BOOK V. 


CHAPTER I. 

        He vehemently inveighs against the error of the Pelagians, who
                     declared that Christ was a mere man.

    WE said in the first book that that heresy which copies and follows the 
lead of Pelagianism, strives and contends in every way to make it believed 
that the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, when born of the Virgin was only a 
mere man; and that having afterwards taken the path of virtue He merited by 
His holy and pious life to be counted worthy for this holiness of His life 
that the Divine Majesty should unite Itself to Him: and thus by cutting off 
altogether from Him the honour of His sacred origin, it only left to Him the 
selection on account of His merits.[1]  And their aim and endeavour was this; 
viz., that, by bringing Him down to the level of common men, and making Him 
one of the common herd, they might assert that all men could by their good 
life and deeds secure whatever He had secured by His good life.[2]  A most 
dangerous and deadly assertion indeed, which takes away what truly belongs to 
God, and holds out false promises to men; and which should be condemned for 
abominable lies on both sides, since it attacks God with wicked blasphemy, and 
gives to men the hope of a false assurance.  A most perverse and wicked 
assertion as it gives to men what does not belong to them, and takes away from 
God what is His.  And so of this dangerous and deadly evil this new heresy 
which has recently sprung up,[3] is in a way stirring and reviving the embers, 
and raising a fresh flame from its ancient ashes by asserting that our Lord 
Jesus Christ was born a mere man.  And so why is there any need for us to ask 
whether its consequences are dangerous, as in its fountain head it is utterly 
wrong.  It is unnecessary to examine what it is like in its issues, as in its 
commencement it leaves us no reason for examination.  For what object is there 
in inquiring whether like the earlier heresy, it holds out the same promises 
to man, if (which is the most awful sin) it takes away the same things from 
God?  So that it would be almost wrong, when we see what it begins like, to 
ask what there is to follow; as if some possible way might appear in the 
sequel, in which a man who denies God, could prove that he was not 
irreligious.  The new heresy then, as we have already many times declared, 
says that the Lord Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, only a mere man: 
and so that Mary should be called Christotocos not Theotocos, because she was 
the mother of Christ, not of God.  And further to this blasphemous statement 
it adds arguments that are as wicked as they are foolish, saying, "No one ever 
gave birth to one who was before her."  As if the birth of the only begotten 
of God, predicted by prophets, announced since the beginning of the world, 
could be dealt with or measured by human reasons.  Or did the Virgin Mary, O 
you heretic, whoever you are, who slander her for her childbearing--bring 
about and consummate that which came to pass, by her own strength, so that in 
a matter and event of so great importance, human weakness can be brought as an 
objection?  And so if there was anything in this great event which was the 
work of man, look for human arguments.  But if everything, which was done, was 
due to the power of God, why should you consider what is impossible with men, 
when you see that it is the work of Divine power?  But of this more anon.  Now 
let us follow up the subject we began to treat of some little way back; that 
everybody may know that you are trying to fan the flame in the ashes of 
Pelagianism, and to revive the embers by breathing out fresh blasphemy.

-----

Notes for Chapter 1

     1. See above Book I. cc. ii. iii.
     2. See below Book VI. c. xiv.  For the twofold error of Pelagianism cf. a 
striking article on "Theodore of Mopsuestia and Modern Thought" in the Church 
Quarterly Review, vol. i.  See esp. p. 135; where, speaking of Pelagianism, 
the writer says: "as the hypostatic union was denied, lest it should derogate 
from the ethical completeness of Christ, so the efficacious working of grace 
must be explained away lest it should derogate from the moral dignity of 
Christians.  The divine and human elements must be kept as jealously apart in 
the moral life of the members as in the person of the Head of the Church.  In 
the ultimate analysis it must be proved that the initial movement in every 
good action came from the human will itself, though when this was allowed, the 
grace of God might receive, by an exact process of assessment, its due share 
of credit for the result."
     3. Viz., Nestorianism.


CHAPTER II. 

           That the doctrine of Nestorius is closely connected with
                          the error of the Pelagians.

    YOU say then that Christ was born a mere man.  But certainly this was 
asserted by that wicked heresy of Pelagius, as we clearly showed in the first 
book; viz., that Christ was born a mere man.  You add besides, that Jesus 
Christ the Lord of all should be termed a form that received God (Theodochos), 
i.e., not God, but the receiver of God, so that your view is that He is to be 
honoured not for His own sake because He is God, but because He receives God 
into Himself.  But clearly this also was asserted by that heresy of which I 
spoke before; viz., that Christ was not to be worshipped for His own sake 
because He was God, but because owing to His good and pious actions He won 
this; viz., to have God dwelling in Him.  You see then that you are belching 
out the poison of Pelagianism, and hissing with the very spirit of 
Pelagianism.  Whence it comes that you seem rather to have been already 
judged, than to have now to undergo judgment, for since your error is one and 
the same, you must be believed to fall under the same condemnation: not to 
mention for the present that you compare the Lord to a statue of the Emperor, 
and break out into such wicked and blasphemous impieties that you seem in this 
madness of yours to surpass even Pelagius himself, who surpassed almost every 
one else in impiety. 


CHAPTER III. 

     How this participation in Divinity which the Pelagians and Nestorians
                attribute to Christ, is common to all holy men.

    YOU say then that Christ should be termed a form which received God 
(Theodochos), i.e., that He should be revered not for His own sake because He 
is God, but because He received God within Him.  And so in this way you make 
out that there is no difference between Him and all other holy men: for all 
holy men have certainly had God within them.  For we know well that God was in 
the patriarchs, and that He spoke in the prophets.  In a word we believe that, 
I do not say apostles and martyrs, but, all the saints and servants of God 
have within them the Spirit of God, according to this: "Ye are the temple of 
the living God: as God said, For I will dwell in them."[1]  And again: "Know 
ye not that ye are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwelleth in 
you?"[2]  And thus we are all receivers of God (Theodochoi); and in this way 
you say that all the saints are only like Christ, and equal to God.  But away 
with such a wicked and abominable heresy as that the Creator should be 
compared to His creatures, the Lord to His servants, the God of things earthly 
and heavenly, to earthly frailty: and out of His very kindnesses this wrong be 
done to Him; viz., that He who honours man by dwelling in him should therefore 
be said to be only the same as man.

-----

Notes for Chapter 3

     1. 2 Cor. 6:16.
     2. 1 Cor. 3:16.


CHAPTER IV. 

             What the difference is between Christ and the saints.

    MOREOVER there is between Him and all the saints the same difference that 
there is between a dwelling and one who dwells in it, for certainly it is the 
doing of the dweller not the dwelling, if it is inhabited, for on him it 
depends both to build the house and to occupy it.  I mean, that he can choose, 
if he will, to make it a dwelling, and when he has made it, to live in it.  
"Or do you seek a proof," says the Apostle, "of Christ speaking in me?"[1]  
And elsewhere, "Know ye not that Jesus Christ is in you except ye be 
reprobate?"[2]  And again: "in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your 
hearts by faith."[3]  Do you not see what a difference there is between the 
Apostle's doctrine and your blasphemies?  You say that God dwells in Christ as 
in a man.  He testifies that Christ Himself dwells in men: which certainly, as 
you admit, flesh and blood cannot do; so that He is shown to be God, from the 
very fact from which you deny Him to be God.  For since you cannot deny that 
He who dwells in man is God, it follows that we must believe that He, whom we 
know to dwell in men, is most decidedly God.  All, then, whether patriarchs, 
or prophets, or apostles, or martyrs, or saints, had every one of them God 
within him, and were all made sons of God and were all receivers of God 
(Theodochoi), but in a very different and distinct way.  For all who believe 
in God are sons of God by adoption: but the only begotten alone is Son by 
nature: who was begotten of His Father, not of any material substance, for all 
things, and the substance of all things exist through the only begotten Son of 
God--and not out of nothing, because He is from the Father: not like a birth, 
for there is nothing in God that is void or mutable, but in an ineffable and 
incomprehensible manner God the Father, wherein He Himself was regenerate, 
begat his only begotten Son; and so from the Most High, Ingenerate, and 
Eternal Father proceeds the Most High, Only Begotten, and Eternal Son.  Who 
must be considered the same Person in the flesh as He is in the Spirit: and 
must be held to be the same Person in the body as He is in glory, for when He 
was about to be born in the flesh,[4] He made no division or separation within 
Himself, as if some portion of Him was born while another portion was not 
born: or as if some portion of Divinity afterwards came upon Him, which had 
not been in Him at His birth from the Virgin.  For according to the Apostle, 
"all the fulness of the Godhead dwelleth in Christ bodily."[5]  Not that It 
dwells in Him at times, and at times dwells not; nor that It was there at a 
later date, and not an earlier one: otherwise we are entangled in that impious 
heresy of Pelagius, so as to say that from a fixed moment God dwelt in Christ, 
and that He then came upon Him; when He had won by His life and conversation 
this; viz., that the power of the Godhead should dwell in Him.  These things 
then belong to men, to men, I say, not to God,--that as far as human weakness 
can, they should humble themselves to God, be subject to God, make themselves 
dwellings for God, and by their faith and piety win this, to have God as their 
guest and indweller.  For in proportion as anyone is fit for God's gift, so 
does the Divine grace reward him: in proportion as a man seems worthy of him: 
in proportion as a man seems worthy of God, so does he enjoy God's presence, 
according to the Lord's promise: "if any man love Me, he will keep My word; 
and I and My Father will come to him and make Our abode with Him."[6]  But 
very different is the case as regards Christ; in whom all the fulness of the 
Godhead dwelleth bodily: for He has within Him the fulness of the Godhead so 
that He gives to all of His fulness, and He--as the fulness of the Godhead 
dwells in Him--Himself dwells in each of the saints in proportion as He deems 
them worthy of His Presence, and gives of His fulness to all, yet in such a 
way that He Himself continues in all that fulness,--who even when He was on 
earth in the flesh, yet was present in the hearts of all the saints, and 
filled the heaven, the earth, the sea, aye and the whole universe with His 
infinite power and majesty; and yet was so complete in Himself that the whole 
world could not contain Him.  For however great and inexpressible whatever is 
made may be, yet there are no things so boundless and infinite as to be able 
to contain the Creator Himself.

-----

Notes for Chapter 4

     1. 2 Cor. 13:3.
     2. 2 Cor. 13:5.
     3. Eph. 3:16, 17.
     4. Idem credendus in corpore qui creditur in majestate, qui nasciturus in 
carne non divisionem, etc., (Petschenig): Gazaeus reads Idem credendus in 
majestate quia nasciturus in carne.  Non divisionem, etc.
     5. Col. 2:9.
     6. S. John 14:23.


CHAPTER V. 

  That before His birth in time Christ was always called God by the prophets.

    HE it is then of whom the Prophet says: "For in Thee is God, and there is 
no God beside Thee.  For Thou art our God and we knew Thee not, O God of 
Israel the Saviour."[1]  Who "afterwards appeared on earth and conversed with 
men."[2]  Of whom and in whose Person the Prophet David also speaks: "From my 
mother's womb Thou art my God:"[3] showing clearly that He who was Lord and 
man[4] was never separate from God: in whom even in the Virgin's womb the 
fulness of the Godhead dwelt.  As elsewhere the same Prophet says: "Truth has 
sprung from the earth and righteousness hath looked down from heaven,"[5] that 
we may know that when the Son of God looked down from heaven (i.e., came and 
descended), righteousness was born of the flesh of the Virgin, no phantasm of 
a body, but the Truth: for He is the Truth, according to His own witness of 
Truth: "I am the Truth and the life."[6]  And so as we have proved in the 
earlier books that this Truth; viz., the Lord Jesus Christ, was God when born 
of the Virgin, let us now do as we determined to do in the book before this, 
and show that He who was to be born of the Virgin, was always declared to be 
God beforehand.  And so the prophet Isaiah says, "Cease ye from the man whose 
breath is in his nostrils, for it is He in whom he is reputed to be;" or as it 
is more exactly and clearly in the Hebrew: "for he is reputed high."[7]  But 
by saying "cease ye," a term which deprecates violence, he admirably denotes 
the disturbance of persecution.  "Cease ye," he says, "from the man whose 
breath is in his nostrils, for he is reputed high."  Does he not in one and 
the same sentence speak of the taking upon Him of the manhood, and the truth 
of His Godhead?  "Cease ye," he says, "from the man whose breath is in his 
nostrils, for he is reputed high."  Does he not, I ask you, seem plainly to 
address the Lord's persecutors, and to say, "Cease ye from the man" whom ye 
are persecuting, for this man is God: and though He appears in the lowliness 
of human flesh, yet He still continues in the high estate of Divine glory?  
But by saying "Cease ye from the man whose breath is in his nostrils," he 
admirably showed His manhood, by the clearest tokens of a human body, and this 
fearlessly and confidently, as one who would as urgently assert the truth of 
His humanity as that of His Godhead, for this is the true and Catholic faith, 
to believe that the Lord Jesus Christ possessed the substance of a true body 
just as He possessed a true and perfect Divinity.  Unless possibly you think 
that anything can be made out of the fact that he uses the word "High" instead 
of "God"; whereas it is the habit of holy Scripture to put "High" for "God," 
as where the prophet says: "the Most High uttered His voice and the earth was 
moved,"[8] and "Thou alone art Most High over all the earth."[9]  Isaiah too, 
who says this: "The High and lofty one who inhabiteth eternity":[10] where we 
are clearly to understand that as he there puts Most High without adding the 
name of God, so here too he speaks of God by the name of Most High.  So then, 
since the Divine word spoken by the prophet clearly announced beforehand that 
the Lord Jesus Christ would be both God and man, let us now see whether the 
New Testament corresponds to and harmonizes with the testimony of the Old. 

-----

Notes for Chapter 5

     1. Isa. 45:14, 15.
     2. Baruch 3:37.
     3. Ps. 21 (22):11.
     4. Dominicus Homo, literally "the Lordly man."  The same title is used 
again by Cassian in Book VI. cc. xxi., xxii., and in the Conferences XI. xiii.  
It is however an instance of a title which the mature judgment of the Church 
has rejected as savouring of an heretical interpretation.  We learn from 
Gregory Nazianzen (Orat. 51) that the Greek equivalent of the title ho 
kyriakos anthropos, was a favourite term with the Apollinarians, as it might 
be taken to favour their view that the Divinity supplied the place of a human 
soul in Christ.  It is however freely used by Epiphanius in his Anchoratus, 
and is also found in the exposition of faith assigned to Athanasius (Migne. 
Pat. Graec. xxv. p. 197).  And Augustine himself actually uses the title 
Dominicus Homo in his treatise on the Sermon on the Mount, Book II. c. vi., 
though he afterwards retracted the term, see "Retract," Book I. c. xx.  "Non 
video utrum recte dicatur Homo Dominicus, qui est mediator Dei et hominum, 
homo Christus Jesus, cum sit utique Dominus: Dominicus autem homo quis in ejus 
sancta familia non potest dici?  Et hoc quidem ut dicerem, apud quosdam legi 
tractores catholicos divinorum eloquiorum.  Sed ubicunque hoc dici, dixisse me 
nollem.  Postea quippe vidi non esse dicendum, quamvis nonnulla possit ratione 
defendi."  The question is discussed by S. Thomas, whether the title is 
rightly applied to Christ and decided by him in the negative.  Summa III. Q. 
iv. art. 3.
     5. Ps. 84 (85):12.
     6. S. John 14:6.
     7. Isa. 2:22.  Cf. the note on the Institutes XII. xxxi.
     8. Ps. 45 (46):7.
     9. Ps. 82 (83):19.
    10. Isa. 57:15.


CHAPTER VI. 

     He illustrates the same doctrine by passages from the New Testament.

    "THAT," says the Apostle John, "which was from the beginning, which we 
have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and 
our hands have handled, of the word of the life: for the life was manifested: 
and we have seen, and do bear witness, and declare unto you the life eternal 
which was with the Father, and hath appeared unto us."[1]  You see how the old 
testimonies are confirmed by fresh ones, and the support of the new preaching 
is given to the ancient prophecy.  Isaiah said: "Cease ye from the man whose 
breath is in his nostrils for he is reputed high."  But John says: "That which 
was from the beginning, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked 
upon, and our hands have handled."  The former said that as man He would be 
persecuted by the Jews: the latter declared that as man He was handled by 
men's hands.  The one predicted that He whom he announced as man, would be God 
Most High: the other asserts that He whom he showed to have been handled by 
men, was ever God in the beginning.  It is then as clear as possible that they 
both showed the Lord Jesus Christ to be both God and man; and that the same 
Person was afterwards man who had always been God, and thus He was God and 
man, because God Himself became man.  That then, he says, "which was from the 
beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we 
have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the word of life; and the life 
was manifested, and we have seen, and do bear witness, and declare unto you 
the life eternal which was with the Father, and hath appeared unto us."  You 
see the number of proofs and ways, very different and numerous, in which that 
Apostle so well beloved and so devoted to God, indicates the mystery of the 
Divine Incarnation.  In the first instance he testifies that He, who ever was 
in the beginning, was seen in the flesh.  Lest in case it might not seem 
sufficient for unbelievers that he had spoken of Him as seen and heard, he 
supports it by saying that He was handled, i.e., touched and felt by his own 
hands and by those of others.  Admirably indeed by showing how He took flesh, 
does he shut out the view of the Marcionites and the error of the Manichees, 
so that no one may think that a phantom appeared to men, since an apostle has 
declared that a true body was handled by him.  Then he adds "the word of life: 
and the life was manifested;" and that he saw it, announced it, and proclaimed 
it: thus at the same time carrying out the duties of the faith and striking 
the unbelievers with terror, that while he declares that he proclaims Him, he 
may bring home the danger in which he stands, to the man who will not listen. 
"We declare to you," he says, "the life eternal which was with the Father, and 
hath appeared to us."  He teaches that that which was ever with the Father 
appeared to men: and that which was ever in the beginning, was seen of men: 
and that which was the Word of life without beginning, was handled by men's 
hands.  You see the number and variety, the particularity and the clearness of 
the ways in which he unfolds the mystery of the flesh joined to God, in such a 
way that no one could speak at all of either without acknowledging both.  As 
the Apostle himself clearly says elsewhere: "For Jesus Christ is the same 
yesterday, and to-day, and for ever."[2]  This is what he said in the passage 
given above: "That which was from the beginning, our hands have handled."  Not 
that a spirit can in its own nature be handled: but that the Word made flesh 
was in a sense handled in the manhood with which it was joined.  And so Jesus 
is "the same yesterday and to-day": i.e., the same Person before the 
commencement of the world, as in the flesh; the same in the past as in the 
present, the same also for ever, for He is the same through all the ages, as 
before all the ages.  And all this is the Lord Jesus Christ.

-----

Notes for Chapter 6

     1. 1 John 1:1, 2.
     2. Heb. 13:8.


CHAPTER VII. 

   He shows again from the union in Christ of two natures in one Person that
         what belongs to the Divine nature may rightly be ascribed to
               man, and what belongs to the human nature to God.

    AND how was it the same Person before the origin of the world, who was but 
recently born?  Because it was the same Person, who was recently born in human 
nature, who was God before the rise of all things.  And so the name of Christ 
includes everything that the name of God does; for so close is the union 
between Christ and God that no one, when he uses the name of Christ can help 
speaking of God under the name of Christ, nor, when he speaks of God, can he 
help speaking of Christ under the name of God.  And as through the glory of 
His holy nativity the mystery of each substance is joined together in Him, 
whatever was in existence--I mean both human and Divine--all is regarded as 
God.  And hence the Apostle Paul seeing with unveiled eyes of faith the whole 
mystery of the ineffable glory in Christ, spoke as follows, in inviting the 
peoples who were ignorant of God's goodness to give thanksgiving to God: 
"Giving thanks to the Father, who hath made us worthy to be partakers of the 
lot of the saints in light, who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, 
and hath translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we 
have redemption through His blood, the remission of sins; who is the image of 
the invisible God, the first-born of every creature: for in Him were all 
things created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones 
or dominations, or powers: all things were created by Him and in Him.  And He 
is before all, and by Him all things consist.  And He is the head of the body 
the Church, who is the beginning, the first-born from the dead; that in all 
things He may hold the primacy.  Because it pleased the Father that in Him 
should all fulness dwell; and through Him to reconcile all things unto 
Himself, making peace through the blood of His cross, both as to the things on 
earth, and the things that are in heaven."[1]  Surely this does not need the 
aid of any further explanation, as it is so fully and clearly expressed that 
in itself it contains not merely the substance of the faith, but a clear 
exposition of it.  For he bids us give thanks to the Father: and adds a 
weighty reason for thus giving thanks; viz., because He hath made us worthy to 
be partakers with the saints, and hath delivered us from the power of 
darkness, hath translated us unto the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom 
we have redemption and remission of sins: who is the image of the invisible 
God, the first-born of every creature; for in Him and through Him were all 
things created; of which He is both the Creator and the ruler: and what 
follows after this?  "He is" he says, "the head of the body the Church: who is 
the beginning, the first-born from the dead."  Scripture speaks of the 
resurrection as a birth: because as birth is the beginning of life, so 
resurrection gives birth unto life.  Whence also the resurrection is actually 
spoken of as regeneration, according to the words of the Lord: "Verily I say 
unto you, that ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of 
man shall sit on the throne of His glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve 
thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel."[2]  Therefore he calls Him the 
first-born from the dead, whom he had previously declared to be the invisible 
Son and image of God.  But who is the image of the invisible God, except the 
only-begotten, the Word of God?  And how can we say that He rose from the 
dead, who is termed the image and word of the invisible God?  And what is it 
that follows afterwards?  "That in all things He may hold the primacy: for it 
pleased the Father that in Him should all fulness dwell, and by Him to 
reconcile all things to Himself, making peace through the blood of His cross, 
both as to things on earth and the things that are in heaven."  Surely the 
Creator of all things has no need of the primacy in all things?  Nor He who 
made them, of the primacy of those things which were made by Him?  And how can 
we say of the Word, that it pleased God that all fulness should dwell in Him 
who was the first-born from the dead, when He was Himself the only-begotten 
Son of God and the Word of God, before the origin of all things, and had 
within Him the invisible Father, and so first had within Him all fulness, that 
He might Himself be the fulness of all things?  And what next?  "Bringing all 
things to peace through the blood of His cross, both things on earth, and the 
things which are in heaven."  Certainly he has made it as clear as possible of 
whom he was speaking, when he called Him the first-born from the dead.  For 
are all things reconciled and brought into peace through the blood of the Word 
or Spirit?  Most certainly not.  For no sort of passion can happen to nature 
that is impassible, nor can the blood of any but a man be shed, nor any but a 
man die: and yet the same Person who is spoken of in the following verses as 
dead, was above called the image of the invisible God.  How then can this be?  
Because the apostles took every possible precaution that it might not be 
thought that there was any division in Christ, or that the Son of God being 
joined to a Son of man, might come by wild interpretations to be made into two 
Persons, and thus He who is in Himself but one might by wrongful and wicked 
notions of ours, be made into a double Person in one nature.  And so most 
excellently and admirably does the apostle's preaching pass from the only 
begotten Son of God to the Son of man united to the Son of God, that the 
exposition of the doctrine might follow the actual course of the things that 
happened.  And so he continues with an unbroken connexion, and makes as it 
were a sort of bridge, that without any gap or separation you might find at 
the end of time Him whom we read of as in the beginning of the world; and that 
you might not by admitting some division and erroneous separation imagine that 
the Son of God was one person in the flesh and another in the Spirit; when the 
teaching of the apostle had so linked together God and man through the mystery 
of His birth in the body, so as to show that it was the same Person 
reconciling to Himself all things on the Cross, who had been proclaimed the 
image of the invisible God before the foundation of the world. 

