Hilary is granting for the moment that the Son really was ignorant of the day and hour; this, he says, could be not argument for the inequality of the Son: it would serve, however, to disprove the Sabellian identification of the Son and the Father by shewing that this knowledge was the possession of the Father only. Erasmus inserted here a passage which he found in a ms.;—“and this shews us that the saying of the Word referred to the mystery of human perfection: that He, Who bore our infirmities, should take upon Himself also the infirmity of human ignorance, and that He should say He knew not the day, just as He knew not where they had laid Lazarus, or who it was when the woman touched the hem of His garment: being infirm in knowledge as He was infirm in weeping, in the endurance of weariness, hunger, and thirst, He did not disdain even the error of ignorance: especially when we consider how, when He rose from the dead, and was about to ascend up to, and above, the heavens, the Apostles approached Him as no longer ignorant, but knowing, and determining this His day, and put exactly the same question to Him of which He was silent during the dispensation of His humanity: that it might be made plain by their repeated question, that they understood His statement, ‘I know not,’ of an ignorance which He took upon Himself, not essential to His nature.” The passage is utterly inconsistent with Hilary’s teaching both here and in ix. 58 f., and is an obvious and clumsy interpolation.