Pseudo-Fulgentius, Book on the Trinity, preface (chs 1-4).
The Book on the Trinity is a testimonia collection: a catalogue of quotations from the Bible designed to substantiate (in this case) various aspects of teaching about the Trinity. It was (wrongly) attributed to Fulgentius of Ruspe in the seventeenth century; the anonymous Nicene Christian author is still called Pseudo-Fulgentius for convenience. The book opens with a long preface setting out a series of exegetical, theological and historical arguments for why the doctrine of the Nicene Church was orthodoxy and the teachings of its rival in Vandal Africa should be condemned as Arian heresy. The precise content of these arguments suggests it may have been written at the time of, or shortly after, the Conference of Carthage called by Huneric in 484 (see Whelan, Being Christian, 61-62).
Edition: Ps.-Fulgentius of Ruspe, Liber de Trinitate (Testimonia de fide Catholica seu adversus Pintam), (ed.) J. Fraipont CCSL 90: 239-59.
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(1)
The certain integrity of the faith witnesses that the most faithful foundation of the Catholic faith after Christ are the apostles. Since that preaching is perhaps stopping, I do not what secret work of the Holy Spirit sows and introduces this logic into the minds of the faithful. Nevertheless, which good believer does not know that all heresies have left the Catholic Church, just like useless branches which have jutted out from the vine? But it [the Catholic church] remains in its root, in its vine, in its love. The gates of hell will not prevail against it. The one Church, the true Church, the Catholic Church, fighting against all heresies, can do battle, and cannot be defeated. Concerning which, Solomon in the Song of Songs says in character as Christ [ex persona Christi] to his bride, which we believe to be the church: behold, my darling is like a lily among thorns (2:2). Because its integrity is pricked every day by the doctrines of various heresies, as if by thorns, so that, guarding against its enemies, it trains itself until, shining like the lily on the head of its bridegroom, it is adorned by its radiance.
(2)
But because some, driven by their own spirit, have presumed that the worshippers of that faith must be called Homoousians or One-Substantialists, there must be a response to their inexperience. For omnipotent God is so great and acts in such a way, that he communicates good things through bad people; just as through Caiphas the bad priest, he deemed it worthy to preach the sacrament of our redemption. For indeed he who wrote that little book, conceived with a savage mind, thought that a mass of divine testimonies as much from the New as the Old Testament had to oppose homoousios. Concerning such things, the apostle once pronounced, saying: since they do not know of what they speak, they should not pronounce concerning those things (I Tim. 1:7). For if he knew what homoousios means in Latin when translated from Greek, he would strive to praise it rather than rebuke it.
For 318 of our fathers, who together concocted the antidote of this vocabulary to exclude the poison of Arius, did not use words extraneous to the Gospel but translated it literally, and they took care to teach the logic of the correct faith more easily to those who had not yet understood it. For in Greek speech, homos means ‘of one’, and usia ‘substance’.
Consult the text of the Gospel, and you find this proffered from the divine mouth: I and the Father are one (John 10:30). Cut away the plural, and return to the singular truth of substance. For because he said: I and the Father are one, that is his own person and that of his Father, by saying we are, he promulgated a judgement against Sabellius, whom he foresaw as a future heretic, so that he might discern his own person and that of the Father. Because he said one, he equally foresaw Arius who did not hesitate to split the substance of the deity. Because Sabellius wrongly conjoined them, and Arius criminally separated them. Indeed it would have been fitting for Sabellius to separate the persons of Father and Son, and for Arius not to separate the substance of God in any way whatsoever.
Assuredly, they judge a great crime to be attached to the Catholic faith, since they call its disciples Homoousians or One-Substantialists, as if homoousios or the substance of God contains the name of some person, just as the creators of diverse heresies ordain that the sect of their name must be preached to their disciples. Just as Simonians from Simon, Menandrians from Menander, Marcionites from Marcion, Valentinianists from Valens, Manichaeans from Mani, Nepotians from Nepos; and since I should hardly pass over ancient heresies which are now absent, I will name the new ones which have arisen in the meantime, as there are Sabellians from Sabellius, Arians from Arius, Eunomians from Eunomius, Macedonians from Macedonius, Apollinarians from Apollinaris, Nestorians from Nestorius, Donatists from Donatus, Maximianists from Maximianus, Rogatianists from Rogatus, and if there are some others who venerate the names of their creators, they are called Christians by name only and not by deeds, since they have abandoned God.
Let he who thinks homoousios should to be blamed show that Homoousios is the name of some person. For it would have seemed to me, if the most glorious summit of the Gospel had become as clear as day [luce clarius innotuisset] to all the gentiles, those words of the Lord from the Gospel could have erased their heresy, which the Arians think must be favoured, that is: the Father and I are one; which (as was said) the fathers established as homoousios, translated literally.
(3)
But I should refer briefly to that which they pretend, in the presence of the inexperienced, ought to be believed by many, rather than a few, because the Council of Nicaea was celebrated by 318 fathers, while indeed they boast that at Ariminum 830 were congregated, where cunning men attempted to obstruct homoousios before the inexperienced. Behold homoousios obtained in a few, so that thus it might become known to other bishops constituted through the space of the whole world, so that they might dare to be honoured by its confession. But if later they met in such a multitude at Rimini, as they assert, the bishops of that sect would have multiplied through the world, their congregations would have grown, such a faith would even have occupied empires. But when the cunning of that fraud was recognised through prudent and most righteous men, thus homoousios was confirmed, so that we might distinguish that barely the remnants of Ariminum have remained to prove the Catholics. We should consult that city of Ariminum, where that act of fraud took place, or rather was inveigled, if it is agreeable. Whether it might have a bishop of that sect, I do not know.
Indeed I should talk more freely about Milan, where Auxentius as a cunning schemer [artifex] poured out the venom of his sect. His successor Ambrose, filled by the Holy Spirit, destroyed [Auxentius’] doctrine thus, that after death his name in that city would be scraped [raderetur] from the memory of the living and his name was considered just like some disease. Then, through this Ambrose, the faith was strengthened in the Emperor Gratian and it increased in the bishops and they made it greater and greater in the people. For omnipotent God, who through all the Scriptures promised increase for his church, would not renounce his promise, and permit falsity to grow. Let this be said concerning all heresies.
(4)
Moreover in what follows, with the aid of God who both instructs the heart and rules the tongue, such testimonies are placed both concerning the one God and the power and invisibility and equality of the Son with the Father, and the deity of the Holy Spirit, which is the Trinity—although those people do not want it, it is nevertheless one God—so that if the shadows of contention have not loved the light, it is necessary that they see the truth.
And lest it should move someone because we have said that the growth of the church had been promised through all the Scriptures, and if they claim that it has been lost through this oppression, they should know it is written in Jeremiah: the partridge will cry out, it will gather what it did not bear, it will make them its own riches unjustly. (Jeremiah 17:11) And this is most certain evidence that the Catholic faith has never grown without tribulations and persecutions, so that it might be fulfilled what was said: that through many tribulations and straits it will behove us to see the kingdom of God (Acts 14:21). And the flourishing of that faith is witnessed by the exile of innocents, and the proscriptions of miserable ones, and the torments and oppression of captives.
But I see some producing contradictions, and throwing at us the persecutions of the Donatists, whose fury did violence to the laws, and who endured the laws to the full. For if the Catholic mother received some from them to her pious bosom, without the injury of any baptism, without any quarrel, without any insult to the Holy Spirit, (it was) so that they who were converted willingly would grieve that Catholic charity had been hidden from them for so long.
(5)
Testimonies concerning the one God
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