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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 45
17. The Arians, however, not even thus abashed, reply, 'Not as you say, but as we will [2918] ;' for, whereas you have overthrown our former expedients, we have invented a new one, and it is this:--So are the Son and the Father One, and so is the Father in the Son and the Son in the Father, as we too may become one in Him. For this is written in the Gospel according to John, and Christ desired it for us in these words, 'Holy Father, keep through Thine own Name, those whom Thou hast given Me, that they may be one, as We are [2919] .' And shortly after; 'Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on Me through their Word; that they all may be one, as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me. And the glory which Thou gavest Me I have given them, that they may be one, even as We are one; I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that Thou didst send Me [2920] .' Then, as having found an evasion, these men of craft [2921] add, 'If, as we become one in the Father, so also He and the Father are one, and thus He too is in the Father, how pretend you from His saying, "I and the Father are One," and "I in the Father and the Father in Me," that He is proper and like [2922] the Father's Essence? for it follows either that we too are proper to the Father's Essence, or He foreign to it, as we are foreign.' Thus they idly babble; but in this their perverseness I see nothing but unreasoning audacity and recklessness from the devil [2923] , since it is saying after his pattern, 'We will ascend to heaven, we will be like the Most High.' For what is given to man by grace, this they would make equal to the Godhead of the Giver. Thus hearing that men are called sons, they thought themselves equal to the True Son by nature such [2924] . And now again hearing from the Saviour, 'that they may be one as We are [2925] ,' they deceive themselves, and are arrogant enough to think that they may be such as the Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son; not considering the fall of their 'father the devil [2926] ,' which happened upon such an imagination.
[2918] S:10, n. 1.
[2919] John xvii. 11.
[2920] Ib. 20-23.
[2921] hoi dolioi. crafty as they are, also infr. 59.
[2922] Or. i. 21, n. 8, cf. infr. S:67.
[2923] diaboliken vid. S:8, n. 10., cf. Isa. xiv. 14.
[2924] Supr. p. 171, note 5.
[2925] John viii. 44.
[2926] ii. 73, n. 7.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/athanasius/discourses-against-arians-2.asp?pg=45
