By Water & Blood

Chapter 16: A refutation of the man’s false doctrine

All these statements, then, since they amount to a denial of the Son of God, need no further working over. But I think it fitting to ask this much: if there was one God and nothing else, neither Father nor Son, why did the Scripture falsely employ such names? And why does Marcellus himself play a part, calling that which is not a Son but a word, “Son”? And since he has used the example of the word in men, it must be said that not every man has a son, even though he is rational and possesses the innate word within himself;

a son, therefore, is something other than a word. If, then, he should say that God has a word within himself and nothing else—by which he also thought, and by which he conversed with himself, saying, “Let us make man”—why does he name him Son in vain? And why does he play a part before the Church? And why, not believing in the Son of God, does he pretend to believe, putting on a show by calling the Word in God “Son,” when his very example clearly teaches that the word implanted in the soul stands at a great distance from a son begotten from someone and subsisting and living and acting by himself?

“But it is not I,” he will say, as is likely, “but the divine evangelist who called him Word; it would follow, then, that we too should agree with him.” Yes, I say so myself as well.