Against Praxeas 4

For my part, since I derive the Son from no other source than the substance of the Father, doing nothing without the Father's will, having received all power from the Father, how can I, as a matter of faith, destroy the monarchy, which I preserve in the Son as handed down to the Son by the Father? Let this be said by me of the third degree too, since I think the Spirit comes from no other source than from the Father through the Son. See, then, whether it is not rather you who destroy the monarchy, since you overturn its arrangement and dispensation, set up in as many names as God has willed. And it remains in its own condition, even though a trinity is brought in, so much so that it has even to be restored to the Father by the Son, since the apostle writes of the final end: “when he has delivered the kingdom to God and the Father. For he must reign until God puts his enemies under his feet”; that is, according to the psalm: “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet”; “but when all things have been subjected to him, except him who subjected all things to him, then he too will be subjected to him who subjected all things to him, that God may be all in all.” We see, then, that it does no harm to the monarchy that it is now with the Son, since it is both in its own condition with the Son and will be restored with its own condition to the Father by the Son. So no one will destroy it on this account if he admits the Son, to whom it is established that it was handed down by the Father, and by whom it is at some time to be restored to the Father. By this one passage of the apostolic letter we could already have shown that the Father and the Son are two, not only from the names of Father and Son but also from the fact that he who delivered the kingdom and he to whom he delivered it, and likewise he who subjected and he to whom he subjected, must necessarily be two.