[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.