a doctrine the hints that come to them from vague
conjectures, but that we might be convinced that God has truly been
manifested in the flesh, and believe that to be the only true
“mystery of godliness243
,” which was
delivered to us by the very Word and God, Who by Himself spake to His
Apostles, and that we might receive the teaching concerning the
transcendent nature of the Deity which is given to us, as it were,
“through a glass darkly244
” from the older
Scriptures,—from the Law, and the Prophets, and the Sapiential
Books, as an evidence of the truth fully revealed to us, reverently
accepting the meaning of the things which have been spoken, so as to
accord in the faith set forth by the Lord of the whole Scriptures245
| 245 This is
perhaps the force of τῶν ὅλων: “the Lord of the Old Covenant as well as of the
New.” But τῶν
ὅλων may mean simply
“the Universe.” | , which faith we guard as we received it, word
for word, in purity, without falsification, judging even a slight
divergence from the words delivered to us an extreme blasphemy and
impiety. We believe, then, even as the Lord set forth the Faith to His
Disciples, when He said, “Go, teach all nations, baptizing them
in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost246
.” This is the word of the mystery
whereby through the new birth from above our nature is transformed from
the corruptible to the incorruptible, being renewed from “the old
man,” “according to the image of Him who created247
” at the beginning the likeness to the
Godhead. In the Faith then which was delivered by God to the Apostles
we admit neither subtraction, nor alteration, nor addition, knowing
assuredly that he who presumes to pervert the Divine utterance by
dishonest quibbling, the same “is of his father the devil,”
who leaves the words of truth and “speaks of his own,”
becoming the father of a lie248
. For whatsoever is
said otherwise than in exact accord with the truth is assuredly false
and not true.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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