32.

However, I suppose even they will be unwilling to proceed to such lengths, if they follow Asterius the sophist. For he, earnest as he is in his advocacy of the Arian heresy, and maintaining that the Unoriginate is one, runs counter to them in saying, that the Wisdom of God is unoriginate and without beginning also. The following is a passage out of his work ¹: ‘The Blessed Paul said not that he preached Christ the power of God or the wisdom of God, but, without the article, ‘God’s power and God’s wisdom ²;’ thus preaching that the proper power of God Himself, which is natural to Him and co-existent with Him unoriginatedly, is something besides.’ And again, soon after: ‘However, His eternal power and wisdom, which truth argues to be without beginning and unoriginate; this must surely be one.’ For though, misunderstanding the Apostle’s words, he considered that there were two wisdoms; yet, by speaking still of a wisdom coexistent with Him, he declares that the Unoriginate is not simply one, but that there is another Unoriginate with Him. For what is coexistent, coexists not with itself, but with another. If then they agree with Asterius, let them never ask again, ‘Is the Unoriginate one or two,’ or they will have to contest the point with him; if, on the other hand, they differ even from him, let them not rely upon his treatise, lest, ‘biting one another, they be consumed one of another ³.’ So much on the point of their ignorance; but who can say enough on their crafty character? who but would justly hate them while possessed by such a madness? for when they were no longer allowed to say ‘out of nothing’ and ‘He was not before His generation,’ they hit upon this word ‘unoriginate,’ that, by saying among the simple that the Son was ‘originate,’ they might imply the very same phrases ‘out of nothing,’ and ‘He once was not;’ for in such phrases things originated and creatures are implied.