Contra Haeresim Nestorianam Impii Nestorianii Sermones

BOOK ONE,

In which are contained thirteen sermons of Nestorius, with one of Proclus; three letters of the same Nestorius, with four of St. Cyril; one letter of Mercator, on the heresy of Nestorius; excerpts of St. Cyril from the works of Nestorius.

PREFACE OF MARIUS MERCATOR, SERVANT OF CHRIST, TO THE VARIOUS SERMONS OF THE IMPIOUS NESTORIUS ON THE INCARNATION OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST,

translated from Greek, with the letters and chapters of the same Nestorius and Cyril, excerpted by St. Cyril from various books of Nestorius.

Marius Mercator, servant of Christ, to his fellow reader, greeting of equal faith in the Lord.

Certain blasphemous sayings or writings of Nestorius, formerly bishop of the city of Constantinople, addressed to the people, I have taken care to translate from Greek into Latin speech, stirred by zeal for the catholic faith, so that they might be known and avoided by the faithful brothers of my tongue; in these I, as translator, have endeavored to render word for word, as far as could be done, lest I be first proved a falsifier rather than afterward a true interpreter.

Grant pardon, then, pious reader, if either my speech is less polished or the novelty of words presumed upon anywhere has perhaps struck your ear; I have chosen to be exposed to the tongues of detractors rather than to be pressed away from the truth of the meanings, where the whole danger concerns falsehood, to wander further astray.

Let these little eloquent men of ours occupy themselves from this very moment in scrutinizing each of our syllables and sifting our words; I do not care about this, nor do I value it greatly, secure in the knowledge that no one will impose upon me the name of a falsifier on account of this work.

I know also that some faulty expressions will be reproached to us by them, which the force of preserving Greek propriety has wrung from us. Let anyone say what he wishes about us on this point, let him think what pleases him; I rely on the judgment of the wise, to whom, without the allurement and charm of words and scholarly trifles, the simple beauty of truth is always pleasing.

Now this is his first sermon of impiety delivered in the church to the people, in which, having badly stumbled concerning the Lord's incarnation, he fell wretchedly.

THE SERMONS OF THE IMPIOUS NESTORIUS.

SERMON ONE.

On the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The intent of those who have understanding in the Church is the doctrine of piety; and the doctrine of piety is the knowledge of Providence: for he knows God's providence who has known God as the creator of bodies and souls. All, therefore, who worship God without knowing this, are manifestly ignorant of the truth: for they confess that they know God, but in deeds, as it is written, they deny him (Tit. 1:16).

But it is fitting that the creator take care of those whom he created; it is fitting that the lord impart solicitude to those over whom he rules; it is fitting that the father of a household be the defender of his own house.

Our life is unequal to the dignity of so great a governance: God the craftsman fashions me in the maternal womb, and in those secret recesses of my mother's entrails the first and highest guardianship is to preserve me. I am born, and I find fountains of milk. I begin to have need of the cutting of foods, and I am found armed with certain knives, namely teeth. I act the man, and creation is made tributary to me: for the earth feeds me from below, and the sun kindles a lamp for me from heaven, the spring season allots me flowers, summer brings me ears of grain, winter generates rains for me, autumn pays down its tribute in wine.

How unequal we consider life to be, consisting as it does of poverty and riches! For mortals could not otherwise have been sustained. For see in these very things how great is our protection. The easy rotting of grain compels the rich man, through fear of corruption, to sell to the needy; the changeable nature of wine compels its owner to enter into trade through dread of loss. Gold is therefore incorruptible and resistant to time, because when it is retained it harms the poor in no way. For what evils do riches cause, if they restrain their gold, when they are compelled to sell those things by which they feed those whom they protect?

The human race was honored with ten thousand gifts, and adorned with the last and final gift of the Lord's Incarnation. For since man is the image of the divine nature, and the devil drove and cast this image down into corruption, the King grieved for it as for his own statue, and renews the corrupted likeness, fashioning nature from the Virgin without seed, just as Adam, who was himself also formed without seed, and he works the restoration of the human race through a man, since, he says, through a man came death, and through a man the resurrection of the dead (1 Cor 15:12).

Let them hear these things who, blinded in the dispensation of the Lord's renewal, do not understand, nor what they are saying, nor the things about which they make assertions: who, as we have just learned, frequently ask one another in turn whether she should be called—that is, the woman who gave birth to God, or the bearer of God, Mary—or rather, that is, the bearer of a man. Does God have a mother? Then the paganism that introduces mothers to the gods is excusable. Paul, then, is a liar when he speaks of the Godhead of Christ and says, without father, without mother, without record of generation.

No, excellent sir, Mary did not give birth to God. For what is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is of the Spirit is spirit. The creature did not give birth to him who is uncreated; the Father did not beget the Word of God newly from the Virgin: for in the beginning was the Word, as John says. The creature did not give birth to the Creator, but gave birth to a man, the instrument of the Godhead; the Holy Spirit did not create the Word of God: for what is born of her is of the Holy Spirit; but a temple was fashioned for God the Word, in which he might dwell, from the Virgin.

God was indeed incarnate, but he did not die; rather, he raised up the one in whom he was incarnate. He stooped down to lift up what had fallen, but he himself did not fall. The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men; that is, he who stoops to lift up the one who fell is blamed as though he himself had fallen. God saw the fallen nature, and by the power of the Godhead he took hold of it as it lay crushed, and holding it crushed and remaining what he was, he raised it on high. For example, consider what is said: if you wish to lift up one who lies prostrate, do you not touch body with body, and by joining yourself to him raise up the crushed man, and thus, joined to him, remain what you were? So also understand that mystery of the incarnation.

Because of the garment he uses, I honor what he uses; because of what is hidden, I adore what is seen outwardly—God is inseparable from him who appears outwardly.

How, then, shall I dare to separate the honor and dignity of him who is not divided? I divide the natures, but I join them in reverence.

Attend to what is said. It is not by himself God who was formed in the womb; for if it were so, we would truly be worshippers of a man. But because God is in the one assumed, from him who assumed, the one assumed has been called and is called God.

God formed the Lord's incarnation. Let us tremble before the form that bore God with one and equal reverence as we do the Word God, as a truly inseparable image of the Divinity, as the image of the hidden Judge. Let us confess and adore him as twofold: one is twofold in natures, one because of unity. Hear Paul proclaiming both things—both the eternity of the Godhead of the Only-begotten and that the dignity of the fellowship or conjunction has been made one: Jesus, he says, is the same yesterday and today and forever. Amen.

SERMON II.

On the doctrine, or rather on the unconfused conjunction of the two natures in Christ, and the communion of names, as it were against the Apollinarists.

Cyril teaches that this was delivered in the church (Epistle to Acacius of Melitene): the titles of the excerpts of the Council of Ephesus show that it was inscribed concerning the doctrine. That by the name of doctrine is understood—and indeed the knowledge of—both the humanity and the Divinity of Christ, the opening words declare. That the sequence of the parts was not devised by us at our own discretion, but is true, anyone will easily know who has compared with one another the passages from which the individual parts were taken.

I do not approve our zeal toward me by acclamations; but I praise your desire concerning the doctrines, and that you have been mindful of the Godhead and the manhood of the Lord.

And after a few words: I see that the peoples possess indeed much reverence and a most abundant piety, but are blinded by ignorance. Yet this is not the fault of the common people; but, to speak with modesty, it is because your teachers have not had the time to set before you anything more carefully and more clearly even concerning the doctrines.

You remember, of course, all the things I have often said to you when I distinguished the two natures in Christ the Lord: for there are two, if you look to the nature; if to the dignity, one. For the authority of the natures is one, on account of the conjunction; the natures indeed always remaining in their own order, but by dignity conjoined, as I have already said, into a single authority.

Therefore I wish you to give your support, or rather your assent, more cautiously: there is no division, neither of the conjunction, nor of the power, nor of the sonship, nor of this, which is Christ. In these there is no division; but in the Godhead and the manhood there is division. Christ, according as He is Christ, is undivided; and the Son, according as He is the Son, is undivided. For we do not have two Christs or two sons; nor is there with us a first Christ and a second; nor one and another; nor again one Son and again another Son; but the same one is double, not in dignity, but in nature.

But just as we call God the maker of all things, and call Moses God—for "I have made you," he says, "a god to Pharaoh" (Exod. 7:1)—and Israel the Son of God—for "Israel," he says, "is my firstborn son" (Exod. 4:22)—and just as we call Saul christ—"I will not," he says, "put forth my hand against him, because he is the Lord's christ" (1 Sam. 24:7)—and likewise Cyrus: "Thus says," he says, "the Lord to my christ Cyrus" (Isa. 45:1)—and the holy one of Babylon: "For I," he says, "command these sanctified ones, and I lead them" (Isa. 13:3)—so we call him Lord, and Christ, and God, and Son, and holy; but the sharing of names is similar, yet the dignity is not the same.

Whenever, then, holy Scripture is about to speak either of the generation of Christ from the blessed Virgin, or of his death, it nowhere says "God," but either "Christ," or "Jesus," or "Lord"; since these three indicate two natures—now this one, now that one, now both. And what I say is this: whenever Scripture recounts to us the generation from the Virgin, what does it say? "God sent his Son" (Gal. 4:4); it does not say, "God sent the Word"; but it uses that name which indicates two natures. For because the Son is both man and God, it says: "God sent his Son, made of a woman"; so that when you hear "made of a woman," you may immediately reckon that the name used indicates two natures, and you may call the generation from the blessed Virgin that of the Son.

For the Virgin bore the Son of God; for since the Son of God is twofold in natures, she bore indeed the Son of God, because she bore the man who is the Son of God, on account of the Son of God conjoined to him.

We have declared that in the nativity from Christ's mother the Virgin, divine Scripture places the name of the Son. Now hear also in the death, and see whether the name of God is anywhere placed, so that we may introduce a passible God. "When we were enemies," he says, "we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son" (Rom. 5:10); he does not say, through the death of God the Word.

God the Word indeed existed before the incarnation, both Son and God with the Father; but in the last times he took the form of a servant: yet since he was also Son beforehand, and is so called after the assumption, he cannot be called a divided Son, lest we establish two sons; but because he is conjoined to him who was Son from the beginning, he cannot undergo division with respect to the dignity of sonship. With respect to the dignity of sonship, I say, not with respect to the natures; therefore also God the Word is named Christ, because he has a perpetual conjunction with Christ; nor does it happen that God the Word does anything without the humanity; for it has been brought to the highest conjunction, yet not to deification, as the wise among the more recent dogmatists assert.

So too we call Christ according to the flesh God, on account of the conjunction which he has with God the Word, knowing that the man who appears is [what he is]. Hear Paul proclaiming both: From the Jews, he says, is Christ according to the flesh, who is above all gods. First he confesses the man, then, by conjunction to God, he calls him who appears God, lest anyone think that Christianity is a worshipper of a man.

Hear also this name. Lord is used sometimes of the humanity of Christ, sometimes of his Divinity, sometimes of both. As often as you shall eat the bread and drink the cup, you shall announce the death of the Lord. Hear from the preceding words the ignorance of those who object, that they read the greatest benefit of this mystery to be, and of what it brings commemoration to men; and hear not me saying this, but the blessed Paul: As often as you shall eat this bread; he did not say, as often as you shall eat this Divinity, but as often as you shall eat this bread. See that it is set forth concerning the Lord's body: As often as you shall eat this bread, of which the body itself is the antitype. Let us see, therefore, whose death. As often as you shall eat this bread and drink this cup, you shall announce the death of the Lord. Hear more openly in what follows, until he comes. But who will come? They shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with great glory.

And, what is greater, the prophet showed him more plainly as he was coming, before the apostles, and cries out concerning the Jews, saying: They shall look upon him whom they pierced. What then is that which was pierced? The side. But the side is not God's, but a man's.

