25. Therefore He was, and He is, since He is from Him Who always is what He is. But to be from Him, that is to say, to be from the Father, is birth. Moreover, to be always from Him, Who always is, is eternity; but this eternity is derived not from Himself, but from the Eternal. And from the Eternal nothing can spring but what is eternal: for if the Offspring is not eternal, then neither is the Father, Who is the source of generation, eternal. Now since it is the special characteristic of His being that His Father always exists, and that He is always His Son, and since eternity is expressed in the name He that is, therefore, since He possesses absolute being, He possesses also eternal being. Moreover, no one doubts that generation implies birth, and that birth points to one existing from that time forth, and not to one who does not continue. Furthermore, there can be no doubt that no one who already was in existence could be born. For no cause of birth can accrue to Him, Who of Himself continues eternal. But God Only-begotten, Who is the Wisdom of God, and the Power and the Word of God, since He was born, bears witness to the Father as the source of His being. Since He was born of One, Who eternally exists, He was not born of nothing. Since He was born before times eternal, His birth must necessarily be prior to all thought. There is no room for the verbal quibble, “He was not, before He was born.” For if He is within the range of our thought, in the sense that He was not before He was born, then both our thought and time are prior to His birth; since everything which once was not, is within the compass of thought and time, by the very meaning of the assertion that it once was not, which separates off, within time, a period when it did not exist. But He is from the Eternal, and yet has always been; He is not ingenerate, yet never was non-existent; since to have always been transcends time, and to have been born is birth.

25. Est aeternus ab aeterno: adeoque non ex nihilo, aut non aliquando fuit.---Erat igitur, atque est: quia ab eo est, qui quod est semper est. Ab eo autem esse, id est, ex patre esse, nativitas est. Esse autem semper ab eo qui est semper, aeternitas est: aeternitas vero non ex se, sed ab aeterno. Ex aeterno autem nihil aliud, quam aeternum. Quod si non aeternum; jam nec pater qui generationis est auctor, aeternus est. Quod cum illi patrem semper esse, atque hujus filium semper esse sit proprium esse, et in eo quod est, significatur aeternitas; per id quoque, cui quod est proprium est, proprium est et aeternum. Nemini autem dubium est, quin generatio significet nativitatem, 423 et nativitas manentem 0448C doceat (cum scil. ex quo ortum ducit natus), non etiam non manentem. Porro autem ambigi non potest, neminem qui erat nasci. Nam nascendi ad cum non 0449A proficit causa, qui per se maneat aeternus. Sed unigenitus Deus, qui et Dei Sapientia et Dei Virtus et Verbum est, cum natus sit, patrem testatur auctorem. Cum ex manente natus est, non est natus ex nihilo. Cum ante tempora aeterna natus est, omnem sensum necesse est nascendo praeveniat. Non reliquit in verbis, ut non fuerit ante quam nasceretur. Si enim sensui nostro subjacet, ut non fuerit ante quam natus est; jam nativitate ejus et sensus noster et tempus anterius est: quia omne, quod non fuit, jam et sensui obnoxium et tempori est in ea ipsa significatione qua non fuit; quia non fuisse, pars temporis est. Qui autem ab aeterno est, et semper fuit, nec est sine nativitate, nec non fuit; dum et semper fuisse supra tempus 0449B est, et natum esse nativitas est.