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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 41
13. Therefore it was none other than God Himself that David too besought concerning his deliverance, 'When I was in trouble, I called upon the Lord, and He heard me; deliver my soul, O Lord, from lying lips and from a deceitful tongue [2890] .' To Him also giving thanks he spoke the words of the Song in the seventeenth Psalm, in the day in which the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul, saying, 'I will love Thee, O Lord my strength; the Lord is my strong rock and my defence and deliverer [2891] .' And Paul, after enduring many persecutions, to none other than God gave thanks, saying, 'Out of them all the Lord delivered me; and He will deliver in Whom we trust [2892] .' And none other than God blessed Abraham and Isaac; and Isaac praying for Jacob, said, 'May God bless thee and increase thee and multiply thee, and thou shalt be for many companies of nations, and may He give thee the blessing of Abraham my father [2893] .' But if it belong to none other than God to bless and to deliver, and none other was the deliverer of Jacob than the Lord Himself and Him that delivered him the Patriarch besought for his grandsons, evidently none other did he join to God in his prayer, than God's Word, whom therefore he called Angel, because it is He alone who reveals the Father. Which the Apostle also did when he said, 'Grace unto you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ [2894] .' For thus the blessing was secure, because of the Son's indivisibility from the Father, and for that the grace given by Them is one and the same. For though the Father gives it, through the Son is the gift; and though the Son be said to vouchsafe it, it is the Father who supplies it through and in the Son; for 'I thank my God,' says the Apostle writing to the Corinthians, 'always on your behalf, for the grace of God which is given you in Christ Jesus [2895] .' And this one may see in the instance of light and radiance; for what the light enlightens, that the radiance irradiates; and what the radiance irradiates, from the light is its enlightenment. So also when the Son is beheld, so is the Father, for He is the Father's radiance; and thus the Father and the Son are one.
[2890] Ps. cxx. 1, 2.
[2891] Ps. xviii. 1, 2.
[2892] Vid. 2 Tim. iii. 11; 2 Cor. i. 10.
[2893] Gen. xxviii. 3, 4, LXX.
[2894] Rom. i. 7, &c.
[2895] 1 Cor. i. 4.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/athanasius/discourses-against-arians-2.asp?pg=41