-----

Notes for Chapter 7

     1. Col. 1:12-20.
     2. S. Matt. 19:28.


CHAPTER VIII. 

     He confirms the judgment of the Apostle by the authority of the Lord.

    AND though this is the saying of an Apostle, yet it is the very doctrine 
of the Lord.  For the same Person says this to Christians by His Apostle, who 
had Himself said something very like it to Jews in the gospel, when He said: 
"But now ye seek to kill me, a man, who have spoken the truth to you, which I 
heard of God: for I am not come of Myself, but He sent me."[1]  He clearly 
shows that He is both God and man: man, in that He says that He is a man: God, 
in that He affirms that He was sent.  For He must have been with Him from whom 
He came: and  He came from Him, from whom He said that He was sent.  Whence it 
comes that when the Jews said to Him, "Thou art not yet fifty years old and 
hast Thou seen Abraham?" He replied in words that exactly suit His eternity 
and glory, saying, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham came into 
being, I am." [2]  I ask then, whose saying do you think this is?  Certainly 
it is Christ's without any doubt.  And how could He who had been but recently 
born, say that He was before Abraham?  Simply owing to the Word of God, with 
which He was entirely united, so that all might understand the closeness of 
the union of Christ and God: since whatever God said in Christ, that in its 
fulness the unity of the Divinity claimed for Himself.  But conscious of His 
own eternity, He rightly then when in the body, replied to the Jews, with the 
very words which He had formerly spoken to Moses in the Spirit.  For here He 
says, "Before Abraham came into being, I am."  But to Moses He says, "I am 
that I am."[3]  He certainly announced the eternity of His Divine nature with 
marvellous grandeur of language, for nothing can be spoken so worthily of God, 
as that He should be said ever to be.  For "to be" admits of no beginning in 
the past or end in the future.  And so this is very clearly spoken of the 
nature of the eternal God, as it exactly describes His eternity.  And this the 
Lord Jesus Christ Himself, when He was speaking of Abraham, showed by the 
difference of terms used, saying, "Before Abraham came into being I am."  Of 
Abraham he said, "Before he came into being:" Of Himself, "I am," for it 
belongs to things temporal to come into being: to be belongs to eternity.  And 
so "to come into being" He assigns to human transitoriness: but "to be" to His 
own nature.  And all this was found in Christ who, by virtue of the mystery of 
the manhood and Divinity joined together in Him who ever "was," could say that 
He already "was."

-----

Notes for Chapter 8

     1. S. John 8:40, 42.
     2. S. John 8:58.
     3. Exod. 3:14.


CHAPTER IX. 

    Since those marvellous works which from the days of Moses were shown to
       the children of Israel are attributed to Christ, it follows that
              He must have existed long before His birth in time.

    AND when the Apostle wanted to make this clear and patent to everybody he 
spoke as follows, saying that, "Jesus having saved the people out of the land 
of Egypt afterward destroyed them that believed not."[1]  But elsewhere too we 
read: "Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them tempted, and were 
destroyed by serpents."[2]  Peter also the chief of the apostles says: "And 
now why tempt ye God to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which 
neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear.  But we believe that we 
shall be saved by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ even as they were."[3]  
We know most certainly that the people of God were delivered from Egypt, and 
led dryshod through mighty tracts of water, and preserved in the vast desert 
wastes, by none but God alone; as it is written: "The Lord alone did lead 
them, and there was no strange God among them."[4]  And how can an Apostle 
declare in so many and such clear passages that the people of the Jews were 
delivered from Egypt by Jesus, and that Christ was at that time tempted by the 
Jews in the wilderness, saying, "Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them 
tempted, and were destroyed of the serpents"?  And further the blessed Apostle 
Peter says of all the saints who lived under the law of the Old Covenant that 
they were saved by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Get out then, and 
wriggle out of this if you can--whoever you are--you who rage with vapid mouth 
and a spirit of blasphemy, and think that there is no difference at all 
between Adam and Christ; and you who deny that He was God before His birth of 
the Virgin, show clearly how you can prove that He was not God before His body 
came into existence.  For lo, an Apostle says that the people were saved out 
of the land of Egypt by Jesus: and that Christ was tempted by unbelievers in 
the wilderness: and that our fathers, i.e., the patriarchs and prophets, were 
saved by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Deny it if you can.  I shall not 
be surprised if you manage to deny what we all read, as you have already 
denied what we all believe.  Know then that even then it was Christ in God who 
led the people out of Egypt, and it was Christ in God who was tempted by the 
people who tempted, and it was Christ in God who saved all the righteous men 
by His lavish grace: for through the oneness of the mystery (of the 
Incarnation) the terms God and Christ so pass into each other, that whatever 
God did, that we may say that Christ did; and whatever afterwards Christ bore, 
we may say that God bore.  And so when the prophet said, "There shall no new 
God be in thee, neither shalt thou worship any other God,"[5] he announced it 
with the same meaning and in the same spirit as that with which the Apostle 
said that Christ was the leader of the people of Israel out of Egypt; to show 
that He who was born of the Virgin as man, was even through the unity of the 
mystery still in God.  Otherwise, unless we believe this, we must either 
believe with the heretics that Christ is not God, or against the teaching of 
the prophet hold that He is a new God.  But may it be far from the Catholic 
people of God, to seem either to differ from the prophet or to agree with 
heretics: or perchance the people who should be blessed may be involved in a 
curse, and be charged with putting their hope in man.  For whoever declares 
that the Lord Jesus Christ was at His birth a mere man, is doubly liable to 
the curse, whether he believes in Him or not.  For if he believes, "Cursed is 
he who puts his hope in man."[6]  But if he does not believe, none the less is 
he still cursed, because though not believing in man, he still has altogether 
denied God.

-----

Notes for Chapter 9

     1. S. Jude 5.
     2. 1 Cor. 10:9.
     3. Acts 15:10, 11.
     4. Deut. 32:12.
     5. Ps. 80 (81):10.
     6. Jer. 17:5.


CHAPTER X. 

  He explains what it means to confess, and what it means to dissolve Jesus.

    FOR this it is which John, the man so dear to God, foresaw from the Lord's 
own revelation to him and so spoke of Him, who was speaking in him.  "Every 
spirit," he says, "which confesseth Jesus come in the flesh is of God, and 
every spirit that dissolveth Jesus is not of God: and this is the spirit of 
Antichrist, of whom you have heard already, and he is now already in the 
world."[1]  O the marvellous and singular goodness of God, who like a most 
careful and skilful physician, foretold beforehand the diseases that should 
come upon His Church, and when He showed the mischief beforehand, gave in 
showing it, a remedy for it: that all men when they saw the evil approaching, 
might at once flee as far as possible from that which they already knew to be 
imminent.  And so Saint John says, "Every spirit that dissolveth Jesus is not 
of God; and this is the spirit of Antichrist."  Do you recognize him, O you 
heretic?  Do you recognize that it is plainly and markedly spoken of you?  For 
no one thus dissolves Jesus but he who does not confess that He is God.  For 
since in this consists all the faith and all the worship of the Church; viz., 
to confess that Jesus is very God; who can more dissolve His glory and worship 
than one who denies the existence in Him of all that we all worship?  Take 
then, I beseech you, take care lest any one may even term you Antichrist.  Do 
you think that I am reviling and cursing?  What I am saying is not my own 
idea: for lo, the Evangelist says, "Every one that dissolveth Jesus is not of 
God; and this is Antichrist."  If you do not dissolve Jesus, and deny God, no 
one may call you Antichrist.  But if you deny it why do you accuse any one for 
calling you Antichrist?  While you are denying it, I declare you have said it 
of yourself.  Would you like to know whether this is true?  Tell me, when 
Jesus was born of a Virgin, what do you make Him to be--man or God?  If God 
only, you certainly dissolve Jesus, as you deny that in Him manhood was joined 
to Divinity.  But if you say He was man, none the less do you dissolve Him, as 
you blasphemously say that a mere man (as you will have it) was born.  Unless 
perhaps you think that you do not dissolve Jesus, you who deny Him to be God, 
you who would certainly dissolve Him even if you did not deny[2] that man was 
born together with God.  But possibly you would like this to be made clearer 
by examples.  You shall have them in both directions.  The Manichees are 
outside the Church, who declare that Jesus was God alone: and the Ebionites, 
who say that he was a mere man.  For both of them deny and dissolve Jesus: the 
one by saying that He is only man, the other by saying that He is only God. 
For though their opinions were the opposite of each other, yet the blasphemy 
of these diverse opinions is much the same, except that if any distinction can 
be drawn between the magnitude of the evils, your blasphemy which asserts that 
He is a mere man is worse than that which says that He is only God: for though 
both are wrong, yet it is more insulting to take away from the Lord what is 
Divine than what is human.  This then alone is the Catholic and the true 
faith; viz., to believe that as the Lord Jesus Christ is God so also is He 
man; and that as He is man so also is He God.  "Every one who dissolves Jesus 
is not of God."  But to dissolve Him is to try to rend asunder what is united 
in Jesus; and to sever what is but one and indivisible.  But what is it in 
Jesus that is united and but one?  Certainly the manhood and the Godhead.  He 
then dissolves Jesus who severs these and rends them asunder.  Otherwise, if 
he does not rend them asunder and sever them, he does not dissolve Jesus: But 
if he rends them asunder he certainly dissolves Him.[3]

-----

Notes for Chapter 10

     1. S. John 4:2, 3.  It will be noticed that Cassian quotes this passage 
with the reading "Qui solvit Jesum," where the Greek has ho me homologei ton 
Iesoun.  Luei is found in no Greek MS., uncial or cursive, and the only Greek 
authority for it is that of Socrates, who says it was the reading in "the old 
copies."  "Qui solvit" was probably an early gloss, current in very early days 
in the West, being found in Tertullian (adv. Marc. v. 16; De Jejun: i.) and in 
all Latin MSS. whether of the Vetus or the Vulgate (with a single exception), 
and finally becoming universal in the Fathers of the Western Church.  Cf. 
Westcott on the Epp. of S. John, p. 156, sq.
     2. Non negares (Petschenig). Gazaeus has denegares.
     3. The last sentences are placed in brackets by Petschenig.


CHAPTER XI. 

The mystery of the Lord's Incarnation clearly implies the Divinity of Christ.

    AND so to every man who breaks out into this mad blasphemy, the Lord Jesus 
in the gospel Himself repeats what He said to the Pharisees, and declares: 
"What God hath joined together, let not man put asunder."[1]  For although 
where it was originally spoken by God it seems to be in answer to another 
matter, yet the deep wisdom of God which was speaking not more of carnal than 
of spiritual things, would have this to be taken of that subject indeed, but 
even more of this: for when the Jews of that day believed with you that Jesus 
was only a man without Divinity, and the Lord was asked a question about the 
union in marriage, in His teaching He not only referred to it, but to this 
also: though consulted about matters of less importance His answer applied to 
greater and deeper matters, when he said, "What God hath joined together, let 
not man put asunder," i.e., Do not sever what God hath joined together in My 
Person.  Let not human wickedness sever that which the Divine Glory hath 
united in Me.  But if you want to be told more fully that this is so, hear the 
Apostle talking about these very subjects of which the Saviour was then 
teaching, for he, as a teacher sent from God that his weak-minded hearers 
might be able to take in his teaching, expounded those very subjects which God 
had proclaimed in a mystery.  For when he was discussing the subject of carnal 
union, on which the Saviour had been asked a question in the gospel, he 
repeated those very passages from the old Law on which He had dwelt, on 
purpose that they might see that as he was using the same authorities he was 
expounding the same subject: besides which, that nothing may seem to be 
wanting to his case, he adds the mention of carnal union, and puts in the 
names of husband and wife whom he exhorts to love one another: "Husbands, love 
your wives even as Christ also loved the Church."  And again: "So also ought 
men to love their wives even as their own bodies.  He that loveth his wife 
loveth himself.  For no man ever hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and 
cherisheth it, as Christ also doth the Church, for we are members of His 
body."[2]  You see how by adding to the mention of man and wife the mention of 
Christ and the Church, he leads all from taking it carnally to understand it 
in a spiritual sense.  For when he had said all this, he added those passages 
which the Lord had applied in the Gospel, saying: "For this cause shall a man 
leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they 
twain shall be one flesh."  And after this with special emphasis he adds: 
"This is a great mystery."  He certainly altogether cuts off and gets rid of 
any carnal interpretation, by saying that it is a Divine mystery.  And what 
did he add after this?  "But I am speaking of Christ and the Church."  That is 
to say: "But that is a great mystery.  But I am speaking of Christ and the 
Church," i.e., since perhaps at the present time all cannot grasp that, they 
may at least grasp this, which is not at variance with it, nor different from 
it, because both refer to Christ.  But because they cannot grasp those more 
profound truths let them at least take in these easier ones that by making a 
commencement by grasping what lies on the surface, they may come to the deeper 
truths, and that the acquisition of a somewhat simple matter may open the way 
in time to what is more profound.

-----

Notes for Chapter 11

     1. S. Matt. 19:6.
     2. Eph. 5:25-30.


CHAPTER XII. 

              He explains more fully what the mystery is which is
                 signified under the name of the man and wife.

    WHAT then is that great mystery which is signified under the name of the 
man and his wife?  Let us ask the Apostle himself, who elsewhere to teach the 
same thing uses words of the same force, saying: "And evidently great is the 
mystery of godliness, which was manifested in the flesh, justified in the 
Spirit, seen of angels, preached to the Gentiles, believed on in the world, 
received up in glory."[1]  What then is that great mystery which was 
manifested in the flesh?  Clearly it was God born of the flesh, God seen in 
bodily form: who was openly received up in glory just as He was openly 
manifested in the flesh.  This then is the great mystery, of which he says: 
"For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to 
his wife; and they two shall be one flesh."  Who then were the two in one 
flesh?  God and the soul, for in the one flesh of man which is joined to God 
are present God and the soul, as the Lord Himself says: "No man can take My 
life (anima) away from Me.  But I lay it down of Myself.  I have power to lay 
it down, and I have power to take it again."[2]  You see then in this, three; 
viz., God, the flesh, and the soul.  He is God who speaks: the flesh in which 
He speaks: the soul of which He speaks.  Is He therefore that man of whom the 
prophet says: "A brother cannot redeem, nor shall a man redeem"?[3]  Who, as 
it was said, "ascended up where He was before,"[4] and of whom we read: "No 
man hath ascended into heaven, but He who came down from heaven, even the Son 
of man who is in heaven."[5]  For this cause, I say, He has left his father 
and mother, i.e., God from whom He was begotten and that "Jerusalem which is 
the mother of us all,"[6] and has cleaved to human flesh, as to his wife.  And 
therefore he expressly says in the case of the father "a man shall leave his 
father," but in the case of the mother he does not say "his," but simply says 
"mother:" because she was not so much his mother, as the mother of all 
believers, i.e., of all of us.  And He was joined to his wife, for just as man 
and wife make but one body, so the glory of Divinity and the flesh of man are 
united and the two, viz., God and the soul, become one flesh.  For just as 
that flesh had God as an indweller in it, so also had it the soul within it 
dwelling with God.  This then is that great mystery, to search out which our 
admiration for the Apostle summons us, and God's own exhortation bids us: and 
it is one not foreign to Christ and His Church, as he says, "But I am speaking 
of Christ and the Church."  Because the flesh of the Church is the flesh of 
Christ, and in the flesh of Christ there is present God and the soul: and so 
the same person is present in Christ as in the Church, because the mystery 
which we believe in the flesh of Christ, is contained also by faith in the 
Church.

-----

Notes for Chapter 12

     1. 1 Tim. 3:16.  Quod manifestum in carne.  The true reading is pretty 
certainly hos, see Westcott and Hort, Greek Testament, vol. ii., p. 132.  The 
neuter ho is found in D. and in many Latin Fathers, as well as the Vulgate.
     2. S. John 10:18.
     3. Ps. 48 (49):8.
     4. Cf. S. John 6:62.
     5. S. John 3:13.
     6. Gal. 4:26.


CHAPTER XIII. 

            Of the longing with which the old patriarchs desired to
                      see the revelation of that mystery.

    THIS mystery then, which was manifested in the flesh and appeared in the 
world, and was preached to the Gentiles, many of the saints of old longed to 
see in the flesh, as they foresaw it in the spirit.  For "Verily," saith the 
Lord, "I say unto you that many prophets and righteous men have desired to see 
the things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear the things which 
ye hear and have not heard them."[1]  And so the prophet Isaiah says: "O that 
Thou, Lord, would rend the heavens and come down,"[2] and David too: "O Lord, 
bow the heavens and come down."[3]  Moses also says: "Show me Thyself that I 
may see Thee plainly."[4]  No one ever approached nearer to God speaking out 
of the clouds, and to the very presence of His glory than Moses who received 
the law.  And if no one ever saw more closely into God than he did, why did he 
ask for a still clearer vision, saying, "Show me Thyself that I may see Thee 
plainly"?  Simply because he prayed that this might happen which the apostle 
tells us in almost the same words actually did happen; viz., that the Lord 
might be openly manifested in the flesh, might openly appear to the world, 
openly be received up in glory; and that at last the saints might with their 
very bodily eyes see all those things which with spiritual sight they had 
foreseen.

-----

Notes for Chapter 13

     1. S. Matt. 13:17.
     2. Isa. 64:1.
     3. Ps. 143 (144):5.
     4. Exod. 33:13.


CHAPTER XIV. 

     He refutes the wicked and blasphemous notion of the heretics who said
      that God dwelt and spoke in Christ as in an instrument or a statue.

    OTHERWISE, as the heretics say, God would in be in the Lord Jesus Christ 
as in a statue or in an instrument, i.e., He would dwell as it were in a man 
and speak as it were through a man, and it would not be He who dwelt and spoke 
as God of Himself and in His own body: and certainly He had already thus dwelt 
in the saints and spoken in the persons of the saints.  In those men too, of 
whom I spoke above, who had prayed for His advent, He had thus dwelt and 
spoken.  And what need was there for all these to ask for what they already 
possessed, if they were seeking for what they had previously received?  Or why 
should they long to see with their eyes what they were keeping in their 
hearts, especially as it is better for a man to have the same thing within 
himself than to see it outside?  Or if God was to dwell in Christ in the same 
way as in all the saints, why should all the saints long to see Christ rather 
than themselves?  And if they were only to see the same thing in Jesus Christ, 
which they themselves possessed, why should they not much rather prefer to 
have this in themselves than to see it in another?  But you are wrong, you 
wretched madman, "not understanding," as the Apostle says, "what you say and 
whereof you affirm":[1] for all the prophets and all the saints received from 
God some portion of the Divine Spirit as they were able to bear it.  But in 
Christ "all the fulness of the Godhead" dwelt and "dwells bodily."  And 
therefore they all fall far short of His fulness, from whose fulness they 
receive something: for the fact that they are filled is the gift of Christ: 
because they would all certainly be empty, were He not the fulness of all.

-----

Note for Chapter 14

     1. 1 Tim. 1:7.


CHAPTER XV. 

    What the prayers of the saints for the coming of Messiah contained; and
                what was the nature of that longing of theirs.

    THIS then all the saints wished for: for this they prayed.  This they 
longed to see with their eyes in proportion as they were wise in heart and 
mind.  And so the prophet Isaiah says: "O that Thou wouldst rend the heavens 
and come down."[1]  But Habakkuk too declaring the same thing which the other 
was wishing for, says: "When the years draw nigh, Thou wilt show Thyself: at 
the coming of the times Thou wilt be manifested: God will come from Teman," or 
"God will come from the south."[2]  David also: "God will clearly come:" and 
again: "Thou that sittest above the Cherubim, show Thyself."[3]  Some declared 
His advent which He presented to the world: others prayed for it.  Some in 
different forms but all with equal longing: understanding up to a certain 
point how great a thing they were praying for, that God dwelling in God, and 
continuing in the form and bosom of God, might "empty Himself,"[4] and take 
the form of a servant and submit Himself to endure all the bitterness and 
insults of the passion, and undergo punishment for His goodness, and what is 
hardest, and the most disgraceful thing of all, meet with death at the hands 
of those very persons for whom He would die.  All the saints then 
understanding this up to a certain point--up to a certain point, I say, for 
how vast it is none can understand--with concordant voice and (so to speak) by 
mutual consent all prayed for the advent of God: for indeed they knew that the 
hope of all men lay therein, and that the salvation of all was bound up in 
this, because no one could loose the prisoners except one who was Himself free 
from chains: no one could release sinners, save one Himself without sin: for 
no one can in any case set free anyone, unless he is himself free in that 
particular, in which another is freed by him.  And so when death had passed on 
all, all were wanting in life, that, dying in Adam, they might live in Christ. 
For though there were many saints, many elect and even friends of God, yet 
none could ever of themselves be saved, had they not been saved by the advent 
of the Lord and His redemption. 

-----

Notes for Chapter 15

     1. Isa. 64:1.
     2. Hab. 3:2, 3, where the Old Latin has "Theman," and the Vulgate 
"Austro."
     3. Ps. 49 (50):3; 79 (80):2.
     4. Phil. 2:7.


