3. As to the statement that human feelings
are transmitted to the actual Godhead, it is one made by men who
preserve no order in their thoughts, and are ignorant that there is a
distinction between the feelings of flesh, of flesh endowed with soul,
and of soul using a body. cf.
De Sp. S. § 12. p. 7. It is the
property of flesh to undergo division, diminution, dissolution; of
flesh endowed with soul to feel weariness, pain, hunger, thirst, and to
be overcome by sleep; of soul using body to feel grief, heaviness,
anxiety, and such like. Of these some are natural and necessary
to every living creature; others come of evil will, and are
superinduced because of life’s lacking proper discipline and
training for virtue. Hence it is evident that our Lord assumed
the natural affections to establish His real incarnation, and not by
way of semblance of incantation, and that all the affections derived
from evil that besmirch the purity of our life, He rejected as unworthy
of His unsullied Godhead. It is on this account that He is said
to have been “made in the likeness of flesh of
sin;”
Rom. viii. 3, R.V. marg. not, as these men
hold, in likeness of flesh, but of flesh of sin. It follows that
He took our flesh with its natural afflictions, but “did no
sin.”1 Pet. ii. 22. Just as the
death which is in the flesh, transmitted to us through Adam, was
swallowed up by the Godhead, so was the sin taken away by the
righteousness which is in Christ Jesus, cf.
Rom. v. 12 ad fin. so
that in the resurrection we receive back the flesh neither liable to
death nor subject to sin.