5. The Only-begotten God, therefore, when He was
born man of the Virgin, and in the fulness of time was about in His own
person to raise humanity to divinity, always maintained this form of
the Gospel teaching. He taught, namely, to believe Him the Son of
God, and exhorted to preach Him the Son of Man; man saying and doing
all that belongs to God; God saying and doing all that belongs to
man. Yet never did He speak without signifying by the twofold
aspect of these very utterances both His manhood and His
divinity. Though He proclaimed one God the Father, He declared
Himself to be in the nature of the
one God, by the truth of His generation. Yet in His office as Son
and His condition as man, He subjected Himself to God the Father, since
everything that is born must refer itself back to its author, and all
flesh must confess itself weak before God. Here, accordingly, the
heretics find opportunity to deceive the simple and ignorant.
These words, uttered in His human character, they falsely refer to the
weakness of His divine nature; and because He was one and the same
Person in all His utterances, they claim that He spoke always of His
entire self.