Let us therefore preserve the unconfused conjunction of the natures; let us confess God in the man; let us worship the man who is to be adored, by a certain divine conjunction, together with God Almighty.

Say of the one who assumed that he is God; add of the one assumed that he is the form of a servant; then bring in the dignity of the conjunction, that the authority of the two is common, and that the dignity of the two is the same; and, with the natures remaining, confess the unity.

HOMILY III.

Delivered by Nestorius as though against the Arians and Macedonians, but in reality against the catholics who defend the true union of the natures in Christ.

Devising a greater injury against Christ, they cut the Holy Spirit off from the divine nature—the Spirit who formed his humanity in the Virgin's womb: for, says Scripture, that which is born in her is of the Holy Spirit; who according to righteousness reformed what was formed: for, he says, he was manifested in the flesh, justified in the spirit; who made him terrible and formidable to demons: for, he says, I cast out demons by the Spirit of God; who fashioned his flesh as a temple: for, he says, I saw the Spirit descending like a dove and remaining upon him.

(Acts 1:32); who gave him ascension into heaven: For, the Scripture says, commanding the apostles whom he chose through the Holy Spirit, he was lifted up into heaven (Acts 1:32). This Spirit, I say, who gave such great glory, is asserted by these men to be the servant of Christ.

But how is he a servant, who cooperates with the Son and the Father? For if anyone should ask about the works of the Spirit, he will find them neither distant nor dissimilar from the works of the Father and the Son; not because the one Godhead is divided, but because divine Scripture distributes the things that belong to one power among the individual substances, so that the likeness of the Trinity may be demonstrated. Consider this, beginning from the works done in his own time: The Word of God was made flesh, and dwelt among us (John 1:14). The Father made the man he assumed to sit beside himself: For the Lord said to my Lord: Sit at my right hand (Ps. 109:1). The Spirit glorified the glory of him who was assumed: For when the Spirit of truth shall come, he will glorify me (John 16:4).

Do you wish that we add yet another working of the Trinity to these? The Son dwelt in a body. The Father commended him when he was baptized. The Spirit formed him in the Virgin. The Son chose the apostles: I, he says, chose you (John 15:19). The Father sanctified them: Father, he says, sanctify them in your truth (John 17:17). The Spirit made them orators (Acts 2:4).

And these men (the Arians), although in their madness they make the Word God less than the majesty of the Father's Deity, nevertheless do not confess him to be a new thing; but these men (the Nestorians) pronounce him also to be second and later than blessed Mary, and assign a temporal mother to the Divinity that is the maker of the ages; indeed, they do not even concede that she is the mother of Christ. For if it was not a human nature, but God the Word, whom she was bearing, then she who gave birth is by no means found to be the mother of him who was born; for how could anyone be his mother, who is alien to the nature of the one who gave birth? But if she is called a true mother by them, then he who was brought forth is not of the nature of the Divinity, but a man; since it belongs to every mother to bear one consubstantial with herself.

Therefore she will not be a mother who did not give birth to one consubstantial with herself. Therefore, because she is called mother by them, she gave birth to one who is similar according to substance. But who will be similar to him according to substance? Doubtless the one who came into being by the working of the Holy Spirit: For what is born in her is of the Holy Spirit (Matt. 1:20); with whom the Word, God, was unceasingly present.

Therefore the Word, God, was not born of Mary, but remained in the one who was born of her. He did not have his beginning from the Virgin, but was inseparably joined at all times to the one who, growing gradually through the months, was formed in the Virgin's womb. Yet it is one thing to say: He remains with the one who was born; and another thing to say that the one who remains with the one born is the very one for whom the course of months would have been needed in order to be born.

When Nestorius in the midst of the Church was employing profane novelties of words (by which he also attacked the twofold nativity of Christ), a certain man, truly upright, who was still among the laity but had nevertheless gathered for himself admirable learning, moved by fervent and religious zeal, and crying out in a rather loud voice, said: The very Word, he says, who existed before the ages also underwent a second generation, that is, the one according to the flesh, and from a woman.

When the people were in an uproar over these things, and the greater and sounder part was extolling him with the highest praises, as a pious and wise man above all, and not unskilled in right doctrines, while others nonetheless were raging against him, he (Nestorius) interposed himself, and presently approved those whom he had ruined by his teaching; but he sharpened his tongue against him who had not endured his doctrines, and against the holy Fathers who had established for us the pious definition of the faith, and he says:

I rejoice, seeing your zeal; for from this very source those things which have been shamefully said by that wretched man can be clearly refuted. For those who have two generations must necessarily have two sons; but the Church acknowledges one Son, the Lord Christ himself.

But we ought to know what has just now come to mind from the Council of Nicaea, which nowhere dared to say that God the Word was born of the virgin Mary; for it says: We believe in one Father almighty, and in one Lord Jesus Christ. Attend, because when the Fathers had first set down Christ, which demonstrates the conjunction of two natures, they did not say, one God the Word; but they took a name that would signify both, so that by descending, when you hear of death, you may not be disturbed by any novelty, and when you hear of him crucified and buried, as if the Divinity suffered in this way, you may not be wounded by the hearing.

Then let us see what they add next. We believe also in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten of the Father, who for our sake descended and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit. They did not say that he was born of the Holy Spirit. See how they interpret "descended," in that they said he was made man. We say, they claim, that God was incarnate, not that the divine nature took on change into flesh, but demonstrating the indwelling which he bore in a man.

And after some things: Hold fast to this, because, omitting to say, We believe in God the Word, his only-begotten Son, they said: We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, consubstantial with the Father, true God from true God, through whom all things were made, who for us men and for our salvation descended, and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit, of the Virgin Mary, and was made man. Nowhere did they say, he was born. Why, do we suppose? So that they would not introduce two births of the Divinity.

And after some things: for thus the Scripture says: God sent his Son, made of a woman, made under the law (Gal. 4:4). Here indeed he demonstrates two natures. But what happened only concerning the man, he relates. Certainly demand from the contentious one who was made under the law. God the Word? By no means.

What then were we saying? Do not fear to take Mary your wife; for what is born (whether we say born or made, it does no harm to the sense), for what is born in her is of the Holy Spirit (Matt. 10:20). If we say that God the Word was born in the womb (for it is one thing to be together with the one being born, another to be born), for what, he says, is born in her is of the Holy Spirit, that is, the Holy Spirit created what is in her. The Fathers therefore saw, as those knowing the holy Scriptures, that if we say that he who was incarnate was born, God the Word will be found to be the Son of the Holy Spirit, or to have two Fathers. But if we say he was made, God the Word will be found to be a creature of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, fleeing the expression of generation, they said thus: Who descended for our salvation and was incarnate. What is incarnate? Not converted from Divinity into flesh.

In that they said, incarnate of the Holy Spirit, they followed the evangelist; for when the evangelist had come to the Word, he refrained from speaking of the generation of the Word, and spoke of the incarnation. Hear: And the Word was made flesh (John 1:14); he did not say: the Word was made through the flesh. For wherever either the apostles or the evangelists make mention of the Son, they say born of a woman. Observe, I ask, where they say the name of the Son, they say that what was born was born of a woman. But where they make mention of the Word, no one dares to speak of a generation through the humanity. Hear the blessed John the evangelist, when he had come to the Word and his. Hear what he says: The Word was made flesh; that is, he assumed flesh; and dwelt among us; that is, he put on our nature. And we saw his glory, the glory of the Son; he did not say: We saw the generation of the Word.

And after some things: But since, if they had said: We believe in one God the Word, it would have come about that death was attributed to the divine nature; therefore they take a common name, namely Jesus Christ, so that they might signify both that he died and that he did not die. And so it is just as if someone should say, that man has died, although the soul is immortal; yet because he has spoken a name that signifies two natures, both the body which dies and the immortal soul, therefore there is no danger in that word; for both are called man, both the body and the soul. So therefore that great chorus also spoke concerning Christ.

The Nicene Creed, which is also the Constantinopolitan.

We believe in one God, the Father almighty, creator of all things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, born of the Father, that is, from the substance of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father: through whom all things were made, both those in heaven and those on earth.

Who for us men and for our salvation descended, and was incarnate, and became man, and suffered, and on the third day rose again; ascended to the heavens, about to come to judge the living and the dead.

And in the Holy Spirit.

But those who say: There was a time when he was not, and before he was born, he was not: or that he is from things that do not exist, or from another substance or essence: or who assert that the Son of God is subject to change or alteration; these the catholic and apostolic Church anathematizes.

The Antiochene Creed.

I believe in one and only true God, the Father almighty, creator of all visible and invisible creatures.

And in our Lord Jesus Christ, his only-begotten Son, and the firstborn of all creation, born of him before all ages, and not made, true God from true God, through whom both the ages were compacted together and all things were made.

Who for our sake came, and was born of the virgin Mary, and was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and was buried, and on the third day rose again according to the Scriptures, and ascended into the heavens, and will come again to judge the living and the dead.

THE EPISTLE of Marius Mercator On the difference between the heresy of Nestorius and the doctrines of Paul of Samosata, Ebion, Photinus, and Marcellus.

Marius Mercator, servant of Christ, to his fellow servant the reader, greeting.

1.d This doctrine, no less impious than vain, is that of Paul of Samosata and of Nestorius.

Nestorius, concerning the Word of God—not indeed as Paul understands it, who defines the Word as not a substantive but a prolative power of God, effective—nevertheless the same Nestorius does not confess concerning the substantive Word that the Son of God is naturally [Son]; but he says, cleverly indeed, though not expressly, that the Son is not from eternity, but only the Word, which abiding in the substance of the Father is God consubstantial, as the Greeks say; but he asserts that that one is and ought to be called the Son who was born of Mary.

And so he divides the eternal from the temporal; assigning to that God and Word of God the things that are of majesty, but to this other the things that are of human infirmity; and on account of the indivisible and inseparable connection, he says that he was considered worthy of the appellation Son of God, inasmuch as he has this very thing by merits and by adoption, not by nature.

But when it is objected to him by the catholics, why through this understanding he holds that there are two Christs and two Sons, he himself answers on his own behalf thus: I, he says, define one Christ, who is to be called anointed from the chrism; that this one same person is the Son of God, because, as was said above, he is joined to God the Word in an indivisible fellowship; sometimes, on account of this very inseparable conjunction or connection, even that Word is jointly named with the same titles, which are wholly alien to his nature; and finally that this Jesus Christ, by the merit of his singular birth and incomparable life, was held worthy, as a temple, of the whole fullness of divinity, and to be inhabited by this God and Word of God.

In this, therefore, he is joined with Paul of Samosata, in that he separates the inhabitant and the habitation according to merits, dividing what is proper to each of them, from the diversity of nature; which indeed is common to both of them with Ebion, and Photinus, and Marcellus of Galatia.

But in that he confesses the substantial Word of God, and asserts that God is with the Father from eternity, he rightly disagrees with the aforementioned and is joined to the right faith.

But in that he again says that the same Word is not by nature the Son of God the Father, but only the Word, as we have set forth above, and in Christ the Lord he divides the merits of each substance, he incurs the great crime of impiety, and on this account, as an alien and stranger, he has been rightly condemned by the ecclesiastical faith.

HOMILY OF PROCLUS, bishop of Cyzicus, delivered while Nestorius was presiding in the great church of Constantinople, on the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, that the blessed virgin Mary is the God-bearer, and that he who was born of her is neither God only nor a mere man, but Emmanuel, God and man without confusion and without change.

Translated, as it seems, by Marius Mercator.

The virginal solemnity today, brothers, summons our tongue to proclamation, and the present festival becomes, as it were, a provider of benefit for those who have assembled, and very fittingly so. For it has as its subject chastity, and the glory of the female sex, on account of her who in time is a mother, and always a virgin.

