"Everything which proceeds from something else must needs be second to that from which it proceeds, without being on that account separated: Where, however, there is a second, there must be two; and where there is a third, there must be three. Now the Spirit indeed is third from God and the Son–.Nothing, however, is alien from that original source whence it derives its own properties. In like manner the Trinity, flowing down from the Father through intertwined and connected steps, does not at all disturb the Monarchy, whilst it at the same time guards the state of the Economy. Bear always in mind that this is the rule of faith which I profess; by it I testify that the Father, and the Son, and the Spirit are inseparable from each other, and so will you know in what sense this is said. Now, observe, my assertion is that the Father is one, and the Son one, and the Spirit one, and that They
are distinct from Each Other. This statement is taken in a wrong sense by every uneducated as well as every perversely disposed person, as if it predicated a diversity, in such a sense as to imply a separation among the Father, and the Son, and the Spirit. I am, moreover, obliged to say, when (extolling the Monarchy at the expense of the Economy) they contend for the identity of the Father and Son and Spirit, that it is not by way of diversity that the Son differs from the Father, but by distribution: it is not by division that He is different, but by distinction; ecause the Father is not the same as the Son, since they differ one from the other in the mode of their eing–.Thus the Father is distinct from the Son, being reater than the Son, inasmuch as He who begets is one, nd He who is begotten is another; He, too, who sends is one, and He who is sent is another; and He, again, who akes is one, and He through whom the thing is made is another. Happily the Lord Himself employs this xpression of the ersonof the Paraclete, so as to signify not a division or severance, but a isposition (of mutual elations in the Godhead); for He says, iaI will pray the Father, and He shall send you another Comforter...even the
Spirit of truth,le thus making the Paraclete distinct from Himself, even as we say that the Son is also distinct from he Father; so that He showed a third degree in the Paraclete, as we believe the second degree is in the Son, by eason of the order observed in the Economy.l, (Against Praxeus, Chapters 8-9)

i maintain that the substance existed lways with its own name, which is God–. but He has not always been
Father and Judge, merely on the ground of His having always been God. For He could not have been the Father previous to the Son, nor a Judge previous to sin. There was, however, a time when neither sin existed with Him, nor the Son; the former of which was to constitute the Lord a Judge, and the latter a Father.lt (Against Hermogenes, Chapter 3))


For before all things God was alone being in Himself and for Himself universe, and space, and all things.
Moreover, He was alone, because there was nothing external to Him but Himself. Yet even not then was He
alone; for He had with Him that which He possessed in Himself, that is to say, His own Reason. For God is
rational, and Reason was first in Him; and so all things were from Himself. This Reason is His own Thought (or
Consciousness) which the Greeks call ‚logos™, by which term we also designate Word or Discourse and therefore it is now usual with our people, owing to the mere simple interpretation of the term, to say that the Word was in the beginning with God; although it would be more suitable to regard Reason as the more ancient; because God had not Word from the beginning, but He had Reason even before the beginning; because also Word itself consists of Reason, which it thus proves to have been the prior existence as being its own substance. Not that this distinction is of any practical moment. For although God had not yet sent out His Word, He still had Him
within Himself, both in company with and included within His very Reason, as He silently planned and arranged
within Himself everything which He was afterwards about to utter through His Word. Now, whilst He was thus planning and arranging with His own Reason, He was actually causing that to become Word which He was dealing with in the way of Word or Discourse. And that you may the more readily understand this, consider first of all, from your own self, who are made ‚in the image and likeness of God,™ for what purpose it is that you also possess reason in yourself, who are a rational creature–.Observe, then, that when you are silently conversing with yourself, this very process is carried on within you by your reason, which meets you with a word at everymovement of your thought, at every impulse of your conception. Whatever you think, there is a word; whatever
you conceive, there is reason. You must needs speak it in your mind; and while you are speaking, you admit
speech as an interlocutor with you, involved in which there is this very reason, whereby, while in thought you are
holding converse with your word, you are (by reciprocal action) producing thought by means of that converse with
your word. Thus, in a certain sense, the word is a second person within you, through which in thinking you utter
speech, and through which also, (by reciprocity of process, ) in uttering speech you generate thought. The word
is itself a different thing from yourself. Now how much more fully is all this transacted in God, whose image and
likeness even you are regarded as being, inasmuch as He has reason within Himself even while He is silent, and
involved in that Reason His Word! I may therefore without rashness first lay this down (as a fixed principle) that
even then before the creation of the universe God was not alone, since He had within Himself both Reason, and,
inherent in Reason, His Word, which He made second to Himself by agitating it within Himself.l) (Against
Praxeus, Chapter 5)