Sacred Texts  Christianity  Early Church Fathers  Index  Previous  Next 

Chapter XXV.

Sabbatius2616 bishop of the Gallican province, at the request of a certain virgin, chaste and devoted to Christ, Secunda by name, composed a book On faith against Marcion and Valentinus his teacher, also p. 391 against Eunomius and his Master Aëtius, showing, both by reason and by testimony of the Scriptures, that the origin of the deity is one, that the Author of his eternity and the Creator of the earth out of nothing, are one and the same, and likewise concerning Christ, that he did not appear as man in a phantasm but had real flesh through which eating, drinking, weary and weeping, suffering, dying, rising again he was demonstrated to be man indeed. For Marcion and Valentinus had been opposed to these opinions asserting that the origin of Deity is twofold and that Christ came in a phantasm. To Aëtius indeed and Eunomius his disciple, he showed that the Father and Son are not of two natures and equal in divinity but of one essence and the one from the other, that is the Son from the Father, the one coeternal with the other, which belief Aëtius and Eunomius opposed.


Footnotes

390:2616

St. Servais, Bishop of Tongres 338, died at Maestricht 384. The patron saint of Maestricht. Supposed by some to be the same as Phebadius (Faegadius, Phaebadius, Segatius, Sabadius Phitadius (called in Gascony Fiari)? bishop of Agen. Flourished 440 (Cave).


Next: Isaac.