9. Believe then that this Only-begotten Son
of God for our sins came down from heaven upon earth, and took upon Him
this human nature of like passions ὁμοιοπαθῆ.
Compare Acts xiv. 15; Jas. v.
17. with us, and was
begotten of the Holy Virgin and of the Holy Ghost, and was made Man,
not in seeming and mere show On the origin of the
Docetic heresy, see vi. 14., but in truth; nor
yet by passing through the Virgin as through a channel Valentinus the Gnostic
taught that God produced a Son of an animal nature who “passed
through Mary just as water through a tube, and that on him the Saviour
descended at his Baptism.” Irenæus, I. vii. 2.; but was of her made truly flesh, [and truly
nourished with milk The words which the
Benedictine Editor introduces in the brackets are found in Theodoret,
and adopted by recent Editors, with Codd. M.A.], and did truly eat
as we do, and truly drink as we do. For if the Incarnation was a
phantom, salvation is a phantom also. The Christ was of two
natures, Man in what was seen, but God in what was not seen; as Man
truly eating like us, for He had the like feeling of the flesh with us;
but as God feeding the five thousand from five loaves; as Man truly
dying, but as God raising him that had been dead four days; truly
sleeping in the ship as Man, and walking upon the waters as
God.