                             --------------------

                                   BOOK VI. 


CHAPTER I. 

       From the miracle of the feeding of the multitude from five barley
          loaves and two fishes he shows the majesty of Divine Power.

    WE read in the gospel that when five loaves were at the Lord's bidding 
brought to Him an immense number of God's people were fed with them.  But how 
this was done it is impossible to explain, or to understand or to imagine.  So 
great and so incomprehensible is the might of Divine Power, that though we are 
perfectly assured of the fact, yet we are unable to understand the manner of 
the fact.  For first one would have to comprehend how so small a number of 
loaves could be sufficient, I will not say for them to eat and be filled, but 
even to be divided and set before them, when there were many more thousands of 
men than there were loaves; and almost more companies than there could be 
fragments of the whole number of loaves.  The plentiful supply then was the 
creation of the word of the Lord.  The work grew in the doing of it.  And 
though what was visible was but little; yet what was given to them became more 
than could be reckoned.  There is then no room for conjecture, for human 
speculation, or imagination.  The only thing in such a case is that like 
faithful and wise men we should acknowledge that, however great and 
incomprehensible are the things which are done by God, even if they are 
altogether beyond our comprehension, we must recognize that nothing is 
impossible with God.  But of these unspeakable acts of Divine Power, we will, 
as the subject demands it, speaks more fully later on, because it exactly 
corresponds to the ineffable miracles of His Holy Nativity. 


CHAPTER II. 

         The author adapts the mystery of the number seven (made up of
               the five loaves and two fishes) to his own work.

    MEANWHILE as we have alluded to the five loaves, I think it will not be 
out of place to make a comparison of the five books which we have already 
composed.  For as they are equal in number, so they are not dissimilar in 
character.  For as the loaves were of barley, so these books may (as far as my 
ability is concerned) be fairly termed "of barley," although they are enriched 
with passages from Holy Scripture, and contain life-giving treasures in 
contemptible surroundings.  And even in this point they are not unlike those 
loaves, for though they were poor things to look at, yet they proved to be 
rich in blessing: and so these books, though, as far as my powers are 
concerned, they are worthless, yet they are valuable from the sacred matter 
which is mingled with them: and though they appear outwardly worthless like 
barley owing to my words, yet within they have the savour of the bread of life 
owing to the testimonies from the Lord Himself.  It remains that, after His 
example, they may, by the gift of Divine grace, furnish life-giving food from 
countless seeds.  And as those loaves supplied bodily strength to those who 
ate them, so may these give spiritual vigour to those who read them.  But as 
then the Lord, from whom this gift comes as did that, by means of that food 
provided that they might be filled and so should not faint by the way, so now 
is He able to bring it about that by means of this men may be filled and not 
err (from the faith).  But still because there, where a countless host of 
God's people was fed with a mighty gift, though there was very little for them 
to eat, we read that to those five loaves there were added two fishes, it is 
fitting that we too, who are anxious to give to all God's people who are 
following, the nourishment of a spiritual repast, should add to those five 
books corresponding to the five loaves, two more books corresponding to the 
two fishes: praying and beseeching Thee, O Lord, that Thou wilt look on our 
efforts and prayers, and grant a prosperous issue to our pious undertaking. 
And since we, out of our love and obedience, desire to make the number of our 
books correspond to the number of loaves and fishes, do Thou grant the virtue 
of Thy Benediction upon them; and, as Thou dost bless[1] this little work of 
ours with a gospel number, so mayest Thou fill up the number with the fruit of 
the gospel, and grant that this may be for holy and saving food to all the 
people of Thy Church, of every age and sex.  And if there are some who are 
affected by the deadly breath of that poisonous serpent, and in an unhealthy 
state of soul and spirit have caught a pestilential disease in their feeble 
dispositions, give to them all the vigour of health, and entire soundness of 
faith, that by granting to them all, by means of these writings of ours, the 
saving care of Thy gift--just as that food in the gospel was completely 
sanctified by Thee, so that by eating it those hungry souls were 
strengthened,--so mayest Thou bid languid souls to be healed by these. 

-----

Note for Chapter 2

     1. Muneraris, (Petschenig): Gazaeus reads numeraris.


CHAPTER III. 

      He refutes his opponent by the testimony of the Council of Antioch.

    THEREFORE since we have, as I fancy, already in all the former books with 
the weight of sacred testimonies, given a complete answer to the heretic who 
denies God, now let us come to the faith of the Creed of Antioch and its 
value.  For as he[1] was himself baptized and regenerated in this, he ought to 
be confuted by his own profession, and (so to speak) to be crushed beneath the 
weight of his own arms, for this is the method, that as he is already 
convicted by the evidence of holy Scripture, so now he may be convicted by 
evidence out of his own mouth.  Nor will there be any need to bring anything 
else to bear against him when he has clearly and plainly convicted himself. 
The text then and the faith of the Creed of Antioch is this.[2]  "I believe in 
one and the only true God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible 
and invisible.  And in one Lord Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son, and the 
first-born of every creature, begotten of Him before all worlds, and not made: 
Very God of Very God, Being of one substance with the Father: By whom both the 
worlds were framed, and all things were made. Who for us came, and was born of 
the Virgin Mary, and was crucified under Pontius Pilate and was buried: and 
the third day He rose again according to the Scripture: and ascended into 
heaven, and shall come again to judge the quick and the dead," etc.[3]  In the 
Creed which gives the faith of all the Churches, I should like to know which 
you would rather follow, the authority of men or of God?  Though I would not 
press hardly or unkindly upon you, but give the opportunity of choosing 
whichever alternative you please, that accepting one, I may deny the other: 
for I will grant you and yield to you either of them.  And what do I grant, I 
ask?  I will force you to one or other even against your will.  For you ought, 
if you like, to understand of your own free will that one or other of these is 
in the Creed: if you don't like it, you must be forced against your will to 
see it.  For, as you know, a Creed (Symbolum) gets its name from being a 
"collection."[4]  For what is called in Greek symbolos is termed in Latin 
"Collatio."  But it is therefore a collection (collatio) because when the 
faith of the whole Catholic law was collected together by the apostles of the 
Lord, all those matters which are spread over the whole body of the sacred 
writings with immense fulness of detail, were collected together in sum in the 
matchless brevity of the Creed, according to to the Apostle's words: 
"Completing His word, and cutting it short in righteousness: because a short 
word shall the Lord make upon the earth."[5]  This then is the "short word" 
which the Lord made, collecting together in few words the faith of both of His 
Testaments, and including in a few brief clauses the drift of all the 
Scriptures, building up His own out of His own, and giving the force of the 
whole law in a most compendious and brief formula.  Providing in this, like a 
most tender father, for the carelessness and ignorance of some of his 
children, that no mind however simple and ignorant might have any trouble over 
what could so easily be retained in the memory.

-----

Notes for Chapter 3

     1. Nestorius, who had belonged to the monastery of St. Euprepius near the 
gate of Antioch before his elevation to the see of Constantinople.
     2. This creed is plainly given by Cassian as the baptismal formula of the 
Church of Antioch; and with it agrees almost verbally a fragment of the Creed 
preserved in a Contestatio comparing Nestorius to Paul of Samosata (A.D. 429, 
or 430) which is said by Leontius to have been the work of Eusebius afterward 
Bishop of Dorylaeum.  The form is especially interesting as showing that the 
Creed of Antioch, in common with several other Eastern Creeds, underwent 
revision, probably about the middle of the fourth century, from the desire to 
enrich the local creed with Nicaean phraseology.  The insertions which are 
obviously due to the Creed of Nicaea are: non factum.  Deum verum ex Deo vero, 
homoousian patri, or as they would run in the original ou poiethenta, Theon 
alethinon ek Theou alithinou, homoousion to Patri, and it has been suggested 
that they were probably introduced at the Synod held at Antioch under Meletius 
in 363.  Similar forms of local creeds thus enlarged by the adoption of Nicene 
phraseology are (1) that of Jerusalem as given by Cyril in his Catechetical 
Lectures, (2) the Creed of Cappadocia, (3) that of Mesopotamia, and (4) the 
"Creed of Charisius" preserved in the Acts of the Council of Ephesus (Mansi 
IV. 1348).  On all of these see Dr. Hort's "Two Dissertations," p. 110 sq.
     Another interesting feature in the Creed as given by Cassian is that it 
was in the singular "Credo," I believe; whereas the Eastern Creeds are almost 
all in the plural pisteuomen.  That however which is found in the Apostolical 
Constitutions (VII. xli.) has the singular pisteuo kai baptizomai, and 
therefore it is possible that Cassian may have preserved the original form 
here.  It is however more probable that the singular Credo is due to a 
reminiscence of the form current in the Western church, which has influenced 
the translation.  See further Hahn's Bibliothek des Symbole p. 64 sq.
     3. Cassian nowhere quotes the last section of the Creed of Antioch, as it 
did not concern the question at issue.  A few clauses of it may however be 
recovered from S. Chrysostom's Homilies (In 1 Cor. Hom. xl. [section] 2); 
viz., kai eis hamartion haphesin kai eis nekron anastasin kai eis zoen 
aionion.
     4. Symbolus, or more commonly and correctly Symbolum (=symbolon) is the 
general name for the creed in the ancient church, met with from the days of 
Cyprian (who uses it more than once, e.g., Ep. lxix.) onwards.  In the account 
which Cassian gives in the text of the origin of the name he is certainly 
copying Rufinus (whose exposition of the Apostles' Creed is directly quoted by 
him below in Book VII. c. xxvii.).  The passage which Cassian evidently has in 
his mind is the following: "Moreover for many and excellent reasons they 
determined that it should be called Symbolum.  For `Symbolum' in Greek may 
mean both Indicium (a token) and collatio (a collection), that is, that which 
several bring together into one; for the apostles effected this in these 
sentences by bringing together into one what each thought good. . . .  
Therefore being about to depart to preach, the apostles appointed that token 
of their unanimity and faith."  (Ruf. De Symb. [section] 2).  Cf. also 
[section] 1.  "In these words there is truly discovered the prophecy which 
says: `Completing His work and cutting it short in righteousness, because a 
short word will the Lord make upon the earth.'"  This explanation, however, of 
the origin of the term labours under the fatal mistake of confusing two 
distinct Greek words symbole a "collection," and symbolon a "watchword:" and 
the true explanation of the word is probably that which Rufinus gives as an 
alternative, which gives it the meaning of "watchword."  It was the watchword 
of the Christian soldier, carefully and jealously guarded by him, as that by 
which he could himself be distinguished from heretics, and that for which he 
could challenge others of whose orthodoxy he might be in doubt.
     5. Rom. 9:28.


CHAPTER IV. 

             How the Creed has authority Divine as well as human.

    YOU see then that the Creed has the authority of God: for "a short word 
will the Lord make upon the earth."  But perhaps you want the authority of 
men: nor is that wanting, for God made it by means of men.  For as He 
fashioned the whole body of the sacred Scriptures by means of the patriarchs 
and more particularly his own prophets, so He formed the Creed by means of His 
apostles and priests.  And whatever He enlarged on in these (in Scripture) 
with copious and abundant material, He here embraced in a most complete and 
compendious form by means of His own servants.  There is nothing wanting then 
in the Creed; because as it was formed from the Scriptures of God by the 
apostles of God, it has in it all the authority it can possibly have, whether 
of men or of God: Although too that which was made by men, must be accounted 
God's work, for we should not look on it so much as their work, by whose 
instrumentality it was made, but rather as His, who was the actual maker.  "I 
believe," then, says the Creed, "in one true and only God, the Father 
Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus 
Christ, His only begotten Son and the first-born of every creature; Begotten 
of Him before all worlds, and not made; Very God of Very God, being of one 
substance with the Father; by whom both the worlds were framed and all things 
were made; who for us came, and was born of the Virgin Mary; and was crucified 
under Pontius Pilate, and was buried.  And the third day He rose again 
according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven: and shall come again to 
judge the quick and the dead," etc. 


CHAPTER V. 

       He proceeds against his opponent with the choicest arguments, and
            shows that we ought to hold fast to the religion which
                      we have received from our fathers.

    IF you were an assertor of the Arian or Sabellian heresy, and did not use 
your own creed, I would still confute you by the authority of the holy 
Scriptures; I would confute you by the words of the law itself; I would refute 
you by the truth of the Creed which has been approved throughout the whole 
world.  I would say that, even if you were void of sense and understanding, 
yet still you ought at least to follow universal consent: and not to make more 
of the perverse view of a few wicked men than of the faith of all the 
Churches: which as it was established by Christ, and handed down by the 
apostles ought to be regarded as nothing but the voice of the authority of 
God, which is certainly in possession of the voice and mind of God.  And what 
then if I were to deal with you in this way?  What would you say?  What would 
you answer?  Would it not, I adjure you, be this: viz., that you had not been 
trained up and taught in this way: that something different had been delivered 
to you by your parents, and masters, and teachers.  That you did not hear this 
in the meeting place of your father's teaching, nor in the Church of your 
Baptism: finally that the text and words of the Creed delivered and taught to 
you contained something different.  That in it you were baptized and 
regenerated.  You would say that you would hold fast this which you had 
received, and that you would live in that Creed in which you learnt that you 
were regenerated.  When you said this, would you not, I pray, fancy that you 
were using a very strong shield even against the truth?  And indeed it would 
be no unreasonable defence, even in a bad business, and one which would give 
no bad excuse for error, if it did not unite obstinacy with error.  For if you 
held this, which you had received from your childhood, we should try to amend 
and correct your present error, rather than be severe in punishing your past 
fault: Whereas now, as you were born in a Catholic city, instructed in the 
Catholic faith, and regenerated with Catholic Baptism, how can I deal with you 
as with an Arian or Sabellian?  Would that you were one!  I should grieve less 
had you been brought up in what was wrong, instead of having fallen away from 
what was right: had you never received the faith, instead of having lost it: 
had you been an old heretic instead of a fresh apostate, for you would have 
brought less scandal and harm on the whole Church; finally it would have been 
a less bitter sorrow, and less injurious example had you been able to try the 
Church as a layman rather than a priest.  Therefore, as I said above, if you 
had been a follower and assertor of Sabellianism or Arianism or any heresy you 
please, you might shelter yourself under the example of your parents, the 
teaching of your instructors, the company of those about you, the faith of 
your creed.  I ask, O you heretic, nothing unfair, and nothing hard.  As you 
have been brought up in the Catholic faith, do that which you would do for a 
wrong belief.  Hold fast to the teaching of your parents.  Hold fast the faith 
of the Church: hold fast the truth of the Creed: hold fast the salvation of 
baptism.  What sort of a wonder--what sort of a monster are you?  You will not 
do for yourself what others have done for their errors.  But we have launched 
out far enough: and out of love for a city that is connected with us,[1] have 
yielded to our grief as to a strong wind, and while we were anxious to make 
way, have overshot the mark of our proper course.

-----

Note for Chapter 5

     1. Viz., Constantinople, where Nestorius was Bishop and where Cassian 
himself had been ordained deacon by S. Chrysostom, as he tells us below in 
Book VII. c. xxxi., where he returns to the subject of his love for the city 
of his ordination, and interest in it.


CHAPTER VI. 

    Once more he challenges him to the profession of the Creed of Antioch.

    THE Creed then, O you heretic, of which we gave the text above, though it 
is that of all the churches (for the faith of all is but one) is yet specially 
that of the city and Church of Antioch, i.e., of that Church in which you were 
brought up, instructed, and regenerated.  The faith of this Creed brought you 
to the fountain of life, to saving regeneration, to the grace of the 
Eucharist, to the Communion of the Lord: And what more!  Alas for the grievous 
and mournful complaint!  Even to the ministerial office, the height of the 
presbyterate, the dignity of the priesthood.  Do you, you wretched madman, 
think that this is a light or trivial matter?  Do you not see what you have 
done?  Into what a depth you have plunged yourself?  In losing the faith of 
the Creed, you have lost everything that you were.  For the mysteries of the 
priesthood and of your salvation rested on the truth of the Creed.  Can you 
possibly deny that?  I say that you have denied your very self.  But perhaps 
you think that you cannot deny yourself.  Let us look at the text of the 
Creed; that if you say what you used to do, you may not be refuted, but if you 
say things widely different and contrary, you may not look to be confuted by 
me, as you have condemned yourself already.  For if you now maintain something 
else than what is in the Creed and what you formerly maintained yourself, how 
can you help ascribing your punishment to nobody but yourself, when you see 
that the opinion of everybody else about you is the same as your own?  "I 
believe," the Creed says, "in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all 
things visible and invisible; and in the Lord Jesus Christ, His only begotten 
Son, the first-born of every creature; Begotten of Him before all worlds, and 
not made."  It is well that you should first reply to this: Do you confess 
this of Jesus Christ the Son of God, or do you deny it?  If you confess it, 
everything is right enough.  But if not, how do you now deny what you yourself 
formerly confessed?  Choose then which you will: Of two things one must 
follow; viz., that that same confession of yours, if it still holds good, 
should alone set you free, or if you deny it, be the first to condemn you.  
For you said in the Creed: "I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ His only 
begotten Son, and the first-born of every creature."  If the Lord Jesus Christ 
is the only begotten, and the first-born of every creature, then by our own 
confession He is certainly God.  For no other is the only begotten and 
first-born of every creature but the only begotten Son of God: as He is the 
first-born of the creatures, so He is also God the Creator of all.  And how 
can you say that He was a mere man at His birth from the Virgin, whom you 
confessed to be God before the world.  Next the Creed says: "Begotten of the 
Father before all worlds, and not made."  This Creed was uttered by you.  You 
said by your Creed, that Jesus Christ was begotten before the worlds of God 
the Father, and not made.  Does the Creed say anything about those phantasms, 
of which you now rave?  Did you yourself say anything about them?  Where is 
the statue?  Where that instrument of yours, I pray?  For God forbid that this 
should be another's and not yours.  Where is it that you assert that the Lord 
Jesus Christ is like a statue, and so you think that He ought to be worshipped 
not because He is God, but because He is the image of God; and out of the Lord 
of glory you make an instrument, and blasphemously say that He ought to be 
adored not for His own sake, but for the sake of Him who (as it were) breathes 
in Him and sounds through Him?  You said in the Creed that the Lord Jesus 
Christ was begotten of the Father before all worlds, and not made: and this 
certainly belongs to none but the only begotten Son of God: that His birth 
should not be a creation, and that He could be said simply to be begotten, not 
made: for it is contrary to the nature of things and to His honour that the 
Creator of all should be believed to be a creature: and that He, the author of 
all things that have a commencement, should Himself have a beginning, as all 
things began from Him.  And so we say that He was begotten not made: for His 
generation was unique and no ordinary creation.  And since He is God, begotten 
of God, the Godhead of Him who is begotten must have everything complete which 
the majesty of Him who begat has. 


CHAPTER VII. 

    He continues the same line of argument drawn from the Creed of Antioch.

    BUT there follows in the Creed: "Very God of Very God; Being of one 
substance with the Father; by whom both the worlds were framed, and all things 
were made."  And when you said all this, remember that you said it all of the 
Lord Jesus Christ.  For you find stated in the Creed: that you believe in the 
Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, and the first-born of every 
creature: and after this and other clauses: "Very God of Very God, Being of 
one substance with the Father; by whom also the worlds were framed."  How then 
can the same Person be God and not God; God and a statue; God and an 
instrument?  These do not harmonize, you heretic, in any one Person, nor do 
they fit together, so that you can, when you like, call Him God; and when you 
like, consider the same Person a creation.  You said in the Creed, "Very God." 
Now you say: "a mere man."  How can these things fit together and harmonize so 
that one and the same Person may be the greatest Power, and utter weakness: 
the Highest glory, and mere mortality?  These things do not meet together in 
one and the same Lord.  So that severing Him for worship and for degradation, 
on one side, you may do Him honour as you like, and on the other, you may 
injure Him as you like.  You said in the Creed when you received the Sacrament 
of true Salvation: "the Lord Jesus Christ, Very God of Very God, Being of one 
substance with the Father, Creator of the worlds, Maker of all things."  Where 
are you alas!  Where is your former self?  Where is that faith of yours?  
Where that confession?  How have you fallen back and become a monstrosity and 
a prodigy?  What folly, what madness was your ruin?  You turned the God of all 
power and might into inanimate material and a lifeless creation: Your faith 
has certainly grown in time, in age, and in the priesthood.  You are worse as 
an old man than formerly as a child: worse now as a veteran than as a tyro: 
worse as a Bishop than you were as a novice: nor were you ever a learner after 
you had begun to be a teacher. 


CHAPTER VIII. 

         How it can be said that Christ came and was born of a Virgin.

    BUT let us look at the remainder which follows.  As then the Creed says: 
"The Lord Jesus Christ, Very God of Very God, Being of one substance with the 
Father; By whom both the worlds were framed, and all things were made," it 
immediately subjoins in closest connexion the following, and says: "Who for us 
came and was born of the Virgin Mary."  He then, who is Very God, who is of 
one substance with the Father, who is the Maker of all things, He, I repeat, 
came into the world and was born of the Virgin Mary; as the Apostle Paul says: 
"But when the fulness of the times was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a 
woman, made under the law."[1]  You see how the mysteries of the Creed 
correspond with the Holy Scriptures.  The Apostle declares that the Son of God 
was "sent from the Father:" The Creed affirms that He "came."  For it 
certainly follows that our faith should confess that He has "come," whom the 
Apostle had taught us to be sent.  Then the Apostle says: "Made of a woman:" 
The Creed, "born of Mary."  And so you see that there speaks through the Creed 
the Scripture itself, from which the Creed acknowledges that it is itself 
derived.  But when the Apostle says, "made of a woman," he rightly enough uses 
"made" for "born," after the manner of Holy Scripture in which "made" stands 
for "born:" as in this passage: "Instead of thy fathers there are made to thee 
sons:"[2] or this: "Before Abraham was made, I am;"[3] where we certainly see 
clearly that He meant "Before he was born, I am:" alluding to the fact of his 
birth under the term "was made," because whatever does not need to be made has 
the very reality of creation.  "Who," it then says, "for us came and was born 
of the Virgin Mary."  If a mere man was born of Mary, how can it be said that 
He "came"?  For no one "comes" but He who has it in Him to be able to come.  
But in the case of one who had not yet received His existence, how could He 
have it in Him to come.  You see then how by the word "coming" it is shown 
that He who came was already in existence: for He only had the power to come, 
to whom there could be the opportunity of coming, from the fact that He was 
already existing.  But a mere man was certainly not in existence before he was 
conceived, and so had not in himself the power to come.  It is clear then that 
it was God who came: to whom it belongs in each case both to be, and to come. 
For certainly He came because He was, and He ever was, because He could ever 
come.

