Collectio Secunda

Second Collection, Which here bears the title in Mercator: *Chapters excerpted from various books or treatises of Nestorius by Bishop Cyril, translated by us from Greek into Latin, of Nestorius*. From a codex composed of twenty-six quires. Among other things: We must know ourselves; for I now come to a recollection of the Council of Nicaea, which never dared to say that the Word God was born of the Virgin Mary; for it says: We believe in one Father Almighty, and in one Lord Jesus Christ. Note that when they had first set down Christ, which demonstrates the conjunction of two natures, they did not say in one God Word, but they took the name that signified both, so that, by descending, when you hear of death, you would not be disturbed by any novelty, and when you hear of the crucified and buried, you would not be wounded in your hearing, as if the Deity itself were suffering. Then let us see what they add: We believe also in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten, who was born of God the Father, consubstantial with the Father, who descended for us and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit. They did not say that he was born of the Holy Spirit. You see how they interpret by descending, because they said, made man. This one, they say, we call incarnate, not indicating a changeability in the divine nature by taking on flesh, but the inhabitation which he carried out in man.

And after some things in the same. "Hold this," he says, "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 from the Holy Spirit and from the Virgin Mary, and was made man.' Nowhere did they say, 'was born.' Why, do we think? So that they might not introduce two nativities of the Deity." Likewise in the same after some things. Wishing to show clearly that when the name "Son" is posited, it does not by any means signify that word which is God, but is introduced as a common name. For Scripture says thus: "God sent His Son, made from a woman, made under the law" (Gal. 4:4). Here indeed it demonstrates two natures; but what happened only concerning the man, it narrates: ask certainly of a contentious person, "Who was made under the law, the Word God?" By no means.

Also from another codex, in the first quaternion, whose beginning is: "I still have many things to say to you." And after some things. There the glorification of the Only-begotten is sometimes attributed to the Father, as in: "It is my Father who glorifies me" (John 8:54); sometimes it is attributed to the Spirit, for it says: "The Spirit of truth who will glorify me" (John 16:13); and sometimes it is assigned to the power of Christ, as it is written: "Going out, they preached the Word everywhere, with the Lord cooperating, and the Word confirming, with signs following them." Also in the eighth quaternion, from the sayings of the Epistle: The Apostle to the Hebrews. For hearing the name "apostle" in Christ, they misunderstand the Word of God to be an apostle. Also, reading the term "pontiff," they imagine God to be a pontiff, with remarkable madness; for who, hearing the office of apostle, does not immediately see that a man is indicated? Who, hearing the name of high priest, would call the nature of the Divinity to the ministry of a priest? For if God is a pontiff, who will be the one who ought to be worshipped by his office? If God is to offer sacrifices as a pontiff, there will be no one to whom they are offered to God; for what is already worthy of the Divinity, if as an inferior he offers sacrifices to a superior?

And he adds: Whence, therefore, did God seem to them to be called a pontiff, who [Baluz. because] by sacrifice, according to the rite of the priesthood, has no need at all for his own advancement; for he is the perpetual possessor of the Divinity: For a pontiff chosen and taken from among men is constituted for men before God, etc. (Heb. v, 1). And he adds: He did not apprehend angels, he says, but the seed of Abraham (Heb. ii, 16). Is the seed of Abraham the Deity? Hear also the following voice: Whence he had to become similar to his brothers in all things (Ibid., 17). Is that for the Deity? For what brothers similar to himself could God the Word have? Consider also what is joined to these words: That he might become a merciful and faithful pontiff before God, for in that in which he himself suffered and was tempted, he is able to bring aid to those who are tempted (Ibid., 18). Therefore, he who suffered is the merciful pontiff; but the temple that suffered is not he who is its life-giver, God. The seed of Abraham is he who is yesterday and today (Heb. xiii, 8), according to the voice of the apostle Paul; not he who said: Before Abraham was, I am (John viii, 58). He is similar to his brothers in all things, who undertook the brotherhood of a human soul and body (Heb. ii, 17), not he who said: He who sees me sees also my Father (John xiv, 9).

Likewise in the nineteenth quaternion, as if speaking against Arius: And these indeed, although they rave that the Word God is lesser by the greater paternal Deity, yet they do not confess him to be new. But these declare him also to be second and posterior to the blessed Mary, and that a temporal mother is greater than the maker, by the Divinity she bears witness to; nay more, they do not even grant that she is the mother of Christ; for if it was not a human nature, but the Word God, 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 can anyone be the mother of him who is alien from the nature of a mother? But if she is truly called mother by them, then the one brought forth is a man, not from the nature of the Divinity, since it is proper to every mother to give birth to something consubstantial with herself. Therefore she will not be a mother, who has not given birth to something consubstantial with herself; because she is called mother by them, she gave birth to one who was similar according to substance. But who will be similar to him according to substance? That one, without doubt, who came to be by the workmanship of the Holy Spirit. For what was born in her, says Scripture, is from the Holy Spirit, with whom the Word God was incessantly present. The Word God was not born from Mary, but remained in that which was born from her. Not having his beginning from the Virgin, but was inseparably associated at all times with that which was gradually composed in the womb of the Virgin, growing through the months.

