And we cannot Max., Dial. cum Pyrrh., if we wish to be accurate, speak of Christ as having judgment (γνώμη) and preference Max., Epist. ad Marin.. For judgment is a disposition with reference to the decision arrived at after investigation and deliberation concerning something unknown, that is to say, after counsel and decision. And after judgment comes preference προαίρεσις., which chooses out and selects the one rather than the other. But the Lord being not mere man but also God, and knowing all things, had no need of inquiry, and investigation, and counsel, and decision, and by nature made whatever is good His own and whatever is bad foreign to Him Basil, on Ps. xliv., or rather on Isaiah vii.. For thus says Isaiah the prophet, Before the child shall know to prefer the evil, he shall choose the good; because before the child knows good or evil, he refuses wickedness by choosing the good Is. vii. 16, sec. LXX.. For the word “before” proves that it is not with investigation and deliberation, as is the way with us, but as God and as subsisting in a divine manner in the flesh, that is to say, being united in subsistence to the flesh, and because of His very existence and all-embracing knowledge, that He is possessed of good in His own nature. For the virtues are natural qualities Φυσικαὶ μεν γάρ εἰσιν αἱ ἀρεταὶ; cf. Cicero, De leg. 1., and are implanted in all by nature and in equal measure, even if we do not all in equal measure employ our natural energies. By the transgression we were driven from the natural to the unnatural Supr., bk. ii., ch. 30.. But the Lord led us back from the unnatural into the natural Max., Dial. cum Pyrrh.. For this is what is the meaning of in our image, after our likeness Gen. i. 26.. And the discipline and trouble of this life were not designed as a means for our attaining virtue which was foreign to our nature, but to enable us to cast aside the evil that was foreign and contrary to our nature: just as on laboriously removing from steel the rust which is not natural to it but acquired through neglect, we reveal the natural brightness of the steel.