By Water & Blood

Chapter 25: How he wrote things contrary to himself

Then too, writing things contrary to himself, he does not perceive it. For in other places he insists that none of the former people knew the things concerning the Word, since it was a hidden mystery. He writes thus, in these very words (Nr. 45):

“For what else was the hidden mystery but that which concerns the Word? And this mystery was formerly so hidden in God that no one of the former people clearly knew the things concerning the Word; but we now enjoy the riches of the glory and of the hidden mystery.”

And again he adds (Nr. 46): “But the holy apostle and disciple of the Lord, John, teaching clearly and expressly at the beginning of the Gospel—as of one formerly unknown among men—and naming him the Word of the Almighty, spoke thus: ‘In the beginning was the Word.’” In these passages, then, he defines the hidden mystery to be that God has a Word; yet in the prophetic sayings just set out he maintains that all the divine Scriptures proclaim the things concerning him, and he gathers together a great many testimonies concerning the Word of God.

He was not, then, unknown to the former people; for they all knew such sayings, carrying the prophetic oracles in their mouths and in their memories. Yet this Christian holds out to us the scribe of the Jews, not hearing the Saviour saying, “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” And he admires him for confirming with an oath that “there is one God; and there is none other but he,” not knowing that “the devils also believe, and tremble.”

And observe how he gathers from the prophetic Scriptures themselves the passages concerning the word that teaches what is to be done—a word which even the children of the Jews will confess that they know, having received it before us. Nor indeed was Sabellius himself ignorant of such a word. How, then, in the expressions of his which I have set out, did he say, censuring the Jews and Sabellius, that they had not known the Word? And since the same man has declared above that no one could know God or recognize his Word unless he had received the image of the invisible God—that is, the flesh, as he himself said

(for he contended that God and his Word are known through the image alone, saying that the flesh is the image)—it must be pointed out, through what has been set forth, that apart from the presence in the flesh all the Jews knew exactly the word of God and the words in the prophetic Scriptures that command holy works, practicing them from their tender years; and they confessed God as the Maker and Creator of all things, just as the scribe also did, confirming this with an oath.

So much, then, for the demonstration that the man Sabellianizes. It is time now to go on to the distorted interpretations of the divine Scriptures which he has made, so that everyone who honors the man may learn that he has turned aside not only from the right faith, but also from the sound reading and contemplation of the divinely inspired Scriptures.