Council of Illiberi, 300-306

time when these powers did not exist; and so there was a time when God was without them; which is very absurd.

50. But why should I treat further about these matters with you, man full of the Spirit, and especially who understand what absurdities follow from that opinion which asserts that the Son was made? It seems to me that the leaders of this belief did not consider these at all, and thus have completely strayed from the truth, when they explain differently from what the divine and prophetic Scripture wishes, the passage: "The Lord created man in the beginning of his ways" [Prov. 8:22: LXX]. Certainly there is not, as you know, only one meaning of the word "created." For in this passage "created" is the same as "he set him over works made by Him," made, I say, by the Son Himself.

But here "created" ought not to be understood exactly as "made." For "to make" and "to create" differ from each other. "Is not he thy father that hast possessed thee, and made thee, and created thee?" [Dt. 32, 6:LXX] said Moses in the great canticle of Deuteronomy. And so who can rightly refute them: O rash and inconsiderate men, was he then a made thing "the first born of every creature" [Col. 1:15], "begotten from the womb before the daystar" [Ps. 109:3:LXX] of whom as Wisdom says, "before all the hills he brought me forth"? [Prov. 8:25:LXX]. Finally anybody may read in many passages of the divine statements that the Son was "begotten," but nowhere "made." By reason of this they who dare to call His divine and inexplicable begetting a making, are clearly proved to speak falsely about the Lord's generation.

51. (3) Neither therefore ought the admirable and divine unity be separated into three godheads, nor ought the dignity and supreme magnitude of the Lord be lessened by the designation of making; but we must believe in God the Father Almighty, and in Christ Jesus his Son, and in the Holy Spirit, that the Word, moreover, is united to the God of all.

For He said: "I and the Father are one" [John 10:30], and: "I am in the Father, and the Father in me" [John 14:10]. Thus it is evident that the divine Trinity and the holy proclamation of the monarchy will be preserved intact.

St. Felix I 269–274

St. Eutychianus 275–283

St. Caius 283–296

St. Marcellinus 296–304

COUNCIL OF ILLIBERI¹ BETWEEN 300/306²

The Indissolubility of Matrimony

52a. Can. 9. Likewise let the faithful woman, who has left an adulterous husband and attracts another faithful one, be forbidden to marry; if she