-----

Notes for Chapter 8

     1. Gal. 4:4.
     2. Ps. 44 (45):17.
     3. S. John 8:58.


CHAPTER IX. 

    Again he convicts his opponent of deadly heresy by his own confession.

  BUT why are we arguing about words, when the facts are clear enough? and 
seeking for a determination of the matter from the terms of the Creed, when 
the Creed itself deals with the question.  Let us repeat the confession of the 
Creed, and of you yourself (for yours it is as well as the Creed's, for you 
made it yours by confessing it), that you may see that you have departed not 
only from the Creed but from yourself.  "I believe" then, says the Creed, "In 
one only true God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and 
invisible: And in the Lord Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son, and the 
first-born of every creature: Begotten of Him before all worlds and not made; 
Very God of Very God; Being of one substance with the Father; By whom both the 
worlds were framed, and all things were made.  Who for us came, and was born 
of the Virgin Mary."  "For us" then the Creed says, our Lord Jesus Christ 
"came and was born of the Virgin Mary, and was crucified under Pontius Pilate; 
and was buried, and rose again according to the Scriptures."  The Churches are 
not ashamed to confess this: the Apostles were not ashamed to preach it.  You 
yourself, you, I say, whose every utterance is now blasphemy, you who now deny 
everything, you did not deny all these truths: that God was born; that God 
suffered, that God rose again.  And what next?  Whither have you fallen?  What 
have you become?  To what are you reduced?  What do you say?  What are you 
vomiting forth?  What, as one says, even mad Orestes himself would swear to be 
the words of a madman.[1]  For what is it that you say?  "Who then is the Son 
of God who was born of the Christotocos?  As for instance if we were to say I 
believe in God the Word, the only Son of God, begotten of His Father, Being of 
one substance with the Father, who came down and was buried, would not our 
ears be shocked at the sound?  God dead?"  And again: "Can it possibly be, you 
say, that He who was begotten before all worlds, should be born a second time, 
and be God?"  If all these things cannot possibly be, how is it that the Creed 
of the Churches says that they did happen?  How is it that you yourself said 
that they did?  For let us compare what you now say with what you formerly 
said.  Once you said: "I believe in God the Father Almighty; and in Jesus 
Christ His Son, Very God of Very God; Being of one substance with the Father; 
who for us came and was born of the Virgin Mary; and was crucified under 
Pontius Pilate; and was buried."  But now what is it that you say?  "If we 
should say: I believe in God the Word, the only Son of God, Begotten of His 
Father; Being of one substance with the Father, who came down and was buried, 
would not our ears be shocked at the sound?"  The bitterness indeed and 
blasphemy of your words might drive us to a furious and ferocious attack in 
answer; but we must somewhat curb the reins of our pious sorrow.

-----

Note for Chapter 9

     1. Persius Sat. iii. l. 116 . . . "quod ipse non sani esse hominis non 
sanus juret Orestes."


CHAPTER X. 

          He inveighs against him because though he has forsaken the
            Catholic religion, he nevertheless presumes to teach in
               the Church, to sacrifice, and to give decisions.

    I APPEAL then to you, to you yourself, I say.  Tell me, I pray, if any Jew 
or pagan denied the Creed of the Catholic faith, should you think that we 
ought to listen to him?  Most certainly not.  What if a heretic or an apostate 
does the same?  Still less should we listen to him, for it is worse for a man 
to forsake the truth which he has known, than to deny it without ever having 
known it.  We see then two men in you: a Catholic and an apostate: first a 
Catholic, afterwards an apostate.  Determine for yourself which you think we 
ought to follow: for you cannot press the claims of the one in yourself 
without condemning the other.  Do you say then that it is your former self 
which is to be condemned: and that you condemn the Catholic Creed, and the 
confession and faith of all men?  And what then?  O shameful deed!  O wretched 
grief!  What are you doing in the Catholic Church, you preventer of Catholics? 
Why is it that you, who have denied the faith of the people, are still 
polluting the meetings of the people: And above all venture to stand at the 
altar, to mount the pulpit, and show your impudent and treacherous face to 
God's people--to occupy the Bishop's throne, to exercise the priesthood, to 
set yourself up as a teacher?  To teach the Christians what?  Not to believe 
in Christ: to deny that He in whose Divine temple they are, is God.[1]  And 
after all this, O folly!  O madness! you fancy that you are a teacher and a 
Bishop, while (O wretched blindness) you are denying His Divinity, His 
Divinity (I repeat it) whose priest you claim to be.  But we are carried away 
by our grief.  What then says the Creed? or what did you yourself say in the 
Creed?  Surely "the Lord Jesus Christ, Very God of Very God; Being of one 
substance with the Father; By whom the worlds were created and all things 
made:" and that this same Person "for us came and was born of the Virgin 
Mary."  Since then you said that God was born of Mary, how can you deny that 
Mary was the mother of God?  Since you said that God came, how can you deny 
that He is God who has come?  You said in the Creed: "I believe in Jesus 
Christ the Son of God: I believe in Very God of Very God, of one substance 
with the Father: who for us came and was born of the Virgin Mary; and was 
crucified under Pontius Pilate; and was buried."  But now you say: "If we 
should say, I believe in God the Word, the only Son of God, Begotten of the 
Father, of one substance with the Father; who came and was buried, would not 
our ears be shocked at the sound?"  Do you see then how you are utterly 
destroying and stamping out the whole faith of the Catholic Creed and the 
Catholic mystery?  "O Sin, O monstrosity, to be driven away," as one says,[2] 
"to the utmost parts of the earth:" for this is more truly said of you, that 
you may forsooth go into that solitude where you will not be able to find 
anyone to ruin.  You think then that the faith of our salvation, and the 
mystery of the Church's hope is a shock to your ears and hearing.  And how was 
it that formerly when you were hastening to be baptized, you heard these  
mysteries with unharmed ears?  How was it that when the teachers of the church 
were instructing you your ears were not damaged?  You certainly at that time 
did your duty without any double shock to your mouth and ears; when you 
repeated what you heard from others, and as the speaker yourself heard 
yourself speaking.  Where then were these injuries to your ears?  Where these 
shocks to your hearing?  Why did you not contradict and cry out against it?  
But indeed you are at your will and fancy, when you please, a disciple; and 
when you please, the Church's enemy: when you please a Catholic, and when you 
please an apostate.  A worthy leader indeed, to draw Churches after you, to 
whatever side you attach yourself; to make your will the law of our life, and 
to change mankind as you yourself change, that, as you will not be what all 
others are, they may be what you want![3]  A splendid authority indeed, that 
because you are not now what you used to be, the world must cease to be what 
it formerly was!

-----

Notes for Chapter 10

     1. Petschenig's text is as follows: Ut quid doceas Christianos?  Christum 
non credere, cum ipsum in cujus Dei templo sint Deum negare.  Gazaeus edits: 
Ut quid doces Christianos, Christum non credens?  Cum ipsum, in cujus Dei 
templo sunt, Deum neges.
     2. Cicero in Verr. Act. Book l. xv. 40.
     3. Ut, quia tu esse nolis quod omnes sint, omnes sint, quod tu velis 
(Petschenig).  Gazaeus has: Et quia tu esse nolis quod omnes sunt, quod tu 
velis: a text which he confesses must be corrupt.


CHAPTER XI. 

      He removes the silent objection of heretics who want to recant the
                 profession of their faith made in childhood.

    BUT perhaps you say that you were a baby when you were regenerated, and so 
were not then able to think or to contradict.  It is true: that your infancy 
did prevent you from contradicting, when if you had been a man you would have 
died for contradicting.  For what if when in that most faithful and devout 
Church of Christ the priest delivered the Creed[1] to the Catechumen and the 
attesting people, you had tried to hold your tongue at any point, or to 
contradict?  Perhaps you would have been heard, and not sent forth at once 
like some new kind of monster or prodigy as a plague to be expelled.  Not 
because that most earnest and religious people of God has any wish to be 
stained with the blood of even the worst of men: but because especially in 
great cities the people inflamed with the love of God cannot restrain the 
ardour of their faith when they see anyone rise up against their God.  But be 
it so.  As a baby, if it be so, you could not contradict and deny the Creed. 
Why did you hold your tongue when you were older and stronger.  At any rate 
you grew up, and became a man, and were placed in the ministry of the Church. 
Through all these years, through all the steps of office and dignity, did you 
never understand the faith which you taught so long before?  At any rate you 
knew that you were His deacon and priest.  If the rule of salvation was a 
difficulty to you, why did you undertake the honour of that, of which you 
disliked the faith?  But indeed you were a far sighted and simply devout man, 
who wished so to balance yourself between the two, as to maintain both your 
wicked blasphemy, and the honour of Catholicity!

-----

Note for Chapter 11

     1. The reference is the ceremony known as the Traditio Symboli, which is 
thus described by Professor Lumby: "The practice of the early church in the 
admission of converts to baptism seems to have been of this nature.  For some 
period previous to their baptism (the usual seasons for which were Easter and 
Pentecost) the candidates for admission thereto were trained in the doctrines 
of the faith by the presbyters.  A few days before they were to be baptized 
(the number of days varying at different periods) the Creed was delivered to 
them accompanied with a sermon.  This ceremony was known as Traditio Symboli, 
the delivery of the Creed.  At the time of Baptism each candidate was 
interrogated upon the articles of the Creed which he had received, and was to 
return an answer in the words which had been given to him.  This was known as 
Redditio Symboli, the repetition of the Creed, and Baptism was the only 
occasion on which the Creed was introduced into any public service of the 
Church."  History of the Creeds, pp. 11, 12.


CHAPTER XII. 

               Christ crucified is an offence and foolishness to
                   those who declare that He was a mere man.

    THE shock then to your hearing and ears is that God was born, and God 
suffered.  And where is that saying of yours, O Apostle Paul: "But we preach 
Christ crucified, to the Jews indeed a stumbling block, but to the Gentiles 
foolishness: but to them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the 
Power of God and the Wisdom of God."[1]  What is the Wisdom and Power of God? 
Certainly it is God.  But he preaches Christ who was crucified, as the Power 
and Wisdom of God.  If then Christ is without any doubt the Wisdom of God, He 
is therefore without any doubt God.  "We," then, he says, "preach Christ 
crucified, to the Jews indeed a stumbling block, but to the Gentiles 
foolishness."  And so the Lord's cross, which was foolishness to the Gentiles 
and a stumbling block to the Jews is both together to you.  Nor indeed is 
there any greater foolishness than not to believe, or any greater stumbling 
block than to refuse to listen.  Their ears were wounded then by the preaching 
and the passion of God, just as yours are wounded now.  They thought as you 
think that this shocked their ears.  And hence it was that when the Apostle 
was preaching Christ as God, at the name of our God and Lord Jesus Christ, 
they stopped the ears in their head, as you stop the ears of your 
understanding.  The sin of both of you in this matter might seem to be equal, 
were it not that your fault is the greater, because they denied Him, in whom 
the passion still showed the manhood,[2] while you deny Him, whom the 
resurrection has already proved to be God.  And so they were persecuting Him 
on the earth, whom you are persecuting even in heaven.  And not only so, but 
this is more cruel and wicked, because they denied Him in ignorance, you deny 
Him after having received the faith: they not knowing the Lord, you when you 
have confessed Him as God: they under cover of zeal for the law, you under the 
cloke of your Bishopric: they denied Him to whom they thought that they were 
strangers, you deny Him whose priest you are.  O unworthy act, and one never 
heard of before!  You persecute and attack the very One, whose office you are 
still holding.

-----

Notes for Chapter 12

     1. 1 Cor. 1:23, 24.
     2. Homo.


CHAPTER XIII. 

  He replies to the objection in which they say that the child born[1] ought
                    to be of one substance with the mother.

    BUT indeed in your deceit and blasphemy you use a grand argument for 
denying and attacking the Lord God, when you say that "the child born ought to 
be of one substance with the mother."[2]  I do not entirely admit it, and 
maintain that in the matter of the birth of God it would not be observed; for 
the birth was not so much the work of her who bore Him as of her Son, and He 
was born as He willed, whose doing it was that He was born.  Next, if you say 
that the child born ought to be of one substance with the parent, I affirm 
that the Lord Jesus Christ was of one substance with His Father, and also with 
His mother.  For in accordance with the difference of the Persons He showed a 
likeness to each parent.  For according to His Divinity He was of one 
substance with the Father: but according to the flesh He was of one substance 
with His mother.  Not that it was one Person who was of one substance with the 
Father, and another who was of one substance with His mother, but because the 
same Lord Jesus Christ, both born as man, and also being God, had in Him the 
properties of each parent, and in that He was man He showed a likeness to His 
human mother, and in that He was God He possessed the very nature of God the 
Father.

-----

Notes for Chapter 13

     1. Nativitas.
     2. Homoousios parienti debet esse nativitas.


CHAPTER XIV. 

      He compares this erroneous view with the teaching of the Pelagians.

    OTHERWISE if Christ who was born of Mary is not the same Person as He who 
is of God, you certainly make two Christs; after the manner of that abominable 
error of Pelagius, which in asserting that a mere man was born of the Virgin, 
said that He was the teacher rather than the redeemer of mankind; for He did 
not bring to men redemption of life but only an example of how to live, i.e., 
that by following Him men should do the same sort of things and so come to a 
similar state.  Your blasphemy then has but one source, and the root of the 
errors is one and the same.  They maintain that a mere man was born of Mary: 
you maintain the same.  They sever the Son of man from the Son of God: you do 
the same.  They say that the Saviour was made the Christ by His baptism: you 
say that in baptism He became the Temple of God.  They do not deny that He 
became God after His Passion: you deny Him even after His ascension.  In one 
point only therefore your perverseness goes beyond theirs, for they seem to 
blaspheme the Lord on earth, and you even in heaven.  We do not deny that you 
have beaten and outstripped those whom you are copying.  They at last cease to 
deny God; you never do.  Although theirs must not altogether be deemed a true 
confession, as they only allow the glory of Divinity to the Saviour after His 
Passion, and while they deny that He was God before this, only confess it 
afterwards: for, as it seems to me, one who denies some part in regard to God, 
denies Him altogether: and one who does not confess that He ever existed, 
denies Him forever.  Just as you also, even if you were to admit that now in 
the heavens the Lord Jesus Christ, who was born of the Virgin Mary, is God, 
would not truly confess Him unless you admitted that He was always God.  But 
indeed you do not want in any point to change or vary your opinion.  For you 
assert that He whom you speak of as born a mere man, is still at the present 
time not God.  O novel and marvellous blasphemy, though with the heretics you 
assert Him to be man, you do not with the heretics confess Him to be God! 


CHAPTER XV. 

He shows that those who patronize this false teaching acknowledge two Christs.

    BUT still, I had begun to say, that as you certainly make out two Christs 
this very matter must be illustrated and made clear.  Tell me, I pray you, you 
who sever Christ from the Son of God, how can you confess in the Creed that 
Christ was begotten of God?  For you say: "I believe in God the Father, and in 
Jesus Christ His Son."  Here then you have Jesus Christ the Son of God: but 
you say that it was not the same Son of God who was born of Mary.  Therefore 
there is one Christ of God, and another of Mary.  In your view then there are 
two Christs.  For, though in the Creed you do not deny Christ, you say that 
the Christ of Mary is another than the one whom you confess in the Creed.  But 
perhaps you say that Christ was not begotten of God: how then do you say in 
the Creed: "I believe in Jesus Christ the Son of God?"  You must then either 
deny the Creed or confess that Christ is the Son of God.  But if you confess 
in the Creed that Christ is the Son of God, you must also confess that the 
same Christ, the Son of God, is of Mary.  Or if you make out another Christ of 
Mary, you certainly make the blasphemous assertion that there are two Christs. 


CHAPTER XVI. 

             He shows further that this teaching is destructive of
                        the confession of the Trinity.

    BUT still even if your obstinacy and dishonesty are not restrained by this 
faith of the Creed, are you not, I ask you, overwhelmed by an appeal to reason 
and the light of truth?  Tell me, I ask, whoever you are, O you heretic--At 
least there is a Trinity, in which we believe, and which we confess: Father 
and Son and Holy Ghost.  Of the Glory of the Father and the Spirit there is no 
question.  You are slandering the Son, because you say that it was not the 
same Person who was born of Mary, as He who was begotten of God the Father. 
Tell me then: if you do not deny that the only Son of God was begotten of God, 
whom do you make out that He is who was born of Mary?  You say "a mere man," 
according to that which He Himself said: "That which is born of the flesh, is 
flesh."[1]  But He cannot be called a mere man who was begotten not after the 
law of human creation alone.  "For that which is conceived in her," said the 
angel, "is of the Holy Ghost."[2]  And this even you dare not deny, though you 
deny almost all the mysteries of salvation.  Since then He was born of the 
Holy Ghost, and cannot be termed a mere man, as He was conceived by the 
inspiration of God, if it is not He who, as the Apostle says, "emptied Himself 
by taking the form of a servant," and "the word was made flesh," and "humbled 
Himself by becoming obedient unto death," and "who for our sakes, though He 
was rich, became poor,"[3] tell me, then, who He is, who was born of the Holy 
Ghost, and was conceived by the overshadowing of God?  You say that He is 
certainly a different Person.  Then there are two Persons; viz., the one, who 
was begotten of God the Father in heaven; and the other who was conceived of 
Mary, by the inspiration of God.  And thus there is a fourth Person whom you 
introduce, and whom (though in words you term Him a mere man) you assert 
actually not to have been a mere man, since you allow (not however as you 
ought) that He is to be honoured, worshipped, and adored.  Since then the Son 
of God who was begotten of the Father is certainly to be worshiped, and He who 
was conceived of Mary by the Holy Ghost is to be worshipped, you make two 
Persons to be honoured and venerated, whom you so far sever from each other, 
as to venerate each with an honour special and peculiar to Him.  And thus you 
see that by denying and by severing from Himself the Son of God, you destroy, 
as far as you can, the whole mystery of the divinity.  For while you are 
endeavouring to introduce a fourth Person into the Trinity,[4] you see that 
you have utterly denied the whole Trinity.

-----

Notes for Chapter 16

     1. St. John 3:6.
     2. S. Matt. 1:20.
     3. Phil. 2:7, 8; S. John 1:14; 2 Cor. 8:9.
     4. Cf. Augustine, Tr. 78 in Joan.


CHAPTER XVII. 

      Those who are under an error in one point of the Catholic religion,
             lose the whole faith, and all the value of the faith.

    AND since this is so, in denying that Jesus Christ the Son of God is one, 
you have denied everything.  For the scheme of the mysteries of the Church and 
the Catholic faith is such that one who denies one portion of the Sacred 
Mystery cannot confess the other.  For all parts of it are so bound up and 
united together that one cannot stand without the other and if a man denies 
one point out of the whole number, it is of no use for him to believe all the 
others.  And so if you deny that the Lord Jesus Christ is God, the result is 
that in denying the Son of God you deny the Father also.  For as St. John 
says: "He who hath not the Son hath not the Father; but he who hath the Son 
hath the Father also."[1]  By denying then Him who was begotten you deny also 
Him who begat.  By denying also that the Son of God was born in the flesh, you 
are led also to deny that He was born in the Spirit, for it is the same Person 
who was born in the flesh who was first born in the Spirit.  If you do not 
believe that He was born in the flesh, the result is that you do not believe 
that He suffered.  If you do not believe in His Passion what remains for you 
but to deny His resurrection?  For faith in one raised springs out of faith in 
one dead.  Nor can the reference to the resurrection keep its place, unless 
belief in His death has first preceded it.  By denying then his Passion and 
Death, you deny also his resurrection from hell.[2]  It follows certainly that 
you deny His ascension also, for there cannot be the ascension without the 
resurrection.  And if we do not believe that He rose again, we cannot either 
believe that He ascended: as the Apostle says, "For He that descended is the 
same also that ascended."[3]  Thus, so far as you are concerned, the Lord 
Jesus Christ did not rise from hell, nor ascend into heaven, nor sit at the 
right hand of God the Father, nor will He come at that day of judgment which 
we look for, nor  will He judge the quick and the dead.

-----

Notes for Chapter 17

     1. 1 John 2:23.
     2. Ab inferis.
     3. Eph. 4:10.


CHAPTER XVIII. 

  He directs his discourse upon his antagonist with whom he is disputing, and
     begs him to return to his senses.  The sacrament of reconciliation is
                 necessary for the lapsed for their salvation.

    AND so, you wretched, insane, obstinate creature, you see that you have 
utterly upset the whole faith of the Creed, and all that is valuable in our 
hope and the mysteries.  And yet you still dare to remain in the Church: and 
imagine that you are a priest, though you have denied everything by which you 
came to be a priest.  Return then to the right way, and recover your former 
mind, return to your senses if you ever had any.  Come to your self, if there 
ever was in you a self to which you can come back.  Acknowledge the sacraments 
of your salvation, by which you were initiated and regenerated.  They are of 
no less use to you now than they were then; for they can now regenerate you by 
penance, as they then gave you birth through the Font.  Hold fast the full 
scheme of the Creed.  Hold the entire truth of the faith.  Believe in God the 
Father: believe in God the Son: in one who begat and one who was begotten, the 
Lord of all, Jesus Christ; Being of one substance with the Father; Begotten in 
His divinity; born in the flesh: of twofold birth, yet of but one glory; who 
Himself creator of all things, was begotten of the Father, and was afterwards 
born of the Virgin. 


CHAPTER XIX. 

            That the birth of Christ in time diminished nothing of
                       the glory and power of His Deity.

