By Water & Blood

Chapter 1: That Marcellus vainly abused Sabellius while holding the same opinions

But before examining these things: since I found Sabellius being attacked by him in the middle of his treatise, I was astonished at the man’s stupidity, that he did not spare himself from speaking ill of the very one whom, above all others, he ought to have praised, since he had become one who shared his opinion and his mind. I did not think it right to pass over the matter in silence, but resolved to hand over the refutation of this too in the present writing. For his slandering of the ministers of God, though it brought blame upon himself and good repute upon those who were set free from communion with him,

nevertheless had some semblance of reason, in that a man may seem to disparage what is not to his liking. But to strike at himself unawares by reviling one of like mind seems to me to belong at once to shamelessness and to senselessness. That this is so, he himself would furnish the proof against himself: for he introduces God as a Son-Father (υἱοπάτωρ) after the manner of Sabellius—if not in bare words, at least in reality—by abolishing the hypostasis (ὑπόστασις) of the Son, and by defining God as one, and by calling this one both his own Father and, again, his own Son. For having granted that the Word is in God,

and having defined him as one and the same with him, he said that God is styled the Father of this Word, and that the Word is his Son—not being truly a Son in the subsistence of an essence (ἐν οὐσίας ὑποστάσει), but being properly and truly Word. At any rate he takes care to point out that he is Word not by an improper use of the term, but properly and truly Word, and nothing other than Word. But if nothing other, it is plain that neither was he properly and truly Son, but was so named improperly, as far as a sound and a name go. And in saying that the Word is one and the same with God, he declared that the one who was made flesh and born of the Virgin is God himself. This is exactly what Sabellius uttered long ago, and long before that, and the Church of God rejected him for it, enrolling him among the godless heretics.