XXIV. Wherefore if the Word of God demonstrates that his Will is his Operation, and not that his Substance is such; and that the Only-begotten subsisted by the Will of the Father; 'tis certainly necessary that the Son preserve this Likeness, not as to Substance, but as to Operation, which is also his Will. Whence also we ought to be persuaded to preserve that true Notion of his being his Father's Image, which the blessed Apostle Paul declar'd, when he said, Who is the Image of the Invisible God, the first-born of every Creature; for in him were all things created, both things in Heaven, and things on Earth, visible and invisible.⁹ For therefore is he call'd, The Image of God. Now these words, All things were created in him, together with the Appellation of the First-born, do not give us the Character of an Unbegotten Substance : for here is nothing about Substance, but about that Operation whereby he, as a Son, performs all things. The Expression of Image does not bear any resemblance to the Substance, but to that Operation which was hidden, without any Generation, in God's Foreknowledg, even before the Constitution of the Son, and of those things which were created in him. For who is there that knowing the Only-begotten himself, and considering that all things, were made by him,¹⁰ will not acknowledg that ^[24] he at once contemplates the whole Power of the Father ? To which the most blessed Apostle Paul has respect, when he does not say by him, but in him, altho he adds the Character of First-born: that when himself is also included, together with all the Beings made by him, he may make manifest to all that are able to comprehend the whole at one view, the Operation of the Father. We therefore call him the Image of the Father, not as comparing a Begotten Being with that which is Unbegotten; for that is certainly disagreeable, and in all Beings impossible; but as owning him the Only begotten, and First-born of the Father : the appellation of Son declaring the Substance, as does that of Father the Operation of him that begat him. But if any one out of the love of Contention, and as fixt in his own Opinions, will not apply his Mind to what has been said, but yet is forc'd to own that the Character of Father is significative of the Substance; let him attribute the like Character to the Son, to whom he has already attributed the like Substance. Or rather let him attribute both Characters to each of them; we mean the Character of Son to the Father, and that of Father to the Son. For the Similitude of Substance obliges those who are of that opinion to characterize them both by the same Appellations.