A of existence it receives its origin. And Gregory says: "Nature to the three is one; but the union is the Father, from whom and toward whom the subsequent things are referred—not in the sense of being blended, but in the sense of being held together." And Nyssen in the sixth book of his *Against Eunomius*: "The Son, as has been said, indicates with Himself the Spirit of life and of truth." And Cyril says: "He is united in union to the Son by the logic of consubstantiality, even if He proceeds from God the Father." And Dionysius calls the Father the root, but the shoots or flowers are those which come from Him, not proceeding in any such order and by succession, but simultaneously and immediately, both being held by one another and by the root supernaturally, B because of the entirely immaterial and infinite nature.
These things being laid down as the principles of piety and the foundations of theology, upon which the discourse of truth is built and the sound dogma is revealed, namely, that the Father alone is the cause, the fountain, the root, and the principle. For to Him alone such things are attributed, according to the divine speaker from Damascus, as His proper characteristic. And in no way do they shift, nor are they made common to any that are from Him; for these are only those things which have a cause from Him, and neither of these is a co-cause of the remainder with the Father, and in no way is the one prior or posterior to the other, both proceeding together and immediately, closely and conjointly; so that the Spirit is applied to the Son in the order of similar things only, but is applied to the Father C according to nature and cause, just as the Son also is applied to the Father, Cyril vociferating this in his *Against Hermias*. For, he says, the Son is spoken of in two ways, that is, He is spoken of as belonging to the Father, and the Spirit is spoken of as third, that is, He is spoken of as belonging to the Son through a certain sequence; for the Son follows the Father, so that the Spirit also follows the Son, and through the Son to the Father, but we do not say that the Son is second, or the Spirit is third, from which it follows that the Son is posterior to the Father and prior to the Spirit; and whatever other things introduce a difference of natures according to Eunomius. But it makes a great difference whether, while naming some things, one says the second and the third, or says that this is third; just as it is not the same thing in those cases wherein the order of cause is confessedly D present, to seek to declare one thing prior to another, even if they are contemporaneous by nature as possessing one nature, and by intellect on account of the reference, and those cases wherein the order of cause is disputed, so that the order of cause among them might be demonstrated. For it is necessary that both the prior and the posterior be found in one of the other modes, namely, in time or in nature. But if it be also by intellect, thus the order according to cause would not be manifested in them. Therefore, having himself said, "In no wise is one thing prior to another"—perhaps someone might say, "in time"—he immediately adds a cause, for which the Father is prior to the two, and the Son to the Holy Spirit. "Because there is," he says, "an order of the hypostases because of the processions, because begetting [is prior] to spirating, and to be begotten [is prior] to being spirated," and because of this the divine persons are thus ordered, and
A you [yourselves] say, "Not all things?" If, therefore, [they are] not all things according to you, [then he is] not consubstantial with the Father; which may it be far from any Christian even to bring into his mind. These things, then, I have said as a few out of many; but as for you, in passing through the sayings of the saints, pass through them diligently, and track down their mind, and learn these things from those who know, that you may not incur laughter by writing or speaking. For you see that all the words which you have inscribed are against you rather than for you. And if you wish to see if I am speaking the truth, come to us, and you shall see; or if not that, we shall come to you, and we shall discourse from your books, and we shall demonstrate the truth, God helping. For the gatekeeper, I know well, will open the door of the sheepfold, because we do not climb up from elsewhere B like thieves, and he will reveal to us the things hidden within it. And would that he might to you also!
HILARIO MONACHUS
NOTICE
(Fabric. Bibl. Græc., ed. Harles, vol. XI, p. 459.)Hilario, a monk, after the Synod of Florence, wrote in defense of the Latins against the Greeks his *Dialectical Dissertation on the mystical bread of the Greeks and the unleavened bread of the Latins*, against Nicetas. It begins: *'Εν τῷ μὲν διαλέγεσθαί με*. J. Meursius first published this in Greek from a codex of the Leiden Library in *Variis divinis*, Lugd. Bat., 1619, 4to. Then Allatius added a version and published it in both languages in *Græcia orthodoxa*, vol. I, pp. 655-662. Nic. Comnenus, in *Prænot. mystagog.*, p. 361 (1), praises his book *On the Procession of the Holy Spirit*. There is another, more ancient Hilario the monk, of whom it is written in the *Life of Nilus the Younger*, p. 5: "For he loved always the lives of the Fathers from his youth, namely Antony, Sabas, and Hilarion." This is he whose *Life* we have as handed down by St. Jerome. Regarding the little book of Q. Julius Hilarion, *On the Duration of the World*, written in the year 397 A.D., see Ussher’s *Diss. on Cainan*, p. 19, and Sandius’ *Animadversions on Vossius concerning Latin Historians*. (Fabr.) Regarding Hilarion Cicada, see a little later, § 27. Regarding Hilarion the archimandrite: Theodore the Studite wrote epistles to him and to another Hilarion. See Montfaucon, *Bibl. Coislin.*, p. 147, 245, 314, and 317; and he is praised on p. 100. Regarding the Lives of St. Hilarion and Hilarion the Younger, see above in vol. X, p. 235, and in many other codices indicated by Montfaucon. In the *Bibliotheca bibliothecarum mss.*, the Life of Hilarion, both the monk and the Arelatensis, is narrated. See Ind. I to that work under the word "Hilarion." Hilario the monk’s *Compendium of the books of Aristotle* addressed to Sixtus IV is in the Vatican Library, Rome, n. 5009. See Montfaucon, l. c., p. 107.
