|
AS we have finished three books with the most certain and the most
valuable witnesses, whose truth is substantiated not only by human but also
by Divine evidences, they would abundantly suffice to prove our case by
Divine authority, especially as the Divine authority of the case itself
would be enough for this. But still as the whole mass of the sacred
Scriptures is full of these evidences, and where there are so many
witnesses, there are so many opinions to be urged--nay where Holy Scripture
itself gives its witness so to speak with one Divine mouth--we have thought
it well to add some others still, not from any need of confirmation, but
because of the supply of material at our disposal; so that anything which
might be unnecessary for purposes of defence, might be useful by way of
ornamentation. Therefore since in the earlier books we proved the Divinity
of our Lord Jesus Christ while He was in the flesh by the evidence not only
of prophets and apostles, but of evangelists and angels as well, let us now
show that He who was born in the flesh was God even before His Incarnation;
that you may understand by the harmony and concord of the evidences from
the sacred Scriptures, that you ought to believe that at His birth in the
body He was both God and man, who before His birth was only God, and that
He who after He had been brought forth by the Virgin in the body was God,
was before His birth from the Virgin, God the Word. Learn then first of all
from the Apostle the teacher of the whole world, that He who is without
beginning, God, the Son of God, became the Son of man at the end of the
world, i.e., in the fulness of the times. For he says: "But when the
fulness of the times was come, God sent His Son, made of a woman, made
under the law." Tell me then, before the Lord Jesus Christ was born of
His mother Mary, had God a Son or had He not? You cannot deny that He had,
for never yet was there either a son without a father, or a father without
a son: because as a son is so called with reference to a father, so is a
father so named with reference to a son.
|
|