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It is necessary, therefore, that one who wishes to speak or to hear
of God should understand clearly that alike in the doctrine of Deity
and in that of the Incarnation, neither are all things unutterable nor
all utterable; neither all unknowable nor all knowable. But the
knowable belongs to one order, and the utterable to another; just as
it is one thing to speak and another thing to know. Many of the things
relating to God, therefore, that are dimly understood cannot be put
into fitting terms, but on things above us we cannot do else than
express ourselves according to our limited capacity; as, for
instance, when we speak of God we use the terms sleep, and wrath,
and regardlessness, hands, too, and feet, land such like
expressions.
We, therefore, both know and confess that God is without beginning,
without end, eternal and everlasting, uncreate, unchangeable,
invariable, simple, uncompound, incorporeal, invisible,
impalpable, uncircumscribed, infinite, incognisable, indefinable,
incomprehensible, good, just, maker of all things created,
almighty, all-ruling, all-surveying, of all overseer, sovereign,
judge; and that God is One, that is to say, one essences; and that
He is known, and has His being in three subsistences, in Father,
I say, and Son and Holy Spirit; and that the Father and the Son
and the Holy Spirit are one in all respects, except in that of not
being begotten, that of being begotten, and that of procession; and
that the Only-begotten Son and Word of God and God, in His
bowels of mercy, for our salvation, by the good pleasure of God and
the co-operation of the Holy Spirit, being conceived without seed,
was born uncorruptedly of the Holy Virgin and Mother of God,
Mary, by the Holy Spirit, and became of her perfect Man; and that
the Same is at once perfect God and perfect Man, of two natures,
Godhead and Manhood, and in two natures possessing intelligence,
will and energy, and freedom, and, in a word, perfect according to
the measure and proportion proper to each, at once to the divinity, I
say, and to the humanity, yet to one composite persons; and that He
suffered hunger and thirst and weariness, and was crucified, and for
three days submitted to the experience of death and burial, and
ascended to heaven, from which also He came to us, and shall come
again. And the Holy Scripture is witness to this and the whole choir
of the Saints.
But neither do we know, nor can we tell, what the essence of God
is, or how it is in all, or how the Only-begotten Son and God,
having emptied Himself, became Man of virgin blood, made by another
law contrary to nature, or how He walked with dry feet upon the
waters. It is not within our capacity, therefore, to say anything
about God or even to think of Him, beyond the things which have been
divinely revealed to us, whether by word or by manifestation, by the
divine oracles at once of the Old Testament and of the New.
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