It is one thing, however, to say: He who was born remains; and another, that he who remains with the born one is the same one who, in order to be born, would have needed the course of months. Likewise from another treatise, in the fifteenth quaternion [B. twentieth]. This Jesus, he says, God raised up; God did not die, but raised. Apollinaris, hear the words of the apostle Peter; hear also, with Apollinaris, the Arian impiety. This Jesus God raised up (Acts 10:40), who appeared visible to the eyes; this one who was nailed to the wood; this one who was touched by Thomas’s hands, who cried out to him: Touch and see, because a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see me have (Luke 24:39); and with these words the disciple, believing, and having touched him, being made more certain of the resurrection of the flesh which was crucified, glorified the wondrous maker God, saying: My Lord and my God (John 20:28); not, of course, calling that which he had touched God.

Likewise in the twenty-ninth quaternion. Paul relates both an incarnate essence and the enduring immutability of the incarnate Deity after the union, on account of which he also writes, crying out: "Think this in yourselves, which is also in Christ Jesus, who, when he was established in the form of God, took the form of a servant" (Phil. 2:5). But the Apostle, taking this name which is "Christ" as a term significant of two natures, without danger both says that he took the form of a servant and calls him God irreprehensibly, when these things which are said to signify the twofold nature are distinguished. And after many things, in the same book. For our nature intercedes for us in the use of Christ, established as a garment, relying on the defenses of its blameless origin, and because that sin, which was first figured, was the cause of the whole race, this was the occasion for the taking up of the man, O man, so that through the flesh the corruption which had come through the flesh might be destroyed. It is of this flesh, not of the Divinity, that the burial on the third day belongs. The feet of this flesh were held by nails; this flesh the Holy Spirit formed in the womb; concerning this flesh the Lord said to the Jews: "Loose this temple, and in three days I will raise it up" (John 2:19). Do I alone call Christ a certain twofold being, and does he not himself call himself both a soluble temple and God who raises it?

If it were God who was being taken down, O Arian—may that turn back upon his own head from the blasphemies—he ought to have said: "Take down this God, and on the third day he will be raised"; if God died, if he was buried, then that saying in the Gospel is empty: "Why do you seek to kill me, a man who has spoken the truth" (John 8:40)? But now he says: "Why do you seek to kill me, a man whose head has been crowned with thorns; a man who says: 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' (Matthew 27:46); and who endured a three-day death." But worship this one together with the Deity, as a co-worker of divine authority. Likewise a little later in the same. "I venerate him," he says, "as the image of the Almighty: God exalted him and gave him a name that is above every name, so that in the name of Jesus Christ every knee bends—of the celestial, terrestrial, and infernal beings—and every tongue confesses that the Lord Jesus is in the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:9); on account of the user, I adore that which he uses; on account of the hidden one, I venerate what is outwardly manifest, and in him who is inseparable I do not separate the dignity, but I separate the natures, and I join the reverence. That which is to be deposited in the tomb is not God in himself; for then we would be manifest worshippers of a man, and of a dead man. But because in the assumed one, God is from the assumer, the one who is assumed is as from the assumer.

as those who take up] God is called conjoined, for that reason the demons shudder at the term of the crucified flesh, knowing God conjoined to the crucified flesh, but not co-suffering; therefore that one who appeared visible is going to come as judge, because he is conjoined to the omnipotent Deity. Likewise after many things in the same place. Not of the Deity, he says, did James have a brother, nor do we announce the death of the Word of God, when we feed on the Lord's body and blood: the divine nature receives the sacrifice, it is not itself immolated in the sacrifice. Likewise in another treatise against the Arians, in the tenth quaternion. Who now might behold so immense a sea of kindness, nature ruling with its own maker, and Deity conjoined to man, commanding nothing without this one, judging no one without that one, with him carrying on the care of the living in the highest providence, and with him raising the dead.

