Preface.
Novatian, with the View of Treating of the Trinity, Sets Forth from the Rule of Faith that We Should First of All Believe in God the Father and Lord Omnipotent, the Absolute Founder of All Things. The Works of Creation are Beautifully Described. Man's Free-Will is Asserted; God's Mercy in Inflicting Penalty on Man is Shown; The Condition After Death of the Souls of the Righteous and Unrighteous is Determined.
God is Above All Things, Himself Containing All Things, Immense, Eternal, Transcending the Mind of Man; Inexplicable in Discourse, Loftier Than All Sublimity.
That God is the Founder of All Things, Their Lord and Parent, is Proved from the Holy Scriptures.
Moreover, He is Good, Always the Same, Immutable, One and Only, Infinite; And His Own Name Can Never Be Declared, and He is Incorruptible and Immortal.
If We Regard the Anger, and Indignation, and Hatred of God Described in the Sacred Pages, We Must Remember that They are Not to Be Understood as Bearing the Character of Human Vices.
And That, Although Scripture Often Changes the Divine Appearance into a Human Form, Yet the Measure of the Divine Majesty is Not Included Within These Lineaments of Our Bodily Nature.
Moreover, that When God is Called a Spirit, Brightness, and Light, God is Not Sufficiently Expressed by Those Appellations.
It is This God, Therefore, that the Church Has Known and Adores; And to Him the Testimony of Things as Well Visible as Invisible is Given Both at All Times and in All Forms, by the Nature Which His Providence Rules and Governs.
Further, that the Same Rule of Truth Teaches Us to Believe, After the Father, Also in the Son of God, Jesus Christ Our Lord God, Being the Same that Was Promised in the Old Testament, and Manifested in the New.
That Jesus Christ is the Son of God and Truly Man, as Opposed to the Fancies of Heretics, Who Deny that He Took Upon Him True Flesh.
And Indeed that Christ Was Not Only Man, But God Also; That Even as He Was the Son of Man, So Also He Was the Son of God.
That Christ is God, is Proved by the Authority of the Old Testament Scriptures.
That the Same Truth is Proved from the Sacred Writings of the New Covenant.
The Author Prosecutes the Same Argument.
Again He Proves from the Gospel that Christ is God.
Again from the Gospel He Proves Christ to Be God.
It Is, Moreover, Proved by Moses in the Beginning of the Holy Scriptures.
Moreover Also, from the Fact that He Who Was Seen of Abraham is Called God; Which Cannot Be Understood of the Father, Whom No Man Hath Seen at Any Time; But of the Son in the Likeness of an Angel.
That God Also Appeared to Jacob as an Angel; Namely, the Son of God.
It is Proved from the Scriptures that Christ Was Called an Angel. But Yet It is Shown from Other Parts of Holy Scripture that He is God Also.
That the Same Divine Majesty is Again Confirmed in Christ by Other Scriptures.
That the Same Divine Majesty is in Christ, He Once More Asserts by Other Scriptures.
And This is So Manifest, that Some Heretics Have Thought Him to Be God the Father, Others that He Was Only God Without the Flesh.
That These Have Therefore Erred, by Thinking that There Was No Difference Between the Son of God and the Son of Man; Because They Have Ill Understood the Scripture.
And that It Does Not Follow Thence, that Because Christ Died It Must Also Be Received that God Died; For Scripture Sets Forth that Not Only Was Christ God, But Man Also.
Moreover, Against the Sabellians He Proves that the Father is One, the Son Another.
He Skilfully Replies to a Passage Which the Heretics Employed in Defence of Their Own Opinion.
He Proves Also that the Words Spoken to Philip Make Nothing for the Sabellians.
He Next Teaches Us that the Authority of the Faith Enjoins, After the Father and the Son, to Believe Also on the Holy Spirit, Whose Operations He Enumerates from Scripture.
In Fine, Notwithstanding the Said Heretics Have Gathered the Origin of Their Error from Consideration of What is Written: Although We Call Christ God, and the Father God, Still Scripture Does Not Set Forth Two Gods, Any More Than Two Lords or Two Teachers.
But that God, the Son of God, Born of God the Father from Everlasting, Who Was Always in the Father, is the Second Person to the Father, Who Does Nothing Without His Father's Decree; And that He is Lord, and the Angel of God's Great Counsel, to Whom the Father's Godhead is Given by Community of Substance.
Two Notes by the American Editor.
