356 NOVATIAN THE ROMAN PRESBYTER measure, have dared to announce or to think Him notthe Son, but God the Father Himself. And this,althoughitis contraryto the truth of the Scriptures,is stilla greatand excellentargument for the divinityof Christ,who issofar God, except as Son of God, born of God, that verymany heretics(aswe have said)have so accepted Him as God,as to thinkthatHe must be pronounced not the Son,butthe Father. Therefore letitbe consideredwhether He isGod [ornot],sinceHis authorityhas so affectedsome, thatthey have thought Him, as we have alreadysaid above,God the Father Himself, and have confessedthe divinityin Christ with such impetuosityand effusion— compelled to itbythe manifestdivinityin Christ— thattheythoughtthatHe whom they read of as the Son, because they perceived Him tobe God, must be the Father. Moreover, other hereticshaveso farembraced the manifest divinityof Christ,as to saythat He was without flesh,and to withdraw from Him thewhole humanity which He took upon Him, lest,by associatingwith Him a human nativity,as they conceivedit,they should diminishin Him the power of the divinename. This,how ever,we do not approve; but we quoteitas an argumentto prove thatChristis God, to thisextent,that some, taking away the manhood, have thought Him God only,and some have thought Him God the Father Himself; when reason and the proportionof the heavenlyScripturesshow Christto be God, but as the Son of God ; and the Son of man, having been taken up, moreover,by God, that He must be believed to be man also. Because ifHe came to man, thatHe might be Mediator of God and men, it behoved Him to be with man, and the Word to be made flesh,that in His own self He might link together the agreement of earthlythings with heavenly things,by associatingin Himself pledgesof both natures,and uniting God to man and man to God; so that reasonablythe Son of God might be made by the assumptionof fleshthe Son of man, and the Son of man by the receptionof the Word of God the Son of God. This most profound and reconditesacrament,destinedbeforethe worlds for the salvationof the human race,isfound tobe