3. We will offer later an explanation of
these texts in the words of the Gospels and Epistles themselves.
But first we hold it right to remind the members of our common faith,
that the knowledge of the Eternal is presented in the same confession
which gives eternal life Alluding to St.
John xvii. 3, quoted in c. 2.. He does not,
he cannot know his own life, who is ignorant that Christ Jesus was very
God, as He was very man. It is equally perilous, whether we deny
that Christ Jesus was God the Spirit, or that He was flesh of our
body: Every one therefore who shall confess Me before men, him
will I also confess before My Father which is in Heaven. But
whosoever shall deny Me before men, him will I also deny before My
Father which is in heaven St. Matt. x. 32, 33.. So said the
Word made flesh; so taught the man Jesus Christ, the Lord of majesty,
constituted Mediator in His own person for the salvation of the Church,
and being in that very mystery of Mediatorship between men and God,
Himself one Person, both man and God. For He, being of two
natures united for that Mediatorship, is the full reality of each
nature; while abiding in each, He is wanting in neither; He does not
cease to be God because He becomes man, nor fail to be man because He
remains for ever God. This is the true faith for human
blessedness, to preach at once the Godhead and the manhood, to confess
the Word and the flesh, neither forgetting the God, because He is man,
nor ignoring the flesh, because He is the Word.