Ad Justinum Manichaeum Contra Duo Principia Manichaeorum

Marius Victorinus's Book to Justinus the Manichaean Against the Two Principles of the Manichaeans, and on the True Flesh of Christ. I. To speak to one who has long since, through much reading, with unflagging vigils of continuous labor, held what he ought to confess concerning the faith of the law, is the mark of one who errs, Justinus, but of one who loves. Hence I have preferred to disclose how highly I regard you, and I have gladly accepted that I have labored with you to this end, so that you might understand beforehand that you still need to seek out what Manichaeus, and as this Andrew sets forth in the Acts, and the Treasure revealed. When I was summoned, I attentively investigate whether you truly say these things or not: having to discuss that diverse and contrary things come to us from one principle, I have, according to my wish, not refused to respond to the same. But I wish, brother, that you make this labor worth the effort. Frequently reread the intended booklet, and by turning it over yourself, penetrate or investigate with the secret of deeper inquiry what is said. For inner sight conquers words, and the hidden recess of the mind itself blinds and stuns even the suspicions of the immense, which, when sought piously and reverently, delights rather than is understood to terrify. For each man who will live, when the intention of the holy mind inquires that there is one principle, and this flesh of ours, which you cherish along with hidden herbs and grasses, venerates its own and the whole world's one and same author, as it is able to act for itself.

But I myself, wondering and being astounded at your stubborn resolve, that you hate flesh and venerate vegetables, do not yet know whether you declare these things to come from one principle or from different ones. For if you say from one, you see what you fall into; if from another, it is reckless to praise the maker of another's things on account of other things, but to accuse and rebuke one's own maker on account of those things that are in oneself. But lest by saying these things I should rather reproach than answer, if they are relevant, they will be said later; for now, accept what you have asked. II. It is foolish and insane, and a danger to truth, for us to be able and permitted to inquire about those things that are beyond us and the world, when we ourselves are almost unknown to ourselves, to doubt whence and how, or by whom you are, while you do not dare to doubt that you exist and are possessed with flesh, and you see clearly that you live in the world, and that by the help of your creator, when you are nevertheless obedient to him, you are set free; and you have it as confessed that the Savior is one, and yet you tremble to confess that you are from one maker, dividing indeed one maker of the flesh, another creator of the soul. We say these things, then, imagining that both rule over the world, and each guards his own creation in man, each insisting equally that what each has perfected from his own realms should not perish. The bright sun, and chaste virginity, and the glorious chorus of stars reject this, and the whole fabric of the entire world refutes and casts it off, that its origin should come from two different and two unbegotten principles.

For the profane senses are violated by clouds, if such a great splendor of immense brightness consists of the more ancient darkness and its part. For it happens that the sun itself is from them, if the whole world received its existence from two principles. Clearly, because it is not ours to detain our understanding in these matters, and to persist in this wandering of the senses, we flee and shudder at him, whom we ourselves even conquer, to confess that he is from himself. Finally, I desire you to grasp what it is like to say that flesh exists without him from whom all things took their beginning: and that it dwells in the higher realms, where that remembered virginity, glory, and proclaimed light are: which, because it descended into Christ from there, cannot be thought not to be there. For from there Christ has his flesh, since your reverence does not permit saying that he is from Mary. Shall we say, then, that what God assumed is from another? What was he who was about to assume it to do, if the creator did not fashion it? And if he composed it, is it worthy to merit?

III. Here, as I see, the inventor and founder is praised, if eternity deigned to dwell in it. But if that other flesh which is in Christ is not, however, more ancient, then God the maker is found to be posterior. If it is more ancient, why is it not in the world, and why is it in heaven, where no fleshly being exists? And if that which is in Christ is not in the world, whence does the creature come in foreign, external realms? Or whence is it joined to the soul here? Or why is it able so frequently to captivate souls to itself, so that it appears almost more powerful in foreign realms? And why does the author of the inner being labor to free this inner being from the flesh? Or why did he admit him to be enclosed, when he was to be freed from it? Certainly, the whole of what the world is is the realm of truth and Ideas, and he who is its maker rules over it. If in this entire realm, which is his own, there is one thing called flesh that belongs to another, and if this alone can and does so much that the soul, driven by it, is tossed about, wavering, and wearied, languishes, we see how great in his own realms the maker of the flesh can be. For if we understand that this realm, which is the whole world, belongs to him from whom we believe the flesh is his servant, we will say that the sun, and that chorus, and the singular virgin, have shone forth from the source of the hiding-places. This I indeed gladly embrace, and with uplifted joy I rejoice to profess one maker for all these, and to venerate him, whom it is right to hold as light, truth, and the whole, recognized by the secret cause of pious inquiry penetrating with care.