For behold, both earth and sea offer gifts to the Virgin: the one calmly spreads its back beneath the waves; the other directs the footsteps of those who walk without hindrance. Let nature rejoice, let women be honored, let humanity lead the dance, let virgins be glorified: for where sin abounded, grace superabounded (Rom 5:20). Blessed Mary has called us together, the immaculate vessel of virginity, the paradise of the rational second Adam, the handiwork of the union of natures, the celebration of the saving exchange, the bush that the fire of the divine birth did not burn, truly the light cloud that bore him who is above the cherubim with a body. O most pure fleece of the heavenly rain, with which the shepherd was clothed as with a sheep!

Mary, mother and handmaid, virgin and heaven, the only bridge of God to men, the web of the awesome dispensation, in which the tunic of the ineffable incarnation was woven, whose master-weaver is the Holy Spirit; the weaver, the power from on high that overshadows; the garment, the covering of the old Adam; the thread, the precious thread from the immaculate Virgin; the shuttle, the immeasurable grace of the one who puts it on; the craftsman, the Word who by obedience leapt into it. Who has seen, who has heard that the uncircumscribed God dwelt in a womb, and that the womb of a virgin contained him whom heaven could not contain?

God was born of a woman, but not naked; and a man was born, but not pure; and he who was born showed the gate of salvation, the gate of ancient sin: for where the serpent poured out poison through disobedience, there the Word, entering through obedience, formed a living temple. Whence the first disciple of sin, Ham, emerged, thence Christ, the liberator of our race, sprang forth without seed.

The lover of mankind did not blush at a woman's childbirth, for the business being conducted was that of life. He was not defiled by dwelling in the womb, which he himself had created without dishonor. If the mother did not remain a virgin, then the man who was born is pure, and the birth was not wonderful; but if she remained a virgin even after giving birth, then he was born from her ineffably, who entered through closed doors without hindrance, whose conjunction of natures Thomas recognized and exclaimed, saying: My Lord and my God (John 20:28).

Do not be ashamed, O man, of the birth; for it has itself become for us the occasion of salvation. If he had not been born of a woman, he would by no means have died; if he had not died, he would by no means have destroyed through death him who holds the empire of death (Heb. 2:14), that is, the devil. It is no injury to an architect to remain in the things which he himself built; the clay does not defile the potter who renews what he had formed: so it does not defile the undefilable one to come forth from the womb of the Virgin; for she, while he was forming her, was not defiled, and passing through her he was not polluted.

O use her, in whom the safeguard of common liberty has been composed! O womb, in which weapons have been forged against death! O field, in which Christ, the farmer of nature, has sprouted like an ear of grain without seed! O temple, in which God has been made a priest, not changing nature, but, for the sake of mercy, clothing himself in him who is according to the order of Melchisedech!

The Word was made flesh, even though the Jews do not believe in the birth. God has put on the form of a man, even though the pagans disparage the miracle; for this is why the mystery is both a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles, because the miracle is beyond reason. If the Word had not dwelt in the womb, the flesh would by no means sit upon the throne. If it were an injury to God to enter the womb, it would also be an injury to the angels to minister to men.

He who is according to nature, inasmuch as he is God, was made for the sake of mercy. Christ was not made God by advancement—far be it—but for the sake of compassion, as we believe, he was made man. We do not preach a deified man, but we confess an incarnate God. He wrote his own handmaid as his mother. He who according to essence is without a mother is according to dispensation without a father: for how is he, according to Paul, without father and without mother? If he is a mere man, he is not without a mother; if he is God bare and simple, he is not without a father: but now the same one is both, without a mother indeed as the fashioner; without a father, however, as the one fashioned.

Be ashamed, at least, of the archangel's name, O man; the one who announced the good news to Mary is called Gabriel. But what does Gabriel mean? God and man. The name came first, so that the dispensation might be believed.

Learn the reason for his presence, and glorify the power of the incarnate one. The human race owed much, and was failing to meet its debt. Through Adam we wrote down every sin, and the devil kept us as slaves; he brought out our instruments, using our much-suffering body in place of documents; the wicked forger of passions stood by, hammering out the debt against us and demanding judgment. It was necessary, then, that one of two things happen: either that death be brought in by judgment, because all have sinned; or that such a one be given as compensation, who would be the justification of the whole reckoning. And indeed a man could not save, for he was subject to the debt; an angel could not redeem, for he fell short in the price of liberation; it was necessary that the one who was without sin die for sinners; for this alone was left as the solution to evil.

What then? He who had brought the whole of nature into being out of nothing, who failed in no gift of goodness, devised both a most certain life for those condemned to death and a most fitting dissolution of death. For he becomes man, as he himself knew (for speech cannot interpret the miracle), and by that he dies, in that he was made man; and by that he sets free, in that he had existed before, as Paul says: In whom we have redemption, through his blood the forgiveness of sins.

O wondrous thing! For others he procured immortality, for he himself was immortal; for such another according to the dispensation neither was, nor was made, nor is, nor will be; he alone is the one born of the Virgin, God and man, having a dignity not only such as can be set in comparison by way of valuation against the multitude of the guilty, but surpassing all judgments. In this indeed, that he was the Son, preserving that which is unchangeable toward the Father; in this, that he was the Creator, having that which belongs to power without fail; in this, that he loves to have mercy, dispensing the things that belong to compassion without any public contribution; finally, in this, that he is a priest, offering that which was suitable for representation: of which things no one will find anything similar, or ever near in anything.

For attend to his love for men. Voluntarily sentenced to death, he dissolved the death that stood against those who crucified him, and turned the wickedness of those who killed him into the salvation of the wicked.

To save a mere man, then, was not possible, for he himself also needed a savior, according to Paul saying: For all have sinned, and need the glory of God (Rom. 3:23). But because sin handed man over as guilty to the devil, the devil drove the man handed over to death: the things concerning us were in great danger, and the dissolution of death was impossible.

Those who were sent as physicians accused; what then? When the prophets saw that the wound was beyond human skill, they cried out to the heavenly physician: and one indeed said: Lord, incline your heavens, and come down (Ps. 144:5). Another: Heal me, Lord, and I shall be healed (Jer. 17:14). Another cried out: Stir up your power, and come, that you may deliver us (Ps. 80:2). Another said: Woe is me! my soul, for the merciful one has perished from the earth. Another said: If truly God has dwelt among men. Another: Let your mercy quickly overtake us, Lord. Again another: God, attend to my help, Lord, hasten to help me (Ps. 70:1). Another: He who is to come will come, and will not delay (Hab. 2:3). Another: I have gone astray like a sheep that has perished; seek your servant (Ps. 119:176).

He did not, then, despise the oppression of human nature—he who by nature is King and God; but he came who was always present, and paid the redemption with his own blood, and gave for the human race a compensation to death, in that he was clothed with a body from the Virgin, and redeemed the world from the curse of the law; whence Paul cries out: Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law (Gal. 3:13).

He, therefore, who redeemed us is not a mere man, O Jew—for the nature of men was enslaved to sin; but neither is he God bare and naked, O Manichaean—for he had a body; unless he had put me on, he would not have saved me. But he who in the womb of the Virgin had passed sentence, was clothed with the guilty one, and there a fearful exchange was made: for giving the Spirit, he received flesh—the same one both with the Virgin and from the Virgin; and the Spirit indeed overshadowed her, but he himself was made flesh from her.

If Christ is one and the Word of God another, there will no longer be a Trinity, but a Quaternity. Do not tear apart the tunic of the dispensation, which is woven from above, lest you be a disciple of Arius; impiously he divides the essence; do not share in his unity, that you may not be divided from God.

Tell me, then, who appeared to those sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death (Luke 1:79)? A man? And how could that be, if he was dwelling in darkness, according to Paul who says: Who has delivered us from the power of darkness (Col. 1:13); and again: For you were once darkness (Eph. 5:8). Who, then, shone upon us? Let David teach you, saying: The Lord is God, and he has shone upon us (Ps. 117:27); the natures came together, and the union remained without confusion.

He came to save, but it was also necessary that he suffer: how, then, could both be accomplished? A mere man could not save, a bare God could not suffer; he who is God by nature became man, and by what he was he saved; by what he became, he endured.

Therefore, when the Church saw that the Synagogue had crowned him with thorns, lamenting the presumption, she said: Daughters of Jerusalem, go out and see the crown with which his mother crowned him (Song

For he himself wore a crown of thorns, that he might dissolve the sentence of thorns; he himself was in the bosom of the Father and in the womb of the Virgin, between the arms of his mother and above the wings of the winds: above he was adored by angels, and below he reclined with tax collectors; the Seraphim did not behold him for reverence, and Pilate questioned him; a servant struck him, and creation was held fast; he was fastened to the cross, and the throne of glory was not bare; here he lay in the tomb, and he stretched out heaven like a skin; he was reckoned among the dead, and he despoiled hell; below he was slandered as a deceiver, and above he was glorified by the saints. O wondrous mystery!

I see the miracles, and I proclaim the deity; I behold the sufferings, and I do not deny the humanity; but Emmanuel opened the gates of nature, indeed, as a man; yet he did not break open the virginal enclosure, as God; but he came forth from the womb just as he entered through the ear. He was born just as he was conceived; he entered without suffering, he came forth without corruption, according to the prophet Ezekiel, who says: The Lord turned me toward the way of the outer gate of the sanctuary, which faces toward the East, and this was closed. And the Lord said to me: Son of man, this gate shall be closed, and it shall not be opened: no one shall pass through it, but the Lord God alone shall enter, and it shall be closed (Ezek. 44:1).

Behold the manifest approval of the holy Mother of God Mary; let every contradiction henceforth be dissolved, and let us be enlightened by the teaching of the holy Scriptures, that we may obtain the kingdom of heaven in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

SERMON IV.

On the Incarnation. The first, and delivered extempore, against the panegyric of Proclus on the Virgin.

b. It is not to be wondered at that the peoples who love Christ give their applause to those who devote the service of their speech on behalf of the blessed Mary; for this very thing, that she was made the temple of the Lord's flesh, exceeds all that is most worthy of praise. But your loving-kindness ought to attend to this, lest, while we dwell upon the honor and praise of that blessed one more than is fitting or proper, we seem to confound the dignity of God the Word by making him begotten twice.

And that you may understand the matter, let us employ a simpler discourse, and use an eloquence most easy for all to grasp, so that what is said may not exceed the hearing of the listeners.

Whoever says simply that God was born of Mary, first of all exposes the nobility of the doctrine to the Gentiles, and setting it out in public, presents it as something to be censured and ridiculed; for immediately the pagan, receiving it with reproach because God was born of Mary, will bring an accusation against the Christian: for necessarily the one who says simply that God was born of Mary, and does not [say] that he who was born is God by the conjunction of the two natures, namely the divine and the human, will hear: I cannot adore a God who was born and died and was buried. But the clear division of the doctrine is this: he who was born, and in the course of time needed the stages of growth, and was carried in the womb for the appointed months, has a human nature, but one plainly conjoined to God.

But it is one thing to say that to him who was born of Mary that God was conjoined who is the Word of the Father, which is most clear and firm and beyond reproach among the Gentiles; and another thing to say that the Divinity itself needed a birth running through months: for God the Word is the maker of times, not made in time.

I was greatly astonished at the division made on this point by the preceding teacher, who says (Part 3): "He who was born of a woman is neither God bare nor pure man," because neither ought we to call God bare and in some way unbegotten; for no one begets himself who is older than himself; nor again is humanity to be proclaimed bare, but humanity conjoined to God was begotten.

I wish you to be drawn to that point, you who are intent examiners of religion (for I hold this opinion of you as well as of the Antiochenes)—to that point, then, as I was saying, I wish you to be drawn, because I cannot bear that God has been made a high priest; for if God is both creator and high priest, by whom is the embassy to be presented from high priests?

I have spoken these things to your love, and I would say more, had it not stolen into my mind that I seem to dispute against the teachers of the Church.

