Page:History of the First Council of Nice.djvu/84

74   Tu cum quiescis pater es, cum procedis, filius. In unum qui cuncta nectis, tu es spiritus sanctus, Unum primum, unum a se ortum, unum ante unum Deus. Translation:

This Victorinus, according to St. Jerome, was the "vice-consul of the African nation," and taught rhetoric, principally at Rome under Constantine. In his extreme old age, he received the faith of Christ, which was not long prior to A.D. 362. He wrote books against the doctrines of the Manichæans, and commentaries on the apostolical Scriptures. He held a controversy with the Arian, Candidus, on the divine generation of the Word; and his four books against the Arians, besides several epistles to Candidus, are preserved in Patrologiæ, vol., together with the opposing arguments of Candidus. The following is the beginning of the latter's book on the divine generation, addressed to "Marius Victorinus, the rhetorician":—

"All generation, O my dear old Victorinus, is a change of some kind. But, as to divinity, God is evidently wholly immutable. However, God, as he is the first cause of all things, so he is the father in respect to all things. If, therefore, God is unchangeable and immutable, inasmuch as he is unchangeable and immutable, he is neither begotten nor made. So, therefore, it stands thus: God is unbegotten. For, indeed, generation is such in consequence of conversion and mutation. But no substance, nor ingredients of substance, nor existence, nor qualities of existence, nor existing things, nor attributes of existing things, nor power, could there have been prior to God. For what is superior to God? Whether a power or existence or substance or on?"

The reply of Victorinus, addressed to Candidus, the Arian, begins thus:—"Is it your great intelligence, O noble Candidus, which has so fascinated me? To say of God, that man is above him, would be audacious. But as, indeed, the nous ethikos (moral sense) was put into our soul, and the breath of life was sent, from above, unto the forms of intelligence inscribed from of the book was loose and dissolute, its style and metres not being very unlike the songs of Sotadés,