Again from the same author in another treatise of the codex, fifth quire, on a passage of Holy Scripture where it says: "If you remember that your brother has something against you" (Matt. 5:23). "He who eats," he says, "the flesh. Remember that it is about the flesh that it was said: 'As the living Father sent me' (John 6:55), I who am visible. But perhaps I interpret the saying wrongly: therefore let us hear what follows. 'As the living Father sent me, and I live through the Father' (John 6:58); he here understands the Divinity, I say the man. Let us see who is the sound interpreter: 'As the living Father sent me'; here the heretic says the Divinity was sent, professing himself to say the Word of God: 'As the living Father sent me.' Therefore even this, according to them, will have to be understood thus: 'And I, the Word of God, live through the Father.' For after this it seems to have been said: 'And he who eats me, and he lives.' Whom then do we eat? The Divinity, or the flesh?

Again in the sixth quire of the same author, in his work against the heretics on Judas. Here I gladly inquired of those heretics who, by mixing and blending the nature of divinity and humanity into one meaning, which one is it in this passage who is betrayed and handed over to the Jews? For if a blending or mixture of both has been made, was it taken by the Jews? Was it God the Word? Or the nature of humanity? Because he seems to have been killed? For I use lower terms so that what is said may become clear to all. Tell me, I ask, upon which do the things that happened fall? Surely not upon the nature of God, which you, by confusing both, presume to blend? Therefore, is God the Word [Baluz. of God] capable of being seized, he who has nothing in common with the flesh in death? Or was he led by the Jews to death? Why then, even with both natures already blended according to you, did we recently hear Scripture telling of the power of the sacrament, which the Lord handed over to his disciples, saying: That on the night he was betrayed, taking bread, giving thanks, he broke it for his disciples, saying: Take and eat of it, all of you, for this is my body (1 Cor. 11:23). Why did he not say: This [Baluz. these] is my divinity, which is broken for us [Baluz. you]? And again, taking the cup and offering it, he did not say: This is my divinity, which is poured out for you in remission of sins; but rather this: This is my blood, which is poured out for you in remission of sins (Matt. 26:28).

Separate the nature, but join the union: confess Christ the Son of God, but the Son twofold, man and God, so that the passion is indeed assigned to the human nature; the absolution from passion, however, which took place in the man who suffered, belongs to the Godhead alone. Likewise elsewhere in the ninth quire against the Jews. Separating, he says, the proper dignity of the natures of the one union. Likewise from another treatise in the twenty-fifth quire. Therefore I want you to be cautious, to favor or to applaud. There is no division of the Godhead in the union, nor of power, when the Son is Christ; in this there is no division; in the Godhead and humanity there is division according to what Christ is; the Son is undivided; according to what the Son is, he is undivided; for we do not have two Christs and two Sons, nor is there among us a first Christ and a second; nor one and another, nor again one Son and another Son: but the same one, the Son himself is twofold, not in dignity, but in nature.

Likewise, in quaternion 26, as if against Apollinaris: “Reverence,” he says, “of the two natures, we call one dignity of him who joined both.” Likewise elsewhere, from another treatise, in quaternion 32, the same author says concerning Christ: “Concerning Christ, even if we say ‘temple,’ yet it is in no way separable from the Deity, and joined to God, possessing the whole divine operation, and now a co-worker of God, and that he rules over all things together with him.” Likewise the same author, in another treatise, on the passage: “If you shall have remembered anything against your brother,” as if against heretics: “Listen,” he says, “attentive to the words: ‘He who eats,’ he says, ‘my flesh.’ Remember, it is of flesh that it is spoken. Has the name ‘flesh’ been added by me, so that they complain I interpret it wrongly? ‘He who eats,’ he says, ‘my flesh, and drinks my blood.’ Does not he who drinks my blood abide in me, and I in him?

Item from another treatise, quaternion 31. But I say this, that you may know how supereminent and supreme a certain conjunction of Deity existed even in the infant himself, when the Lord’s flesh is beheld. For he was both infant and lord of the infant himself. You have praised the statement, but I do not want you to assent without examination, for I said: He himself was the infant, and the inhabitant of the infant. Item from another codex, quaternion 2, as if against the Arians and Macedonians. Devising, he says, a greater injury against Christ, they sever the Holy Spirit from the divine nature, the Spirit who shaped his humanity in the womb of the Virgin: For what, says Scripture, was born from that, is from the Holy Spirit (Matt. 1:20); who according to righteousness reformed what was shaped: For it is manifest, he says, in the flesh, it was justified in the Spirit (1 Tim. 3:16); who made him terrible and formidable to demons: For I, he says, cast out demons in the Spirit of God (Luke 11:20); who built his flesh as a temple: For I saw the Spirit, he says, descending like a dove and remaining upon him (John 1:32); who gave him ascension into heaven: For commanding, says Scripture, the apostles whom he chose through the Holy Spirit, he was raised into heaven (Acts 1:2). This Spirit, I say, who gave such great glory, is asserted by these men to be a servant