For Christ, having admitted what pertained to His humanity, recurs to His God-befitting dignity, taking pleasure in the advantages of His Nature for the profit of the faithful and for the sake of sound faith, which is, never at all to suspect that the Son is inferior to the Father. For thus He is shewn to be the undamaged Image of the Father, preserving in Himself whole and sound the Very Impress of the Father. And we say the Son and the Father are One, not blending their Individualities by the use of that number, as do some who say that the Father and the Son are the same [Person], but believing the Father by Himself and the Son by Himself to personally subsist; and collecting the two into One Sameness of Essence, also knowing them to possess one might, so that it is seen without variation now in One and now in the Other.
I and the Father are One. By the word "One" He signifies the Sameness of their Essence: and by the word "are" He severs into two that which is understood, and again binds them up into One Godhead.
But this also we must understand, in opposition to the Arians, that in His saying: I and the Father are One, there is signified, not the proof of sameness of will, but the Oneness of their Essence. For indeed the Jews understood that in saying this, He said that Himself was God and equal to the Father; and Christ did not deny that He had said this as they understood it.
