§ 1.
I have thought it right to add to these such points as they try to make out by selection from the Scriptures concerning their First Father, who was unknown to all before the coming of Christ: whereby they would exhibit our Lord as proclaiming another Father, besides the Maker of the Universe; whom, as we have said before, they in their impiety affirm to be the offspring of Defect. Thus, the Prophet Isaiah having said,1 But Israel hath not known Me, and My people hath not understood Me, they distort as though he had spoken of the ignorance of the Invisible Deep. And that which is said by Hosea,2 There is no truth in them, nor knowledge of God, they are positive, tends the same way. And, There is none that understandeth, nor searcheth out God:3 they are all gone aside, they have together become useless, they refer to the ignorance of the Deep. The saying moreover of Moses,4 None shall see God, and live, has reference, they argue, to Him.
§ 2.
For as to the Creator, they falsely say that He was seen by the Prophets; but the saying, None shall see God, and live, they will have to be spoken of that Greatness which is invisible and unknown to all. Now that the invisible Father and Maker of all is He of Whom it is said, None shall see God, is manifest to us all: but that it is not spoken of The Deep whom they wrongly imagine, but of the Creator, and that He is Himself the Invisible God, shall be shewn in the course of our argument. And Daniel too, they say, signifies this same, when he asks the Angel the solutions of the Parables, as though not knowing them. Yea, that the Angel also, hiding from him the great Mystery of the Deep, said unto him, “Haste away, Daniel:5 for these words are shut up, until the understanding understand, and the white are whitened.” And they flatter themselves that they are the white, and the truly intelligent.