[247]The reference here is to Manichean views of the worst kind, _i. e._ that matter is not only without beginning, but the source of evil and altogether independent of God.
[248]_i. e._ Dionysius of Rome, to whom this treatise was addressed. This particular “other letter” does not seem to have been known to Eusebius, and when Athanasius quotes this extract in another of his treatises he omits the words “to thee.”
[249]Athanasius himself was sparing in his use of the term, and the Synod of Antioch (A.D. 264) refused to accept it, as liable to misconstruction.
[250]_i. e._ in the letter to Euphranor (about Sabellianism in Libya) which had given rise to the Bishop of Rome’s intervention.
[251]It looks as if Dionysius was in exile when he wrote this. See above, p. 19.
[252]_i. e._ each of the two is itself and not the other, as was said above in the case of parents and children.
[253]i. e. they had gone or sent to Rome, in order to attack him.
[254]Viz. about the plant and the ship, which he has already apologized for as not quite appropriate.
[255]_i. e._ in Scripture, _e. g._ in such passage as Wisd. vii. 25, to which he refers in the next sentence.
[256]Sc. in Dionysius’s letter to Euphranor: cf. John x. 30, xvii. 11, 21, 22. The extract on p. 106 below deals with the same thought more fully. In both places Dionysius’s language is based on Philo’s discussion of the λόγος ἐνδιάθετος and the λόγος προφορικός (the conceived and the expressed word), _de vita Mosis_, p. 230, Cohn.
[257]i. e. _from_ the Father and _through_ the Son: Dionysius seems to have derived this view of the Holy Spirit’s Procession from his master, Origen, though he is thinking here rather of the Mission of the Spirit into the Church and its members than of the eternal and necessary relations of the three Persons in the Holy Trinity to one another, as the sentences that follow indicate.
[258]_Lit._ in their hands: a striking expression which Athanasius borrows from Dionysius in his _Exposition of the Faith_.
[259]This is what Dionysius of Rome had imputed to our Dionysius, though without the word “wholly” he would not have altogether discarded the position.
[260]Λόγος is translated throughout this passage by “speech” (_i. e._ uttered words), except in the last clause, where it refers to the Son Himself and where it must be rendered by “Word” as usual: but obviously “speech” is only part of the full meaning of λόγος. The whole passage should be compared with the preceding extract.