{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/002/0020010.htm","path":"chr/ecf/002/0020010.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/002/0020010.htm","text":"First of all, believe 152 that there is one God who created and finished all things, and made all things out of nothing. He alone is able to contain the whole, but Himself cannot be contained. 153 Have faith therefore in Him, and fear Him; and fearing Him, exercise self-control. Keep these commands, and you will cast away from you all wickedness, and put on the strength of righteousness, and live to God, if you keep this commandment.\n[These first words are quoted by Iren\u00e6us, vol. i. p. 488, this series. Note that this book begins with the fundamental principle of faith, which is everywhere identified by Hermas (as in Vision ii. cap. 2) with faith in the Son of God. The Holy Spirit is also everywhere exhibited in this work. But the careful student will discover a very deep plan in the treatment of this subject. Repentance and faith are the great themes, and the long-suffering of God, against the Montanists. But he begins by indicating the divine character and the law of God. He treats of sin in its relations to the law and the gospel: little by little, opening the way, he reaches a point, in the Eighth Similitude, where he introduces the New Law, identifying it, indeed, with the old, but magnifying the gospel of the Son of God. Hermas takes for Granted the \u201cSon of man;\u201d but everywhere he avoids the names of His humanity, and brings out \u201cthe Son of God\u201d with emphasis, in the spirit of St. John\u2019s Gospel (cap. i.) and of the Epistle to the Hebrews (cap. i.), as if he feared the familiarities even of believers in speaking of Jesus or of Christ, without recognising His eternal power and Godhead.]\n20:153\nContained.\u2014Vat. and Pal. add: and who cannot be defined in words, nor conceived by the mind. [Here we have the \u201cIncomprehensible,\u201d so familiar in the liturgic formula improperly called the Athanasian Creed. In the Latin immensus, in the Greek \u1f04\u03c0\u03b5\u03b9\u03c1\u03bf\u03c2; i.e., \u201cnon mensurabilis, qui\u00e2 inlocalis, incircumscriptus, ubique totus, ubique pr\u0153sens, ubique potens.\u201d Not intelligible is too frequently supposed to be the sense, but this is feeble and ambiguous. See Waterland, Works, iv. p. 320 London, 1823.]","title":"Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol II: THE PASTOR OF HERMAS: Commandment First. On Faith in God.","type":"page"}