I wish you, therefore, to be perspicacious in examining doctrines, and neither to confound the humanity assumed by God the Word, nor to call him who was born a bare man; but neither [to say] that God the Word, tempered or mingled, has lost his own essence.

For this reason, when the disciples were struck with amazement at the time when he was taken up into heaven, and were pondering this within themselves, as far as we may judge: "Has human nature perhaps been dissolved? Does it perhaps remain in heaven in the same essence?"—and while they were astonished at this vision, angels came and said: "This Jesus who is seen, this one who needed the increase of months, this one who died, this one who endured the cross, will come in the same way as you saw him ascending into heaven" (Acts 1:11). And again the blessed Paul in the Acts of the Apostles says: "In the man in whom God has decreed to judge the whole world, giving assurance to all, raising him from the dead" (Acts 17:31). Did God the Word rise from the dead? But if the life-giver was put to death, who will be the one to confer life?

Besides this, we are also greatly reproachable to the Arians on this account; for if we in any way call the Word God born, and simply [call him] so, see what is made of this. You say simply: "God is he who was born of Mary"; immediately the heretic draws the objection, reproving: "Then you accuse us unjustly, when we say that the Son is lesser than the Father and created; since among you also this is in your confession," saying that the Word God is he who was born of Mary.

Hear what the same God the Word himself testifies concerning himself: "Go, report to my brothers: I am going to my Father and your Father, my God and your God" (John 20:17). But when he said this, he who was born of blessed Mary was indeed consubstantial with us in his humanity; but in that he is joined to God, he was far from us, because as God he is better in substance.

Then you will be freed from their blasphemy, and you will set forth the mystery of religion easily and briefly in this way: On the one hand, God the Word is one thing, who was in the temple that the Spirit wrought, and the temple is another thing besides the God who dwells in it. It belongs to the temple to be dissolved by death; but to raise up the temple of the indweller is his own proper work. This is not my word, but it is the voice of the Lord: "Destroy this temple," he says, "and in three days I will raise it up" (John 2:19).

Let us therefore confess the unity of the conjunction, but the natures and substances as twofold, otherwise God the Word will be found to be a creature of the Holy Spirit. For what does the evangelist say? "That which is born in her is of the Holy Spirit" (Matthew 1:20). But if God the Word was bare and alone, he who was born was not—as the evangelist says—a temple created by the Spirit in blessed Mary, and God the Word will be found to be the workmanship of the Holy Spirit.

Let us therefore flee the error of this confusion: let us say that our Lord Christ is twofold according to nature, but one according to that which he is, the Son.

But I have often laughed with joy at certain people who report this to me as well, saying, "The bishop savors the things of Photinus"—not knowing either what they say or about what they make assertions (1 Tim 1:7). For what is said by me is found to be the overthrow of Photinus. For the opinion of Photinus gives a beginning to God the Word from the birth from Mary, whereas I say that God the Word always existed before the ages.

For them, indeed, let the proverbial saying suffice for me: Do not answer a fool according to his folly (Prov 26:4). But I want you to be discerning examiners of doctrines, neither to make use of applause nor to be drawn by the allurements of speech, nor to consider any doctrine, or a reasoned account of novelty, to be presumption, but rather to judge it the glory of truth.

SERMON V.

On God born and the Virgin, which is the second against Proclus.

I have often asked those who defend [the point]: Do you say that the Deity was born of the holy Virgin? At these words they immediately recoil: Who, they say, is afflicted with so great a disease of blasphemy as to say that God himself was created in her whom the Holy Spirit's work made a temple? Then when I add to this: What then is said absurdly by us, when we urge that this word indeed be uttered, but proceed to the meaning common to the two natures? Then indeed they think it blasphemous that we say: Either openly confess that the Divinity was born of blessed Mary; or, if you flee this word as blasphemous, why do you, who say the same things as I, pretend that you do not say them?

If you brought forth the God-bearer by simple faith, there would be no ill will in my speaking as I search out the sense of the word; but because I see you, under the pretext of honor toward blessed Mary, confirming the blasphemy of the heretics, for that reason I cautiously guard beforehand the utterance of the word, since I hold suspect the danger lurking in that word.

To say this more clearly, and so that it can be more easily grasped by those men who have followed Arius and Eunomius and Apollinarius and the whole chorus of every family of this kind, they have striven to introduce the term, so that by a certain mixing together, with the two natures in no way distinguished, nothing of the things that are more lowly would be accepted as said of the humanity; and thus a place would already lie open for them against the Divinity itself, as though all things were said of one, not by reason of the dignity that follows from that conjunction itself, but by reason of its nature. For there is one Christ and one Lord; but in Christ, in the only-begotten, I say, Son, both the name of Christ and of the Son is spoken now of the divinity, now of the humanity and the divinity.

I have said already rather often: If anyone among you is simpler, or among any others whatsoever, and takes pleasure in this word, there is no envy in me concerning the word, only let him not make the Virgin a goddess.

If Christ is God, they say, and Christ was born of the blessed Mary, why is the Virgin not the Mother of God? I hide nothing of what is objected by them. For the lover of truth brings against himself all the things that can be said by falsehood. The infant is formed in the womb, but as to the figure it has received, it does not yet have a soul; but when it has been formed, then the soul is informed by God.

Therefore, just as a woman gives birth to a body, but God bestows the soul; and she is not for that reason called the mother of the soul, because she gave birth to one who has a soul, but rather the mother of a man: so too the blessed Virgin, even though she gave birth to a man, with the Word of God passing through him at the same time, is not for that reason the mother of God; for the Divinity of the Word did not take its beginning from the blessed Virgin, but was God by nature.

Concerning blessed John the Baptist it is proclaimed by the holy angels that the child was to be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother's womb (Luke 1:15); and so blessed John the Baptist was brought forth having the Holy Spirit. What then? Will you call Elisabeth herself the mother of the Spirit? Turn your attention here, and if there are any among you who are disturbed by what is said, as though by things unheard of and unusual, pardon their ignorance.

Hear also another testimony of theirs: for if they had known, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory. Behold, he calls him the Lord of glory. He does not call his humanity this, but his Divinity; and this is the work of men who tear apart that supreme union: for when you say that this one is not the Lord, but that one is, you make Christ a bare man. What then do you say under the person of the Church, heretic? Is he himself also a man, the Lord, or not? If indeed he is the Lord, the things that are said apply to both in common. If not, do not you, when you make Christ a bare and simple man, cast this reproach upon me. Let us hear blessed Paul openly crying out who it is that was crucified.

Hear, then, his voice most plainly: For indeed he was crucified out of weakness, but he lives by the power of God. If he was crucified out of weakness, who is it that was made weak, heretic? Was it God the Word?

See what you are saying, heretic. I do not begrudge the name to the Virgin: for I confess that she who conceived God is to be revered; through whom the Lord of all passed; through whom the sun of righteousness shone forth: for God was the Word, both joined to the man and dwelling in him; but further, I suspect, you look for applause. Have you understood how this that I said—"passed through"? I did not say "came forth," in the sense of "was begotten": for I do not so easily forget my own meaning. That God passed through the Virgin I have been thoroughly taught by Scripture; that he was born, I have not been taught.

Nowhere does divine Scripture assert that God was born of the Virgin, but Jesus Christ, the Son, the Lord. Let us all confess these things: for whoever does not immediately accept what divine Scripture has taught is wretched. Rise, take the child and his mother. This is the voice of angels—no, it is yours. Perhaps the archangel himself knew his generation: Rise, and take the child and his mother; he did not say: Rise and take God and his mother.

SERMON VI.

On the words of the Apostle's Epistle to the Hebrews: Consider the apostle and high priest of our confession, Jesus, etc. (Heb. 3:1).

Hearing the name "apostle" in Christ, they wrongly understand that God the Word is an apostle. Likewise, reading the term "high priest," they imagine that God is the high priest—a wondrous folly. For who, hearing of the office of an apostle, does not at once see that a man is being pointed out? Who, hearing the name of high priest, would call the nature of the Godhead to the ministry of a priest?

For if God is a high priest, who will be the one who ought to be worshiped by his office? If God is to offer sacrifices as a high priest, there will be no one to whom God may be offered. For what is now worthy of the Godhead, if he offers sacrifices to a superior as one inferior?

From what source, then, did God appear to them to be called a high priest, when by sacrifice, according to the rite of the priesthood, he has no need at all for his own advancement? For he is the perpetual possessor of the Godhead. Indeed, chosen from among men and taken up, a high priest is appointed on behalf of men before God (Heb. 5:1).

He did not take hold of angels, but he took hold of the seed of Abraham (Heb. 2:16). Is the Godhead itself the seed of Abraham? Hear also the voice that follows: Therefore it was fitting that he be made like his brothers in all things (Ibid. 17). Is the Godhead? For whom could God the Word have as brothers like himself?

Consider also what is joined to these words: That he might become a merciful and faithful high priest before God; for in that he himself suffered and was tempted, he is able also to bring help to those who are tempted (Ibid. 18). Therefore the one who suffered is that merciful high priest; but the passible temple is not the one who is God the life-giver.

The seed of Abraham is the one who is yesterday and today, according to the voice of the apostle Paul (Heb. 13:8); not the one who said: Before Abraham was, I am (John 8:58). This one is like his brothers in all things (Heb. 2:17); he who took on the brotherhood of human soul and body, not the one who said: Whoever sees me sees also my Father (John 14:9).

But he who is consubstantial with us was sent, and anointed, and proclaiming remission to captives and sight to the blind: for the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me; he has sent me to evangelize the poor, to heal the contrite of heart, to proclaim remission to captives, and sight to the blind (Isa. 61:1).

Moreover, when he was speaking of Christ, that he had been sent to announce remission to captives, the Apostle added this also and said: This one who was made faithful to God as high priest (Heb. 2:17). For he was made this; he had not been it perpetually beforehand. This one advanced gradually, O heretic, into the dignity of high priest. Hear the voice declaring this to you more clearly: Who, he says, in the days of his flesh, offering prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to him who was able to save him from death, was heard because of his reverence; and indeed, though he was the Son, he learned obedience from the things which he suffered, and being made perfect, he became to all who obey him the cause of eternal salvation (Heb. 5:7).

But that which advances gradually is brought to completion, you heretic, of whom Luke also cries out in the Gospel: Jesus advanced in age, and wisdom, and grace (Luke 2:52). To these things Paul also fittingly says: He was made complete for all who obey him the cause of eternal salvation, called by God a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek (Heb. 5:6). This one was joined with Moses in the figure of leading armies; that one was called the seed of Abraham; that one was made like his brothers in all things; that one was made high priest in time; that one was made complete through sufferings; that one, in that in which he suffered, being himself tempted, is able to help those who are tempted; that one was called high priest according to the order of Melchizedek. Why, therefore, do you think differently from Paul? Why, mixing the impassible God the Word with an earthly body, do you make him a passible high priest?

Since, therefore, this one alone is our high priest, compassionate, and kin, and steadfast, never be driven away from faith in him. For he was sent to us from the promised blessing, from the seed of Abraham, as one offering the sacrifice of his body for himself and for his kind.

SERMON VII.

Which is the fourth against Proclus. Against those who, because of the conjunction, either put the divinity of the Word to death or deify the humanity.

I indeed regard the insults of the heretics against me as the contrivances of madmen, and their plots, like the drownings they devise against us in the sea, and their desires for disturbances, and the new devices of persecutions that are being prepared, and the negligence of the needy which they impute to us, and the delirious babblings of others against us—these I laugh at as the croaking of frogs, or certainly I despise them as the darts of infants, or as camps such as the prophet once derided, saying: The arrows of little children have become their wounds (Ps. 63:8).

But nothing is more wretched than that shepherd who glories in the praises of wolves; for if he wishes to please them and chooses to be loved by them, great destruction will come from this upon the sheep. No shepherd, therefore, can please both the wolves and the flocks of sheep; so, as I said before, I will despise their voices, bringing forth against them the words of the Lord: You brood of vipers, how can you speak good things, when you are evil (Matt. 12:34)?