    FOR the fact that He came of the flesh and in the flesh, has reference to 
His birth, and involves no diminution in Him: and He was simply born, not 
changed for the worse.[1]  For though, still remaining in the form of God, He 
took upon Him the form of a servant, yet the weakness of His human 
constitution had no effect on His nature as God: but while the power of His 
Deity remained whole and unimpaired, all that took place in His human flesh 
was an advancement of His manhood and no diminution of His glory.  For when 
God was born in human flesh, He was not born in human flesh in such a way as 
not to remain Divine in Himself, but so that, while the Godhead remained as 
before, God might become man.  And so Martha while she saw with her bodily 
eyes the man, confessed Him by spiritual sight to be God, saying, "Yea, Lord, 
I have believed that Thou art the Christ the Son of the living God, who art 
come into the world."[2]  So Peter, owing to the Holy Spirit's revelation, 
while externally he beheld the Son of man, yet proclaimed Him to be the Son of 
God, saying, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God."[3]  So Thomas 
when he touched the flesh, believed that he had touched God saying, "My Lord 
and my God."[4]  For they all confessed but one Christ, so as not to make Him 
two.  Do you therefore believe Him; and so believe that Jesus Christ the Lord 
of all, both only Begotten and first-born, is both Creator of all things and 
Preserver of men and that the same Person is first the framer of the whole 
world, and afterwards redeemer of mankind?  Who still remaining with the 
Father and in the Father, Being of one substance with the Father, did (as the 
Apostle says), "Take the form of a servant, and humble Himself even unto 
death, the death of the Cross:"[5] and (as the Creed says) "was born of the 
Virgin Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate, and was buried.  And the third 
day He rose again according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven; and 
shall come again to judge both the quick and the dead."  This is our faith; 
this is our salvation: to believe that our God and Lord Jesus Christ is one 
and the same before all things and after all things.  For, as it is written, 
"Jesus Christ is yesterday and today and the same for ever."[6]  For 
"yesterday" signifies all time past, wherein, before the beginning, He was 
begotten of the Father.  "Today" covers the time of this world, in which He 
was again born of the Virgin, suffered, and rose again.  But by the expression 
the same "for ever" is denoted the whole boundless eternity to come.

-----

Notes for Chapter 19

     1. Demutatus.
     2. S. John 11:27.
     3. S. Matt. 16:16.
     4. S. John 20:28.
     5. Phil. 2:7, 8.
     6. Heb. 13:8.


CHAPTER XX. 

  He shows from what has been said that we do not mean that God was mortal or
         of flesh before the worlds, although Christ, who is God from
             eternity and was made man in time, is but one Person.

    BUT perhaps you will say: If I admit that the same Person was in the end 
of time born of a Virgin, who was begotten before all things of God the 
Father, I shall imply that before the beginning of the world God was in the 
flesh, as I say that He was afterwards man, who was always God: and so I shall 
say that that man who was afterwards born, had always existed.  I do not want 
you to be confused by this blind ignorance, and these obscure misconceptions, 
so as to fancy that I am maintaining that the manhood[1] which was born of 
Mary had existed before the beginning of things, or asserting that God was 
always in a bodily form before the commencement of the world.  I do not say, I 
repeat it, I do not say that the manhood was in God before it was born: but 
that God was afterwards born in the manhood.  For that flesh which was born of 
the flesh of the Virgin had not always existed: but God who always was, came 
in the flesh of man of the flesh of the Virgin.  For "the Word was made 
flesh," and did not manifest flesh together with Himself: but in the glory of 
Divinity joined Himself to human flesh.  For tell me when or where the Word 
was made flesh, or where He emptied Himself by taking the form of a servant: 
or where He became poor, though He was rich?  Where but in the holy womb of 
the Virgin, where at His Incarnation, the Word of God is said to have been 
made flesh, at His birth He truly took the form of a servant; and when He is 
in human nature nailed to the Cross, He became poor, and was made poor in His 
sufferings in the flesh, though He was rich in His Divine glory?  Otherwise 
if, as you say, at some later period the Deity entered into Him as into one of 
the Prophets and saints, then "the Word was made flesh" in those men also in 
whom He vouchsafed to dwell: then in each one of them He emptied Himself and 
took upon Him the form of a servant.  And thus there is nothing new or unique 
in Christ.  Neither His conception, nor His birth nor His death had anything 
special or miraculous about it.

-----

Note for Chapter 20

     1. Hominem.


CHAPTER XXI. 

The authority of Holy Scripture teaches that Christ existed from all eternity.

    AND yet to return to what we said before, though all these things are so, 
as we have stated: how do we read that Jesus Christ (whom you assert to be a 
mere man) was ever existing even before His birth of a Virgin, and how is He 
proclaimed by prophets and apostles as God even before the worlds?  As Paul 
says: "One Lord Jesus, through whom are all things."[1]  And elsewhere he 
says: "For in Christ were created all things in heaven and on earth, both 
visible and invisible."[2]  The Creed too, which is framed both by human and 
Divine authority, says: "I believe in God the Father, and in the Lord Jesus 
Christ, His Son."  And after other clauses: "Very God of Very God; by whom 
both the worlds were framed and all things were made."  And further: "Who for 
us came and was born of the Virgin Mary, and was crucified, and was buried."

-----

Notes for Chapter 21

     1. 1 Cor. 8:6.
     2. Col. 1:16.


CHAPTER XXII. 

                 The hypostatic union enables us to ascribe to
                   God what belongs to the flesh in Christ.

    HOW then is Christ (whom you term a mere man) proclaimed in Holy Scripture 
to be God without beginning, if by our own confession the Lord's manhood[1] 
did not exist before His birth and conception of a Virgin?  And how can we 
read of so close a union of man and God, as to make it appear that man was 
ever co-eternal with God, and that afterwards God suffered with man: whereas 
we cannot believe that man can be without beginning or that God can suffer?  
It is this which we established in our previous writings; viz., that God being 
joined to manhood,[2] i.e., to His own body, does not allow any separation to 
be made in men's thoughts between man and God.  Nor will He permit anyone to 
hold that there is one Person of the Son of man, and another Person of the Son 
of God.  But in all the holy Scriptures He joins together and as it were 
incorporates in the Godhead, the Lord's manhood,[3] so that no one can sever 
man from God in time, nor God from man at His Passion.  For if you regard Him 
in time, you will find that the Son of man is ever with the Son of God.  If 
you take note of His Passion, you will find that the Son of God is ever with 
the Son of man, and that Christ the Son of man and the Son of God is so one 
and indivisible, that, in the language of holy Scripture, the man cannot be 
severed in time from God, nor God from man at His Passion.  Hence comes this: 
"No man hath ascended into heaven, but He who came down from heaven, even the 
Son of man who is in heaven."[4]  Where the Son of God while He was speaking 
on earth testified that the Son of man was in heaven: and testified that the 
same Son of man, who, He said, would ascend into heaven, had previously come 
down from heaven.  And this: "What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend 
up where He was before,"[5] where He gives the name of Him who was born of 
man, but affirms that He ever was up on high.  And the Apostle also, when 
considering what happened in time, says that all things were made by Christ. 
For he says, "There is one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things."[6]  But 
when speaking of His Passion, he shows that the Lord of glory was crucified. 
"For if," he says, "they had known, they would never have crucified the Lord 
of glory."[7]  And so too the Creed speaking of the only and first-begotten 
Lord Jesus Christ, "Very God of Very God, Being of one substance with the 
Father, and the Maker of all things," affirms that He was born of the Virgin 
and crucified and afterwards buried.  Thus joining in one body (as it were) 
the Son of God and of man, and uniting God and man, so that there can be no 
severance either in time or at the Passion, since the Lord Jesus Christ is 
shown to be one and the same Person, both as God through all eternity, and as 
man through the endurance of His Passion; and though we cannot say that man is 
without beginning or that God is passible, yet in the one Person of the Lord 
Jesus Christ we can speak of man as eternal, and of God as dead.  You see then 
that Christ means the whole Person, and that the name represents both natures, 
for both man and God are born, and so it takes in the whole Person so that 
when this name is used we see that no part is left out.  There was not then 
before the birth of a Virgin the same eternity belonging in the past to the 
manhood as to the Divinity, but because Divinity was united to manhood in the 
womb of the Virgin, it follows that when we use the name of Christ one cannot 
be spoken of without the other.

-----

Notes for Chapter 22

     1. Dominicus homo, see above on V. v.
     2. Homini.
     3. Dominicus homo.
     4. S. John 3:13.
     5. S. John 6:63.
     6. 1 Cor. 8:6.
     7. 1 Cor. 2:8.  See the note on IV. vii.


CHAPTER XXIII. 

         That the figure Synecdoche, in which the part stands for the
                whole, is very familiar to the Holy Scripture.

    WHATEVER then you say of the Lord Jesus Christ, you say of the whole 
person, and in mentioning the Son of God you mention the Son of man, and in 
mentioning the Son of man you mention the Son of God: by the grammatical trope 
synecdoche in which you understand the whole from the parts, and a part is put 
for the whole: and the holy Scriptures certainly show this, as in them the 
Lord often uses this trope, and teaches in this way about others and would 
have us understand about Himself in the same way.  For sometimes days, and 
things, and men, and times are denoted in holy Scripture in no other fashion. 
As in this case where God declares that Israel shall serve the Egyptians for 
four hundred years, and says to Abraham: "Know thou that thy seed shall be a 
stranger in a land not theirs, and they shall bring them under bondage and 
afflict them four hundred years."[1]  Whereas if you take into account the 
whole time after that God spoke, they are more than four hundred: but if you 
only reckon the time in which they were in slavery, they are less.  And in 
giving this period indeed, unless you understand it in this way, we must think 
that the Word of God lied (and away with such a thought from Christian 
minds!).  But since from the time of the Divine utterance, the whole period of 
their lives amounted to more than four hundred years, and their bondage 
endured for not nearly four hundred, you must understand that the part is to 
be taken for the whole, or the whole for the part.  There is also a similar 
way of representing days and nights, where, when in the case of either 
division of time one day is meant, either period is shown by a portion of a 
single period.  And indeed in this way the difficulty about the time of our 
Lord's Passion is cleared up: for whereas the Lord prophesied that after the 
model of the prophet Jonah, the Son of man would be three days and three 
nights in the heart of the earth,[2] and whereas after the sixth day of the 
week on which He was crucified, He was only in hell[3] for one day and two 
nights, how can we show the truth of the Divine words?  Surely by the trope of 
Synecdoche, i.e., because to the day on which He was crucified the previous 
night belongs, and to the night on which He rose again, the coming day; and so 
when there is added the night which preceded the day belonging to it, and the 
day which followed the night belonging to it, we see that there is nothing 
lacking to the whole period of time, which is made up of its portions.  The 
holy Scriptures abound in such instances of ways of speaking: but it would 
take too long to relate them all.  For so when the Psalm says, "What is a man 
that Thou art mindful of Him,"[4] from the part we understand the whole, as 
while only one man is mentioned the whole human race is meant.  So also where 
Ahab sinned we are told that the people sinned.  Where--though all are 
mentioned, a part is to be understood from the whole.  John also the Lord's 
forerunner says: "After me cometh a man who is preferred before me for He was 
before me."[5]  How then does He mean that He would come after Him, whom He 
shows to be before Him?  For if this is understood of a man who was afterwards 
born, how was he before him?  But if it is taken of the Word how is it, "a man 
cometh after me?"  Except that in the one Lord Jesus Christ is shown both the 
posteriority of the manhood and the precedence of the Godhead.  And so the 
result is that one and the same Lord was before him and came after him: for 
according to the flesh He was posterior in time to John; and according to His 
Deity was before all men.  And so he, when he named that man, denoted both the 
manhood and the Word, for as the Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God was complete 
in both manhood and Divinity[6] in mentioning one of these natures in Him he 
denoted the whole person.  And what need is there of anything further?  I 
think that the day would fail me if I were to try to collect or to tell 
everything that could be said on this subject.  And what we have already said 
is enough, at any rate on this part of the subject, both for the exposition of 
the Creed, and for the requirements of our case, and for the limits of our 
book.

-----

Notes for Chapter 23

     1. Gen. 15:13.
     2. S. Matt. 12:40.
     3. Apud inferos.
     4. Ps. 8:5.
     5. S. John 1:15.
     6. Verbi.


                             --------------------

                                   BOOK VII. 


CHAPTER I. 

          As he is going to reply to the slanders of his opponents he
           implores the aid of Divine grace to teach a prayer to be
             used by those who undertake to dispute with heretics.

    AS it happens to those who having escaped the perils of the sea, are in 
terror of the sands that stretch before the harbour, or the rocks that line 
the shore, so it is in my case that,--as I have kept to the last some of the 
slanders of the heretics,--although I have reached the limit of the work which 
I set myself, yet I am beginning to dread the close, which I had longed to 
reach.  But, as the Prophet says, "The Lord is my helper; I will not fear what 
man can do to me,"[1] so we will not fear the pitfalls which crafty heretics 
have dug in front of us, nor the paths thickly strewn with horrid thorns.  For 
as they make our road difficult but do not close it, there is before us the 
trouble of clearing them away, rather than the fear of not being able to do 
so.  For when, as we are walking feebly along the right road, they come in our 
way, and frighten the walkers rather than hurt them, our work and business has 
more to do in clearing them away, than to fear from the difficulty of this: 
And so, laying our hands upon that monstrous head of the deadly serpent, and 
longing to lay hold of all the limbs that are entangled in the huge folds and 
coils of his body, again and again do we pray to Thee, O Lord Jesus, to whom 
we have ever prayed, that Thou wouldst give us words by opening our mouth "to 
the pulling down of strongholds, destroying counsels, and every height that 
exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity 
every understanding unto Thine obedience:"[2] for he is indeed free, who has 
begun to be led captive by Thee.  Do Thou then be present to this work of 
thine, and to those of Thine who are striving for Thee above the measure of 
their strength.  Grant us to bruise the gaping mouths of this new serpent, and 
its neck that swells with deadly poison, O Thou who makest the feet of 
believers to tread unharmed on serpents and scorpions, and to go upon the 
adder and basilisk, to tread under foot the lion and the dragon.[3]  And grant 
that through the fearless boldness of steadfast innocence, the sucking child 
may play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child thrust his hand into the 
den of the basilisk.[4]  Grant then to us also that we may thrust our hands 
unharmed into the den of this monstrous and most wicked basilisk; and if it 
has in any holes, i.e., in the human heart, a lurking or resting place, or has 
laid its eggs there, or left a trace of its slimy course, do Thou remove from 
them all the foul and deadly pollution of this most noxious serpent.  Take 
away the uncleanness their blasphemy has brought on them, and purify with the 
fan of Thy sacred cleansing[5] the souls that are plunged in stinking mud, so 
that the "dens of thieves" may become "houses of prayer:"[6] and that in those 
which are now, as is written, the dwellings where hedgehogs and monsters,[7] 
and satyrs, and all kinds of strange creatures dwell, there the gifts of Thy 
Holy Spirit, namely the beauty of faith and holiness may shine forth.  And as 
once Thou didst destroy idolatry and cast out images, and make shrines of 
virtue out of the temples of devils, and let into the dens of serpents and 
scorpions the rays of shining light, and make out of the dens of error and 
shame the homes of beauty and splendour, so do Thou pour upon all whose eyes 
the darkness of heretical obstinacy has blinded, the light of Thy compassion 
and truth, that they may at length with clear and unveiled sight behold the 
great and life-giving mystery of Thine Incarnation, and so come to know Thee 
to have been born as Very man of that sacred womb of a pure Virgin, and yet to 
acknowledge that Thou wast always Very God.

-----

Notes for Chapter 1

     1. Ps. 117 (118):6.
     2. 2 Cor. 10:4, 5.
     3. Cf. S. Luke 10:19; Ps. 90 (91):13.
     4. Isa. 11:8.
     5. Cf. Mal. 3:2, 3.
     6. S. Matt. 21:13.
     7. Onocentauri: the allusion is to Is. 34:14, 15.  Cf. Jerome in Esaiam, 
Bk. X.


CHAPTER II. 

          He meets the objection taken from these words: No one gave
                   birth to one who had existed before her.

    AND before I begin to speak of those things of which I have given no 
foretaste in the earlier books, I think it right to try to carry out what I 
have already promised, that when I have thoroughly redeemed my pledge, I may 
begin to speak more freely of what has not been touched upon, after having 
satisfied my promise.  So then that new serpent, in order to destroy the faith 
of the holy nativity, hisses out against the Church of God and says: "No one 
ever gives birth to one older than herself."  To begin with then I think that 
you know neither what you say nor where you get it from.  For if you knew or 
understood where you got it from, you would never regard the nativity of the 
only begotten of God in the light of human fancies, nor would you try to 
settle by merely human propositions, about Him who was born without His 
conception originating from man: nor would you bring human impossibilities as 
objections against Divine Omnipotence if you knew that with God nothing was 
impossible.  No one then, you say, gives birth to one older than herself.  
Tell me then, I pray, of what cases are you speaking, for the nature of what 
creatures do you think that you can lay down rules?  Do you suppose that you 
can fix laws for men or beasts or birds or cattle?  Those (and others of the 
same kind) are the things of which such assertions can be made.  For none of 
them is able to produce one older than itself; for what has already been 
produced cannot return to it again so as to be born again by a new creation. 
And so no one can bear one older than herself, as no one can beget one older 
than himself: for the opportunity of bearing only results where there is the 
possibility of begetting.  Do you then imagine that in reference to the 
nativity of Almighty God regard must be had to the same considerations as in 
the birth of earthly creatures?  And do you bring the nature of man's 
conditions as a difficulty in the case of Him who is Himself the author of 
nature? You see then that, as I said above, you know not whence or of whom you 
are talking, as you are comparing creatures to the Creator; and in order to 
calculate the power of God are drawing an instance from those things which 
would never have existed at all, but that the very fact of their existence 
comes from God.  God then came as He would, when He would, and of her whom He 
would.  Neither time nor person, nor the manner of men, nor the custom of 
creatures was any difficulty with Him; for the law of the creatures could not 
stand in the way of Him who is Himself the Creator of them all.  And whatever 
He would have possible was ready to His hand, for the power of willing it was 
His.  Do you want to know how far the omnipotence of God extends, and how 
great it is?  I believe that the Lord could do that even in the case of His 
creatures which you do not believe that He could do in His own case.  For all 
living creatures which now bear things younger than themselves could, if only 
God gave the word, bear things much older than themselves.  For even food and 
drink, if it were God's will, could be turned into the foetus and offspring: 
and even water, which has been flowing from the beginning of things, and which 
all living creatures use, could, if God gave the word, be made a body in the 
womb, and have birth given to it.  For who can set a limit to divine works, or 
circumscribe Divine Providence? or who (to use the words of Scripture) can say 
to Him "What doest thou?"[1]  If you deny that God can do all things, then 
deny, that, when God was born, one older than Mary could be born of her.  But 
if there is nothing impossible with God, why do you bring as an objection 
against His coming an impossibility, when you know that for Him nothing is 
impossible in anything?

-----

Note for Chapter 2

     1. Isa. 45:9; Rom. 9:20.


CHAPTER III. 

             He replies to the cavil that the one who is born must
                  be of one substance with the one who bears.

    THE second blasphemous slander or slanderous blasphemy of your heresy is 
when you say that the one who is born must be of one substance with the one 
who bears.  It is not very different from the previous one, for it differs 
from it in terms rather than in fact and reality.  For when we are treating of 
the birth of God, you maintain that one of greater power could not be born of 
Mary just as above you maintain than one older could not be begotten.  And so 
you may take it that the same answer may be given to this as to what you said 
before: or you may conceive that the answer given to this assertion, which you 
are now making, applies to that also.  You say then that the one who is born 
must be of one substance with the one who bears.  If this refers to earthly 
creatures, it is most certainly the case.  But if it refers to the birth of 
God, why in the case of His birth do you regard precedents from nature? for 
appointments are subject to Him who appointed them, and not the appointer to 
His appointments.  But would you like to know more fully how these slanders of 
yours are not only wicked but foolish, and the idle talk of one who does not 
in the least see the omnipotence of God?  Tell me, I pray, you who think that 
like things can only be produced from like things, whence was the origin of 
that unaccountable host of quails in the wilderness of old time to feed the 
children of Israel, for nowhere do we read that they had been previously born 
of mother birds, but that they were brought up and came suddenly.  Again 
whence came that heavenly food which for forty years fell on the camp of the 
Hebrews?  Did manna produce manna?  But these refer to ancient miracles.  And 
what of more recent ones?  With a few loaves and small fishes the Lord Jesus 
Christ fed countless hosts of the people that followed Him, and not once only.  
The reason that they were satisfied lay not in the food: for a secret and 
unseen cause satisfied the hungry folk, especially as there was much more left 
when they were filled than there had been set before them when they were 
hungry.  And how was all this brought about that when those who ate were 
satisfied, the food itself was multiplied by an extraordinary increase?  We 
read that in Galilee wine was produced from water.  Tell me how what was of 
one nature produced something of an altogether different substance from its 
own quality?  Especially when (which exactly applies to the birth of the Lord) 
it was the production of a nobler substance from what was inferior to it?  
Tell me then how from mere water there could be produced rich and splendid 
wine?  How was it that one thing was drawn out, another poured in?  Was the 
cistern a well of such a nature as to change the water drawn from it into the 
best wine?  Or did the character of the vessels or the diligence of the 
servants effect this?  Most certainly neither of these.  And how is it that 
the manner of the fact is not understood by the thoughts of the heart, though 
the truth of the fact is firmly held by the conscience?  In the gospel clay 
was placed on the eyes of a blind man and when it was washed off[1] eyes were 
produced.  Had water the power of giving birth to eyes, or clay of creating 
light?  Certainly not, especially as water could be of no use to a blind man, 
and clay would actually hinder the sight of those who could see.  And how was 
it that a thing that itself in its own nature was injurious, became the means 
of restoring health; and that what was ordinarily hurtful to sound people, was 
then made the instrument of healing?  You say that the power of God brought it 
about, and the remedy of God caused it, and that all these things of which we 
have been speaking were simply brought about by Divine Omnipotence; which is 
able to fashion new things from unwonted material, and to make serviceable 
things out of their opposites, and to change what belongs to the realm of 
things impossible and impracticable into possibilities and actual 
performances.

-----

Note for Chapter 3

     1. Abluto eo (Petschenig): Ab luto eo (Gazaeus).


CHAPTER IV. 

               How God has shown His Omnipotence in His birth in
                      time as well as in everything else.

