True God from True God

But next in the creed comes: “True God from true God; of one substance with the Father; through whom the ages were framed and all things were made.” And when you said all this, remember that you said it all of the Lord Jesus Christ. For you find it stated in the creed that you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God and the firstborn of every creature; and after this and other clauses, “true God from true God, of one substance with the Father, through whom also the ages were framed.” How, then, can the same person be God and not God; God and a statue; God and an instrument? These things do not agree in any one person, heretic. They do not fit together so that whenever you like you may call him God, and whenever you like you may regard the same person as a creature. You said in the creed, “true God.” Now you say, “a mere man.” How can these things fit and agree, so that one and the same person is the greatest power and utter weakness, the highest glory and mere mortality? These things do not meet in one and the same Lord in such a way that you can split him in two, for worship and for degradation, honoring him on one side as you like and wronging him on the other as you like. [a]

When you received the sacrament of true salvation, you said in the creed: “the Lord Jesus Christ, true God from true God, of one substance with the Father, Creator of the ages, Maker of all things.” Where are you now, alas? Where is your former self? Where is that faith of yours? Where is that confession? How have you fallen back and become a monster and a portent? What folly, what madness, ruined you? You have turned the God of all power and might into lifeless matter and a soulless creature. Your faith has certainly grown, with time, with age, and with the priesthood! You are worse as an old man than you were as a child, worse as a veteran than as a raw recruit, worse as a bishop than as a novice. Once you began to be a teacher, you were never again a learner.