Chapter
XI.
Should
you, however, ask in what way Deity is mingled with humanity, you
will have occasion for a preliminary inquiry as to what the coalescence
is of soul with flesh. But supposing you are ignorant of the way in
which the soul is in union with the body, do not suppose that that
other question is bound to come within your comprehension; rather, as
in this case of the union of soul and body, while we have reason to
believe that the soul is something other than the body, because the
flesh when isolated from the soul becomes dead and inactive, we have
yet no exact knowledge of the method of the union, so in that other
inquiry of the union of Deity with manhood, while we are quite aware
that there is a distinction as regards degree of majesty between the
Divine and the mortal perishable nature, we are not capable of
detecting how the Divine and the human elements are mixed up together.
The miracles recorded permit us not to entertain a doubt
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that God was born in the nature of man. But
how—this, as being a subject unapproachable by the processes of
reasoning, we decline to investigate. For though we believe, as we do,
that all the corporeal and intellectual creation derives its
subsistence from the incorporeal and uncreated Being, yet the
whence
or the
how
, these we do not make a matter for
examination along with our faith in the thing itself. While we accept
the fact, we pass by the manner of the putting together of the
Universe, as a subject which must not be curiously handled, but one
altogether ineffable and inexplicable.
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