Fragment
II.
The God of all things therefore became truly,
according to the Scriptures, without conversion, sinless man, and that
in a manner known to Himself alone, as He is the natural Artificer of
things which are above our comprehension. And by that same saving
act of the incarnation
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He introduced into the flesh the
activity of His proper divinity, yet without having it (that activity)
either circumscribed by the flesh through the exinanition, or growing
naturally out of the flesh as it grew out of His divinity,
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but manifested
through it in the things which He wrought in a divine manner in His
incarnate state. For the flesh did not become divinity in nature
by a transmutation of nature, as though it became essentially flesh of
divinity. But what it was before, that also it continued to be in
nature and activity when united with divinity, even as the Saviour
said, “The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is
weak.”
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And
working and enduring in the flesh things which were proper to sinless
flesh, He proved the evacuation of divinity (to be) for our sakes,
confirmed as it was by wonders and by sufferings of the flesh
naturally. For with this purpose did the God of all things become
man, viz., in order that by suffering in the flesh, which is
susceptible of suffering, He might redeem our whole race, which was
sold to death; and that by working wondrous things by His divinity,
which is unsusceptible of suffering, through the medium of the flesh He
might restore it to that incorruptible and blessed life from which it
fell away by yielding to the devil; and that He might establish the
holy orders of intelligent existences in the heavens in immutability by
the mystery of His incarnation,
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the doing of which is the recapitulation
of all things in himself.
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He remained therefore, also,
after His incarnation, according to nature, God infinite, and
more,
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having the
activity proper and suitable to Himself,—an activity growing out
of His divinity essentially, and manifested through His perfectly holy
flesh by wondrous acts economically, to the intent that He might be
believed in as God, while working out of Himself
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by the flesh, which by nature is weak,
the salvation of the universe.
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σωτήριον
σάρκωσιν
.
1729
οὐδ᾽
ὥσπερ τῆς
αὐτοῦ
θεότητος
οὕτω καὶ
αὐτῆς
φυσικῶς
ἐκφυομένην
.
1730
Matt. xxvi. 41
.
1731
σωματώσεως
.
1732
Referring probably to
Eph. i.
10
.
1733
ὑπεράπειρος
.
1734
αὐτουργῶν
.