Thus the recollection of the exultant soul elevates the senses, and the better origin consoles all the cares of the fluctuating spirit with the festive reasons of causes. Whatever are called ages, or are counted as kingdoms, or are held as worlds, whatever precedes all that is ancient, is one, exists as singular, and is held to be immense, gathered from the fact that it is whole, but is called one. IV. Otherwise indeed, Justinus, what He Himself is, otherwise what is from Him. What He Himself is is one, and is whole, whatever He Himself is; but what is from Him is countless. And these are the things with which everything that is enclosed and encompassed by the one whole is filled. But since those things which are from Him are various, who is from Himself and is one, it befits Him to rule over various things. And so that He may appear omnipotent, He Himself must be found to be the origin even of contraries. And that is plainly of that forest which distinguished every wood by the matter of species, disparate and dissimilar in the kind of trees; and yet the whole forest, and the confusion that is nearly discrete, is seen and appears to be wood in the matter of countless thousands of thousands, and yet its nature is not denoted. That these are likenesses of what has been decreed, and of what has happened to come to be from another so that they might exist, you, together with me, observing, recall.

But that—that which is immense and from itself—no one will doubt that it lacks likeness, is deprived of comparison, and falls short of example. By this, our mind's approach is compelled to confess and is pressed to narrow itself toward those lofty, hidden things that travel with unwearying bounds, to penetrate the more secret of secrets, the venerable nature of things—alone, indeed, as far as nature avails, as far as speech suffices to speak, to approach, to touch, or to attempt. And therefore, I now ask: what will be like the immense? V. Speak, if you can, you who, granting trust to comparisons, believe you have attained truth through the shadows of images. But as I see, it is not you, Justin, who fail in matters, but matters in you. And if, as you often boast and now say, there is another kingdom, is this not some other kingdom that is also immense? But I do not see how it can be called immense if its existence is not denied to another: for where the other begins to exist, there the end of the other fails, and neither is infinite. If this is so, that it is finite, I reject or misuse the existence of either. Yet, because we are from another, and the world is not from itself, and however great it may be, it is nevertheless finite—if not in other respects, then at least in relation to its maker: so much so that it is sacrosanct to confess its maker as infinite.

Therefore, I observe and recognize that all things which are in the world—and those things which are whatever the world itself is—proceed from that principle which is one and alone, from itself, in itself, and to itself; and which, being immense, extends wholly and infinitely, and flows in such a way that it does not exist or fails where it is for another to be or to exist; or that something else could not be, which is nevertheless external or divided, and becomes a rival or stands as an enemy—something which, placed in its own domain and remaining there, can be conquered and later captured, and, once dragged within the victor's realms and transferred there, ceases to be, and ends where for it being had been before the war. Certainly, if it is still in that domain, it has not yet been overcome; and if it exists, it might perhaps be restored. How many times will this happen? For how many ages will this battle last? When will it cease? But if it has already been conquered, it is not in its own domain; and is it anywhere? On the contrary, it has already ceased to be and ends. Thus, all things that were its own have perished along with their source and have been removed. If they have perished, they are never its; and the flesh that exists is not its, but rather belongs to the one who conquered.

VI. Perhaps you claim that this victor carried off a trophy for himself into his own realms from some of those things which the one who was conquered possessed. Granted that these things exist, they are not, however, hostile, which the victor carried off as spoils. But you still confess today that the flesh is hostile to God. O the idleness of the triumphant one! O the leisure of the beaten one! O the sluggishness of the injured one! O the weak strength of the provoked one! O the dormant authority of the master! You are wearied by captives in your own kingdom; and you, who were able to conquer by waging war, become accustomed to being overcome by sparing. Let those things which are first be held in such an order, and let this suspicion gather errors far back, long before the world existed. Certainly you say that each is from itself, whom you mention came together in war: equal to them is the power, for whom origin and one eternity are found from themselves. Should I here dare to say that one is better, and suspect that there is more in the other: do I not fall into or incur, and am I not constituted and condemned as guilty before eternity itself, which is always one? By having what is eternal be overcome, and by not fearing to profess that what is from itself is not one: and that we confess as omnipotent, shall I assert that it is dominated by someone at some time? A blind thing and more obscure than any darkness is laid open by sacrilegious error. It is the fault of mad speech that what is from itself is a vice, so that fear of the victor, who is from itself, agitates the captive, that what is unbegotten is subjected. Therefore, the omnipotent one increased himself from the oppressed kingdoms, and what is unbegotten, you ask, you promise to be destroyed or removed.

