17. My soul has been burning to answer these insane attacks. I call to mind that the very centre of a saving faith is the belief not merely in God, but in God as a Father; not merely in Christ, but in Christ as the Son of God; in Him, not as a creature, but as God the Creator, born of God. My prime object is by the clear assertions of prophets and evangelists to refute the insanity and ignorance of men who use the unity of God (in itself a pious and profitable confession) as a cloak for their denial either that in Christ God was born, or else that He is very God. Their purpose is to isolate a solitary God at the heart of the faith by making Christ, though mighty, only a creature; because, so they allege, a birth of God widens the believer’s faith into a trust in more gods than one. But we, divinely taught to confess neither two Gods nor yet a solitary God, will adduce the evidence of the Gospels and the prophets for our confession of God the Father and God the Son, united, not confounded, in our faith. We will not admit Their identity nor allow, as a compromise, that Christ is God in some imperfect sense; for God, born of God, cannot be the same as His Father, since He is His Son, nor yet can He be different in nature.

17. Fides vera contra utramque toto hoc opere stabilienda.---Horum igitur furori respondere animus exarsit: recolens hoc vel praecipue sibi salutare esse, non solum in Deum credidisse, sed etiam in Deum patrem; neque in Christo tantum sperasse, sed in Christo Dei filio; neque in creatura, sed in Deo creatore ex Deo nato. Maxime ergo properamus ex propheticis atque evangelicis praeconiis vesaniam eorum ignorantiamque confundere, qui sub unius Dei, sola sane utili ac religiosa praedicatione, aut Deum natum Christum negant, aut verum Deum non esse contendunt; ut creatio potentis creaturae intra unum Deum fidei sacramentum relinquat; quia nativitas Dei extra unius Dei fidem religionem protrahat confitentum. Sed nos edocti divinitus neque 0037C duos deos praedicare neque solum, hanc evangelici ac prophetici praeconii rationem in confessione Dei patris et Dei filii afferemus, ut unum in fide nostra sint uterque, non unus: neque eumdem utrumque, neque inter verum ac falsum aliud confitentes; quia Deo ex Deo nato, neque eumdem nativitas permittit esse, neque aliud.