REFUTATIO ARGYROPULI. A ... AGALLIANOS: 1038 For it is an hypothesis which one ought to accept with reverence, that the persons are of the same essence, and do not have—to correct this by human reason—the same perfections. For if we were to say just one hypostatic characteristic of the Father, namely the fatherhood, and thus make the procession or the spiration common to the Son, we would be showing it to be something incidental and superfluous; especially since we do not find the teachers distinguishing these, and as if thinking of two such things in the Father, but rather assigning the fatherhood—or the fruit-bearing, or the theogony, or the cause, or any of the rest—to Him as a single hypostatic property, or personal perfection. For not in vain did Gregory turn back the name "Father" to the begetter and the source. For in the comparison with the Son, he shows the one who begets; but when He is called "Father" simply, as Cause, he says, it is understood as of the divinity contemplated in the Son and the Spirit; for this reason [he is called] only Father, that is, sole cause and not with a consort.
As, then, the paternal person exists, fatherhood and procession—which indeed, again in common under the name of fatherhood, or if you like, under the name of unbegottenness—characterize the paternal person, and are, in a way, perfections of the paternal [person]; for they are not only perfections of the nature in which He is simply whatever He is, but also of the hypostasis in which He is this specific thing. Wherefore the teachers call those [traits] properties of the divine nature, but others [they call] properties of each of the hypostases. As, then, the hypostatic properties are certain perfections, inasmuch as they are constituent of the persons and principles of the operations, they are also [perfections] of the powers and processions, whether these are understood energetically or passively. And thus, if the paternal person causes the theogony and the fatherhood to exist in the unsharable, and the principle of the divinity and the cause, and whatever else one might wish of such things—each of which, for the sake of clarity, we divide into fatherhood and procession—the specifically named [properties] are for the sake of what is brought forward. B The hypostatic property is the beginning of the person's operations and powers, inasmuch as He is such a person, that one being unsharable, and all these things must be unsharable. And since properties of the nature are shared with those from the Father, it is true to say that He differs only in mode; and in the Father there are sources, as it were, and without cause, and such things; for goodness and wisdom and creative power and such things are one in number in the Father and Son and Holy Spirit, provided, however, with this stated difference, that they exist for them from Him congenitally; but since the properties of the hypostasis are unsharable, those things which he has gathered and set forth are nothing but a mere clatter and noise in the Father. Hence, even as they have been refuted and [are contrary] to what was said before, we must stand firm on them, concerned for brevity.
ARGYROPULOS: Bringing forward, therefore, the Son, the Father gives to Him the divine essence, and as many perfections as it has, so that even the generative and the processive [powers] at the same time.
AGALLIANOS: Very good. And how, O wonderful man, can the person of the Son or of the Holy Spirit be generative and processive? Or will there be something having generative power that is not generative, or will something be generative among divine things, yet never begetting? No, that is a falsehood altogether. The Father does indeed give them the divine essence, and as many perfections as the nature has, yet not the generative or processive power; for they are not simply perfections of the nature, but are of the paternal person as His own property; wherefore they are unsharable in the Father, as has been shown. For god-befitting things belong only to the whole Godhead, and those things which are fitting for the whole Godhead would be the god-befitting perfections. But whatever does not belong to the whole Godhead are personal properties; and whatever strictly belongs to one person would not be called perfections of the nature, since the nature encompasses all the divine persons, but rather [they are] as they exist in that person, and thus they would be personal rather.
ARGYROPULOS: But indeed, when the Son was produced from the Father, the Holy Spirit is not conceived of as being produced from the Father as from a processor; for the Father is presupposed as Father, before the processor is [presupposed] as processor, as was said.
AGALLIANOS: But the argument showed the opposite: that as the Son proceeds from the Father inasmuch as the Father is Begetter, so also the Holy Spirit proceeds from the same Father as from a processor. And in the Father, the Begetter is not presupposed inasmuch as He is in the Father, but because we presuppose the Son of the Spirit from the sequence of the names, the general meaning of the Father being drawn together with the paternal and filial [names], or it signifies the Cause, toward the specific [name] whereby he wishes [to signify] the begetter. Hence we also presuppose the Begetter before the processor. For it is necessary that to whatever person the Father is referred to regarding what is conceived, that also must be presupposed in the Father before that to which He is referred regarding the rest, so that everything might be appropriately assigned, even in those very presuppositions. And nothing inconsistent with the properties of the persons happens, because we cannot conceive and speak of things that are simultaneous and proceeding at the same time, but in sequence, which is the mode of our thinking—not because the generative power arrives at being completed in the Father by the act before the processive is completed by the act. But what a wonderful thing he has suffered: he presupposes in the Father the fatherhood before the procession, as if distinguishing them in the Father as prior and posterior, and he believes that one follows the other in sequence, [following] the order of the powers and operations according to his view, which cast him into the position of not even declaring fatherhood and procession to be simultaneous, because of not positing that in a pious manner; not...