Section 48
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16 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. dominion with divinity itself, and power and honour from the Father. -All this is evident jfrom those more abstruse passages in reference to his divinity, " In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God." " All things were made by him, and without him nothing was made." This, too, we are taught by the great Moses* that most ancient of all the prophets', when under the influence of the divine Spirit, he de scribes the creation and arrangement of all things, he also informs us that the Creator and maker of the universe yielded to Christ, and to none but to his divine and first begotten word, the forma tion of all subordinate things, and communed with him respect ing the creation of man. " For," says he, " God said let us make man according to our image and according to our likeness." This expression is confirmed by another of the prophets, who, discoursing of God in his hymns, declares, " He spake, and they were made ; he commanded, and they were created." Where he introduces the Father and maker as the Ruler of all, commanding with his sove reign nod, but the divine word as next to him, the very same that is proclaimed to us, as ministering to his Father's commands. Him too, all that are said to have excelled in righteousness and piety, since the creation of man ; Moses, that eminent servant of God, and Abraham before him, the children of the latter, and as many righteous prophets as subsequently appeared, contemplated with the pure eyes of the mind, and both recognized and gave him the worship that was his due as the Son of God. The Son himself, however, by no means indifferent to the worship of the Father, is appointed to teach the knowledge of the Father to all. The Lord God, therefore, appeared as a common man to Abraham, whilst sitting at the oak of Mamre. And he, immediately fall ing down, although he plainly saw a man with his eyes, never theless worshipped him as God, and entreated him as Lord. He confesses, too, that he is not ignorant who he is in the words, " Lord, the judge of all the earth, wilt not thou judge righteously ?" For as it were wholly unreasonable to suppose the uncreated and un changeable substance of the Almighty God to be changed into the form of a man, or to deceive the eyes of beholders with the phantom of any created substance, so also it is unreasonable to