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358 THE HISTORY OF HEJIESIES,
he was a mere creature ; but when we say he is the Son, we
mean that he was produced from the substance of the Father, or
that he was of the same substance as the Father, as St. Athanasius
teaches : (16)
" Omnis films ejusdem essentiae est proprii
parentis, alioquin impossibile est, ipsum
verum esse filium." St.
Augustin says that Christ cannot be called the Son of the Holy
the In
Ghost, though it was by the operation of the Holy Spirit
How, then, can he be the Son of the three
carnation took place.
Persons ? St. Thomas (17) teaches that Christ cannot be called
the Son of God, unless by the eternal generation, as he has been
generated by the Father alone ;
but Berruyer wants us to believe
that he is not the Son, generated by the Father, but made by one
God, subsisting
in three Persons.
12 To carry out tliis if
proposition,
he understands that Jesus
Christ is the Son, consubstantial to the Father, who subsists in
three Persons, he must admit four Persons in God, that is, three
in which God subsists, and the fourth Jesus Christ, made the
Son of the Most Holy Trinity ; or, in other words, of God sub
sisting in three Persons. If, on the other hand, he considers the
Father of Jesus Christ as one person alone, then he falls into
Sabellianism, recognizing in God not three distinct Persons, but
one alone, under three different names. He is accused of Arian-
ism by others, and, in my opinion,
his error leads to Nesto-
rianism. He lays down as a principle, that there are two gene
rations in God one eternal, the other in time one of necessity,
ad intra the other voluntary, ad extra. In all this he is quite
correct ; but then, speaking of the generation in time, he says
that Jesus Christ was not the natural Son of God the Father, as
the first Person of the Trinity, but the Son of God, as subsisting
in three Persons.
13. Admitting this, then, to be the case, it follows that Jesus
Christ had two Fathers, and that in Jesus Christ there are two
Sons one the Son of God, as the Father, the first Person of the
Trinity, who generated him from all eternity the other, the
Son made in time by God, but by God subsisting
in three Per
sons, who, unking the humanity of Jesus Christ (or, as Berruyer
says, uniting that man, hominem ilium,) to the Divine Word,
(16) St. Athan. Epist. 2, ad Strapion. (17) St. Thorn. 3, p. 711, 32, art. 3.