Moreover, that which follows from something will not be in the future, since, succumbing to the victor's power, it will either perish or be led away. VII. Next, which of the two shall we say was not content with its own, so that the battle you mention arose? The light or the darkness? If the light, then it lacked the darkness and took delight in the foul. Where is that which is held to be omnipotent, that which is understood as whole, if in it there was something that was not, which was external, and was held by other realms, and the truth for itself was that which indeed existed, which the dominion of the omnipotent did not yet possess? But now let us suppose that the darkness stirred up war, and let us posit that the shadow of the unbegotten radiance, existing with its own solid substances, conspired. If that light is fire, and the darkness, they came together for a conflagration, so that their solid substance, which was their own, coming to the conflict from without, would be burned. But if they are empty, and therefore do not make use of it, where, I ask, is the coming together of solids with the empty? To think these things, and to have arrived with a wandering sense at such inner matters, is plainly bold and insane. To imagine a conflict of the empty with the solid, of the deep with the high, of the finite with the infinite, of darkness with light, of false with true, and of the tiny with the whole? I cannot bear, brother, that these dissonant things should be spoken of as having arisen in like manner, and that they should be recalled in eternity and so placed that being belongs to each of them; but I attribute being to the one alone who is from himself, and I wish it not to be held for the other.

For if you reject these things, you must teach what substance there is in the void, what is outside the infinite, what is more ancient than the eternal, what is equal to the whole: so that I may grasp that it exists and is held as a reality, and I will not deny two origins for things. If some trifler utters these things, or a Persian recalls them, let him command his own people, let him grow old in his own clime. For there it is otherwise to have divine wisdom, for those who otherwise use law. Although they are men by nature, yet unless they are separated by speech, they are also distinguished by reason, and it is not otherwise to be thought of such men, whose body is nourished otherwise, whose habit is fitted otherwise, whose form is refined otherwise by the practice of taking, whose form is retained otherwise, and many are even born with another form, and what I speak of are nations without number. Now have you seen, then, how many Manis, Zoroasters, or Buddhas have deceived by teaching these things? Let us be recalled to seek. VIII. What we are, Justinus, we are from him who is omnipotent, and who is seen to have stood forth from himself, existing; for whom, that in which he is not, is not to be. So much so that it did not happen that there was one who would stir up a battle. But that there are two kinds of things, and these are contrary or diverse, of good and evil, solid and void, high and deep, true and false, light and darkness, eternal and temporal, life and death, and all contraries, the order of things teaches and reveals that they are not from two principles. For if one were to behold two eternal things, and to perceive that they came as enemies, to have held them would be subject to outcome.

They themselves set up the principles, and in anxious dread handed over the innate terrors of trembling fear, when the warring kingdoms were troubled by sad anxiety; perhaps it was permitted to the Parthians, who fabled the outcomes of the combatants. What conditions and pacts were agreed upon, what end suppressed the war, which master the safer chance established from the two. But since both are being discussed, for the unbegotten and the victor, as I see, danger arises: therefore, brothers, that which is from itself is conquered, and that which is without beginning will be ended and will not be, or is already ended. I have escaped, I breathe again: there is no other who is my maker and dedicator, or if he were still to perish and remains, he dwells in his own realms, and he himself will not be my maker in this world: and he is my founder who is also the artisan of the world: by whom chaste virginity, the glorious chorus of stars, the bright sun in the sky were established, or placed on the upper ships, as you are accustomed to have been. Therefore let us exult rejoicing, already the flesh that will not perish is to be congratulated. For by your Christ you are the savior, whether when you are in Adam and Mary, or when in the higher regions you have merited to be taken up as vessels of eternity. No longer desolate by the hope of a promise, thrust down into the depths, do you flow away growing old: already restored by the price of the cross, you will be clothed with the glory of immortality.

