Acts of the Disputation with the Heresiarch Manes

³⁴ I think that you cannot fail to understand this too, that the word “father” is but a single term indeed, and yet one admitting of being understood in various ways. For one is called father, as being the parent of those children whom he has begotten in a natural way; another is called father, as being the guardian of children whom he has but brought up; and some, again, are called fathers in respect of the privileged standing accruing through time or age. Hence our Lord Jesus Christ Himself is said to have a variety of fathers: for David was called His father, and Joseph was reckoned to be His father, while neither of these two was His father in respect of the actuality of nature.

For David is called His father as touching the prerogative of time and age, and Joseph is designated His father as concerning the law of upbringing; but God Himself is His only Father by nature, who was pleased to make all things manifest in short space to us by His word. And our Lord Jesus Christ, making no tarrying, in the space of one year restored multitudes of the sick to health, and gave back the dead to the light of life; and He did indeed embrace all things in the power of His own word. And wherein, forsooth, did He make any tarrying, so that we should have to believe Him to have waited so long, even to these days, before He actually sent the Paraclete? Nay, rather, as has been already said above, He gave proof of His presence with us immediately, and did most abundantly impart Himself to Paul, whose testimony we also believe when he says, “Unto me only is this grace given.” For this is he who formerly was a persecutor of the Church of God, but who afterwards appeared openly before all men as a faithful minister of the Paraclete; by whose instrumentality His singular clemency was made known to all men, in such wise that even to us who some time were without hope the largess of His gifts has come. For which of us could have hoped that Paul, the persecutor and enemy of the Church, would prove its defender and guardian? Yea, and not that alone, but that he would become also its ruler, the founder and architect of the churches? Wherefore after him, and after those who were with Himself— that is, the disciples— we are not to look for the advent of any other (such), according to the Scriptures; for our Lord Jesus Christ says of this Paraclete, “He shall receive of mine.” Him therefore He selected as an acceptable vessel; and He sent this Paul to us in the Spirit. Into him the Spirit was poured; and as that Spirit could not abide upon all men, but only on Him who was born of Mary the mother of God, so that Spirit, the Paraclete, could not come into any other, but could only come upon the apostles and the sainted Paul. “For he is a chosen vessel,” He says, “unto me, to bear my name before kings and the Gentiles.” The apostle himself, too, states the same thing in his first epistle, where he says: “According to the grace that is given to me of God, that I should be the minister of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, ministering the Gospel of God.” “I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost.” And again: “For I will not dare to speak of any of those things which Christ has not wrought by me by word and deed.” “I am the last of all the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle. But by the grace of God I am what I am.” And it, is his wish to have to deal with those who sought the proof of that Christ who spoke in him, for this reason, that the Paraclete was in him: and as having obtained His gift of grace, and as being enriched with magnificent, honour, he says: “For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me. And He said unto me, My grace is sufficient for you; for strength is made perfect in weakness.” Again, that it was the Paraclete Himself who was in Paul, is indicated by our Lord Jesus Christ in the Gospel, when He says: “If you love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray my Father, and He shall give you another Comforter.” In these words He points to the Paraclete Himself, for He speaks of “another” Comforter. And hence we have given credit to Paul, and have hearkened to him when he says, “Or do you seek a proof of Christ speaking in me?” and when he expresses himself in similar terms, of which we have already spoken above. Thus, too, he seals his testament for us as for his faithful heirs, and like a father he addresses us in these words in his Epistle to the Corintians: “I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures; and that He was seen of Cephas, then of the eleven apostles: after that He was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. After that He was seen of James; then of all the apostles. And last of all He was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time. For I am the last of the apostles.” “Therefore, whether it were I or they, so we preach, and so you believed.” And again, in delivering over to his heirs that inheritance which he gained first himself, he says: “But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. For if he that comes preaches another Christ, whom we have not preached, or if you receive another Spirit, which we have not received, or another gospel, which you have not accepted, you might well bear with him. For I suppose that I did nothing less for you than the other apostles.”