    CONFESS then the same truth in respect of the actual nativity of the Lord, 
as in respect of everything else.  Believe that God was born when He would, 
for you do not deny that He could do what He would; unless possibly you think 
that that power which belonged to Him for all other things was deficient as 
regards Himself, and that His Omnipotence though proceeding from Him and 
penetrating all things, was insufficient to bring about His own nativity.  In 
the case of the Lord's nativity you bring this as an objection against me: No 
one gives birth to one who is anterior in time: and in regard of the birth 
which Almighty God underwent you say that the one who is born ought to be of 
one substance with the one who bears; as if you had to do with human laws as 
in the case of any ordinary man, to whom you might bring the impossibility as 
an objection, as you include him in the weakness of earthly things.  You say 
that for all men there are common conditions of birth, and but one law of 
generation; and that a thing could not possibly happen to one man only out of 
the whole of humanity, which God has forbidden to happen to all.  You do not 
understand of whom you are speaking; nor do you see of whom you are talking; 
for He is the Author of all conditions, and the very Law of all natures, 
through whom exists whatever man can do, and whatever man cannot do: for He 
certainly has laid down the limits of both; viz., how far his powers should 
extend, and the bounds beyond which his weakness should not advance.  How 
wildly then do you bring human impossibilities as an objection in the case of 
Him, who possesses all powers and possibilities.  If you estimate the Person 
of the Lord by earthly weaknesses, and measure God's Omnipotence by human 
rules, you will most certainly fail to find anything which seems appropriate 
to God as concerns the sufferings of His Body.  For if it can seem to you 
unreasonable that Mary could give birth to God who was anterior to her, how 
will it seem reasonable that God was crucified by men?  And yet the same God 
who was crucified Himself predicted: "Shall a man afflict God, for you afflict 
Me?"[1]  If then we cannot think that the Lord was born of a Virgin because He 
who was born was anterior to her who bore Him, how can we believe that God had 
blood?  And yet it was said to the Ephesian elders: "Feed the Church of God 
which He has purchased with His own Blood."[2]  Finally how can we think that 
the Author of life was Himself deprived of life: And yet Peter says: "Ye have 
killed the Author of life."[3]  No one who is set on earth can be in heaven: 
and how does the Lord Himself say: "The Son of man who is in heaven"?[4]  If 
then you think that God was not born of a Virgin because the one who is born 
must be of one substance with the one who bears, how will you believe that 
different things can be produced from different natures?  Thus according to 
you the wind did not suddenly bring the quails, nor did the manna fall, nor 
was water turned into wine nor were many thousands of men fed with a few 
loaves, nor did the blind man receive his sight after the clay had been put on 
him.  But if all these things seem incredible and contrary to nature, unless 
we believe that they were wrought by God, why should you deny in the matter of 
His nativity, what you admit in the matter of His works?  Or was He unable to 
contribute to His own nativity and advent what He did not refuse for the 
succour and profit of men?

-----

Notes for Chapter 4

     1. Mal. 3:8.
     2. Acts 20:28.
     3. Acts 3:15.
     4. S. John 3:13.


CHAPTER V. 

He shows by proofs drawn from nature itself, that the law which his opponents
      lay down; viz., that the one born ought to be of one substance with
             the one who bears, fails to hold good in many cases.

    IT would be tedious and almost childish to speak further on this subject. 
But still in order to refute that folly and madness of yours, in which you 
maintain that the one born ought to be of one substance with the one who 
bears, i.e., that nothing can produce something of a different nature to 
itself, I will bring forward some instances of earthly things, to convince you 
that many creatures are produced from things of a different nature.  Not that 
it is possible or right to make any comparison in such a case as this: but 
that you may not doubt the possibility of that happening in the case of the 
holy Nativity, which as you see takes place in these frail earthly things. 
Bees, tiniest of creatures though they are, are yet so clever and cunning that 
we read that they can be produced and spring from things of an entirely 
different nature.  For as they are creatures of marvellous intelligence, and 
well endowed not merely with sense but with foresight, they are produced from 
the gathered flowers of plants.  What greater instance do you think can be 
produced and quoted?  Living creatures are produced from inanimate: sensate 
from insensate.[1]  What artificer, what architect was there?  Who formed 
their bodies?  Who breathed in their souls?  Who gave them articulate sounds 
by which to converse with each other?  Who fashioned and arranged these 
harmonies of their feet, the cunning of their mouths, the neatness of their 
wings?  Their powers, wrath, foresight, movements, calmness, harmony, 
differences, wars, peace, arrangements, contrivances, business, government, 
all those things indeed which they have in common with men--from whose 
teaching, or whose gift did they receive them? from whose implanting or 
instruction?  Did they gain this through generation? or learn it in their 
mother's womb or from her flesh?  They never were in the womb, and had no 
experience of generation.  It was only that flowers which they culled were 
brought into the hive and from this by a marvellous contrivance bees issued 
forth.[2]  Then the womb of the mother imparted nothing to the offspring: nor 
are bees produced from bees.  They are but their artificers, not their 
authors.  From the blossoms of plants living creatures proceed.  What is there 
akin in plants and animals?  I fancy then that you see who is the contriver of 
those things.  Go now and inquire whether the Lord could bring about that in 
the case of His own nativity, which you see that He procured in the case of 
these tiniest of creatures.  Perhaps it is needless after this to add anything 
further.  But still let us add in support of the argument what may not be 
necessary to prove the point.  We see how the air is suddenly darkened, and 
the earth filled with locusts.  Show me their seed--their birth--their 
mothers.  For, as you see, they proceed thence, whence they have their birth. 
Assert in all these cases that the one who is born must be of one substance 
with the one who bears.  And in these assertions you will be shown to be as 
silly, as you are wild in your denial of the Nativity of the Lord.  And what 
next?  Do even you think that we must go on any further?  But still we will 
add something else.  There is no doubt that basilisks are produced from the 
eggs of the birds which in Egypt they call the Ibis.  What is there of kindred 
or relationship between a bird and a serpent?  Why is the thing born not of 
one substance with that which bears it?  And yet those who bear are not the 
authors of all these things, nor do those who are born understand them: but 
they result from secret causes, and from some inexplicable and manifold law of 
nature which produces them.  And you are bringing as objections to His 
Nativity your petty assertions from earthly notions, while you cannot explain 
the origin of those things, which are produced by His bidding and command, 
whose will does everything, whose sway causes everything: whom nothing can 
oppose or resist; and whose will is sufficient for everything which can 
possibly be done.

-----

Notes for Chapter 5

     1. Ex inanimis animalia, ex insensibilibus sensibilia nascuntur 
(Petschenig).  The text of Gazaeus has ex atomis animalia nascuntur.
     2. Cf. Virgil's Georgics IV.  Rufinus, on the Apostles' Creed (c. xi.) 
gives the same illustration of the Incarnation, and cf. with the passage in 
the text S. Basil Hom. in Hexaem., IX. ii.


CHAPTER VI. 

        He refutes another argument of Nestorius, in which he tried to
              make out that Christ was like Adam in every point.

    BUT since we cannot (as we should much prefer) ignore them, it is now time 
to expose the rest of your more subtle and insidious blasphemies that at least 
they may not deceive ignorant folk.  In one of your pestilent treatises you 
have maintained and said that "Since man is the image of the Divine nature, 
and the devil dragged this down and shattered it, God grieved over His image, 
as an Emperor over his statue, and repairs the shattered image: and formed 
without generation a nature from the Virgin, like that of Adam who was born 
without generation; and raises up man's nature by means of man: for as by man 
came death, so also by man came the resurrection of the dead."  They tell us  
that some poisoners have a custom of mixing honey with the poison in the cups 
which they prepare; that the injurious ingredient may be concealed by the 
sweet: and while a man is charmed with the sweetness of the honey, he may be 
destroyed by the deadly poison.  So then, when you say that man is the image 
of the Divine nature, and that the devil dragged this down and shattered it, 
and that God grieved over His image as an Emperor over his statue, you smear 
(so to speak) the lips of the cup with something sweet like honey, that men 
may drain the cup offered to them, and not perceive its deadliness, while they 
taste what is alluring.  You put forward God's name, in order to speak 
falsehoods in the name of religion.  You set holy things in the front, in 
order to persuade men of what is untrue: and by means of your confession of 
God you contrive to deny Him whom you are confessing.  For who is there who 
does not see whither you are going?  What you are contriving?  You say indeed 
that God grieved over His image as an Emperor over his statue, and repaired 
the shattered image, and formed without generation a nature from the Virgin, 
like that of Adam who was born without generation, and raises up man's nature 
by man, for as by man came death, so also by man came the resurrection of the 
dead.  So then with all your earnestness, with all your professions, you 
crafty plotter, you have managed by your smooth assertions, by naming God in 
the forefront, to come down to a (mere) man in the conclusion: and in the end 
you degrade Him to the condition of a mere man, from whom under colour of 
humility you have already taken away the glory of God.  You say then that the 
Divine goodness has restored the image of God which the devil shattered and 
destroyed, for you say that He restores the shattered image.  Now with what 
craft you say that He restores the shattered image in order to persuade us 
that there was nothing more in Him, in whom the image is restored, than there 
was in the actual image, of which the restoration was brought about.  And thus 
you make out that the Lord is only the same as Adam was: that the restorer of 
the image is nothing more than the actual destructible image.  Finally in what 
follows you show what you are aiming and driving at, when you say that He 
formed without generation a nature from the Virgin like that of Adam, who was 
born without generation, and raises up man's nature by man.  You maintain that 
the Lord Jesus Christ was in all respects like Adam: that the one was without 
generation, and the other without generation: the one a mere man, and the 
other a mere man.  And thus you see that you have carefully guarded and 
provided against our thinking of the Lord Jesus Christ as in any way greater 
or better than Adam: since you have compared them together by the same 
standard, so that you would think that you detracted something from Adam's 
perfection, if you added anything more to Christ. 


CHAPTER VII. 

    Heretics usually cover their doctrines with a cloak of holy Scripture.

    "FOR as," you say, "by man came death, so by man came also the 
resurrection of the dead."  Do you actually try to prove your wrong and 
impious notion by the witness of the Apostle?  And do you bring the "chosen 
vessel" into disgrace by mixing him up with your wicked ideas?  I mean, that, 
as you cannot understand the author of your Salvation, therefore the Apostle 
must be made out to have denied God.  And yet, if you wanted to make use of 
Apostolic witnesses, why did you rest contented with one, and pass over all 
the others in silence? and why did you not at once add this: "Paul, an Apostle 
not of men neither by man, but by Jesus Christ:"[1] or this: "We speak wisdom 
among the perfect:" and presently: "Whom none," says he, "of the princes of 
this world knew; for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of 
glory."[2]  Or this: "For in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead 
bodily."[3]  And: "One Lord Jesus Christ through whom are all things."[4]  Or 
do you partly agree, and partly disagree with the Apostle, and only receive 
him so far as in consequence of the Incarnation[5] he names Christ man, and 
repudiate him where he speaks of Him as God?  For Paul does not deny that 
Jesus is man, but still he confesses that man is God: and declares that to 
mankind the resurrection came by man in such a way that he shows that in that 
man God arose.  For see whether he declares that He who rose was God, as he 
bears his witness that He who was crucified was the Lord of glory.

-----

Notes for Chapter 7

     1. Gal. 1:1.
     2. 1 Cor. 2:6, 8.
     3. Col. 2:9.
     4. 1 Cor. 8:6.
     5. Dispensatio.


CHAPTER VIII. 

  The heretics attribute to Christ only the shadow of Divinity, and so assert
         that he is to be worshipped together with God but not as God.

    BUT still in order to avoid thinking of the Lord Jesus as one of the whole 
mass of people, you have given to Him some glory, by attributing to Him honour 
as a saint, but not Deity as true man and true God.  For what do you say?  
"God brought about the Lord's Incarnation.  Let us honour the form of the 
Theodochos[1] together with God, as one form of Godhead, as a figure that 
cannot be severed from the Divine link, as an image of the unseen God."  Above 
you said that Adam was the image of God, here you call Christ the image: the 
one you speak of as a statue, and  the other also as a statue.  But I suppose 
we ought for God's honour to be grateful to you, because you grant that the 
form of the Theodochos should be worshipped together with God: in which you 
wrong Him rather than honour Him.  For in this you do not attribute to the 
Lord Jesus Christ the glory of Deity, but you deny it.  By a subtle and wicked 
art you say that He is to be worshipped together with God in order that you 
may not have to confess that He is God, and by the very statement in which you 
seem deceitfully to join Him with God, you really sever Him from God.  For 
when you blasphemously say that He is certainly not to be adored as God, but 
to be worshipped together with God, you thus grant to Him an union of nearness 
to Divinity, in order to get rid of the truth of His Divinity.  Oh, you most 
wicked and crafty enemy of God, you want to perpetrate the crime of denying 
God under pretext of confessing Him.  You say: Let us worship Him as a figure 
that cannot be severed from the Divine will, as an image of the unseen God.  
It is I suppose, then, owing to His kind acts that our Lord Jesus Christ has 
obtained among us honour as Creator and Redeemer.  If then we were redeemed by 
Him from eternal destruction, in calling our Redeemer a figure we are 
endeavouring indeed to respond to His kindness and goodness, by a worthy 
service and a worthy allegiance, if we try to get rid of that glory which He 
did not refuse to bring low for our sakes.

-----

Note for Chapter 8

     1. Cf. V. ii.


CHAPTER IX. 

   How those are wrong who say that the birth of Christ was a secret, since
               it was clearly shown even to the patriarch Jacob.

    BUT I suppose you excuse the degradation offered to the Lord by means of a 
subordinate honour, by the words "as the image of the secret God."  By the 
fact that you term Him an image you compare Him to man's estate.  In speaking 
of Him as the image of the secret God, you detract from the honour plainly due 
to Him.  For "God," says David, "shall plainly come; our God, and shall not 
keep silence."[1]  And He surely came and did not keep silence, who before 
that He in His own person uttered anything after His birth, made known His 
advent by both earthly and heavenly witnesses alike, while the star points Him 
out, the magi adore Him, and angels declare Him.  What more do you want?  His 
voice was yet silent on earth, and His glory was already crying aloud in 
heaven.  Do you say then that God was and is secret in Him?  But this was not 
the announcement of the Prophets, of the Patriarchs, aye and of the whole Law. 
For they did not say that He would be secret, whose coming they all foretold. 
You err in your wretched blindness, seeking grounds for blasphemy and not 
finding them.  You say that He was secret even after His advent.  I maintain 
that He was not secret even before His advent.  For did the mystery of God to 
be born of a Virgin escape the knowledge of that celebrated Patriarch on whom 
the vision of God present with him conferred a title, whereby from the name of 
Supplanter he rose to the name of Israel?  Who, when from the struggle with 
the man who wrestled with him he understood the mystery of the Incarnation yet 
to come, said, "I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved."[2] 
What, I pray you, had he seen, for him to believe that he had seen God?  Did 
God manifest Himself to him in the midst of thunder and lightning? or when the 
heavens were opened, did the dazzling face of the Deity show itself to him? 
Most certainly not: but rather on the contrary he saw a man and acknowledged a 
God.  O truly worthy of the name he received, as with the eyes of the soul 
rather than of the body he earned the honour of a title given by God!  He saw 
a human form wrestling with him, and declared that he saw God.  He certainly 
knew that human form was indeed God: for in that form in which God then 
appeared, in the selfsame form He was in very truth afterwards to come. 
Although why should we be surprised that so great a patriarch unhesitatingly 
believed what God Himself so plainly showed in His own Person to him, when he 
said, "I have seen God face to face and my life is preserved."  How did God 
show to him so much of the presence of Deity, that he could say that the face 
of God was shown to him?  For it seems that only a man had appeared to him, 
whom he had actually beaten in the struggle.  But God was certainly bringing 
this about by precursory signs, that there might not be any one to disbelieve 
that God was born of man, when already long before the Patriarch had seen God 
in human form.

-----

Notes for Chapter 9

     1. Ps. 49 (50):3.
     2. Gen. 32:30.
     The name Israel was in the 4th and 5th centuries commonly explained to 
mean the "man seeing God" as if it came from [ish], [raah], and [El].  S. 
Jerome (Quaest. in Genesim c. xxxii. ver. 27, 28) rejects this interpretation 
as forced, and prefers "a Prince with God."  Hence the rendering in the A. V.  
"For as a prince hast thou power with God and with men and hast prevailed."  
This however is now generally rejected, and the right interpretation of the 
name appears to be "He who striveth with God."  Cf. R. V.  "For thou hast 
striven with God and with men, and hast prevailed."  Cf. the Conferences, 
Pref. and V. xxiii. XII. xi.


CHAPTER X. 

                 He collects more witnesses of the same fact.

    BUT why am I lingering so long over one instance, as if many were wanting? 
For even then how could the fact that God was to come in the flesh escape the 
knowledge of men, when the Prophet said openly as if to all mankind of Him: 
"Behold your God;" and elsewhere: "Behold our God."  And this: "God the 
mighty, the Father of the world to come, the Prince of Peace;" and: "of His 
kingdom there shall be no end."[1]  But also when He had already come, could 
the fact of His having come escape the knowledge of those who openly confessed 
that He had come?  Was Peter ignorant of the coming of God, when he said, 
"Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God?"[2]  Did not Martha know what 
she was saying or whom she believed in, when she said, "Yea, Lord, I have 
believed that Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God, who art come 
into this world?"[3]  And all those men, who sought from Him the cure of their 
sicknesses, or the restoration of their limbs, or the life of their dead, did 
they ask these things from man's weakness, or from God's omnipotence?

-----

Notes for Chapter 10

     1. Isa. 40:9; 25:9; 9:6, 7.
     2. S. Matt. 16:16.
     3. S. John 11:27.


CHAPTER XI. 

   How the devil was forced by many reasons to the view that Christ was God.

    FINALLY as for the devil himself, when he was tempting Him with every show 
of allurements, and overly art of his wickedness, what was it that in his 
ignorance he suspected, or wanted to find out by tempting Him?  Or what so 
greatly moved him, that he sought God under the humble form of man?  Had he 
learned that by previous proofs?  Or had he known of anyone who came as God in 
man's body?  Most certainly not.  But it was by the mighty evidence of signs, 
by mighty results of actions, by the words of the Truth Himself that he was 
driven to suspect and examine into this matter: inasmuch as he had already 
once heard from John: "Behold the Lamb of God, behold Him who taketh away the 
sin of the world."[1]  And again from the same person: "I have need to be 
baptized of Thee, and comest Thou to me?"[2]  The dove also which came down 
from heaven and stopped over the Lord's head had made itself a clear and open 
proof of a God who declared Himself.  The voice too which was sent from God 
not in riddles or figures had moved him, when it said: "Thou art My beloved 
Son, in Thee I am well pleased."[3]  And though he saw a man outwardly in 
Jesus, yet he was searching for the Son of God, when he said: "If Thou art the 
Son of God, command that these stones be made bread."[4]  Did the 
contemplation of the man drive away the devil's suspicions of His Divinity, so 
that owing to the fact that he saw a man, he did not believe that He could be 
God?  Most certainly not.  But what does he say? "If Thou art the Son of God, 
command that these stones be made bread."  Certainly he had no doubt about the 
possibility of that, the existence of which he was examining into.  His 
anxiety was about its truth.  There was no security as to its impossibility.

-----

Notes for Chapter 11

     1. S. John 1:29.
     2. S. Matt. 3:14.
     3. S. Matt. 3:17.
     4. S. Luke 4:3.


CHAPTER XII. 

    He compares this notion and reasonable suspicion of the devil with the
        obstinate and inflexible idea of his opponents, and shows that
           this last is worse and more blasphemous than the former.

    BUT he certainly knew that the Lord Jesus Christ was born of Mary: he knew 
that He was wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger: that His 
childhood was that of a poor person at the commencement of His human life; and 
His infancy without the proper accessories of cradles: further he did not 
doubt that He had true flesh, and was born a true man.  And why did this seem 
to him not enough for him to be secure in?  Why did he believe that He could 
not be God, whom he knew to be very man?  Learn then, you wretched madman, 
learn, you lunatic, you cruel sinner, learn, I pray, even from the devil, to 
lessen your blasphemy.  He said: "If Thou art the Son of God."  You say: "Thou 
art not the Son of God."  You deny what he asked about.  No one was ever yet 
found but you, to outdo the devil in blasphemy.  That which he confessed to be 
possible in the case of the Lord, you do not believe to have been possible. 


CHAPTER XIII. 

  How the devil always retained this notion of Christ's Divinity (because of
   His secret working which he experienced) even up to His Cross and Death.

    BUT perhaps he afterwards ceased and rested, and when his temptations were 
vanquished laid aside his suspicion because he found no result?  Nay, it 
rather remained always in him, and even up to the very cross of the Lord the 
suspicion lasted in him and was increased by peculiar terrors.  What need is 
there of anything further?  Not even then did he cease to think of Him as the 
Son of God, after that he knew that such licence was granted to His 
persecutors against Him.  But the crafty foe saw even in the midst of His 
bodily sufferings the signs of Divinity, and though he would have much 
preferred Him to be a (mere) man, was yet forced to suspect that He was God: 
for though he would have preferred to believe what he wanted, yet he was 
driven by surest proofs to that which he feared.  And no wonder: for although 
he beheld Him spitted on, and scourged, and disgraced, and led to the Cross, 
yet he saw Divine powers abounding even in the midst of the indignities and 
wrongs; when the veil of the temple is rent, when the sun hides itself, the 
day is darkened, and all things feel the effects of the Passion: all things 
even, which know not God, acknowledge the work of Deity.  And therefore the 
devil seeing this, and trembling, tried in every way to arrive at the 
knowledge of His Godhead, even at the very death of the manhood, saying in the 
person of those who crucified Him: "If He be the Son of God, let Him come down 
now from the Cross, and we will believe Him."[1]  He certainly perceived that 
by His bodily Passion our Lord God was working out the redemption of man's 
salvation, and also that by it he was being destroyed and subdued, while we 
were being redeemed and saved.  And so the enemy of mankind wanted by every 
means and every wile to defeat that which he knew was being done for the 
redemption of all men.  "If," he says, "He be the Son of God, let Him come 
down now from the Cross and we will believe Him:" on purpose that the Lord 
might be moved by the reproach of the words, and destroy the mystery, while He 
avenged the wrong.  You see then that the Lord even when hanging on the Cross 
was termed the Son of God.  You see that they suspect the fact to which they 
refer.  And so do you learn, as I said above, even from His persecutors, even 
from the devil, to believe on the Son of God.  Who ever came up to the 
unbelief of the devil?  Who went beyond it?  He suspected that He was the Son 
of God even when He endured death.  You deny it even when He has risen.  He 
suspected that He was God, from whom He hid Himself.  You, to whom He has 
proved it, deny it.