IX. And it is fitting that you, having entered, have seized those things which pervade all that is eternity and immensity. For here it already pleases to mark the magi of Babylon and the chanters of Ctesiphon with the mysteries of their secrets: whose power it is in song now to raise spirits, now to summon them. But better, and plainly divine, is that our Savior’s flesh raised up from tombs buried in the ground. For no one doubts that what could be buried was dead: and if death clung to the flesh coming from above, wounded, in Christ our flesh rose again. Yet what reason was there to take on flesh, if it was not itself lifted up? But if that flesh is other, it is certainly mortal, which can be killed. This is immense and inestimable: that he dwelt in the limbs of a man. Unless he were from eternity, he would not be omnipotent: in this same eternity, recognize that things which are said to be contrary exist. To the same one it was to die, to whom a father unbegotten and age and eternity are found: and that he may truly be known as omnipotent, it is not denied that he was born of a virgin. What now is that which is omnipotent, eternal, infinite, and whole; what, that which is immense and higher than all that is highest and sublime, from which everything that exists in things remains and comes, I perceive, admonished by the saying of the savior of all, who, teaching himself as Son, deigned to indicate the Father to himself? Whom, revealing God, Jesus, even as he marveled that all things are him, revealed as much as the measure of the world merited.

On account of which God is the one and only principle, and God alone is truth: and that truth itself is light, and light always eternal: and everything that is true is solid, and always exists, and remains and endures as perspicuous. But that which is true of itself is never conquered; that which is solid has nothing empty; that which is light does not admit darkness, and is ignorant of it, and if it does admit it, and darknesses come into it, they cease to be themselves. Rather, they are not for others, those things which have ceased to be themselves. But if they are still in their own state, they are outside this world, and there is still conflict with them, and it is uncertain whether they are ever overcome, or truly perish at some time. But if this is still in doubt, then the world, or the flesh, did not receive its being from another as such: rather, it came to it from that one by whom the glorious sun was also appointed as minister to the world. For imagining that darkness is that which is called evil, you will grasp and understand: not indeed accepting that being is given to darkness in the same way as it is held to be and to be light for light; but rather that which from the act of another, who truly exists, is brought about or appears. For there is in things, both the highest and the airy, and even in these our own things, that which has found its being from the act of another: as, from the ray of the sun, heat; from the breath of the wind, cold, which binds rivers, which splits the earth with heat. Thus the earth is opened by the heat of the sun, the streams of rivers are bound by frost.

X. These matters are indeed to be understood thus: that by the action of one thing, another is effected, so that in those things which exist, it may be seen that what is not inherent in their quality arises from the action of another. But it is otherwise with that which, from a thing that is eternal, which is whole, gives itself to come to be from another. For shadows are not subsistent, not solid, not penetrating: but an empty thing that perishes from light, and has no being of its own when that light shines. For it happens that they do not have being by the action of light, because they themselves are not substance; they receive the substance of light to perish. If, therefore, it is for shadows to perish from light, from the same it comes to them to appear, in the same way as depth comes from height, and nothingness from the whole. For although the whole is eternal, yet nothingness is that which is nowhere a substance. For height exists, but its depth exists: for if height did not exist, depth could not appear. If you do not know the solid, you do not perceive the empty. Therefore, there are things which are substance, and there are things which are not using their own substance: because those things which are substance exist; from them it comes to those things which are not substance to appear, as hoarfrost, as ice: which appear, but because they do not use their own substance, it comes to them to be from the action of cold, they melt and perish when dissolved. And ice, nevertheless, is from water, but is constricted by the rigidity of the air. I see, therefore, two things in water: liquidity and freezing. Therefore, what is substance is liquidity: but what comes to it by action, that is its own turning into ice, which freezes.

But because ice itself is no substance, it perishes and is taken away, and yet the liquidity of water, remaining, persists as substance. XI. And these matters are indeed mundane; they are either from the creator or from nature. But those higher things, which are last and, without beginning, first—which lack likeness, fall short in comparison, which are not formed by the example of images, to which nothing is equal, nothing prior—beyond which nothing can be estimated, which are comprehended solely by being known as incomprehensible—do not have their action from cause or form, as do those things which have been spoken of, which this composite world possesses. But just as it belongs to them to be powerful—those things which are uncreated, unbegotten, infinite, which are the whole—so perceive or attend to this for them: that there be one and only that which is omnipotent, which is held as the whole of all, which is perceived as infinite; this exists and consists, and by its own solid, invisible extension it dominates and reigns, and using the reason of its own? admirable substance by that divine act of its own, by which it is either moved or unmoved. Nevertheless, that very thing which indeed falsely gives origin as the whole: for by nothing, when the whole is omnipotent, it comes about through it that nothing also appears. For the omnipotent will not be such that it is the whole, if besides itself there will be anything else that is nothing. Therefore, what is called nothing exists, but has no substance; and what is called the whole exists, and has substance. But for the one, to be is; for the other, not to be is. God is therefore truth, who is the whole, and consists as infinite.

