A Source Book for Ancient Church History - Mirrors

332 A Source Book for Ancient Church History[303]any substance [hypokeimenon], 99 but that of His own will andcounsel He has subsisted before time and before ages, as perfectGod only begotten and unchangeable, and that before He wasbegotten or created or purposed or established He was not. ForHe was not unbegotten. We are persecuted because we say thatthe Son has a beginning, but that God is without beginning. Thisis the cause of our persecution, and likewise because we say thatHe is of that which is not. 100 And this we say because He isneither part of God, nor of any substance [hypokeimenon]. Forthis we are persecuted; the rest you know. I bid thee farewell inthe Lord, remembering our afflictions, my fellow-Lucianist andtrue Eusebius [i.e., pious].(d) Arius, Thalia, in Athanasius, Orat. contra Arianos, I, 2.(MSG, 26:21.)The following extracts from the Thalia, although given byAthanasius, the opponent of Arius, are so in harmony withwhat Arius and his followers asserted repeatedly that they maybe regarded as correctly representing the work from whichthey profess to be taken.God was not always Father; but there was when God was aloneand was not yet Father; afterward He became a Father. The Sonwas not always; for since all things have come into existencefrom nothing, and all things are creatures and have been made, soalso the Logos of God himself came into existence from nothingand there was a time when He was not; and that before He cameinto existence He was not; but He also had a beginning of Hisbeing created. For God, he says, was alone and not yet was there99 ὑποκείμενον.100 ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων, the phrase which was afterward the foundation of the Ariansect of the Exoukontians.