Nevertheless, it is necessary to resist and oppose these opinions by which they are armed against the Lord. For they call the life-giving Godhead mortal, and they dare to drag God the Word into theatrical fables, as if the same one were wrapped in swaddling cloths and died—oh, abomination!—so that the Lord Christ might extend his kindness upon us, he is in danger, in their view, of falling from the dignity of the Godhead.

Hear, most wretched man, and however rabid, admit the care of health for yourself: Pilate did not kill the Godhead, but the garment of the Godhead; God the Word was not wrapped in a linen cloth by Joseph and consigned to burial. For how could he suffer this, who holds the circle of the earth and all who dwell in it like locusts, as the prophet says (Isa. 40:22)?

But who is he who is wrapped in the linens of burial? Hear it proclaimed by the voices of the Gospel: A rich man came from Arimathea, whose name was Joseph, who himself had also been a disciple of Jesus. He approached Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then Pilate ordered the body to be handed over; and Joseph, taking that body, wrapped it in a clean linen cloth and placed it in the tomb (Matt. 27:57). Three times he said "body," and not even once did he mention the Godhead; for the soldiers had not wounded the Godhead with a spear. But what is it that was wounded by them? Let John teach: One, he says, of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear (John 19:34). And hear yet another proof, by which it is established that the Godhead was in no way wounded.

He went forth, it says, immediately blood and water (Ibid.).

He himself did not die, who gives life; for who would then subsist? Who would raise the dead? He came to raise dead men; for he himself is found to bring aid to the dead who lie low; he himself is not, as one lying low, destitute of aid.

God was not changed by conjunction or association with man; for he himself is the one who cries through the prophet: I am, I am, and I am not changed (Mal. iii, 6). And again: But you yourself are the same, and your years shall not fail (Ps. ci, 28). But united to human nature, and binding it in the embraces of his Godhead, he raised it on high, remaining what he was.

For this reason Peter himself, preaching concerning our firstfruits, and declaring that height which God conferred on this visible nature, says: This Jesus God raised up (Act. x, 40). Therefore God did not die, but raised up.

Hear Peter speaking, O Apollinaris. Hear, you too, Arian impiety, along with Apollinaris. This Jesus, he says, God raised up; this one who is obedient; this one whom eyes behold, who was fastened to the wood, who was touched by the hands of Thomas, who cried out to him: Touch and see that a spirit does not have bones and flesh, as you see me having (Luc. xxiv, 39). And made more certain by these words, by the resurrection of his own body that was touched and crucified, he glorified God who did these marvelous things, saying, My God, and My Lord (Joan. xx, 28).

He was not calling "God" that which he had touched; for the Godhead is not traced out by such touching. For if Thomas were to begin to know or learn God the Word by this touching, the Lord would undoubtedly have said to him: Touch and see, for I am spirit and God. But now, on the contrary, he says: Touch and see, for I am not a spirit; for a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see me having (Lk 24:39). Namely me, whom you see to be composed according to what is seen and appears, and whom you perceive to be touchable according to the substance of the body.

For the Godhead of the Father's Word is not, Apollinaris, bones and flesh. Of this touchable one Peter cries out: This Jesus God raised up (Acts 10:40). Therefore he was exalted by the right hand of God, yet not with the Word assisted by the right hand. O Arian madness! Having also received the promise of the Holy Spirit from the Father (Acts 2:33), he poured out this one whom you see and hear.

And hear Paul reasoning about God, and setting forth that unchangeable conjunction of God and man. "Being," he says, "in the form of God, he did not consider it robbery to be equal to God; but he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant" (Philippians 2:6). So also in other places, he says, he spoke to us in the Son, "whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the ages, who is the splendor of his glory" (Hebrews 1:2). Altogether he cautiously calls him Son, and splendor of glory, and positive heir: positive heir indeed according to the flesh; but splendor of the Father's glory according to the Godhead, because even incarnate he did not depart from the likeness which he has with the Father. For this reason Paul also says: "Who is the splendor of his glory"; lest perhaps when someone had heard: "He was in the form of God," he might suspect that he was of a nature that passes and changes.

John indeed, in describing the coeternity of the Word and the Father with each other, used these words: "In the beginning was the Word" (John 1:1), omitting "is"; for he did not say: "In the beginning is the Word, and the Word is with God"; but: "In the beginning the Word was with God, and the Word was God." For it was being asked what was the first existence or essence of him who bore the man.

But Paul narrates at once everything that happened—both the incarnate essence and the unchangeable and ever-abiding union of the incarnate Deity—and for this reason, when he wrote, he cried out: "Let this be understood in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being established in the form of God, emptied himself, taking the form of a servant" (Philippians 2:5). He did not say: "Let this be understood in you which was also in God the Word, who, being established in the form of God, took the form of a servant." But the Apostle, taking the name of Christ as significative of the appellation of the two natures, without danger to himself, names him both the form of a servant and God irreprehensibly, dividing those things which are said to signify the twofold nature; and he preaches this to Christians not only, that Christ is God unchangeable, but also benign, taking the form of a servant, and that he was subsisting as existing, so that you may know he was not changed after the union, but was seen to be at once benign and just: for his death for the impious is without the sin of the flesh; and that he did not shrink from it for his enemies is the grace of inestimable benignity. For scarcely, according to Paul, would anyone die for a just man (Romans 5:7)?

But that the human race should be taken up through a man, and Adam reconciled, is a matter of great circumspection of justice; for it was just that the nature which had offended should be set free, made pleasing to God once again; and it is just to absolve the nature that was once liable, which incurred the debt. For the nature of men owed to God a blameless and faultless manner of life, but it fell short in the payment. For dragging the soul hither and thither by the negligence of passion, they drove it bare of virtues, and those who professed piety and justice were few; and then, in proportion to the poverty of that time, who were there who seemed or were thought to be professors? But the debt was owed throughout the whole world: for, he says, All have sinned, and do need the glory of God (Rom. 3:23). The interest of sin also was growing.

What then did the Lord Christ do? Seeing the human race bound by sins, and unworthy to make repayment, he did not discharge the debt by command, lest kindness should injure justice; and the apostle Paul is a witness of this, crying out: Christ, he says, whom God has set forth as a propitiation through faith in his blood, to show forth his justice (Ibid. 25); so that, he says, the kindness may be shown to be just, not given indiscriminately and at random without judgment. For this reason Christ took up the person of the nature that owed the debt, and through it, as a son of Adam, he repaid the debt.

For it was necessary that the one paying the debt be drawn from the race of him who had once contracted it; the debt from the woman, the discharge from the woman—but learn the debt, that you may learn the repayment.

For the sake of food Adam became a debtor to punishment. Christ paid this in the desert by hungering, spurning the devil's counsel concerning the refreshment of food.

That man fell into the guilt of desiring divinity against God, when he had heard from the devil, "You shall be as gods" (Gen. 3:5), and eagerly seized the food. But Christ discharged this, when the demon promised him power—for he was saying these things to him: "All these things I will give you, if falling down you worship me" (Matt. 4:9)—and, himself rejecting his voice, he answered: "Go, Satan; the Lord your God shall you worship, and him only shall you serve" (ibid., 10).

From disobedience on the tree Adam was a debtor to punishment; Christ also repaid this on the tree, being made obedient (Phil. 2:8). Therefore Paul also says: "The handwriting of our sins, which was contrary to us, he took out of the midst, fastening it to the cross" (Col. 2:14). And he who was repaying for us is Christ; in him our nature was paying its debt, for he had taken up the Person of the same nature whose sufferings he was discharging in his own passion, because we have redemption in his blood, as was said by Paul (Eph. 1:7; Col. 1:14).

See now our nature in Christ pleading its cause before God against the devil, and using these just allegations: I am oppressed by injury, most just judge; the unjust devil assails me and wields against me the evident tyranny of his impotence. Granted that he delivered the first Adam to death, because he was the occasion of his sin; why, O king, did he crucify the second Adam, whom you formed from the Virgin? For what cause did he even hang the robbers together with him? Why was he who committed no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth, reckoned with the wicked? Or is the abominable intent of his perhaps not manifest? Openly he envies me as your image, O Lord. Rushing upon me without any occasion, he strives to overthrow me; but do you grant me yourself as a just judge. You are angry with me for the cause of Adam's transgression; if for his sake you have Adam joined to you without sin, I beseech you to be propitiated. If for that one's sake you delivered me to corruption, for this one's sake let me share in incorruption. The nature of both of them is mine. As I was a partaker of the former's death, so let me also be a partaker of the second's immortal life. I am strengthened by indubitable and invincible allegations. In every way I overcome the adversary. If he raises a dispute concerning the corruption that was brought upon me from Adam, I on the other hand will plead prescription from the life of him who committed no sin. And if he accuses me by that one's disobedience, I will establish him as guilty by this one's obedience.

Christ, speaking of this triumph over the devil's victory, says: Now is the judgment of this world; now the prince of this world shall be cast out (John 12:31). For just as the devil held the guilt of the first-formed man against all his posterity and had an original claim, so when he had gained possession of the guiltless firstfruits of its nature in Christ, our nature, striving against the devil, was conquering by the very defenses on which the adversary presumed; for in Christ it most justly brings forward the guiltless origin of its firstfruits against him, if the devil presses the charges of guilt that came first from Adam. And this is what Paul says: Christ died for our sins; indeed, he who also rose again, who is at the right hand of God, also intercedes for us (Rom 8:34).

For our mass, clothed in Christ, intercedes, wholly free from every sin, and an unjust defense arises against our punishment, which from the beginning that first-formed one brought upon his own kind: this is the occasion of the man he took up, that man might dissolve through the flesh the corruption he deserved through the flesh.

The burial on the third day is of this man, not of the Deity. His feet were stretched with nails. The Holy Spirit formed this one in the womb. Concerning this flesh the Lord said to the Jews: Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up (John 2:19).

Am I alone the one who calls Christ twofold? Does he not himself name both the destroyable temple and the Lord who raises it? But if it was God who was being destroyed (a blasphemy that turns back upon the head of Arius), the Lord would have said: Destroy this God, and in three days he will be raised up; if God was put to death in the tomb, Christ lies when he said: Why do you seek to kill me, a man who has spoken the truth to you (John 8:40)?

But Christ is not a bare man, O slanderer, but at once man and God; yet if he existed only as God, he ought, according to Apollinaris, to have said: Why do you seek to kill me, a God who has spoken the truth to you? But as it is he says: Why do you seek to kill this man, who has been crowned with thorns; this one, who said: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me (Matthew 27:46 ff.)? this one, who endured death for three days?

I adore this one together with the Deity, as a co-worker of divine authority. For let it be manifest, says the Scripture: Men and brethren, that through Christ forgiveness of sins is announced to us (Acts 13:38).

As the instrument of the Lord's goodness I venerate him. For be, it says, kind and merciful to one another, as God also in Christ has forgiven us (Ephesians 4:32).

I honor him as the court of God's counsels: For I would have you know the knowledge of the mystery of God the Father and of Jesus Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Colossians 2:1).

I receive him as the form that pledges for God among us. He who sent me, he says, is true, and I speak these things which I have heard from him (John 8:26).

I bless him as the pledge of eternal peace: For he himself is our peace, who has made both one, and the middle wall of partition, abolishing enmities in his flesh, etc. (Ephesians 2:14).

I venerate him as the propitiation of divine wrath. Christ, he says, God set forth as a propitiation through faith in his blood (Rom 3:25).

I love and revere him as the beginning of immortality for mortals. For he is, it says, the head of the body, the Church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead (Col 1:18).

I embrace him as the mirror of the resplendent Deity. For God, it says, was in Christ reconciling the world to himself (2 Cor 5:19).

