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94 THE HISTORY OF HERESIES,
Son in vain, as the Son already existed always, for the Divine
generation is eternal, and as the Father generating is eternal, so
the Son is eternally generated ; both are eternal, but the Father
has been always the principium in the Divine Nature.
17. Finally, they object that the primitive Christians did not
believe the mystery of the Trinity, for if they did, the Gentiles
would have attacked them, on the great difficulties with which
this mystery, humanly speaking, was encompassed ; at all
events, they would have tried to prove from that, that they
believed in a plurality of Gods, but we find no such charge
made against the Christians by the Gentiles, nor do we find a
word about it in the Apologies written by the early Fathers in
defence of the Faith. To this we answer : First That even in
these early days the Pastors of the Church taught the Catechu
mens the Apostles Creed, which contains the mystery of the
Trinity, but they did not speak openly of it to the Gentiles, who,
when their understanding could not comprehend Divine things,
only mocked them. Secondly Many of the writings of the
Gentiles have been lost in the lapse of centuries, and through
the prohibitory decrees
of the Apologies were
of the Christian Emperors, and many
lost in like manner. Praxeas, how
ever, who denied the Trinity, uses this very argument against
the Catholics :
"
If you admit three Persons in God," says he,
"
you admit a plurality of Gods like the Gentiles." Besides,
in the first Apology of St. Justin, we read that the Idolaters
objected to the Christians, that they adored Christ as the Son
of God. The pagan Celsus, as we find in Origcn (13), argued
that the Christians, by their belief in the Trinity, should admit
a plurality of Gods, but Origen answers him, that the
Trinity
does not constitute three Gods, but only one, for the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Ghost, though three Persons, are still
only one and the same essence. The acts of the martyrs prove
in a thousand places, that the Christians believed that Jesus
Christ was the true Son of God, and they could not believe this,
unless they believed, at the same time, that there were three
Persons in God.
(13) Origen lib. Con. Celsum.