"In
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
This was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him
was nothing made." To this so great sublimity of his [John's] beginning all
the rest of his preaching well agrees; and he has spoken concerning the divinity
of the Lord as none other has spoken. What he had drank in, the same he gave
forth. For it is not without reason that it is recorded of him in this very
Gospel, that at supper he reclined on the Lord's bosom. From that breast then he
drank in secret; but what he drank in secret he gave forth openly, that there
may come to all nations not only the incarnation of the Son of God, and His
passion and resurrection, but also what He was before His incarnation, the only
Son of the Father, the Word of the Father, coeternal with Him that begat, equal
with Him by whom He was sent; but yet in that very sending made less, that the
Father might be greater.
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