48. But neither is it necessary for the
Only-begotten God that He should change. He is God, and that is
the name of full and perfect divinity. For, as we said before,
the meaning of the repeated glorifying, and the cause of the subjection
is that God may be all in all: but it is a Mystery, not a
necessity, that God is to be all in all. Christ abode in the form
of God when He assumed the form of a servant, not being subjected to
change, but emptying Himself; hiding within Himself, and remaining
master of Himself though He was emptied. He constrained Himself
even to the form and fashion of a man, lest the weakness of the assumed
humility should not be able to endure the immeasurable power of His
nature. His unbounded might contracted itself, until it could
fulfil the duty of obedience even to the endurance of the body to which
it was yoked. But since He was self-contained even when He
emptied Himself, His authority suffered no diminution, for in the
humiliation of the emptying He exercised within Himself the power of
that authority which was emptied.