-----

Note for Chapter 13

     1. S. Matt. 27:42.


CHAPTER XIV. 

         He shows how heretics pervert holy Scripture, by replying to
             the argument drawn from the Apostle's words, "Without
                    father, without mother," etc.: Heb. 7.

    YOU then make use of the holy Scriptures against God, and try to bring His 
own witnesses against Him.  But how?  Truly so as to become a false accuser 
not only of God, but  of the evidences themselves.  Nor indeed is it wonderful 
that, as you cannot do what you want, you only do what you can: as you can  
not turn the sacred witnesses against God, you do what you can, and pervert 
them.  For you say: Then Paul tells a lie, when he says of Christ: "Without 
mother, without genealogy."[1]  I ask you, of whom do you think that Paul said 
this?  Of the Son and Word of God, or of the Christ, whom you separate from 
the Son of God, and blasphemously assert to be a mere man?  If of the Christ, 
whom you maintain to be a mere man, how could a man be born without a mother 
and without a genealogy on the mother's side?  But if of the Word of God and 
Son of God--what can we make of it, when the same Apostle, your own witness, 
as you impiously imagine, testifies in the same place and by the same witness, 
that He whom you assert to be without mother, was also without father; saying, 
"Without father, without mother, without genealogy"?  It follows then that if 
you use the Apostle's witness, since you assert that the Son of God was 
"without mother," you must also be guilty of the blasphemy that He was 
"without father."  You see then in what a downfall of impiety you have landed 
yourself, in your eagerness for your perversity and wickedness, so that, while 
you say that the Son of God had not a mother, you must also deny Him a 
Father--a thing which no one yet since the world began, except perhaps a 
madman, ever did.  And this, whether with greater wickedness or folly, I 
hardly know; for what is more foolish and silly than to give the name of Son 
and to try to keep back the name of Father?  But you say I don't keep it back, 
I don't deny it.  And what madness then drove you to quote that passage, 
where, while you say that He had no mother, you must seem also to deny to Him 
a Father?  For as in the same passage He is said to be without mother and also 
without father, it follows that if it can be understood that there He is 
without mother, in the same way in which we understand that He is without 
mother, we must also believe that He is without father.  But that hasty craze 
for denying God did not see this; and when it quoted mutilated, what was 
written entire, it failed to see that the shameless and palpable lie could be 
refuted by laying open the contents of the sacred volume.  O foolish 
blasphemy, and madness! which, while it failed to see what it ought to follow, 
had not the wit to see even what could be read: as if, because it could get 
rid of its own intelligence, it could get rid of the power of reading from 
everybody else, or as if everybody would lose their eyes in their heads for 
reading, because it had lost the eyes of the mind.  Hear then, you heretic the 
passage you have garbled: hear in full and completely, what you quoted 
mutilated and hacked about.  The Apostle wants to make clear to every one the 
twofold birth of God--and in order to show how the Lord was born in the 
Godhead and in flesh, he says, "Without father, without mother:" for the one 
belongs to the birth of Divinity, the other to that of the flesh.  For as He 
was begotten in His Divine nature "without mother," so He is in the body 
"without father:" and so though He is neither without father nor without 
mother, we must believe in Him "without father and without mother."  For if 
you regard Him as He is begotten of the Father, He is without mother: if, as 
born of His mother, He is without father.  And so in each of these births He 
has one: in both together He is without each: for the birth of Divinity had no 
need of mother, and for the birth of His body, He was Himself sufficient, 
without a father.  Therefore says the Apostle "Without mother, without 
genealogy."

-----

Note for Chapter 14

     1. Heb. 7:3.


CHAPTER XV. 

       How Christ could be said by the Apostle to be without genealogy.

    HOW does he say that the Lord was "without genealogy," when the Gospel of 
the Evangelist Matthew begins with the Saviour's genealogy, saying: "The book 
of the generations of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham"?[1] 
Therefore according to the Evangelist He has a genealogy, and according to the 
Apostle, He has not: for according to the Evangelist, He has it on the 
mother's side, according to the Apostle He has not, as He springs from the 
Father.  And so the Apostle well says: "Without father, without mother, 
without genealogy:" and where he lays down that He was begotten without 
mother, there also he records that He was without genealogy.  And thus as 
regards both the nativities of the Lord, the writings of the Evangelist and of 
the Apostle agree together.  For according to the Evangelist He has a 
genealogy "without father," when born in the flesh: and according to the 
Apostle, the Lord has not, when begotten in His Divine nature "without 
mother;" as Isaiah says: "But who shall declare His generation?"[2]

-----

Notes for Chapter 15

     1. S. Matt. 1:1.
     2. Isa. 53:8.


CHAPTER XVI. 

            He shows that like the devil when tempting Christ, the
                  heretics garble and pervert holy Scripture.

    WHY then, you heretic, did you not in this way quote the whole and entire 
passage which you had read?  So you see that the Apostle laid down that the 
Lord was "without mother" in the same way in which he laid down that He was 
born "without father:" that we might know that He is "without mother" in the 
same way in which we understand Him to be "without father."  And as it is 
impossible to believe Him to be altogether "without father," so we cannot 
understand that He is altogether "without mother."  Why then, you heretic, did 
you not in this way quote what you had read in the Apostle, entire and 
unmutilated?  But you insert part, and omit part; and garble the words of 
truth in order that you may be able to build up your false notions by your 
wicked act.  I see who was your master.  We must believe that you had his 
instruction, whose example you are following.  For so the devil in the gospel 
when tempting the Lord said: "If Thou art the Son of God, cast Thyself down. 
For it is written that He shall give His angels charge concerning Thee to keep 
Thee in all Thy ways."[1]  And when he had said this, he left out the context 
and what belongs to it; viz., "Thou shalt walk upon the asp and the basilisk: 
and thou shalt trample under foot the lion and the dragon."[2]  Surely he 
cunningly quoted the previous verse and left out the latter: for he quoted the 
one to deceive Him: he held his tongue about the latter to avoid condemning 
himself.  For he knew that he himself was signified by the asp and basilisk, 
the lion and dragon in the Prophet's words.  So then you also bring forward a 
part and omit a part; and quote the one to deceive; and omit the other for 
fear lest if you were to quote the whole, you might condemn your own 
deception.  But it is now time to pass on to further matters, for by dwelling 
too long on particular points, as we are led to do by the desire of giving a 
full answer, we exceed the limits even of a longish book. 

-----

Notes for Chapter 16

     1. S. Luke 4:9, 10.
     2. Ps. 90 (91):13.


CHAPTER XVII. 

     That the glory and honour of Christ is not to be ascribed to the Holy
          Ghost in such a way as to deny that it proceeds from Christ
             Himself, as if all that excellency, which was in Him,
               was another's and proceeded from another source.

    YOU say then in another discussion, nay rather in another blasphemy of 
yours, "and He separated[1] the Spirit from the Divine nature Who created His 
humanity.  For Scripture says that that which was born of Mary is of the Holy 
Ghost.[2]  Who also filled with righteousness (justitia) that which was 
created: for it says `He appeared in the flesh, was justified in the 
Spirit.'[3]  Again: Who made Him also to be feared by the devils: `For I,' He 
says,`by the Spirit of God cast out devils.'[4]  Who also made His flesh a 
temple.  `For I saw His spirit descending like a dove and abiding upon 
Him.'[5]  Again: Who granted to Him His ascension into Heaven.  For it says, 
`Giving a commandment to the apostles whom He had chosen, by the Holy Ghost He 
was taken up.'[6]  Finally that it was He who granted such glory to Christ." 
The whole of your blasphemy then consists in this: that Christ had nothing of 
Himself: nor did He, a mere man, as you say, receive anything from the Word, 
i.e., the Son of God; but everything in Him was the gift of the Spirit.  If 
then we can show that all that which you refer to the Spirit, is His own, what 
remains but that we prove that He whom you therefore would have taken to be a 
man, because as you say everything which He has is another's, is therefore 
God, because everything which He has is His own?  And indeed we will prove 
this not only by discussion and argument, but by the voice of Divinity Itself: 
for nothing testifies of God better than things divine.  And because nothing 
knows itself better than the very glory of God, we believe nothing on the 
subject of God with greater right than those writings in which God Himself is 
His own witness.  First then, as to this that you say that the Holy Spirit 
created His humanity; we might take it simply, if we could acknowledge that 
you had not brought it forward in the interests of unbelief.  For neither do 
we deny that the flesh of the Lord was conceived by the Holy Ghost: but we 
assert that the body was conceived by the co-operation of the Holy Ghost in 
such a way that we can say that His Humanity[7] was created for Himself by the 
Son of God, as the Holy Spirit Itself says in holy Scripture, testifying that 
"Wisdom hath builded for Itself a house."[8]  You see then that that which was 
conceived by the Holy Ghost was built and perfected by the Son of God: not 
that the work of the Son of God is one thing, and the work of the Holy Ghost 
another: but that through the unity of the Godhead and glory the operation of 
the Spirit is the building of the Son of God; and the building of the Son of 
God is the co-operation of the Holy Ghost.  And so we read not only that the 
Holy Ghost came upon the Virgin, but also that the power of the Most High 
overshadowed the Virgin; that since Wisdom Itself is the fulness of the 
Godhead, no one might doubt that when Wisdom built Itself a house all the 
fulness of the Godhead was present.  But the wretched hardness of your 
blasphemy, while it tries to sever Christ from the Son of God, fails to see 
that it is entirely severing the nature of the Godhead from Itself.  Unless 
perhaps you believe that the house is therefore built for Him by the Holy 
Ghost because He Himself was insufficient and incapable of building for 
Himself an house.  But it is as absurd as it is wild, to believe that He, whom 
we believe to have created the whole universe of things heavenly and earthly 
by His will, was unable to build for Himself a body: especially as the power 
of the Holy Ghost is His power, and the Divinity and Glory of the Trinity are 
so united and inseparable, that we cannot think of anything at all in One 
Person of the Trinity, which can be separated from the fulness of the Godhead. 
Therefore when this is laid down and grasped; viz., that according to the 
faith of holy Scripture, when the Holy Ghost came upon (the Virgin) and the 
power of the Most High overshadowed her, Wisdom builded Itself an house; the 
rest of the slanders of your blasphemy come to nothing.  For neither is it 
doubtful that He made all things by Himself and in Himself, in whose name and 
faith, the faith even of believers can do anything.  For neither did He need 
the aid of another, as neither have they needed it, who have trusted in His 
power.  And so as for your assertions that He was justified by the Spirit, and 
that the Spirit made Him to be feared by the devils, and that His flesh became 
the temple of the Holy Ghost, and that He was taken up by the Spirit into 
heaven, they are all blasphemous and wild: not because we are to believe that 
in all these things which He Himself did, the unity and cooperation of the 
Spirit was wanting--since the Godhead is never wanting to Itself, and the 
power of the Trinity was ever present in the Saviour's works--but because you 
will have it that the Holy Ghost gave assistance to the Lord Jesus Christ as 
if He had been feeble and powerless; and that He granted those things to Him, 
which He was unable to procure for Himself.  Learn then from sacred witnesses 
to believe God, and not to mingle falsehood with truth: for the subject does 
not admit it, and common sense abhors the idea of mingling the notions of the 
spirit of the devil with the witnesses that are Divine.

-----

Notes for Chapter 17

     1. Separavit (Petschenig).
     2. S. Matt. 1:20.
     3. 1 Tim. 3:16.
     4. S. Luke 9:20.
     5. S. John 1:32.
     6. Acts 1:2.
     7. Hominem suum.
     8. Prov. 9:1.


CHAPTER XVIII. 

          How we are to understand the Apostle's words: "He appeared
               in the flesh, was justified in the Spirit," etc.

    FOR to begin with this assertion of yours that the Spirit filled with 
righteousness (justitia) what was created, and your attempts to prove this by 
the evidence of the Apostle, where he says that "He appeared in the flesh, was 
justified in the Spirit," you make each statement in an unsound sense and wild 
spirit.  For you make this assertion; viz., that you will have it that He was 
filled with righteousness by the Spirit, in order to show how He was void of 
righteousness, as you assert that the  being filled with it was given to Him. 
And as for your use of the evidence of the Apostle on this matter, you garble 
the arrangement and meaning of the sacred passage.  For the Apostle's 
statement is not as you have quoted it, mutilated and spoilt.  For what says 
the Apostle?  "And evidently great is the mystery of Godliness, which was 
manifested in the flesh, was justified in the Spirit."[1]  You see then that 
the Apostle declared that the mystery or sacrament of Godliness was justified. 
For he was not so forgetful of his own words and teaching as to say that He 
was void of righteousness, whom he had always proclaimed as righteousness, 
saying: "Who was made unto us righteousness and sanctification and 
redemption."[2]  Elsewhere also he says: "But ye were washed, but ye were 
justified, but ye were sanctified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ."[3]  
How far then from Him was it to need being filled with righteousness, as He 
Himself filled all things with righteousness, and for His glory to be without 
righteousness, whose very name justifies all things.  You see then how foolish 
and wild are your blasphemies, since you are trying to take away from our Lord 
what is ever shed forth by Him upon all believers in such a way that still in 
its continuous supply it is never diminished.

-----

Notes for Chapter 18

     1. 1 Tim. 3:16.
     2. 1 Cor. 1:30.
     3. 1 Cor. 6:11.


CHAPTER XIX. 

           That it was not only the Spirit, but Christ Himself also
                          who made Him to be feared.

    YOU say too that the Spirit made Him to be feared by the devils.  To 
reject and refute which, even though the horrible character of the utterance 
is enough, we will still add some instances.  Tell me, I pray, you who say 
that the fact that the devils feared Him was not His own doing but another's, 
and who will have it that this was not His own power but a gift, how was it 
that even His name had that power, of which He Himself was, according to you, 
void?  How was it that in His name devils were cast out, sick persons were 
cured, dead men were raised?  For the Apostle Peter says to that lame man who 
was sitting at the beautiful gate of the Temple: "In the name of Jesus Christ 
arise and walk."[1]  And again in the city of Joppa to the man who had been 
lying on his bed paralysed for eight years he says, "Aeneas, may the Lord 
Jesus Christ heal thee: arise and make thy bed for thyself."[2]  Paul too says 
to the pythonical spirit: "I charge thee in the name of Jesus Christ come out 
of her," and the devil came out of her.[3]  But understand from this how 
utterly alien this weakness was from our Lord: for I do not call even those 
weak, whom He by His name made strong, since we never heard of any devil or 
infirmity able to resist any of the apostles since the Lord's resurrection. 
How then did the Spirit make Him to be feared, who made others to be feared? 
Or was He in Himself weak, whose faith even through the instrumentality of 
others reigned over all things?  Finally those men who received power from 
God, never used that power as if it were their own: but referred the power to 
Him from whom they received it: for the power itself could never have any 
force except through the name of Him who gave it.  And so both the apostles 
and all the servants of God never did any thing in their own name, but in the 
name and invocation of Christ: for the power itself derived its force from the 
same source as its origin, and could not be given through the instrumentality 
of the ministers, unless it had come from the Author.  You then--who say that 
the Lord was the same as one of His servants (for as the apostles had nothing 
but what they received from their Lord, so you make out that the Lord Himself 
had nothing but what He received from the Spirit; and thus you make out that 
everything that He had, He had not as Lord, but had received it as a servant), 
do you tell me then, how it was that He used this power as His own and not as 
something which He had received?  For what do we read of Him?  He says to the 
paralytic: "Arise, take up thy bed, and go to thine house."[4]  And again to a 
father who pleads on behalf of his child, He says: "Go thy way: thy son 
liveth."[5]  And where an only son of his mother was being carried forth for 
burial, "Young man," He says, "I say unto thee, Arise."[6]  Did He then like 
those who received power from God, ask that power might be given to Him for 
performing these things by the invocation of the Divine Name?  Why did He not 
Himself work by the name of the Spirit, just as the apostles wrought by His 
Name?  Finally, what does the gospel itself state about Him?  It says: "He was 
teaching them as one that had authority, and not like the Scribes and 
Pharisees."[7]  Or do you make out that He was so proud and haughty as to put 
to the credit of His own might the power which (according to you) He had 
received from God?  But what do we make of the fact that the power never 
submitted to His servants, except through the name of its author, and could 
have no efficacy if the actor claimed any of it as his own?

-----

Notes for Chapter 19

     1. Acts 3:6.
     2. Acts 9:34.
     3. Acts 16:18.
     4. S. Matt. 9:6.
     5. S. John 4:50.
     6. S. Luke 7:14.
     7. S. Matt. 7:29.


CHAPTER XX. 

     He tries by stronger and weightier arguments to destroy that notion.

    BUT why are we so long dealing with your wild blasphemy, with arguments 
that are plain indeed but still slight?  Let us hear God Himself speaking to 
His disciples: "Heal the  sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out 
devils."[1]  And again: "In My name," He  says, "ye shall cast out devils."[2]  
Had He any need of Another's name for the exercise of His power, who made His 
own name to be a power?  But what is still added?  "Behold," He says, "I have 
given you power to tread upon serpents and scorpions and upon all the power of 
the enemy."[3]  He Himself says that He was gentle, as indeed He was, and 
humble in heart.  And how was it that as regards the greatest possible power, 
He commanded others to work in His own name, if He Himself worked in Another's 
name?  Or did He give to others, as if it were His own, what He Himself, 
according to you, did not possess, unless He received it from Another?  But 
tell me, which of the saints receiving power from God, so worked?  Or would 
not Peter have been thought a lunatic, or John a madman, or Paul out of his 
mind, if they had said to any sick folk: "In our name arise;" or to the lame: 
"In our name walk;" or to the dead: "In our name live;" or this to some: "We 
give you power to tread upon serpents and scorpions and upon all the power of 
the enemy"?  You see then from this your madness: for just as these words are 
mad if they spring from man's assurance, so are you utterly mad if you do not 
see that they come from Divine power.  For you must admit one of two 
alternatives; either that man could possess and give Divine power, or at any 
rate if no man can do this, that He who could do it, was God.  For no one can 
grant of His liberality Divine power, except Him who possesses it by nature.

-----

Notes for Chapter 20

     1. S. Matt. 10:8.
     2. S. Mark 16:17.
     3. S. Luke 10:19.


CHAPTER XXI. 

      That it must be ascribed equally to Christ and the Holy Ghost that
               His flesh and Humanity became the temple of God.

    BUT there follows in your blasphemy that His flesh was made a temple of 
the Holy Ghost, for this reason, that John has said: "For I saw the Spirit 
descending from heaven and abiding upon Him."[1]  For you try to support even 
this wild statement of yours by Scriptural authority: wherefore let us see 
whether this sacred authority has said that which you say.  "For I saw," it 
says, "the Spirit descending like a dove, and abiding upon Him."  Discern 
here, if you can, which is the more powerful, which greater, which more to be 
honoured?  He who descended, or He to whom the descent was made?  He who 
brought down the honour, or He to whom the honour was brought?  Where do you 
find in this passage that the Spirit made His flesh a temple? or wherein does 
it lessen the honour of God, if God Himself descended to show God to mankind? 
For certainly we ought not to think that He is less whose high estate was 
pointed out, than He who pointed out His high estate.  But away with the 
thought of believing or making any separation in the Godhead: for one and the 
same Godhead and equal power shut out altogether the wicked notion of 
inequality.  And so in this matter, where there is the Person of the Father 
and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, and where it is the Son of God to whom 
the descent is made, the Spirit who descends, the Father who gives His 
witness, no one had more honour, and no one received any slight, but it all 
redounds equally to the fulness of the Godhead, for each Person of the Trinity 
contains within Himself the glory of the whole Trinity.  And so nothing 
further needs to be said, except only to show the rise and origin of your 
blasphemy.  For thorns and thistles springing up from the roots produce shoots 
of their own nature, and from their character show their origin.  So then you 
also, a thorny offshoot of the Pelagian heresy, show in germ just the same 
that your father is said to have had in the root.  For he[2] (as Leporius his 
follower said) declared that our Lord was made the Christ by His baptism: you 
say that at His baptism He was made the temple of God by the Spirit.  The 
words are not altogether identical: but the wrong-headedness is altogether the 
same.

-----

Notes for Chapter 21

     1. S. John 1:32.
     2. Ille enim; viz., Pelagius.  This appears to be the true reading, 
though one MS. followed by Gazaeus has Leporius ille enim; a reading which 
would involve the supposition that there were two persons of the name of 
Leporius, master and scholar.


CHAPTER XXII. 

                 That the raising up of Christ into heaven is
                    not to be ascribed to the Spirit alone.

    BUT you add this also to those impieties of yours mentioned above; viz., 
that the Spirit granted to the Lord His ascension into heaven: showing by this 
blasphemous notion of yours that you believe that the Lord Jesus Christ was so 
weak and powerless that had not the Spirit raised Him up to heaven, you fancy 
that He would still at this day have been on earth.  But to prove this 
assertion you bring forward a passage of Scripture: for you say "Giving 
commands to the apostles whom He had chosen, by the Holy Ghost He was raised 
up."[1]  What am I to call you?  What am I to think of you who by corrupting 
the sacred writings contrive that their evidences should not have the force of 
evidences?  A new kind of audacity, which strives by its impious arguments to 
manage that truth may seem to confirm falsehood.  For the Acts of the Apostles 
does not say what you make out.  For what says the Scripture?  "What Jesus 
began to do and to teach until the day in which giving charge to the apostles 
whom He had chosen by the Holy Ghost, He was taken up."  Which is an instance 
of Hyperbaton, and must be understood in this way: what Jesus began to do and 
to teach until the day in which he was taken up, giving charge to the apostles 
whom He had chosen by the Holy Ghost; so that we ought not perhaps to have to 
give you any further answer m this matter than that of the passage itself, for 
the entire passage ought to be sufficient for the full truth, if the 
mutilation of it was available for your falsehood.  But still, you, who think 
that our Lord Jesus Christ could not have ascended into heaven, unless He had 
been raised up by the Spirit; tell me how is it that He Himself says "No one 
hath ascended into heaven but He who came down from heaven, even the Son of 
man who is in heaven"?[2]  Confess then how foolish and absurd your notion is 
that He could not ascend into heaven, who is said, although He had descended 
into earth, never to have been absent from heaven: and say whether to leave 
the regions below and ascend into heaven was possible for Him to whom it was 
easy when still on earth, ever to continue in heaven.  But what is that which 
He Himself says: "I ascend unto my Father."[3]  Did He imply that in this 
ascension there would be the intervention of Another's help, who by the very 
fact that He said He would ascend, shows the efficacy of His own power?  David 
also says of the Ascension of the Lord: "God ascended with a merry noise, the 
Lord with the sound of the trumpet:"[4] He clearly explained the glory of Him 
who ascends by the power of the ascension.