Because nothing can exist outside the whole, you are correct, Justin, that what is understood as non-spatial is considered to be beyond boundaries and is called false—if, that is, any reasoning can admit that you understand a limit anywhere for that which you perceive to be the whole, and you investigate it. For if the whole is occupied by the eternal, nothingness has no place where it might be; and if the omnipotent is everything, nothingness is understood to exist only in the sense that it is what is outside the whole, not that it is something. Finally, if you measure the omnipotent in such a way that there is for you another who is not omnipotent, a greater place will be said for God, and one more immense than both: if by their own realms different unbegotten principles are used, and they stand as rivals. XII. To understand or maintain that something greater than the eternal Omnipotent exists is the sense of a barbarian of incautious confusion; and to hold that what wages war is coeternal, and to suppose that one of the eternals is conquered, is the mark of one who says that light itself will not exist at some age; yet if you listen to that very thing, you will understand that the sun will not exist. And since for it to exist is to have begun, if there is danger for that which exists from itself and which is to perish, then the unbegotten wages war, and that which is overcome by the unbegotten is unbegotten. Do you dare to judge which of the unbegotten began first? Or perhaps you dissemble by order alone, and fabulate that they began equally? Can you judge greater and lesser among the eternal unbegotten? If you prefer the darkness, you will give to them every beginning, and they will be greater in being.

If you admit that light is more ancient, you confess that everything comes from it. If you see that both are equally coeternal, either neither will be overcome, or one will retain what the other has taken. And where here will be the omnipotent or the eternal? Will victory be in one of them, and in a state of equal existence will a dissimilar cause arise, and will chance rule the war of the unbegotten, or will accident take over? Far be it from the mind’s perception to turn to this error, and may human hope reject confessing such insane understanding. There is one unbegotten; from one Lord all things have proceeded. Indeed, that diverse things are of the same is the reason the omnipotent is found by all creatures, both before beginnings and ends. XIII. Thus, then, from what is true, false being also proceeds, as shadows from solids. For if the solid does not exist, neither does the shadow. And this is the mystery of the true, true. For from what are true, those things which are not also appear, so that it is from itself for itself, and for others it establishes that they exist from it, not by its own works, not by labor, not by matter, not by nature, nor by substance. For if it is for the omnipotent to be the whole, what is outside is his. But if something comes to be without him, neither is omnipotent, and by actual chance principles grow as they are added, diminished indeed when additions have made them. Finally, what matter, what nature is there of shadows, which does not appear without the other, nor is held in darkness?

But because this is not its own substance, nor does it exist from itself, it vanishes and perishes, and yet the solid body, from which the shadow sometimes arises, persists, standing firm in its own strength. Marvel, Manes of Babylon, at these mysteries and these riches of the Almighty: confess that nothing exists which is not of Him whom you venerate as eternal, whom you acknowledge as Lord, before whom there is nothing prior. And how can it be fitting that something is not of Him or from Him, before whom you intend nothing else? But you are troubled, anxious with the care of wandering error, indeed confused by the labor of vain study, deceived by dull perception, you have wounded the beginnings of a greater inquiry with the madness of a novice soul. Recall your untamed cares to their first steps, and cease to believe that one eternity has taken up two kingdoms, and that it, as you say, tempts itself. XIV. Concerning two eternal beings: if one is to be conquered, a truncated eternity will remain. Therefore light and darkness have equal powers, and are diverse in themselves, indeed contrary: one power is fitting, but in the other it will sometimes cease. It is no longer the same, if it is hoped for everywhere, if one of them will fail first; it will be, Justinus, that you confess one principle, if one is victor from the two. Certainly, what I understand in the highest regions, and at the extreme of every height, nothing dwells there that is called evil, which beyond Angels and Archangels the trembling veneration of human devotion suspects.

