Sabbatius the Bishop

Sabbatius, a bishop of the province of Gaul, at the request of a certain virgin named Secunda, chaste and devoted to Christ, composed a book On Faith against Marcion and Valentinus his teacher, and also against Eunomius and his master Aetius. In it he showed, both by reason and by the testimony of the Scriptures, that the source of deity is one, and that the Author of his eternity and the Creator of the earth out of nothing are one and the same. Likewise concerning Christ, he showed that he did not appear as a man in a phantom, but had real flesh, through which, by eating, drinking, growing weary and weeping, suffering, dying and rising again, he was shown to be truly man. For Marcion and Valentinus had opposed these teachings, asserting that the source of deity is twofold and that Christ came as a phantom. To Aetius and his disciple Eunomius he showed that the Father and the Son are not of two natures, but equal in divinity and of one essence, the one from the other, that is, the Son from the Father, the one coeternal with the other. Aetius and Eunomius opposed this belief. [a]