Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament

⁷ Let us then recall the difficulty of the question to your minds. One may say to me, “You have said that the Father does nothing without the Son, nor the Son without the Father, and testimonies you have adduced out of the Scriptures, that the Father does nothing without the Son, for that 'all things were made by Him;' and again, that that which was made is not governed without the Son, for that He is the Wisdom of the Father, 'reaching from one end to another mightily, and sweetly ordering all things.'

And now you tell me, as if contradicting yourself, that the Son was born of a Virgin, and not the Father; the Son suffered, not the Father; the Son rose again, not the Father. See then, here I see the Son doing something which the Father does not. Do you therefore either confess that the Son does something without the Father, or else that the Father also was born and suffered, and died and rose again. Say one or the other of these, choose one of the two.” No: I will choose neither, I will say neither the one nor the other.

I will neither say the Son does anything without the Father, for I should lie were I to say so; nor that the Father was born, suffered, and died, and rose again, for I should equally lie were I to say this. “How then, says he, will you disentangle yourself from these straits?”