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Translated by Cardinal Newman.
St Athanasius the Great Resources Online and in Print
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This Part: 130 Pages
Page 26
80. Moreover, that the Son should be speaking of the impress that is within us as if it were Himself, should not startle any one, considering (for we must not shrink from repetition [2764] ) that, when Saul was persecuting the Church, in which was His impress and image, He said, as if He were Himself under persecution, 'Saul, why persecutest thou Me [2765] ?' Therefore (as has been said), as, supposing the impress itself of Wisdom which is in the works had said, 'The Lord created me for the works,' no one would have been startled, so, if He, the True and Framing Wisdom, the Only-begotten Word of God, should use what belongs to His image as about Himself, namely, 'The Lord created me for the works,' let no one, overlooking the wisdom created in the world and in the works, think that 'He created' is said of the Substance of the Very [2766] Wisdom, lest, diluting the wine with water [2767] , he be judged a defrauder of the truth. For It is Creative and Framer; but Its impress is created in the works, as the copy of the image. And He says, 'Beginning of ways,' since such wisdom becomes a sort of beginning. and, as it were, rudiments of the knowledge of God; for a man entering, as it were, upon this way first, and keeping it in the fear of God (as Solomon says [2768] , 'The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom'), then advancing upwards in his thoughts and perceiving the Framing Wisdom which is in the creation, will perceive in It also Its Father [2769] , as the Lord Himself has said, 'He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father,' and as John writes, 'He who acknowledgeth the Son, hath the Father also [2770] .' And He says, 'Before the world He founded me [2771] ,' since in Its impress the works remain settled and eternal. Then, lest any, hearing concerning the wisdom thus created in the works, should think the true Wisdom, God's Son, to be by nature a creature, He has found it necessary to add, 'Before the mountains, and before the earth, and before the waters, and before all hills He begets me,' that in saying, 'before every creature' (for He includes all the creation under these heads), He may shew that He is not created together with the works according to Essence. For if He was created 'for the works,' yet is before them, it follows that He is in being before He was created. He is not then a creature by nature and essence, but as He Himself has added, an Offspring. But in what differs a creature from an offspring, and how it is distinct by nature, has been shewn in what has gone before.
[2764] to auto gar legein ouk okneteon: where Petavius, de Trin. ii. 1. S:8. ingeniously but without any authority reads ouk oknei theon. It is quite a peculiarity of Athan. to repeat and to apologize for doing so. The very same words occur supr. 22, c. Orat. iii. 54, a. Serap. i. 19, b. 27, e. Vid. also 2, c. 41, d. 67, a. 69, b. iii. 39 init. vid. especially supr. p. 47, note 6.
[2765] Acts ix. 4.
[2766] Cf. above, 79, n. 8.
[2767] Isa. i. 22. Infr. iii. 35. Ep. Aeg. S:17. Ambros. de Fid. iii. 65. p. 157. note 4.
[2768] Prov. i. 7, LXX.
[2769] The whole of this passage might be illustrated at great length from the contr. Gent. and the Incarn. V. D. vid. supr. notes on 79. Cf. c. Gent. 34, and Incarn. 11, 41, 42, &c. Vid. also Basil. contr. Eunom. ii. 16.
[2770] John xiv. 9; 1 John ii. 23. and so Cyril in Joan. p. 864. vid. Wetstein in loc.
[2771] Vid. Prov. viii. 24-26.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/athanasius/discourses-against-arians-2.asp?pg=26
