Fragment
V.
For lately a certain person, Beron, along with
some others, forsook the delusion of Valentinus, only to involve
themselves in deeper error, affirming that the flesh assumed to Himself
by the Word became capable of working like works with the
deity
1748
by virtue of
its assumption, and that the deity became susceptible of suffering in
the same way with the flesh
1749
by virtue of the exinanition;
1750
and thus they
assert the doctrine that there was at the same time a conversion and a
mixing and a fusing
1751
of the two aspects one with the other. For if the flesh that was
assumed became capable of working like works with the deity, it is
evident that it also became God in essence in all wherein God is
essentially known. And if the deity by the exinanition became
susceptible of the same sufferings with the flesh, it is evident that
it also became in essence flesh in all wherein flesh essentially can be
known. For objects that act in like manner,
1752
and work like works, and are altogether
of like kind, and are susceptible of like suffering with each other,
admit of no difference of nature; and if the natures are fused
together,
1753
Christ will be
a duality;
1754
and if the
persons
1755
are separated,
there will be a quaternity,
1756
—a thing which is altogether to be
avoided. And how will they conceive of the one and the same
Christ, who is at once God and man by nature? And what manner of
existence will He have according to them, if He has become man by a
conversion of the deity, and if he has become God by a change of the
flesh? For the mutation
1757
of these, the one into the other, is a
complete subversion of both. Let the discussion, then, be
considered by us again in a different way.
1748
γενέσθαι
ταυτουργὸν
τῇ θεότητι
.
1749
ταυτοπαθῆ
τῇ σαρκί
.
1750
κένωσιν
.
1751
σύγχυσιν
.
1752
ὁμοεργῆ
.
1753
συγκεχυμένων
.
[Vol. iii. p. 623].
1754
δυάς
.
1755
προσώπων
.
1756
τετράς
, i.e., instead of
Trinity [the
Τριὰς
].
1757
μετάπτωσις
.
[Compare the Athanasian Confession].