I adore him as the living purple of the King. For being, it says, established in the form of God, he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, and was found in fashion as a man (Phil 2:6).

I praise him as the hand of the Deity snatching me from death into life. For when, it says, I am lifted up from the earth, then I will draw all to myself (John 12:32). And who is this who is lifted up, the faithful scribe showing, says: For this he said, signifying by what death he was to die (John 12:33).

I marvel at him as at the door of entrance to divine things. For he says, I am the door; through me whoever has entered will be set free, and will go in and out and find a dwelling (Jn 10:9).

I adore him as the image of the omnipotent Deity. For God, he says, has highly exalted him and given him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of things in heaven, of things on earth, and of things under the earth (Phil 2:9).

Because of the hidden God I adore what is visible to the eyes. God is inseparable. I do not separate the dignity of him who is visible, for he is inseparable; I separate the natures, but I join together the reverence.

He is not God in himself, that which was formed in the womb; he is not God in himself, that which was created by the Holy Spirit; he is not God in himself, that which was buried in the tomb: for thus we would be manifest worshippers of a man and of one dead.

But since God is in the one assumed, from the one assuming he who was assumed is called God, as being joined to the one assuming. Therefore even the demons dread the name of the crucified flesh—of the crucified flesh, that is, joined to him, not suffering with him, knowing him to be God. Therefore this same one who appeared to sight is also to come as judge, because he is joined to the omnipotent Deity. For then, he says, the sign of the Son of man will appear in heaven, and they will see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory (Mt 24:30).

For just as a king, when victory has been won, is seen in the cities with the very arms with which he overcame the enemy in war, and wishes to be conspicuous with them, so too the King, the Lord of all, will come to his own creation with the cross and the flesh, to be seen with those arms by which he overcame impiety, and he will judge the world in the form of a man, by almighty power, according to the proclamation of Paul, who says: God, overlooking the times of ignorance, has now commanded all men to repent; inasmuch as he has appointed a day on which he will judge the world in the man in whom he has established faith for all, raising him from the dead (Acts 17:30). This was said so that no one might suspect that the Deity is dead.

For even if you search the entire New Scripture, you will nowhere find in it that God died; but when it is written, it is assigned either to Christ, or to the Son, or to the Lord. For Christ and Son and Lord, as received in the Scriptures concerning the Only-begotten, is the signification of the two natures; and sometimes indeed it designates the Deity, or the humanity, sometimes both together: for example, when Paul, writing, proclaims: While we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son (Rom 5:10), he shows his humanity. When again he himself says to the Hebrews: God has spoken to us in the Son, through whom he also made the ages (Heb 1:2), he indicates also the Deity of the Son. For the flesh is not the maker of the ages, having been fashioned after many ages.

Behold, a fitting proof of the appellation of the Son of God, both of the Godhead and of the essence of humanity.

Let us now ask whether this name, that is, Christ, is also understood as Son, and whether this very name pertains to designating both natures. Jesus Christ, it says, is the same yesterday and today and forever (Heb. xiii, 8). For just as, being God, he is also the same man, according to Paul, both the last and before the ages; as man indeed, recent; as God, however, before the ages.

It has therefore been shown to you that the appellation of Christ sometimes points to the temple, sometimes to the God who dwells in it. Show where the Lord is also placed in the person of the Son, and now indeed shows that man, now God. Come, it says, see the place where the Lord was laid (Matt. xxviii, 6). And again, the women lamenting that the body of the Lord had been taken away by the Jews as if by theft: They have taken away, says Scripture, my Lord (John xx, 13). And Paul to the Galatians: I saw no other of the apostles, it says, except James the brother of the Lord (Gal. i, 19). And again he himself to the Corinthians: As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord, until he comes (1 Cor. xi, 26). And again: Lord, as I see, you are a prophet (John iv, 19). All these things are proofs of the Lord's incarnation, because neither was God the Word cast into the tomb. For how did he rise again, who sustains the universe by the word of his power, if according to Arius he lay dead?

But neither were the women bewailing the essence of God, as though it had been stolen away from the tomb. For who would suppose that the Godhead could be seized by thieving hands? Nor again did James have him as a brother of the Godhead; nor do we proclaim the death of God the Word, when we are fed with the body and blood of the Lord. For the nature of God receives the sacrifice, it is not itself immolated as a sacrifice; nor is God a prophet, but the giver of prophecy, so that in this place "Lord" is, as I said, an expression of the flesh, as having the Lord's dignity, which nevertheless by no blending or admixture has in the least passed over into the substance of the Godhead.

For elsewhere "Lord" is demonstrative of the Godhead, as is that passage: One God the Father, from whom are all things; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things (1 Cor. 8:6). For Christ is the maker of all things from the Godhead, not from the humanity, which is found to have been created after the creation.

Elsewhere, however, as I said, "Lord" is significative of both natures, as is: Lord Jesus, do not lay this sin to their charge (Acts 7:59). And: Many will say to me in that day: Lord, Lord, did we not cast out demons in your name (Matt. 7:22)? And Paul: Which the Lord, the righteous judge, will render to me in that day, not only to me, but also to all who love his appearing (2 Tim. 4:8). You have seen how Christ is both Son and Lord.

When Scripture makes mention of the Only-begotten, it intends terms that are significative sometimes of the humanity, sometimes of the divinity, and sometimes of both.

Why then do you confound things that are unconfused? Why do you assign the name of God to death, which is nowhere brought forward by divine Scripture in the commemoration of death? Why, when you hear Paul crying out: In the man in whom God has defined... raising him from the dead (Acts 17:31), do you judge with empty imagination that the Godhead was born and died?

Well indeed does Paul designate this man, who was visible, as also the one who is to come as judge, since the devil prepared as food for worms the man who was formed by God according to his own image and honored with the kingdom of the earth. Christ comes in the form of a man, according to what is to come, as the Almighty, so that the devil himself also may learn by experience—he who with all things was himself also under the dominion of God—that truly man was made according to the image and likeness of God, and was appointed king of the earth and lord, and was deservedly exalted by the Author even to the kingdoms of the heavens.

But your hearing overcomes our discourse, and, having confessed myself overcome, I take refuge in silence, always desiring to be separated from this eagerness of your hearing.

Let us therefore venerate the assumption of the Lord's humanity; let us extol the mystery of the incarnation with unceasing hymns; let us reason of the Virgin who conceived God together with God; with God let us not raise to divine things—I say, not the letter, not wishing it to be expressed. For there is one, as I say according to them, God the Father, that is, the begetter of God, who has this composite name. Let us therefore reckon the visible form joined with the invisible together with God among divine things, that is, let us honor the nature which is the garment of God together with him who uses it, as a ray, so to speak, of the incarnate Divinity; let us fear it as the inseparable image of divine authority, as the image or statue of the hidden judge. Dividing the natures, let us join the honor; let us confess a double one, and adore as one; for the double of natures is one according to unity.

If a heretic, speaking in the person of the Church, has reproached you with your dead God, answer angrily to what he says: It is God who raised up from the dead the great shepherd of the sheep; he himself was not put to death and lifted up. If a Jew has said that you worship a man, reply with the apostolic tradition: God was in Christ reconciling the world. If a Gentile asks the reason for the humanity that was undertaken, the assertion is the forgiveness of sins. Answer him with Paul's words: For since by man came death, by man also came the resurrection of the dead; for as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive. To him be glory for ever and ever.

The First Letter of Saint Cyril, bishop of Alexandria, to Nestorius, translated from the Greek discourse by Marius Mercator.

Venerable and trustworthy men coming to Alexandria have reported to us that your religion bears something grievously, and that you stir up everything to my hurt and strive by all means; and when I wished to learn the causes of your grief, they said that certain Alexandrians are carrying about my letter to the holy monks, and that, stirred up to hatred against me and to your disgust, they have made this the occasion.

I have therefore been astonished that your reverence did not rather reflect within itself that it was not my letter that was written first, but certain utterances of your religion that brought the occasion of disturbance concerning the faith; for many circulate not only your little papers but even your expositions, and we labor correcting whoever among them are depraved; for some have come near to not even tolerating to confess that Christ is God, but rather (what in Latin we can call the instrument, or tool, of the Godhead, and a man clothed with or using God, or bearing God). But which of these is not beyond measure absurd?

It was ours, then, to be angry over what your religion said, or did not say (for I greatly distrust the papers that are circulated). How, then, I ask, are we to be silent when the right faith is wounded and so many and such great men are daily depraved? Shall we not stand before the tribunal of Christ, or shall we not give account, as those set over others to speak, for silence at an unseasonable time?

What finally shall I do? For it is time to speak, or to confer with your reverence, since the most reverend and most religious bishop of the Romans, Celestine, together with all the venerable bishops who are with him, is asking about certain little papers which have been brought to Rome I know not how, because it is uncertain whether they are of your religion or not; for they write to us from there, greatly offended.

How also shall we satisfy those coming from the East from all the churches, and how shall we take care of those who murmur against these same papers? Or do you think that a small disturbance has arisen in the churches from treatises of this kind? We are all in anxiety, and set in readiness for labor to correct these men, so that they may be recalled to the right path, men who have been persuaded I know not how to think otherwise.

Since, therefore, your religion has brought the necessity and cause of these whisperings, how do you think we are justly to be accused? Or by what right have you cried out against me in vain, and not rather corrected your own speech, so that the offense of the whole world concerning you may be put to rest?

If a word has slipped in the congregation, let it be corrected in retractions. Deign to grant one expression to offended ears, proclaiming the mother of God, that is, the holy virgin, so that, with those healed who are clouded by sadness, holding the right glory concerning religion before all, we may celebrate in peace and unanimity the assemblies of the people.

But that for the faith which is in Christ we are all prepared to endure all things, and to experience chains and prisons, and willingly to undergo death itself, let your religion not doubt.

In truth I say that, while the blessed Atticus was still established among human affairs, a book was elaborated concerning the holy and consubstantial Trinity, in which also a more abundant treatise concerning the Lord's incarnation is contained, and it is found consonant with these things which I have now written. I read this to the bishops and clergy, and also to the studious hearers of the people; but I published it to no one: perhaps if I publish it, I think that I am again to be accused, although I composed the book even before the ordination of your reverence. Greet the brotherhood which is with you; those who are with us greet you in the Lord.

To the most religious and most holy fellow-minister Cyril, Nestorius sends greeting in the Lord.

Nothing indeed is more powerful than Christian modesty, nothing more firm. And it is this that has moved us to write at present through the most religious presbyter Lampon. For when he reported many things concerning your piety, and in turn heard many things, in the end he made no end of urging until he obtained these letters from us. Wherefore we have yielded to the man's importunity; for, to confess frankly what the case is, the modesty of any Christian man (inasmuch as God dwells in his breast) is accustomed to bring no small fear upon me.

Accordingly, as far as concerns ourselves and our own affairs, although not a few things have been designated by your piety that are little in keeping with brotherly charity (for one must speak modestly), we are nonetheless so affected that we have determined to preserve a solid gentleness of mind, and also to remain in our former office of benevolently and amicably greeting you by letter. But how much fruit that vehement impulse of the most religious presbyter Lampon is going to bring us, experience itself will demonstrate. I and those who are with me wish the whole brotherhood that is with you to be greeted.

THE SECOND LETTER OF ST. CYRIL, bishop of Alexandria, to Nestorius; to which the same Nestorius, most impiously contradicting it, thought a reply must be made. From Greek into Latin.

Certain persons, as I hear, are prattling about my reputation before your Religiosity, and this frequently, watching for [Baluzius adds: namely of processions] the opportune times of gatherings [Baluzius: seizing], perhaps thinking to delight your ears, they utter intemperate words against us; men who have indeed been injured in nothing, but have been rebuked by us, and that gently: one because the injury of the blind and the poor was vexing him; another because he had drawn the sword against his mother; a third because he had stolen another's property together with a maidservant, and because [Baluzius: he] had always held such a reputation as no one would wish to come even to the most bitter enemies.