-----

Notes for Chapter 22

     1. Acts 1:2.
     2. S. John 3:13.
     3. S. John 20:17.
     4. Ps. 46 (47):6.


CHAPTER XXIII. 

           He continues the same argument to show that Christ had no
             need of another's glory as He had a glory of His own.

    BUT to end let us see the addition with which you sum up your preceding 
blasphemies.  Your words are, "Who gave such[1] glory to Christ?"  You name 
glory in order to degrade Him.  For by the assertion that the Lord was endowed 
with glory, in saying that He received it you blasphemously imply that He 
stood in need of it.  For your perverse notion suggests that the generosity of 
the giver shows the need of the receiver.  O miserable impiety of yours! and 
where is that which Divinity itself once foretold of the Lord Jesus Christ 
ascending into heaven?  Saying: "Lift up your heads, and the King of glory 
shall come in."[2]  And when He (after the fashion of Divine utterances) had 
made answer to Himself as if in the character of an inquirer: "Who is the King 
of glory?" at once He adds: "The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in 
battle:" showing under the figure of a battle fought, the victory of the Lord 
in His triumph.  Then when, to complete the exposition of it, He had repeated 
the words of the utterance quoted above, He showed by the following conclusion 
the majesty of the Lord as He entered heaven, saying "The Lord of hosts, He is 
the King of glory."  On purpose that the fact of His taking a body might not 
interfere with the glory of His mighty Divinity, He taught that the same 
Person was Lord of hosts and King of heavenly glory, whom He had previously 
proclaimed Victor in the battle below.  Go now[3] and say that the glory was 
given to the Lord, when both prophecy has said that He was the King of glory, 
and He Himself also has testified of Himself as follows: "When the Son of man 
shall come in His glory."[4]  Refute it, if you can, and contradict this; 
viz., that whereas He testifies that He has glory of His own, you say that He 
has received Another's.  Although we maintain that He has His own glory, in 
such a way that we do not deny that His very property of glory is common to 
Him with the Father and the Holy Ghost.  For whatever God possesses belongs to 
the Godhead: and the kingdom of glory belongs to the Son of God in such a way 
that it is not kept back from belonging to the entire Godhead.

-----

Notes for Chapter 23

     1. Tantam Petschenig.  Tamen Gazaeus.
     2. Ps. 23 (24):7.
     3. I nunc Petschenig.  The text is however doubtful.  One MS. reading In 
hunc, and another jam nunc.
     4. S. Matt. 25:31.


CHAPTER XXIV. 

       He supports this doctrine by the authority of the blessed Hilary.

    BUT it is quite time to finish the book, aye and the whole work, if I may 
however add the sayings of a few saintly men and illustrious priests, to 
support by the faith of the present day what we have already proved by the 
authority of holy Scripture.  Hilary, a man endowed with all virtues and 
graces, and famous for his life as well as for his eloquence, who also, as a 
teacher of the churches and a priest, advanced not only by his own merits but 
also by the progress of others, and remained so steadfast during the storms of 
persecution that through the fortitude of his unconquered faith he attained 
the dignity of being a Confessor,[1]--he testifies in the First book on the 
faith that the Lord Jesus Christ, Very God of Very God, was both begotten 
before the world, and afterwards born as man.  Again in the Second book: "One 
only Begotten God grew in the womb of the holy Virgin into the form of a human 
body; He who contains all things, and in whose power all things are, is 
brought forth according to the law of human birth."  Again in the same book: 
"An angel is witness that He who is born is God with us."  Again in the Tenth 
book: "We have taught the mystery of God born as man by the birth from the 
Virgin."  Again in the same book: "For when God was born as man, He was not 
born on purpose not to remain God."[2]  Again in the same writer's preface to 
his exposition of the gospel according to Matthew:[3] "For to begin with it 
was needful for us that for our sakes the only Begotten God should be known to 
be born as man."  Again in what follows: "that besides being God, He should be 
born as man, which He was not yet."  Again in the same place: "Then this third 
matter was fitting: that as God was born as man in the world" etc.: Here are a 
few passages out of any number.  But still you see even from these which we 
have quoted, how clearly and plainly he asserts that God was born of Mary.  
And where then is this saying of yours: "The creature could not bring forth 
the Creator: and that which is born of the flesh, is flesh."  It would take 
too long to quote passages bearing on this point from each separate writer.  I 
must try to enumerate them rather than to explain them: for they will 
sufficiently explain themselves.

-----

Notes for Chapter 24

     1. S. Hilary of Poictiers (ob. A.D. 368).  The reference is of course to 
his banishment to Phrygia by the Emperor Constantius in 356, because of his 
resolute defence of the Nicene faith against Arianism.
     2. De Trinitate II. xxv., xxvii.; X. vii.
     3. This preface to Hilary's work on S. Matthew is now lost, though the 
commentary itself still exists.  See Opera S. Hilarii Pictav: (Verona, 1730).  
Vol. i. 658. 


CHAPTER XXV. 

                 He shows that Ambrose agrees with S. Hilary.

    AMBROSE, that illustrious priest of God, who never leaving the Lord's 
hand, ever shone like a jewel upon the finger of God, thus speaks in his book 
to the Virgins: "My brother is white and ruddy.[1]  White because He is the 
glory of the Father: ruddy because He was born of the Virgin.  But remember 
that in Him the tokens of Divinity are of longer standing than the mysteries 
of the body.  For He did not begin to exist from the Virgin, but He who was 
already in existence, came into the Virgin."[2]  Again on Christmas Day: "See 
the miracle of the mother of the Lord: A Virgin conceived, a Virgin brought 
forth.  She was a Virgin when she conceived, a Virgin when with child, a 
Virgin after the birth.  As is said in Ezekiel: "And the gate was shut and not 
opened, because the Lord passed through it."[3]  A splendid Virginity, and 
wondrous fruitfulness!  The Lord of the world is born: and there are no cries 
from her who brought Him forth.  The womb is left empty, and a true child is 
born, and yet the Virginity is not destroyed.  It was right that when God was 
born the power of chastity should become greater, and that her purity should 
not be violated by the going forth of Him who had come to heal what was 
corrupt."[4]  Again in his exposition of the gospel according to Luke he says 
that "one was especially chosen, to bring forth God, who was espoused to an 
husband."[5]  He certainly declares that God was born of the Virgin.  He calls 
Mary the mother of God.  And where is that awful and execrable utterance of 
yours asking how can she be the mother of one of a different nature from her 
own.  But if she is called mother by them, it is the human nature which was 
born not the Godhead.  So, that illustrious teacher of the faith says both 
that she who bare Him was human, and that He who was born is God: and yet that 
this is no reason for unbelief, but only a miracle of faith.

-----

Notes for Chapter 25

     1. Cf. Cant. 5:10 (LXX.).
     2. S. Ambrose.  De Virg. Lib. i. xlvi.
     3. Ezek. 44:2.
     4. These words are not found in any extant writing of S. Ambrose, but 
something very like them occurs in S. Augustine's Sixth Sermon in Natali 
Domini.
     5. In Lucam II. i.


CHAPTER XXVI. 

             He adds to the foregoing the testimony of S. Jerome.

    JEROME, the Teacher of the Catholics, whose writings shine like divine 
lamps throughout the whole world, says in his book to Eustochium: "The Son of 
God for our salvation was made the Son of man.  He waits ten months in the 
womb to be born: and He, in whose hand the world is held, is contained in a 
narrow manger."[1]  Again in his commentary on Isaiah: "For the Lord of hosts, 
who is the King of glory, Himself descended into the Virgin's womb, and 
entered in and went forth from the East Gate which is ever shut."[2]  Of whom 
Gabriel says to the Virgin: "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the 
power of the Most High shall overshadow thee.  Wherefore that holy thing which 
shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God."  And in Proverbs: 
"Wisdom hath builded herself an house."[3]  Compare this if you please with 
your doctrine or rather your blasphemy, in which you assert that God is the 
Creator of the months, and was not an offspring of months.  For lo, Jerome, a 
man of the greatest knowledge and also of the most pure and approved doctrine 
testifies almost in the very words in which you deny that the Son of God was 
an offspring of months, that He was an offspring of months.  For he says that 
He waits ten months in the womb to be born.  But perhaps the authority of this 
man seems a mere nothing to you.  You may take it that every one says the same 
and in the same words, for whoever does not deny that the Son of God is the 
offspring of the Virgin, admits that He is the offspring of months.

-----

Notes for Chapter 26

     1. Ep. xxii. Ad Eustochium.
     2. Cf. Ezek. 44:2.
     3. Book III. c. vii.


CHAPTER XXVII. 

          To the foregoing he adds Rufinus and the blessed Augustine.

    RUFINUS also, a Christian philosopher, with no mean place among 
Ecclesiastical Doctors testifies as follows of the Lord's Nativity in his 
Exposition of the Creed.  "For the Son of God," he says, "is born of a Virgin, 
not chiefly allied to the flesh alone, but generated in the soul which is the 
medium between the flesh and God."[1]  Does he witness obscurely that God was 
born of man?  Augustine the priest[2] of Hippo Regiensis says: "That men might 
be born of God, God was first born of them: for Christ is God.  And Christ 
when born of men only required a mother on earth, because He always had a 
Father in heaven, being born of God through whom we are made, and also born of 
a woman, through whom we might be re-created."[3]  Again, in this place: "And 
the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.  Why then need you wonder that men 
are born of God?  Notice how God Himself was born of men."  Again in his 
Epistle to Volusianus: "But Moses himself and the rest of the prophets most 
truly prophesied of Christ the Lord, and gave Him great glory: they declared 
that He would come not as one like themselves, nor merely greater in the same 
sort of power of working miracles, but clearly as the Lord God of all, and as 
made man for men.  Who therefore Himself also willed to do such things as they 
did to prevent the absurdity of His not doing Himself those things which He 
did through them.  But still it was right also for Him to do something 
special; viz., to be born of a Virgin, to rise from the dead, to ascend into 
heaven.  And if anyone thinks that this is too little for God, I know not what 
more he can look for.[4]

-----

Notes for Chapter 26

     1. Rufinus in Symb. c. xiii.
     2. There is no authority for the reading of Cuyck and Gazaeus "Magnus 
Sacerdos."  On the coldness with which Augustine is here spoken of see the 
Introduction.  Note.
     3. August. Tract. II. in Johan. xv.
     4. Ep. cxxxvii. c. 4.


CHAPTER XXVIII. 

    As he is going to produce the testimony of Greek or Eastern Bishops, he
            brings forward in the first place S. Gregory Nazianzen.

    BUT perhaps because those whom we have enumerated came from different 
parts of the world, their authority may seem to you less valuable.  An absurd 
thing, indeed, because faith is not interfered with by place, and we have to 
consider what a man is, not where: especially since religion unites all 
together, and those who are in the one faith may be also known to be in the 
one body.  But still we will bring forward for you some, whom you cannot 
despise, even from the East.  Gregory, that most grand light of knowledge and 
doctrine, who though he has been for some time dead, yet still lives in 
authority and faith, and though he has been for some time removed in the body 
from the Churches, yet has not forsaken them in word and authority.  "When 
then," he says, "God had come forth from the Virgin, in that human nature 
which He had taken, as He existed in one out of two which are the opposite of 
each other; viz., flesh and spirit, the one is taken into God, the other 
exalts into the grace of Deity.[1]  O new and unheard of intermingling!  O 
marvellous and exquisite union!  He who was, came to be, and the Creator is 
created: and He who is infinite is embraced by the soul which is the medium 
between God and the flesh: and He who makes all rich, is made poor."  Again he 
says of the Epiphany: "But what happens?  What is done concerning us and for 
us?  There is brought about some new and unheard of change of natures and God 
is made man."  Again in this passage:[2] "The Son of God began to be also the 
Son of man, not being changed from what He was, for He is unchangeable, but 
taking to Himself what He was not: for He is pitiful so that He, who could not 
be embraced, can now be embraced."  You see how grandly and nobly he asserts 
the majesty of His Godhead so that He may bring in the condescension of the 
Incarnation: for that admirable teacher of the faith knew well that of all the 
blessings which God granted to us at His coming into the world this was the 
chief, without diminishing in any way His glory.  For whatever God gave to 
man, ought to increase the love of Him in us, and not to lessen the honour 
which we give to Him.

-----

Notes for Chapter 28

     1. Aliud in Deum adsumitur, aliud in Deitatis gratiam praestat.  So 
Petschenig edits.  The text of Gazaeus has aliud Deitatis gratia praestat.
     2. Greg. Nazianz. Oratio xxxviii.  The Greek of the passage which Cassian 
translates is as follows: proelthon de Theos meta tes proslepseos hen ek duo 
ton enantion, sarkos kai pneumatos: on to men etheose to de etheothe, o tes 
kaines mixeos, o tes paradoxou kraseos, ho hon ginetai kai ho aktistos 
ktizetai kai ho achoretos choreitai dia meses psyches noeras mesiteuouses 
theoteti kai sarkos pachyteti, kai ho ploutizon ptocheuei.  Oratio xxxix.  Ti 
ginetai kai ti to mega peri hemas mysterion; kainotomountai physeis kai Theos 
anthropos ginetai . . . kai ho huios tou Theou dechetai kai huios anthropou 
genesthai te kai klethenai, ouch ho en metabalon, atreptonu gar, all' ho ouk 
en proslabon, philanthropos gar, hina chorethe ho achoretos.


CHAPTER XXIX. 

           In the next place he puts the authority of S. Athanasius.

    ATHANASIUS also, priest of the city of Alexandria, a splendid instance of 
constancy and virtue, whom the storm of heretical persecution tested without 
crushing him: whose life was always like a clear glass, and who had almost 
obtained the reward of martyrdom before attaining the dignity of 
confessorship: Let us see what was his view of the Lord Jesus Christ and the 
mother of the Lord.  "This then," he says, "is the mind and stamp of Holy 
Scripture, as we have often said; viz., that in one and the same Saviour two 
things have to be understood: (1) that He was ever God, and is Son, Word, and 
Light, and Wisdom of the Father, and (2) that afterwards for our sakes He took 
flesh of the Virgin Mary the Theotocos, and was made man."[1]  Again after 
some other matter: "Many then were saints and clean from sin: Jeremiah also 
was sanctified from the womb, and John, while still in the womb leapt for joy 
at the voice of Mary the Theotocos."[2]  He certainly says that God, the Son 
of God, who (to declare the faith of all in his words) is "the Word, and Light 
and Wisdom of the Father," took flesh for our sakes; and therefore he calls 
the Virgin Mary Theotocos, because she was the Mother of God.

-----

Notes for Chapter 29

     1. See the orations against the Arians IV.  The Greek is as follows: 
Skopos toinyn houtos kai charakter tes graphes, hos pollakis eipomen, diplen 
einai ten peri tou soteros apangelian en aute, hoti te aei Theos en kai estin 
ho ueos, logos on kai apaugasma kai sophia tou patros, kai hoti hysteron di' 
hemas sarka labon ek parthenou tes theotokou Marias anthropos gegonen.
     2. Orations Against the Arians IV.  polloi goun hagioi gegonasi kai 
katharoi pases hamartias: Hieremias de kai ek koilias hegiasthe kai Ioannes 
eti kuophoroumenos eskirtesen en agalliasei epi te phone tes Theotokou Marias.


CHAPTER XXX. 

                       He adds also S. John Chrysostom.

    AS for John the glory of the Episcopate of Constantinople, whose holy life 
obtained the reward of martyrdom without any show of Gentile persecution, hear 
what he thought and taught on the Incarnation of the Son of God: "And Him," he 
says, "whom if He had come in unveiled Deity neither the heaven nor the earth 
nor the sea nor any other creature could have contained, the pure womb of a 
Virgin bore."[1]  This man's faith and doctrine then, even if you ignore that 
of others, you ought to follow and hold, as out of love and affection for him 
the pious people chose you as their Bishop.  For when it took you for its 
priest from the Church of Antioch, from which it had formerly chosen him, it 
believed that it would receive in you all that it had lost in him.[2]  Did 
not, I ask you, all these almost with prophetic spirit say all these things in 
order to confound your blasphemies.  For you declare that our Lord and Saviour 
Christ is not God: they declare that Christ the Lord is Very God.  You 
blasphemously assert that Mary is Christotocos not Theotocos: they do not deny 
that she is Christotocos, while they acknowledge her as Theotocos.  Not merely 
the substance but the words also are opposed to your blasphemies: that we may 
clearly see that an impregnable bulwark was formerly prepared by God against 
your blasphemies, to break on the wall of truth ready prepared, the force of 
the heretical attack which was at some time or other to come.  And you, O you 
most wicked and shameless contaminator of an illustrious city, you disastrous 
and deadly plague of a Catholic and holy people, do you dare to stand and 
teach in the Church of God, and with your wild and blasphemous words slander 
the priests of an ever unbroken faith and Catholic confession, and say that 
the people of the city of Constantinople are in error through the fault of 
their earlier teachers?  Are you then the corrector of former Bishops, the 
accuser of ancient priests, are you better than Gregory, more approved than 
Nectarius, greater than John,[3] and all the other Bishops of Eastern cities 
who, though not of the same renown as those whom I have enumerated, were yet 
of the same faith? which, as far as the matter in hand is concerned, is 
enough: for when it is a question of the faith, all are as good as the best in 
so far as they agree with the best.

-----

Notes for Chapter 30

     1. The passage has not been identified with any now extant in the 
writings of S. Chrysostom.
     2. S. Chrysostom had been taken from Antioch for the Bishopric of 
Constantinople: and after the death of Sisinnius in 426, as there was so much 
rivalry and party spirit displayed at Constantinople, the Emperor determined 
that none of that Church should fill the vacant see, but sent for Nestorius 
from Antioch, where he had already gained a great reputation for eloquence 
(cf. Socrates H. E. VII. xxix.).  It is to the fact that both S. Chrysostom 
and Nestorius came from the same city that Cassian alludes in the text.
     3. The reference is to Gregory Nazianzen, Bishop of Constantinople from 
379 to 381 when he retired in the interests of peace; to Nectarius who was 
chosen to succeed him; and to his successor, S. John Chrysostom, 397 to 404.


CHAPTER XXXI. 

  He bemoans the unhappy lot of Constantinople, owing to the misfortune which
     has overtaken it from that heretic; and at the same time he urges the
      citizens to stand fast in the ancient Catholic and ancestral faith.

    WHEREFORE I also, humble and insignificant as I am in name as in desert, 
and although I cannot claim a place as Teacher among those illustrious Bishops 
of Constantinople, yet venture to claim the zeal and enthusiasm of a disciple. 
For I was admitted into the sacred ministry by the Bishop John, of blessed 
memory, and offered to God, and even though I am absent in body yet I am still 
there in heart: and though by actual presence I no longer mix with that most 
dear and honourable people of God, yet I am still joined to them in spirit. 
And hence it comes that condoling and sympathizing with them, I broke out just 
now into the utterance of our common grief and sorrow, and in my weakness 
cried out (which was all that I could do) by means of the dolorous lamentation 
of my works, as if for my own limbs and members: for if as the Apostle says, 
when the smaller part of the body is grieved, the greater part grieves and 
sympathizes with it,[1] how much more should the smaller part sympathize when 
the greater part is grieved?  It is indeed utterly inhuman for the smaller 
parts not to feel the sufferings of the greater in one and the same body, if 
the greater feel those of the smaller.  Wherefore I pray and beseech you, you 
who live within the circuit of Constantinople, and who are my fellow-citizens 
through the love of my country, and my brothers through the unity of the 
faith; separate yourselves from that ravening wolf who (as it is written) 
devours the people of God, as if they were bread.[2]  Touch not, taste not 
anything of his, for all those things lead to death.  Come out from the midst 
of him and be ye separate and touch not the unclean thing.  Remember your 
ancient teachers, and your priests; Gregory whose fame was spread through the 
world, Nectarius renowned for holiness, John a marvel of faith and purity. 
John, I say; that John who like John the Evangelist was indeed a disciple of 
Jesus and an Apostle; and so to speak ever reclined on the breast and heart of 
the Lord.  Remember him, I say.  Follow him.  Think of his purity, his faith, 
his doctrine, and holiness.  Remember him ever as your teacher and nurse, in 
whose bosom and embraces you as it were grew up.  Who was the teacher in 
common both of you and of me: whose disciples and pupils we are.  Read his 
writings.  Hold fast his instruction.  Embrace his faith and merits.  For 
though to attain this is a hard and magnificent thing: yet even to follow is 
beautiful and sublime.  For in the highest matters, not merely the attainment, 
but even the attempt to copy is worthy of praise.  For scarcely anyone 
entirely misses all parts in that to which he is trying to climb and reach.  
He then should ever be in your minds and almost in your sight: he should live 
in your hearts and in your thoughts.  He would himself commend to you this 
that I have written, for it was he who taught me what I have written: and so 
do not think of this as mine, so much as his: for the stream comes from the 
spring, and whatever you think belongs to the disciple, ought all to be 
referred to the honour of the master.  But, beyond and above all I pray with 
all my heart and voice, to Thee, O God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
that Thou wouldest fill with the gift of Thy love whatever we have written by 
Thy bounteous grace.  And because, as the Lord our God Thine Only Begotten Son 
Himself taught us, Thou hast so loved this world as to send Thine Only 
Begotten Son to save the world, grant to Thy people whom Thou hast redeemed 
that in the Incarnation of Thine Only Begotten Son they may perceive both Thy 
gift and His love: and that all may understand the truth that for us Thine 
Only Begotten, our Lord God, was born and suffered and rose again, and may so 
love it that the condescension of His glory may increase our love: and let not 
His Humility lead to a diminution of His honour in the hearts of all men, but 
let it ever produce an increase of love: and may we all rightly and wisely 
comprehend the blessings of His Sacred Compassion, so as to see that we owe 
the more to God, in proportion as for our sakes God humbled Himself yet lower.

-----

Notes for Chapter 31

     1. Cf. 1 Cor. 12:26.
     2. Ps. 13 (14):4; Col. 2:21, 23; 2 Cor. 6:17.