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Book I

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Preface.--It is useless to attempt to benefit those who will not accept help.

viii.i.iii.i

We have been justly provoked to make this Answer, being stung by Eunomius' accusations of our brother.

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We see nothing remarkable in logical force in the treatise of Eunomius, and so embark on our Answer with a just confidence.

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Eunomius displays much folly and fine writing, but very little seriousness about vital points.

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His peculiar caricature of the bishops, Eustathius of Armenia and Basil of Galatia, is not well drawn.

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A notice of Aetius, Eunomius' master in heresy, and of Eunomius himself, describing the origin and avocations of each.

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Eunomius himself proves that the confession of faith which He made was not impeached.

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Facts show that the terms of abuse which he has employed against Basil are more suitable for himself.

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In charging Basil with not defending his faith at the time of the 'Trials,' he lays himself open to the same charge.

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All his insulting epithets are shewn by facts to be false.

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The sophistry which he employs to prove our acknowledgment that he had been tried, and that the confession of his faith had not been unimpeached, is feeble.

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His charge of cowardice is baseless: for Basil displayed the highest courage before the Emperor and his Lord-Lieutenants.

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Résumé of his dogmatic teaching. Objections to it in detail.

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He did wrong, when mentioning the Doctrines of Salvation, in adopting terms of his own choosing instead of the traditional terms Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

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He does wrong in making the being of the Father alone proper and supreme, implying by his omission of the Son and the Spirit that theirs is improperly spoken of, and is inferior.

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Examination of the meaning of 'subjection:' in that he says that the nature of the Holy Spirit is subject to that of the Father and the Son. It is shewn that the Holy Spirit is of an equal, not inferior, rank to the Father and the Son.

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Discussion as to the exact nature of the 'energies' which, this man declares, 'follow' the being of the Father and of the Son.

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He has no reason for distinguishing a plurality of beings in the Trinity. He offers no demonstration that it is so.

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His acknowledgment that the Divine Being is 'single' is only verbal.

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He does wrong in assuming, to account for the existence of the Only-Begotten, an 'energy' that produced Christ's Person.

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The blasphemy of these heretics is worse than the Jewish unbelief.

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He has no right to assert a greater and less in the Divine being. A systematic statement of the teaching of the Church.

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These doctrines of our Faith witnessed to and confirmed by Scripture passages.

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His elaborate account of degrees and differences in 'works' and 'energies' within the Trinity is absurd.

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He who asserts that the Father is 'prior' to the Son with any thought of an interval must perforce allow that even the Father is not without beginning.

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It will not do to apply this conception, as drawn out above, of the Father and Son to the Creation, as they insist on doing: but we must contemplate the Son apart with the Father, and believe that the Creation had its origin from a definite point.

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He falsely imagines that the same energies produce the same works, and that variation in the works indicates variation in the energies.

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He falsely imagines that we can have an unalterable series of harmonious natures existing side by side.

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He vainly thinks that the doubt about the energies is to be solved by the beings, and reversely.

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There is no Word of God that commands such investigations: the uselessness of the philosophy which makes them is thereby proved.

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The observations made by watching Providence are sufficient to give us the knowledge of sameness of Being.

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His dictum that 'the manner of the likeness must follow the manner of the generation' is unintelligible.

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He declares falsely that 'the manner of the generation is to be known from the intrinsic worth of the generator'.

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The Passage where he attacks the ῾Ομοούσιον, and the contention in answer to it.

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Proof that the Anomœan teaching tends to Manichæism.

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A passing repetition of the teaching of the Church.

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Defence of S. Basil's statement, attacked by Eunomius, that the terms 'Father' and 'The Ungenerate' can have the same meaning.

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Several ways of controverting his quibbling syllogisms.

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Answer to the question he is always asking, “Can He who is be begotten?”

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His unsuccessful attempt to be consistent with his own statements after Basil has confuted him.

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The thing that follows is not the same as the thing that it follows.

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Explanation of 'Ungenerate,' and a 'study' of Eternity.

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