But my discourse is not about such men, so that neither above the Lord and Master, nor above the fathers, the measure of the lowliness that is in me should grow excessive: for it is not easy for anyone, even though he keep his life circumspect, to avoid the curses of wicked men, but those who have a mouth full of cursing and bitterness (Ps. 13:3) will at some time render an account to the judge of all.

But now I will turn to what most becomes me; and I will admonish you, even now, as a brother in Christ, concerning the manner of doctrine and the understanding of the faith, that it must be preached to the peoples with all caution; and I will exhort you also to consider that if one of those little ones who believe in Christ is offended (Mark 9:41), how intolerable is the indignation of God. But if there be a multitude of the injured, how, I ask, must one not strive with every art, that the offense be prudently removed, and the reasoning of sound faith be instilled into those who demand the truth?

Now this must be done rightly, if, reading the books of the holy Fathers, we acknowledge them to be of great weight; and proving ourselves, whether we are in the faith (2 Corinthians 13:5), according as it is written, we should fully and excellently strengthen our own understandings by their words and their irreprehensible definitions.

That holy and great council of the Fathers, therefore, defined that the only-begotten Son himself, begotten of God the Father according to nature, God from true God, light from light, through whom the Father created all things, descended, was incarnate, and having become man rose again on the third day, and ascended into heaven.

Following this same reasoning, let us also see what it means that that Word of God was incarnate from God. We do not say that the nature of God was transformed and became flesh, nor that it was changed into a whole man, who consists of soul and body; but rather we hold this: that God the Word, uniting to himself substantially, or essentially, flesh animated—that is, with a rational soul—became man in an ineffable and inscrutable manner, and was called the Son of Man, not only according to will or good pleasure, nor merely as in the mere assumption of a person, but because the distinct natures came together into a true unity, and one Christ and Son came forth from both: not that the diversity of the natures was consumed by the unity, but that the same natures, divinity and humanity, through an ineffable and secret concurrence into unity, accomplish one Lord, and Christ, and Son

And thus, although he has existence before the ages, because he was born of God the Father, he is nevertheless said to be born also of a woman according to the flesh: not that his divine nature, in which he is consubstantial, or coessential, that is, is with the Father, received a beginning of existence in the holy Virgin; nor that he needed a second birth for his own sake, after the first from the Father—for it is impious and ignorant to think this, to say that he who existed before the ages and is coeternal with the Father needed a second beginning in order to exist—but because for us and for our salvation, having united a man to himself substantially, or essentially, he came forth from a woman, and in this way he is said to have been born also carnally.

For the man was not first born of the holy Virgin, or even conceived in her, and then the Word of the Father came upon him thus born; but from her and in her womb itself he is believed and said to have sustained the united carnal birth, assigning to himself the birth proper to that same flesh.

Thus we say that he himself both suffered and rose again, not that the Word of God suffered in his own nature, or felt blows or the force of nails, or endured the other torments of wounds (for the Godhead is impassible, since it is also incorporeal), but because the body that became his own suffered, he himself is said to have suffered these things for us; for he who is impassible was in the body that suffered.

In this way we also understand that he died, although according to nature he is immortal and incorruptible, and is life and the giver of life, God the Word; but because again his own body, by the grace of God, as the apostle Paul said, tasted death for all (Hebr. ii, 9); not that these things belonged to his nature (for to think or say this is the height of madness), but because, as I said a little before, his flesh tasted death.

So too, when the flesh rose again, his resurrection is again spoken of, not that he fell into corruption—far be it—but because what rose again was his body.

Thus we confess one Christ and Lord, not as though we were worshipping a man together with the Word of God—lest on the occasion of a single syllable, that is, the word "with," the fiction or thought of a divided understanding steal upon us—but as one and the same we worship in both, because the body is not alien to the Word, with whom it sits at the right hand of the Father. Not again as though there were two sons sitting together, but as one according to the unity with the flesh. For if we decline that substantial unity as though it were either impossible or indecent, we begin to confess two sons; for it is altogether necessary to separate them and to say that the man was honored with the special title of "son," while the Word of God properly possesses the name of "son" by nature in reality.

Therefore our one and the same Lord Jesus Christ must not be divided into two sons; for in no way does it help the right reasoning of the faith that it should be so and be so understood, even if someone should think that the unity of persons is to be disparaged, because Scripture did not say that the Word of God united to itself the person of a man, but that the Word was made flesh; and for the Word to be made flesh is nothing other than that, made like and comparable to us, he became a partaker also of flesh and blood, and made our body his own, and came forth as a man.

On this point the reasoning of the sound and most limpid faith discharges, as it were, an embassy everywhere; thus we find that the holy Fathers understood it; thus they confidently declared the holy Virgin to be the bearer of God, that is, the God-bearer: not that the nature of the Word of God, or his Divinity, took its beginning from her so as to exist, but as though from her he took a body animated by a rational soul, to which God the Word was united according to essence, and is believed to have been born according to the flesh.

These things and things of this kind I write out of the love of Christ, entreating you as a brother, and adjuring you in the sight of God and of the elect angels I exhort you, both to understand and to teach these things with us, so that the peace and concord of the Churches may be preserved, and the bond of love may remain indissoluble among the priests of God.

From the Letter of St. Cyril, bishop of Alexandria, to his clergy appointed at Constantinople; translated from the Greek discourse by Marius Mercator.

I have read the letter sent by you, from which I learned that our envious opponents, by meeting with you, were pretending to seek peace and friendship, and saying—as I wrote to the monks—that they hold the faith in this way; then, looking to their own meaning, they say that even I have said that the holy council did not remember that expression which is.

But I wrote that even if the council did not set down this little word, it nevertheless acted fittingly; for none of these matters had then been raised, nor was there any need to bring forward a work that at that time was not being sought at all. Nevertheless, by the power and force of the understanding, I believe that the Mother of God, that is, the holy Virgin, was called so by him; for he himself says: He who was born of God the Father, through whom all things were made, was incarnate, became man, suffered, rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, and will also come as judge.

Not that the Word, which by nature was begotten of God, is to be believed to have died in every respect, or that a spear was about to wound him in the side (for what side does an incorporeal nature have? or how did the life of lives die?), but since this Word is united to the flesh, therefore, when that flesh suffered—as being, that is, his own body—he draws this passion into himself.

They quibble, then, and deceive themselves, when they say they want peace and lie about their sentiments; for that they have their own poison in their heart is easy to understand from this. They sent to this deacon, who has charge of ecclesiastical affairs, two little papers: one indeed composed by Photius, or by anyone else you please, against my book which I published to the monks; and the other, as it were, in the form of a quaternion, having even an unsuitable title, as follows: Against those who because of the conjunction, or the Divinity of the Son, put to death, or transfer the humanity into God. The preface, however, reads thus: The insults indeed of the heretics against me, etc.

Next they attempt to show that the body suffered, and not God the Word, as if either we or anyone else were saying that that Word, which is impassible, could have been capable of passibility. There is absolutely no one who is so insane; but, as we have often said, the holy council declared that the Word itself, through whom all things were made, suffered in his own flesh, according to the Scriptures: for when his body suffers, he himself is said to suffer, just as the soul of a man, though it suffers nothing in its own substance and nature, is nevertheless itself said to suffer when his body grows pale.

But since their purpose is to introduce two sons and two Christs—one specifically a man, the other properly God—they make a unity only in persons, unwilling that God the Word be properly and substantially united to the man, made man, and having taken up man; and for this reason they also shuffle and, as it is written, frame excuses in sins (Ps. 140:4).

You, therefore, in agreement with them, say these things: that they do evil, in that they introduce certain talkative and garrulous persons against us, and by fostering and defending them, they create a cause for their own malice.

But this is not the cause of our own injury. Say that I am not an enemy even to this man who, dwelling there, presides; but that both the Eastern and the Western venerable bishops are injured on this account, that the right word of doctrine concerning Christ is not being proclaimed, but altogether a perverse one.

This evidence, moreover, is sufficient to refute them: that never by anyone in the Churches has such a thing been said as is contained in his expositions, which reads as follows: "I do not approve your zeal toward me by your acclamations, but I praise your desire concerning the dogmas, in which you have been mindful of the Deity and the humanity of the Lord." And after a few words: "And I see that the peoples indeed possess much reverence and most prudent piety, but are blinded by ignorance of the dogma; yet this is not the fault of the common people, but, to speak modestly or fittingly, because your teachers have not had the time to set before you anything concerning the dogmas more elaborately and clearly.

I ask, let it be said how his predecessors did not have the time to teach? Is he more eloquent than John, or to be compared with the blessed Atticus? Or is he found equal to them, or more prudent? What is more arrogant than this? Or how does he not evidently confess, by saying these things, that he is bringing in a new and unusual doctrine, and one altogether unknown to his predecessors, and that this very abomination, he wishes to introduce into the Church?

But I have no word against him concerning other matters: but may it happen that he repents, and at some time confesses the right faith; but concerning the things which he plots against me, provoking and challenging enemies, he will make satisfaction to God.

But it is no wonder if the dung-heaps of the city, Chaeremon and Victor, and Sophronas, and the slave of the bankrupt Flavianus, speak evil of us; for they have always been both among themselves and toward others worthless. But let him who provokes them know that we have never feared to undertake a journey, nor even to respond to their accusations, if the time should demand it. For it can happen, by the dispensation of our Savior, that for perhaps even light and most vile causes, to purify the Church, a council be ordered to be convened.

Let that wretched man not therefore hope that he will be our judge, even if more numerous and more trustworthy men still accuse us; because even if he should be ordered that we ought to come before him, we will reject his hearing and, with God's favor, we will make the matter clearer, to the extent that he ought to give satisfaction for his blasphemies.

Nor therefore do we flee peace, but we even desire it, if the right faith has been announced and professed, or if he at last ceases to preach such things. For his quaternion contains such great perversity that it is rightly said of those who wrote them that they hold the foremost place in blasphemies.

But since he complains that an unusual expression is demanded, namely "God-bearer," that is, the holy Virgin, which neither Scripture nor the holy synod brought forth, let him himself tell us when questioned, where does Scripture speak of the "Christ-bearer," that is, of Christ as the receiver or container of the Godhead? Or is there any episcopal council that has named Christ by this term?

For in that notebook which he sent here, and by which he greatly offended us, it is stated thus—that is, that we should venerate the God-bearing form with one and the same reason of Deity as we do God the Word. Similarly, concerning that ever-venerable Virgin he also set down thus—that is, that we should not raise the Virgin who bore the Deity together with God to divine honors.

But he does not know what he is saying. For if the Virgin, as he wishes, did not give birth to God, then neither is Christ God, nor could she have received God in her womb; how then is it that, as it again pleases him, he is God?

Why does he prefer in his statements that the Father be named, rather than that holy Virgin, whom he ought more rightly and fittingly to have declared (the Latins would say the Begetter of the Thing)? Let him therefore tell us where he has read these words, or from whom he has heard them. Many are the charges of his expositions, but they will be preserved and brought forth at the opportune time, unless perhaps some repentance should follow.

But it is necessary for me to make my purpose clear to you, and therefore I write again, that although I am by nature peaceable and quite unacquainted with disputes, I nevertheless desire that the Churches have peace, and that the priests of God, living in peace, be mindful of us, as the Savior of all, the Lord Jesus Christ, says: Peace I give you, my peace I leave you (John 14:27).

Say this, then, in your conversations: that many things have indeed come forth from them which would injure us; yet there will be peace when he ceases to teach or to hold such things. For when the faith is injured, it stirs up enmity, and indeed even increases it.

