So great is the divergence between the doctrines. These men have now done their best to outdo Apollinarius, Arius and Eunomius, in their impiety and have now endeavoured to plant anew the heresy sown of old by Valentinus and Bardesanes, and afterwards uprooted by most excellent husbandmen. Like Valentinus and Bardesanes they have denied that the body of our Lord was assumed of our nature. But the Church, following the footprints of the Apostles, contemplates in the Lord Christ both perfect Godhead and perfect manhood. For just as He took a body, not that He needed a body, but by its means to give immortality to all bodies; so too He took a soul, the guide of the body, that every soul by its means might share His immutability. For even if souls are immortal, they are not however immutable; for they undergo many and frequent changes, as they experience pleasure, now from one object, and now from another. Whence it cometh about that we err when we are changed and are inclined to what is worse. But after the resurrection our bodies enjoy immortality and incorruptibility, and our souls impassibility and immutability. For this reason the only begotten Son of God took both a body and a soul, preserved them free from all blame, and offered the sacrifice for the race. And this is why He is called our high priest; and He is named high priest not as God but as man. He makes the offering as man, and accepts the sacrifice with the Father and the Holy Spirit as God. If only Adam’s body had sinned, it alone should have benefited by the cure. But since the soul not only shared in the sin but was first in the sin, for first the thought forms an image of the sin and then carries it out by means of the body, it was just, I ween, that the soul too should be healed. But it is perhaps superfluous to demonstrate these points by reasoning, when the divine Scripture clearly proclaims them. This doctrine is distinctly taught by the holy David and the very divine Peter, the one foretelling from distant ages, and the other interpreting his prediction. The words of the first of the apostles are “David therefore being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him, that of the fruit of his loins, according to the flesh, He would raise up Christ to sit on his throne; he seeing this before spake of the resurrection of Christ that His soul was not left in hell neither His flesh did see corruption.”