Testimonia

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While very vainly putting together such reasons against the right confession of the Humanization, as I said before, reasons which contend against God, and saying that a man should be worshipped with the Trinity, Nestorius and those who think with him state of themselves that they preserve the unity of nature of the three hypostases unmixed, in that they do not confess that God the Word was hypostatically united to flesh possessing an intelligent soul, and call the union that is so far above nature and immutable and wonderful mingling. Wherefore also Dorotheus, who became bishop of Marcianopolis , and belonged to the same Jewish company and party, presented a petition to Marcian's own self at the very beginning of his reign, and found fault with the position held by the bishops, and the sound opinion of the holy churches; and he speaks thus: «Therefore, merciful kings, in consideration of their so ridiculous, that is lamentable, opinions, renew the firm maintenance of the connaturality while it is possible, while there is time, by recalling Nestorius from exile , and join together the people of Christ who are divided, lest, as I pray may not happen, the past be repeated» . The holy Cyril therefore, having exposed such old people's fables and Jewish tales in every part of his writings, in the first letter to Succensus also, which I mentioned above, said thus: «But it is impossible for a body taken from earth to endure the change into the divine nature; for it cannot be done. And, if not, we speak of the Godhead as a thing that is made, and as a thing that has taken into it something that is not its by nature. For on the score of impropriety it is equal for us to say that the body was changed into the nature of Godhead, and also the other thing too that the Word was changed into the nature of flesh. For, as this is impossible (for he is invariable and immutable), so also is the other. For it is not among possibilities that any created thing can pass into the essence or nature of Godhead. But the body too is a created thing. Accordingly we say that Christ's body is divine, because it is also God's body, and resplendent with ineffable glory, incorruptible, holy, life-giving: but, that it was changed into the nature of Godhead, none of the holy fathers has either thought or said, nor do we ourselves so hold» . This fact therefore according to the expression of the doctor, that the body of the Word is resplendent with ineffable glory, incorruptible and holy and life-giving, Gregory the Theologian also in the demonstration contained in the letter to Gledonius demonstrated by saying that the Godhead overcame the incarnation . Accordingly the flesh remained flesh, even after the God-befitting Resurrection and Ascension, but adorned with divine and ineffable glory, and with all the excellencies that befit God; and it is divine as something that is the body of God, and it was not changed into the essence of the Godhead. It is in this meaning that the expression of the doctor with which we are now concerned also should rightly be understood that God the Word is one and not without flesh: for he is incarnate by hypostatic union in flesh possessing an intelligent soul (but in his own nature he is without flesh and blood), that is, without mixture with what he possesses in his essence and nature, that is the bodiless and immutable and incomprehensible Godhead.

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