To those who are not wise in their mind or are otherwise without intelligence, and are lacking in true instruction, the holy Scripture gives the proper rule and place, in order that their emptiness of mind and lack of instruction may be turned to wisdom: for indeed it commands those who are such both to learn and to ask, or to be silent altogether; for the holy book of Proverbs somewhere said: «To the fool who asketh wisdom shall be reckoned: but, when a man maketh himself silent, he is thought to be wise» . But the man who keeps this rule it raises and advances, and incites to learn things that are of use and profit, and it says, «Give thine heart to wisdom, and prepare thine ears for words of understanding» . I am surprised therefore that the brother whom you mention (out of tenderness for his soul I do not mention his name) did not know his own measure, and, besides not knowing originally the subject on which he was talking, neglected this legally established and salutary rule; and, when he ought to have bent a ear of understanding to those who are wiser than he is, he on the contrary threatened to take the ignorance that is in him to the city of Alexandria, like an invincible warrior, who is able to overcome and take captive all that meet him, and sell them where he likes. Therefore I have both accepted your wisdom in the Lord, which is worthy of the church and very honourable, and your patience, which is such as befits Christians, and have crowned them also with a decree of many praises, since in accordance with the apostolic model you both received and admonished him as your member and brother , and brought forward the teachings of the holy fathers. And, whereas you once and twice secretly and openly refuted and corrected him on the points on which he spoke without knowledge, and he was again involved in the same errors, and you behaved like doctors and churchmen, and on all sides seek to gain his salvation, and by actual deeds show that you look to the apostolic commandment which commands, «Let everything be done decently and in order», but he, though he was thought worthy to receive so much attention, had no mercy on his soul, and did not restrain himself so as to show moderation and humility, I expressed blame and at the same time showed mercy and still show mercy, since ignorance is free from danger, for a man is not blamed because he does not know. He is trying to bring upon himself the sin that does not deserve forgiveness, in that he does not yield to those who are wise among the brethren, or seek from wiser men a cure for his ignorance by desire to learn, but pettily searches into things that are unknown and uncertain, and does his best to find men to share his opinions, in order that he may seem to be saying something when he is saying nothing that is sound. But the other things which he said without knowledge he has with difficulty come to honour by silence, in that he assented to the passages from the holy fathers (that were brought before him; and he was reduced to one passage, the words used by the holy Cyril in the second volume against the blasphemies of Nestorius, which are as follows: (( For, because the Word who is from God the Father took flesh and came forth as a man like us, he would not for this reason be also termed a double thing. For he is one, and not without flesh, who in his own nature is without flesh and blood» . After you had quoted to him the words used by the doctor, he persisted and said that after his own Resurrection we must confess that God the Word is without flesh , inasmuch as he put off that which was without variation and without separation hypostatically united to him, a thing that is beyond all impiety and profanity, so that everyone who has natural (I will not say, spiritual) intelligence must wonder if a fact which is so universally admitted has ever been made a subject of contention, and has passed the lips of anyone who has duly believed in our one Lord and God and Saviour Jesus Christ. If he were skilled in divine doctrine, he should have (to omit everything else) considered the anathemas of Gregory the Theologian, who in the great letter to Cledonius which begins, 'I wonder what this innovation is', clearly lays down these principles in it, «If anyone says that the flesh was now laid down by him, and the Godhead is stripped of a body, and does not confess that he both is and will come with the thing assumed itself, may he not see the glory of his coming. For where is the body now except with him who assumed it? For it has not been laid up in the sun, as the silly tale of the Manichees goes, in order that he may be honoured through the object of contempt, or diffused and dissolved in the air, like the nature of a voice and the wafting of a smell, and the course of lightning that does not stand still. But what becomes of the fact that he was actually touched after the Resurrection, or that he will again some time be seen by those who pierced him? For the Godhead by itself is invisible. But he will come with the body, according to my account, and such as he was seen by, or was shown to, the disciples on the mount, inasmuch as the Godhead easily overcomes the flesh» . Who.that reads these words resplendent with truth, and flashing with the rays of the Holy Spirit, will dare to say that the Word of God, who was humanized immutably and without any phantasy , is without flesh after the inexplicable and incomprehensible union? Accordingly it is clear that you also have not gone beyond what is fitting in opposing the precipitous error of that man and saying in order to remove him from this error, «The words used by the doctor about the Word of God, In his own nature he is without flesh and blood', refer to the time before the Humanization». Indeed, since he himself said that 'he is one, and not without flesh', how can it be anything but wholly unreasonable, and presumptuous and irreverent, for us to gainsay this, and contend that he is without flesh? But the words which he went on to add, 'who in his own nature is without flesh and blood', plainly introduce this thought, that in his own nature, that is in the Godhead, he has no association with flesh and blood. He did not take the flesh into the fulness of his own divine nature and mix it with it, nor did he mingle it with his own Godhead, but that in the dispensatory assumption we might understand him to be not without flesh, Emmanuel being wonderfully composed and consisting of two elements, the Godhead and the manhood: but even so he preserved the absence, of mixture in the divine essence1, and did not change the essence of the Godhead into the nature of flesh. And that this is so I bring as a witness to the accuracy of his doctrines the doctor himself, who by the operation of the Holy Spirit is an accurate doctor. In the first letter to Succensus, when certain men had advanced