2 Corinthians 4:6

If, owing to the fault of human error, the word God has become a common name (since in the world there are said and believed to be “gods many”), yet “the blessed God,” (who is “the Father) of our Lord Jesus Christ,” will be understood to be no other God than the Creator, who both blessed all things (that He had made), as you find in Genesis, and is Himself “blessed by all things,” as Daniel tells us. Now, if the title of Father may be claimed for (Marcion’s) sterile god, how much more for the Creator? To none other than Him is it suitable, who is also “the Father of mercies,” and (in the prophets) has been described as “full of compassion, and gracious, and plenteous in mercy.” In Jonah you find the signal act of His mercy, which He showed to the praying Ninevites. …

Now, if you will examine the words which precede the passage where mention is made of the outward and the inward man, will you not discover the whole truth, both of the dignity and the hope of the flesh? For, when he speaks of the “light which God hath commanded to shine in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord in the person of Jesus Christ,” and says that “we have this treasure in earthen vessels,” meaning of course the flesh, which is meant, that the flesh shall be destroyed, because it is “an earthen vessel,” deriving its origin from clay; or that it is to be glorified, as being the receptacle of a divine treasure? Now if that true light, which is in the person of Christ, contains in itself life, and that life with its light is committed to the flesh, is that destined to perish which has life entrusted to it? Then, of course, the treasure will perish …

3. But this the bodily eye neither now is, nor shall then be, able to see. For everything which can be seen by the bodily eye must be in some place, nor can be everywhere in its totality, but with a smaller part of itself occupies a smaller space, and with a larger part a larger space. It is not so with God, who is invisible and incorruptible, “who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen nor can see.” For He cannot be seen by men through the bodily organ by which men see corporeal things. …

10. Scripture again witnesses that the space of those three days themselves was not whole and entire, but the first day is counted as a whole from its last part, and the third day is itself also counted as a whole from its first part; but the intervening day, i.e. the second day, was absolutely a whole with its twenty-four hours, twelve of the day and twelve of the night. For He was crucified first by the voices of the Jews in the third hour, when it was the sixth day of the week. Then He hung on the cross itself at the sixth hour, and yielded up His spirit at the ninth hour. But He was buried, “now when the even was come,” as the words of the evangelist express it; which means, at the end of the day. …

8. How shall I make those whose minds are full of vanity understand that the actions of the prophets were also mystical and prophetic? The vanity of their minds is shown in their thinking that we believe God to have once existed in darkness, because it is written, "Darkness was over the deep." As if we called the deep God, where there was darkness, because the light did not exist there before God made it by His word. From their not distinguishing between the light which is God, and the light which God made, they imagine that God must have been in darkness before He made light, because darkness was over the deep before God said, "Let there be light, and there was light." In the New Testament both these things are ascribed to God. …

Now, since, as he says in another passage, “the law was added because of transgression,” meaning the law which is written externally to man, he therefore designates it both as “the ministration of death,” and “the ministration of condemnation;” but the other, that is, the law of the New Testament, he calls “the ministration of the Spirit” and “the ministration of righteousness,” because through the Spirit we work righteousness, and are delivered from the condemnation due to transgression. The one, therefore, vanishes away, the other abides; for the terrifying schoolmaster will be dispensed with, when love has succeeded to fear. …

But what shall I say about the revelation of wisdom? For there is no man who can in the present life very well hope to attain to the great revelations which were given to the Apostle Paul; and of course it is impossible to suppose that anything was accustomed in these revelations to be made known to him but what appertained to wisdom. Yet for all this he says: “Lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me. For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that He would take it away from me. …

Ver. 6 . “Seeing it is God that said, Light shall shine out of darkness, who shined in your hearts.”

86. But does any one deny that the Godhead of the eternal Trinity is to be worshipped? whereas the Scriptures also express the inexplicable Majesty of the Divine Trinity, as the Apostle says elsewhere: “Since God, Who said that light should shine out of darkness, shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

87. The apostles truly saw this glory, when the Lord Jesus on the mount shone with the light of His Godhead: “The apostles,” it says, “saw it and fell on their face.” Do not you think that they even, as they fell, worshipped, when they could not with their bodily eyes endure the brightness of the divine splendour, and the glory of eternal light dulled the keenness of mortal sight? Or what else did they who saw His glory say at that time, except, “O come let us worship and fall down before Him”? For “God shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”