Chapter XIV.
He refutes the wicked and blasphemous notion of the
heretics who said that God dwelt and spoke in Christ as in an
instrument or a statue.
Otherwise
, as the
heretics say, God would be in the Lord Jesus Christ as in a statue or
in an instrument, i.e., He would dwell as it were in a man and speak as
it were through a man, and it would not be He who dwelt and spoke as
God of Himself and in His own body: and certainly He had already thus
dwelt in the saints and spoken in the persons of the saints. In those
men too, of whom I spoke above, who had prayed for His advent, He had
thus dwelt and spoken. And what need was there for all these to ask for
what they already possessed, if they were seeking for what they had
previously received? Or why should they long to see with their eyes
what they were keeping in their hearts, especially as it is better for
a man to have the same thing within himself than to see it outside? Or
if God was to dwell in Christ in the same way as in all the saints, why
should all the saints long to see Christ rather than themselves? And if
they were only to see the same thing in Jesus Christ, which they
themselves possessed, why should they not much rather prefer to have
this in themselves than to see it in another? But you are wrong, you
wretched madman, “not understanding,” as the Apostle says,
“what you say and whereof you affirm”:
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for all the prophets and all the saints
received from God some portion of the Divine Spirit as they were able
to bear it. But in Christ “all the fulness of the Godhead”
dwelt and “dwells bodily.” And therefore they all fall far
short of His fulness, from whose fulness they receive something: for
the fact that they are filled is the gift of Christ: because they would
all certainly be empty, were He not the fulness of
all.
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1 Tim. i. 7
.