a similar objection, he expressed himself thus: «Since I found in the memorial an assertion of this kind stated, that since the Resurrection the holy body of Christ the Saviour of us all has passed into the nature of the Godhead, so as to be all Godhead only, I thought it right to speak against this also». And thereupon, after he has above in a brief compass gone through all the statement of the dispensation of the Humanization, he brings against it this argument: «It is impossible for a body taken from earth to endure the change into the divine nature. And, if not, we bring against the Godhead the charge that it is as a thing that is made and as a thing that has taken into it something that is not its by nature» . See! how plainly he denies that the divinity of the Word has taken anything into its essence which is not its by nature, though we confess that flesh possessing an intelligent soul was taken by God the Word, and he united this to him hypostatically, but not so that anything should be added to his divine essence2, as if it were deficient (for he is truly complete in everything), but that from the unmixed union of the Incarnation, and the composition out of two elements, the Godhead and the manhood, Emmanuel should be made up, who in one hypostasis is ineffably composite; not simple, but composite: as the soul of a man like us, which by nature is bodiless and rational, which is naturally intertwined with the body, remains in its suprasensual and bodiless nature, but by reason of the composition with the body makes up one composite animal, man. Accordingly the assumption of the body makes no addition to the essence of the soul, but makes up the composite animal, as it is reasonable to understand with regard to the theory of Emmanuel also. The Word did not take the flesh intelligently possessed of a soul in order to complete his being God, as we have said, but that one hypostasis might be wonderfully and immutably made up out of two elements, the Godhead we mean and the manhood, and the one incarnate nature of the Word himself, and one person: for the Word of God, according to the saying of Paul the apostle, partook of blood and flesh after our pattern . And that this is so the approved Cyril further shows in the letter to Valerian bishop of Iconium; who wrote as follows: «For God and man did not come together, as they say, and make up one Christ; but, as I have already said, the Word, being God, partook of blood and flesh like us, in order that he may be known to be God who was humanized, and who took our flesh, and made this his, because, as the man who was composed of soul and body is known to be one, so also now he is acknowledged to be one Son and Lord. For one nature and hypostasis of a man is acknowledged, though he is known to be made of diverse and heterogeneous elements: for the body is truly different in nature from the soul; but it belongs to it, and with it makes up the hypostasis of the one man. And in mental conception and in theory the difference of the things that have been named is not obscure, but by combination and concurrence that cannot be cut asunder one animal, man, is made up. The Word therefore, the Only one of God, did not come forth as man by taking a man, but, though his birth from the Father is ineffable, he became man by forming a man for himself through the Holy Spirit which is of one essence with him. Accordingly he is known to be one, though in the theory which is according to reason his own body is different in nature from himself. Let it therefore be everywhere acknowledged that he was not without soul, but that he was possessed of an intelligent soul» . Similarly also in the second volume against the blasphemies of Nestorius he clearly teaches that the assumption of flesh did not pass into the Godhead of the Word, but that the Word of God remained in his own nature, and apart from flesh, but by the immutable combination with flesh it was wisely and beyond all reason and understanding brought about that one Christ should be marvellously made up; for he speaks thus: «Accordingly confess one, not dividing the natures, while you know and understand that to flesh belongs one principle, and to Godhead that which befits it only. For we do not say that the flesh of the Word became Godhead, but rather that it is divine as being his. For, as the flesh of a man is called his, on what ground is it not right for us also to call that of the Word divine?» And again farther on: «If therefore he were a wise and intelligent man at all, he should say that the body is from a woman, but confess besides that by being combined in hypostatic union with the Word it has made up one Christ and one Son, and one Lord, who being the same is God and man» . The expressions therefore that are used by this genuine and very accurate father, 'for he is one, and not without flesh', and, 'he who in his own nature is apart from flesh and blood', demonstrate this, as is plain from what we have demonstrated, that in the dispensatory conjunction he is not without flesh: for he is one composed of two elements, the Godhead and the manhood, which have a perfect existence in their own sphere; but in his own nature he is known to be apart from flesh and blood, and without a body; not that he mingled flesh with the nature or with the essence of the Godhead, but that he kept the Godhead sublime and pure and unmixed, in the characteristics of its own incorporeal character, as also he did not change the manhood which was hypostatically united to him, but kept it free and without change in its own characteristics. Wherefore also one may see that Nestorius and those who like Jews hold his opinions wish to reject the absence of change of the hypostatic union, and to put confusion into the minds of the believers, while they are everywhere making this charge, that we confess that the body was changed into the divine essence1, and thereby hold one incarnate nature of God the Word, and they say that they themselves only, the wretched, unhappy men, keep the Godhead of the holy Trinity unmixed and pure, by confessing that the man from Mary, as they themselves say, in loving mercy was conjoined to God the Word and shares with him in sonship and divine authority, and by this self-created scruple they make the Trinity a quaternity. And for this reason the wise Cyril shows Nestorius also, who was their leader in this fatuity, speaking thus: «Therefore God the Word is named Christ also, because he has the eternal conjunction with Christ, and God the Word cannot do anything without the manhood: for he knows the coalescence exactly , not with the Godhead, as the new wise men amoug the doctors say» . And the same man of small intellect weaves the same charge, and in the treatise entitled 'Against the Theopaschites or Cyrillians', which he composed in the form of question and answer, speaks thus: