Fathers’ sins; vain Name; idols; Trinity without polytheism

to race with ancestral stumblings. For we do not say somewhere that fathers’ sins strike down upon those who have altogether done nothing wrong, although God has cried out expressly: ‘Fathers will not die on behalf of children, nor children on behalf of fathers; each will die in his own sin.’ Yet if those from them should follow the fathers’ judgments, and be zealots of ancestral impiety, the wrath somehow stretches even unto them. And even if somehow from inborn love-of-humanity the God above all should let go the first ones from needing to be punished, yet late he brings upon the second or the third the anger fitting and owed at the beginnings to the profane race. He was therefore frightening them unto needing to fear, naming himself a jealous God; yet he was also confirming them otherwise unto faith, promising to do mercy unto thousands to those who love him. And he was adding to these a neighboring and sister commandment: ‘For you will not take,’ he says, ‘the name of the Lord your God upon a vain thing; for the Lord will not cleanse the one taking his name upon a vain thing.’ Some were doing this, fastening the calling of God upon woods and stones, and unlearnedly bringing down the name above every name unto a handiwork and toil of a human hand. And God said somewhere concerning them through Isaiah’s voice: ‘A craftsman choosing a wood stood it in a measure, and in glue shaped it, and made it as a form of a man, and as beauty of a human to stand it in a house; he cut wood from the thicket which the Lord planted, and rain lengthened it, that it might be for humans unto burning, and taking from it he was warmed, and having burned they baked breads upon them; yet the remainder they worked into gods, and they worship them.’ And after other things: ‘Know that their heart is ash, and they wander.’ These take the Lord’s name upon a vain thing. Yet I think those who have already come to be outside a diabolic snare, and have known the true God, must not kneel unto cold thoughts, nor honor the ignoble in this at least with empty talk, being dragged opposite unto needing to know other gods, or to think that any exist at all beside the one and truly. ‘For even if some are called gods and lords, both in heaven and upon earth, yet for us one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we unto him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him; and one Holy Spirit, in whom are all things, and we in him.’ For we least of all contract the nature of the Godhead in a Jewish way unto only the one God and Father, yet widening as it were unto a holy and consubstantial Trinity; and indeed also distinguishing by quality of persons and property of hypostasis, we contract again unto one God, because of the sameness of substance, and we will serve him, we will worship him, calling upon the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. ‘For there will not be,’ he says, ‘other gods besides me;’ and again: ‘The Lord your God you will wor