Sacred Texts  Christianity  Early Church Fathers  Index  Previous  Next 

Chapter XVII.—The Nature of God.

“We call Him God whose peculiar attributes cannot belong to the nature of any other; for, as He is called the Unbounded because He is boundless on every side, it must of necessity be the case that it is no other one’s peculiar attribute to be called unbounded, as another cannot in like manner be boundless.  But if any one says that it is possible, he is wrong; for two things boundless on every side cannot co-exist, for the one is bounded by the other.  Thus it is in the nature 1303 of things that the unbegotten is one.  But if he possesses a figure, even in this case the figure is one and incomparable. 1304   Wherefore He is called the Most High, because, being higher than all, He has the universe subject to Him.”


Footnotes

316:1303

Lit., “thus it is nature.”

316:1304

We have adopted an emendation here.  The text has:  “Even thus the incomparable is one.”


Next: Chapter XVIII