It is a sacrilegious utterance to dwell on such evil things, or if that is its seat, and the creator himself is understood to be there, then the devil rules over every creature, and even over the sun itself. For if he is coeternal, he is there; or if he is not there, he is in some kingdom of his own, I know not where. I believe that the other has no sun, no sky, no world, no light, no truth. And if he himself has a kingdom elsewhere, nothing of his is common to us; or if he is in this world, he is already conquered, already subject to the sun, already without strength. But if you admit this, you yourself understand that what you see captive to a ruler cannot be called a principle. Does it befit things that there be two highest, two lowest, two infinites? Two infinites cannot be spoken of, because where one begins, there is the end of the other; moreover, something is highest only if there is nothing beyond it, and lowest only if there is nothing within it, and the whole is possessed only when nothing else is possessed. If this is one and only God—highest, infinite, and whole, and all-powerful, and all-holding—he alone and only is the principle.

XV. Do not be disturbed, do not grow numb and blind, struck with awe at such venerable truth, because evil cannot arise from a good author. I rightly inquire into this in creatures, so that created things do not emit from themselves anything other than what they are, such as bitter from sweet, water from fire, offspring of the underworld from shadow, a man from wood, flesh from the non-flesh, and all other things the whole world enumerates. But these cannot be ascribed to the omnipotent one. There is a discipline, so that a law exists for him as to what can come from him, what cannot, what is from him, what is through him. You rightly gather and constrain these points if you least confess the omnipotent one. But if his power and eternity are spread throughout the whole, and it did not come to him to exist from another, then assuredly all things either come from him or from him, or through him, or happen, or are created. Therefore, evil also received from him that it might exist. Yet this evil is what is called the demon; for other things, if there are any you call evil, have no substance or nature. But the demon, now good, now evil, exists as an angelic creature, as the expression of the Attic tongue teaches, saying: [Greek text omitted] and [Greek text omitted]. And that it is itself good, which is said, we will discuss later. But all other things you call evil, if the vices of errors cease, will have no origin of birth.

XVI. Do not, then, be crushed by the notion that it is by the impulse of evil that one is precipitated into vices, as if evil were some existing thing, or a substance that has arisen or been made. It is the soul which, standing in freedom, violated the dominion granted to it by the license of free will. It is deceived by desire and curious concupiscence rather than by pride. Then you claim that a lord of two substances rules over us, or that kingdoms of a twin or rather multiform human nature rule over countless nations. For you so delight in examples that you love to perceive eternal and perpetual things through mortal and transient ones. You deny the flesh in Christ, yet you confess the man; you do not wish him to have been born, yet you do not deny that he lived; you proclaim that he was killed by the Jews, yet you judge that what was wounded did not exist. Thus you assert that the dead limbs of the damned, tortured on the right and left, are such that the destruction of Christ himself was fulfilled in them; and you do not wish the true man to have flesh, where you find a true burial. Behold, Justinus, what truly is, you try to assert was not, and what neither is nor was, you strive to prove persists. But, admonished by you yourself as teacher, I speak steadfastly: Was it possible for him to die eternally, but not possible for him to have flesh? Was it possible for him to have established what was not, but not possible for him to grant two natures, of light and darkness, to the world? Would the Lord, the origin of contraries, not be powerful, who is from himself that he might be?

Cease, Justin, cease to pursue with diligent care the barbarism of that vanity, and as a Roman man, strive to be removed from the Persian or Armenian sacrilege. For it is in no way fitting for darkness or the devil, the authors of Mani, to dwell in the glory of eternal life in the kingdoms of true light. And vainly have you until now weakened the members of the flesh, as you say, by constant fasting, thinking yourself that the juices of the nourished body hinder the merits and nature of the soul, and that you are weighed down by the grossness of distended fat and the mass of their bellies, if after this labor of fasts you return to your creator, whom you call either the devil or the outer darkness. I judge it better and plainly declare that you should confess your omnipotent God to be the creator, so that you may truly be a temple of God, as the Apostle Paul declares, saying: "You are the temple of God, and the spirit of God dwells in you" (1 Cor. 3:16). But if you are deprived of this honor, so that you are neither a temple of God nor does his spirit dwell in you, then Christ came not as the Savior of man, but as a thief; which indeed divine law forbids to say, and the eternity of his majesty does not admit. For if we are not his temple, and his spirit is not in us, what is he to us? For if we are his, we are his in both respects, both soul and body, and that is true and catholic, uttered by a holy mouth: "God is all in all" (1 Cor. 15:28), who is one and alone the beginning, omnipotent without beginning, and the whole of the universe, infinite through all things.

To whom is honor and glory.