If he professes the right faith, there will be full and most firm peace; and if he holds this in his desire, let him write the catholic faith and send it to Alexandria. If these things are written from the affection of the inmost heart, I too am ready, according to my strength, to write similar things, and to publish a book, and to say that no one of our fellow priests ought to be burdened, because we have learned that his words have a right intention and a manifest purpose. But if he persists in the wickedness of vainglory and seeks peace, nothing remains except that we oppose him with all our strength, lest we be thought to consent to him [and to hold things that are unspeakable]. For for the faith which is in Christ, both to labor and to live and to die is my greatest vow.

ATTACHED TO THE COMMONITORY LETTER.

I have received and read the petitionary libellus sent to me by you, which is to be handed to the emperor—though not without our opinion. But the fact that it inveighs at length against him who acts there, whether he is reckoned under the name of brother or any other whatsoever, I have suppressed up to this point, lest, rising up against us, he should quibble that he has been denounced by us to the emperor on a charge of heresy. And so we have dictated it in other words, declining him also as a judge for us, with the manner of our hostilities made explicit, and asking that the present controversy, if they persist in being altogether troublesome, be transferred to another forum. When, therefore, you have read through the libellus, if any necessity demands it, hand it over; and if you perceive that he persists in these plots and strives with all his might against us, write it down diligently. For I will choose pious and prudent men, both bishops and monks as well, whom I will send to you at the very first opportunity. For I will not give sleep to my eyes, as it is written, nor slumber to my eyelids, nor rest to my temples, until I have completed the struggle for the salvation of all. Wherefore, since you have now learned my opinion, act manfully. For letters will be prepared by me as soon as possible, both such as are fitting and to whom they are fitting.

For I have resolved for the sake of the faith of Christ to undergo any labor, and to endure any torments whatsoever, even those that are reckoned the most grievous among punishments, until at last I shall have borne a death undertaken for this cause as something pleasant to me.

THE SECOND LETTER OF NESTORIUS, writing back to St. Cyril of Alexandria; likewise translated into Latin from the Greek discourse by Marius Mercator.

The injuries, indeed, of your wondrous letters against us, as worthy of a medicinal patience, and suited to the matter and the occasion, I shall leave for a response to them at the proper time; but what silence does not permit—because it brings danger if it is kept silent—as I am, and as far as ability is granted me, I shall attempt to answer briefly and in summary the prolixity of your discourse, shunning and avoiding the dark and undigested horror of a long speech.

For I shall begin from the most wise utterances of your charity, setting them forth themselves, or rather expounding them word for word: For the holy and great council, you say, has defined that the very one begotten of God the Father according to nature, the only Son, true God from true God, light from light, through whom the Father created all things, descended, was incarnate, and became man, suffered, and rose again.

These are the words of your religion, and you recognize them as your own, assuredly; hear now us also, offering a brotherly exhortation out of piety, namely this which that old man Paul declared to his dearest Timothy, saying: Attend to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine; for in doing this you shall save both yourself and those who hear you (1 Tim. 4:16). What then, tell me, does that word "attend" mean? Surely, reading the tradition of those saints on the surface, you ignored the ignorance that was in you, worthy of pardon, thinking that they said the Word that is coeternal with the Father was passible.

Therefore, if it pleases you, examine these words more attentively, and you will find that that divine assembly of the Fathers did not say that that consubstantial Deity was passible; nor that this one, consempiternal with the Father, was recently born; nor that this one rose again who raised up the temple that had been dissolved.

If you lend your ears to me as I offer brotherly medicine, interposing for you the very words of those Fathers, I shall absolve you from the bond of calumny which you strive to bring upon them, and through them from the scriptures you endeavor [to twist].

They say: We believe also in our Lord Jesus Christ, his only-begotten Son. See how they lay down as foundations the names common to the Godhead and the manhood—of Lord, of Jesus Christ, and of the only-begotten Son—and then build upon them the tradition concerning the man assumed, the resurrection, and the passion; so that, with certain names common to both natures and expressive of both being set down, neither the things of the Son's generation and dominion are separated, nor are the things proper to the natures, in the singularity of the Son's nativity, endangered by any abolition of confusion through the name of union.

In this Paul became their teacher, who, when he made mention of the divine incarnation, beginning to add what belongs to the passion, first set down Christ, the name common to the natures, as I said a little before; then he brings in the fitting discourse or account of both; for he says: Let this be thought in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not think it robbery to be equal with God; but, not to speak of each one, he became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross (Philippians 2:5).

Since, therefore, he had begun to make mention of death, lest anyone from this should suspect that the Word, who is God, was passible, he set down "Christ," as it were a term signifying an essence both passible and impassible, within the singularity of one person, so that Christ may be named without danger as both impassible and passible: impassible indeed in his Deity, but passible in his corporeal nature.

Although I could say many things on this subject, and indeed first of all I could show that those holy Fathers made mention not of the Divinity in the dispensation, but only of the assumption of humanity; yet I remember the brevity of speech promised in the preface, and I feel it restraining my discourse.

I come now also to the second point raised by your Charity, in which I was praising the distinction of natures that has been made according to the principle of Deity and humanity, and their fellowship in one person; and also that point, that you were saying the Word, who is God, by no means needed a second birth from a woman; and that you were professing the Deity to be incapable of suffering; for these things are truly catholic, and altogether opposed to all the sects that fight against the Lord's natures.

But in the remaining matters, if you bring forward some hidden, deep, and incomprehensible reason for the ears of readers, it is for your prudence to examine. For I thought you were wisely destroying the earlier points, when you were somehow introducing again as passible and newly created the one who had been proclaimed in the first place impassible and as not receiving a second birth; as if the things that were naturally in God the Word had been corrupted by association with the temple, or perhaps it ought to be reckoned as nothing by men that that very temple without sin, and inseparable from the divine nature, did not endure birth and death for sinners; as if also the Lord's voice crying out to the Jews, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up" (John 2:19), ought not to be believed. He did not say: Destroy my Divinity, and in three days it will be raised up.

Here again the remembrance of the brevity I promised recalls me as I wish to expand my discourse; yet I will say something. Everywhere throughout the divine Scriptures, whenever they make mention of the Lord's dispensation, it is not the passion and birth of Christ's Divinity but of his humanity that is handed down, so that according to the clearest reasoning it is more fitting and appropriate that the holy Virgin be called not the mother of God, that is, Theotokos, but the mother of Christ, that is, Christotokos.

To this the evangelist also cries out: The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham (Matt. 1:1); it is evident that God the Word was not the son of David. Take, if it seems good, another testimony as well: But Jacob begot Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ (ibid. 1:16). Attend to another saying: Now the generation of Christ was in this manner. When his mother Mary was espoused, she was found to have in her womb by the Holy Spirit (ibid. 1:18). But who could or should suspect the Godhead of the Only-Begotten to be a creature of the Holy Spirit? What moreover should be poured upon these things? Hear again: And the mother of Jesus was there (John 2:1). And again: With Mary the mother of Jesus (Acts 1:14). That too: What is born in her is of the Holy Spirit (Matt. 1:20). And again: Take the child and his mother, and flee into Egypt (Matt. 2:13). And that: Of his Son, who was made to him of the seed of David according to the flesh (Rom. 1:3). And again concerning his passion: Because God sent his Son in the likeness of the flesh of sin, and of sin condemned sin in the flesh (Rom. 8:3). And again: Christ died for our sins (1 Cor. 15:3). And once more: Christ having suffered in the flesh (1 Pet. 4:1). And that: This is my body, and this is my blood (Luke 22:19). He did not say: This is my Godhead.

And there are ten thousand other things, protesting with various and manifold voices, that the human race should not think the Deity of the Son to be recent or novel, or capable of bodily passions, but that the flesh united to the divine nature is that from which Christ names himself the son of David. For what does he say? What do you think of Christ? Whose son is he? They answered, David's. Jesus answered and said: How then does David in the spirit call him Lord, saying: The Lord said to my Lord: Sit at my right hand (Matt. 22:42)? He is indeed the son of David according to the flesh, but according to the Godhead, Lord. That the body of the Son is truly the temple of the Godhead, and a temple united according to a certain excellent and divine conjunction, is most certain, so that it is good to profess, and worthy of the evangelical tradition, that the divine nature takes to itself and recalls to itself the things that are God's.

But to attribute to God, under the name of this familiarity, the properties of the flesh joined to him—namely, generation, passion, and mortality—is, brother, the sentiment either of erring paganism, or of the deranged Apollinaris and Arius, or of the other heretical plagues, and something worse than these. For it necessarily follows that such men, drawn in by the name of familiarity, and by reason of that familiarity made sharers in his nursing and partakers in the increments of age that gradually came on, make the Word of God a partaker also of passion in time, as one who from fear needed the help of an angel.

I pass over circumcision and sacrifice, and sweat, and hunger, which indeed befell the flesh for our sake; yet these, when they are joined to him, are even to be adored; but in the Deity these things are now falsely accepted, and they bring upon us, as though we were slanderers, just causes of condemnation.

These are the traditions of the holy Fathers, these the commands of the holy Scriptures: thus do they reason concerning the things that are of divine mercy and of authority according to God. Meditate on these things, be in them, that your progress may be manifest (1 Tim. 4:15). Paul said these things to all.

You do well to take thought for those who are offended on our account, and to have solicitude for the matters that concern us. I give thanks to your unanimity; but know that you have been deceived by those who were deposed by the holy council, because they were filled with the disease of the Manichaeans; or, what is most important, by clerics of your affection. For the things that pertain to our Church are daily increased for the better; and the things that pertain to the people, know that they are extended to greater progress, through the grace of Christ, to such an extent that this multitude cries out with the words of the prophet: The earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as the many waters covering the seas (Isa. 11:9).

Know also that the royal house, with the doctrine made clear, dwells in great joy; and, to make an end of the page, see that voice concerning the Church also among us fulfilled concerning all the heresies that strive against God: The house of Saul went and grew weak; the house of David went and grew strong (2 Sam. 3:2). These are our counsels, as of a brother to a brother; but if anyone wishes to be contentious, Paul will cry out to him through us: We have no such custom, nor does the Church of God (2 Cor. 11:16).

SERMON VIII.

Against the heretics, on Judas.

Gladly here, questioning, I would ask those heretics who, by mingling the nature of Divinity and humanity into one essence, blend them together, who it is in this passage that is betrayed and handed over to the Jews. For if a blending or admixture of both has been made, which of the two was held by the Jews? Was it God the Word, or the nature of humanity? Who is seen to have been killed? For I am compelled to use rather lowly words, so that what is said may be made clear to all.

On whom, pray tell, do the things that were done fall? Is it on the nature of God, which you presume to blend together by confounding both? Therefore God the Word is capable of being seized, who has nothing in common with the flesh in being slain. Or was he led to slaughter by the Jews?

But why, when both natures have been blended, according to you, have we just now heard the Scripture telling of the power of the sacrament, which the Lord handed down to his disciples, saying: Because on the night on which he was being betrayed, taking bread, giving thanks, he gave it to his disciples, saying: Take and eat from it, all of you, for this is my body. Why did he not say: This is my Divinity, which will be broken for you? And again, why, when offering the cup that had been taken, did he not say: This is my Divinity, which will be poured out for you for the remission of sins; but rather this: This is my blood, which will be poured out for you for the remission of sins (Matthew 26:28)?

Separate the nature, but unite the union; confess Christ the Son of God, but a twofold son, man and God, so that the passion is indeed assigned to the human nature, while the deliverance from the passion, which was accomplished in the man who suffered, belongs to the Godhead alone.

SERMON IX.

On what is written: If you remember that your brother has anything against you (Matt. 5:23); as against the heretics.

Listen with attentive minds: He who eats, it says, my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. Remember that it is of the flesh that it is said: As the living Father sent me, so I am visible. Was it not I who applied the name of flesh, that they might complain of being wrongly interpreted by me? He who eats, it says, my flesh and drinks my blood? Did he perhaps say: He who eats my Divinity and drinks my Divinity? But: He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.