{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/007/0070088.htm","path":"chr/ecf/007/0070088.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/007/0070088.htm","text":"God, therefore, the contriver and founder of all things, as we have said in the second book, before He commenced this excellent work of the world, begat a pure and incorruptible Spirit, whom He called His Son. And although He had afterwards created by Himself innumerable other beings, whom we call angels, this first-begotten, however, was the only one whom He considered worthy of being called by the divine name, as being powerful in His Father\u2019s excellence and majesty. But that there is a Son of the Most High God, who is possessed of the greatest power, is shown not only by the unanimous utterances of the prophets, but also by the declaration of Trismegistus and the predictions of the Sibyls. Hermes, in the book which is entitled The Perfect Word, made use of these words: \u201cThe Lord and Creator of all things, whom we have thought right to call God, since He made the second God visible and sensible. But I use the term sensible, not because He Himself perceives (for the question is not whether He Himself perceives), but because He leads 519 to perception and to intelligence. Since, therefore, He made Him first, and alone, and one only, He appeared to Him beautiful, and most full of all good things; and He hallowed Him, and altogether loved Him as His own Son.\u201d The Erythr\u00e6an Sibyl, in the beginning of her poem, which she commenced with the Supreme God, proclaims the Son of God as the leader and commander of all, in these verses:\u2014\n \u201cThe nourisher and creator of all things, who placed the sweet breath in all, and made God the leader of all.\u201d\nAnd again, at the end of the same poem:\u2014\n \u201cBut whom God gave for faithful men to honour.\u201d\nAnd another Sibyl enjoins that He ought to be known:\u2014\n \u201cKnow Him as your God, who is the Son of God.\u201d\nAssuredly He is the very Son of God, who by that most wise King Solomon, full of divine inspiration, spake these things which we have added: 520 , \u201cGod founded 521 me in the beginning of His ways, in His work before the ages. He set me up in the beginning, before He made the earth, and before He established the depths, before the fountains of waters came forth: the Lord begat me before all the hills; He made the regions, and the uninhabitable 522 boundaries under the heaven. When He prepared the heaven, I was by Him: and when He separated His own seat, when He made the strong clouds above the winds, and when He strengthened the mountains, and placed them under heaven; when He laid the strong foundations of the earth, I was with Him arranging all things. I was He in whom He delighted: I was daily delighted, when He rejoiced, the world being completed.\u201d But on this account Trismegistus spoke of Him as \u201cthe artificer of God,\u201d and the Sibyl calls Him \u201cCounsellor,\u201d because He is endowed by God the Father with such wisdom and strength, that God employed both His wisdom and hands in the creation of the world.\nLiterally, \u201csends.\u201d The passage appears to be corrupt: \u1f51\u03c0\u03bf\u03c0\u03af\u03c0\u03c4\u03b5\u03b9 has been suggested instead of \u1f51\u03c0\u03bf\u03c0\u03ad\u03bc\u03c0\u03b5\u03b9, \u201cfalls under perception,\u201d \u201cis an object of perception.\u201d\n105:520\nProv. viii. 22-31. Lactantius quotes from the Septuagint.\n105:521\nAccording to the Hebrew, \u201cpossessed me in the beginning,\u201d and so the authorized version.\n105:522\nFines inhabitabiles. Other editions read terras inhabitabiles, \u201cuninhabitable lands.\u201d","title":"Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol VII: Lactantius: Chap. VI.\u2014Almighty God begat his Son; and the testimonies of the Sibyls and of Trismegistus concerning Him","type":"page"}