7. Who can fail to see here the slimy windings of the serpent’s track: the coiled adder, with forces concentrated for the spring, concealing the deadly weapon of its poisonous fangs within its folds? Presently we shall stretch it out and examine it, and expose the venom of this hidden head. For their plan is first to impress with certain sound statements, and then to infuse the poison of their heresy. They speak us fair, in order to work us secret harm. Yet, amid all their specious professions, I nowhere hear God’s Son entitled God; I never hear sonship attributed to the Son. They say much about His having the name of Son, but nothing about His having the nature. That is kept out of sight, that He may seem to have no right even to the name. They make a show of unmasking other heresies to conceal the fact that they are heretics themselves. They strenuously assert that there is One only, One true God, to the end that they may strip the Son of God of His true and personal Divinity.

7. Venenum in hac epistola latens.---Quis non his sentiat lubricos serpentinae viae flexus, vel tortuosis spiris nodos vipereos non intelligat, quibus venenati oris 136 principalis potestas collecto inflexi corporis orbe concluditur? Sed extensis omnibus atque absolutis, totum occultati capitis virus patebit. Ingeruntur enim nobis primum nomina veritatis, ut virus falsitatis introeat. Bonum in ore est, ut de corde malum subeat. Et inter haec nusquam audio ab his Deum Dei filium dici: nusquam 0161C Filium invenio ita praedicatum esse, quod filius sit. Nomen filii ingeritur, ut natura taceatur; natura adimitur, ut nomen alienum sit. Haereses caeterae praetenduntur, ut de se haeresis mentiatur (Idem notat Athanas. Or. I, p. 313). Unus solus Deus et solus verus ingeritur, ne verum ac proprium Dei filio relinquatur esse quod Deus est.