59. Since it was taught that the Son did not, like all other things, owe His existence to God’s will, lest He should be thought to derive His essence only at His Father’s will and not in virtue of His own nature, an opportunity seemed thereby to be given to heretics to attribute to God the Father a necessity of begetting the Son from Himself, as though He had brought forth the Son by a law of nature in spite of Himself. But such liability to be acted upon does not exist in God the Father: in the ineffable and perfect birth of the Son it was neither mere will that begat Him nor was the Father’s essence changed or forced at the bidding of a natural law. Nor was any substance sought for to beget Him, nor is the nature of the Begetter changed in the Begotten, nor is the Father’s unique name affected by time. Before all time the Father, out of the essence of His nature, with a desire that was subject to no passion, gave to the Son a birth that conveyed the essence of His nature.

XXVI. “If any man says that the Son is incapable of birth and without beginning, speaking as though there were two incapable of birth and unborn and without beginning, and makes two Gods: let him be anathema. For the Head, which is the beginning of all things, is the Son; but the Head or beginning of Christ is God: for so to One who is without beginning and is the beginning of all things, we refer the whole world through Christ.”

59. Non tamen ex invito Patre Filius.---Cum non ex voluntate, ut caetera, Filius subsistere doceretur, 0520D ne secundum voluntatem tantum, non etiam secundum naturam haberet essentiam; data haereticis occasio videbatur, ut necessitatem Deo patri gignendi ex se Filii adscriberent, tamquam naturae lege cogente 0521A invitus ediderit. Sed haec passionum non est in Deo patre conditio: cum inenarrabili et perfecta nativitate Filii, nec voluntas sola genuit Filium, nec demutata aut coacta imperio naturalis legis essentia est. Nec ad gignendum quaesita substantia est, nec gignentis in genito diversa natura est, nec in tempore paterni nominis solitudo: sed ante tempora omnia Pater ex naturae suae essentia, impassibiliter volens, Filio dedit naturalis nativitatis essentiam.

XXVI. «Si quis innascibilem et sine initio dicat Filium; tamquam duo sine principio et duo innascibilia et duo innata dicens, duos faciat deos: anathema sit. Caput enim, quod est principium omnium, Filius: caput autem, quod est principium Christi, Deus; sic enim ad unum ininitiabilem, omnium initium, 0521B per Filium universa referimus.»