Page:History of the First Council of Nice.djvu/54

44 said, 'He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.' And in the Psalms, 'In thy light we shall see light.' (Ps. xxxv.)

"They say that they alone are wise and destitute of property. Oh, what wicked arrogance! Even devils are not guilty of impiety like this. These ignorant persons contend that one of the two things must necessarily be true; either that Christ was created, or that there are two unbegotten beings.

"We believe, as is taught by the apostolical church, in the only unbegotten Father, who is the author of his own existence. The mind of man could not possibly invent a term expressive of what is meant by being unbegotten. To say that the Son was, that he has always been, and that he existed before all ages, is not to say that he is unbegotten. We believe that he is the only begotten Son of God, as was taught by the holy men who vainly endeavored to clear up the mystery, but failed, and confessed that it was beyond their powers.

"Besides this pious opinion of the Father and the Son, we confess the existence of the Holy Ghost, which truth has been upheld by the saints of the Old Testament, and by the learned divines of the New.

"We believe in one catholic and apostolical church, which cannot be destroyed, and which never fails to defeat all the impious designs of heretics. Besides this we receive the doctrine of the resurrection from the dead, of which Jesus Christ, our Lord, became the first fruits. He possessed a true, not a suppositious body, and he derived it from Mary, the mother of God.