O, he says, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are His judgments, and unsearchable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been His counsellor? Or who has first given to Him, that it should be repaid him? For of Him, and through Him, and in Him are all things: to Him be glory forever and ever (Rom. XI, 33–36). Therefore it is the depth not of the wisdom and knowledge of the Father alone, but of God, in whom you also grant the Son to be a person; of whom no one was a counsellor, and whose mind no searcher has known: how much less he who directs even the reproach of diminution against the Most High, who receives no increase? Since the Apostle himself sighs at the unsearchable depth of God on account of his bodily infirmity.
But who first gives to God, that it should be repaid him, except one who gives a beginning to the Creator (so that he himself, as it were, might seem to have recovered his own beginning from a substance of God that had a beginning)? Here indeed one is named, one God is set forth. Assuredly, if it be otherwise than that of Him, and through Him, and in Him are all things—if these things, as you wish, belong to three—say now to whom belongs the 'to Him be glory forever and ever.' If to three, why not 'to them'? If to Him, to which of the three? Assuredly, be it as you wish, that the substance of the majesty is tripartite: why did he not say 'of Him, through another, in a third,' unless inasmuch as the one named is Himself one in three? Of whom the Apostle in another place says: And He is before all things, and all things are in Him (Col. I, 17).
Moreover, if, as you have said, all things consist in the Holy Spirit, and He is before all things, and does not begin to be after many things—He will not be a creature; and since He is not a creature, He will owe no servitude, and it remains that He is God, if He is not a servant: and He who is not gathered by reason to serve, is by truth believed to have dominion.