—nor, indeed, does anyone else attach to it any meaning other than the sonship that is intelligible only when a portion separates from the parent; and even this understanding is rejected by such of their own scholars as deny it.

Yet they neither followed the prophets nor spoke in terms that sound reason can accept. They went astray concerning what they reported from the prophets, and they led their followers—especially the common folk—astray by what they themselves asserted.

Granted, they do not claim that God’s begetting resembles the reproduction of animals, in which a concrete part splits off and comes into existence. Instead they speak of “a divine begetting,” meaning that a segment of the Godhead became separate and then indwelt the human nature. No other intelligible sense of begetting can be conceived apart from this.

They also declare: “We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the life-giver, who proceeds from the Father, who together with the Father is worshiped and glorified, who spoke through the prophets.” Their assertion that He “proceeds from the Father, who together with the Father is worshiped and glorified,” cannot reasonably be said of the life that inheres in the Lord, for that life, like the other attributes, does not proceed from Him. Were the self-subsisting One something that ‘proceeded,’ His knowledge, power, and every other attribute would likewise have to ‘proceed’ from Him. In fact, the idea of procession is far clearer with respect to speech than it is with respect to life: speech issues forth from the speaker, whereas life does not flow out of the living being. So if within