Scotus Academicus, Tomus septimus: De Incarnatione Verbi Divini

Since the mystery of the Incarnate Word transcends, among other divine works, human reason above all — for nothing more marvelous can be thought than that which the Church professes in the Symbol of St. Athanasius: Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and man: God begotten of the substance of the Father before all ages, and man born of the substance of his Mother in the world: perfect God, perfect man subsisting of a rational soul and human flesh; equal to the Father according to his divinity; less than the Father according to his humanity — therefore it is no wonder if around a mystery so ineffable and so impenetrable to the human mind far more errors have been committed than around any other whatsoever of the Articles of our faith. For, to pass over the Gentiles, who judged it impossible for God to become man, as well as the reprobate Jews, who believed Christ to be mere man; nay even lifted him up by an ignominious death as a man most lowly and worthless — the various impious dogmas of heretics concerning the assertion of the Incarnate Word can scarcely be numbered and enumerated. Nevertheless, that we may reduce those errors to a certain order, we shall distribute them into three classes: of which the First will disclose the principal Heresiarchs who assailed the divinity of Christ the Lord: The Second will recount all those who erred concerning his humanity. The Third finally will recount various and manifold errors of all those who denied the union of both, divinity and humanity, or attempted to adulterate and obscure it. For some, as holy Pope Leo writes in his tenth Sermon On the Nativity, chapter 2, from the documents of the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ, which showed him to be the true son of man, believed him to be nothing more than the son of man, not thinking that divinity was to be attributed to him whom the condition of the beginnings of infancy, and of bodily growth, and of passions even unto the cross and death, had shown not unlike the rest of mortals.

Moreover, in this series of weaving together the Heresies and Heresiarchs warring against the Incarnation of the divine Word, lest I seem to bring forth anything fabricated from my own brain, I wished the Reader to be admonished that everything I am about to narrate has been drawn from the holy Fathers, the vanquishers of those errors, and from the older Writers of Ecclesiastical History, and confirmed by their testimony: although, that I may render to each his deserved and due thanks and praises, let me not deny that I owe very much to Baronius, Petavius, and other modern Annalists and Professors of Theology, who with their most learned studies and writings came to our aid in this weaving together of an Encyclopedia of Heresies, nay even in elaborating this most difficult Treatise.

FIRST CLASS OF HERETICS — Those who assailed the Divinity of Christ the Lord.

About thirteen Assertors and Artificers of that nefarious error are celebrated among the Ancients: whose impious host was led by Carpocrates, who in the very times of the Apostles, as Irenaeus recounts, book 1. chapter 1, was the chief author of the Gnostics, just like that Simon the Samaritan, magician and fornicator, who affirmed, among other things, that Jesus had been begotten from the marriage of Joseph and Mary like the rest of men, upon whom after his Baptism Christ descended; and he said he had received such a soul whereby he might know the things that are supernal and announce them: as Tertullian teaches, book On the Soul, chapter 25; Epiphanius, book 1. On Heresies chapter 5; and Augustine there, chapter 7.

Cerinthus, disciple of Carpocrates, dissented in nothing from his impious teacher; since with him he affirmed that Christ, that is the Holy Spirit, descended into Jesus at the Jordan in the form of a dove, and after Jesus suffered, Christ flew back on high, while Jesus rose again. So relate Irenaeus, book 2. chapter 3; Epiphanius, haer. 28. But Augustine, book On Heresies, chapter 8, says that Cerinthus asserted that Jesus had not risen, but would rise. Moreover the same authors testify that this same Cerinthus was one of those who stirred up the multitude of believers against Peter, because he had entered unto men having foreskin to baptize Cornelius: and that he moreover was he who under the Apostles raised that question about Circumcision and the other Jewish ceremonies to be observed; for the disputation of which the first Council was held at Jerusalem, as we read Acts 15. Which things if they be true, he must have been older than Carpocrates, whom Theodoret places under Hadrian, who relates that Cerinthus dwelt long in Egypt, and there applied himself to Philosophy, and afterward passed over into Asia; whence Irenaeus narrates that memorable thing, book 3. chapter, that when the holy John the Evangelist had come to the bath, perceiving that Cerinthus had entered there, he immediately went out from there, lest the bath, he says, falling suddenly crush us together with Cerinthus.

Ebion, from whom come the Ebionites, disciple of Cerinthus, although his sect was Samaritan, preferred to be held a Jew, and therefore joined the Mosaic Law and the Jewish rites with the Christian profession; and casting aside the other Gospels, the Ebionites receive only that which is according to Matthew: but they reject the Apostle Paul, calling him an apostate from the law, as Irenaeus relates, chapter 26, and Epiphanius, haer. 30, who likewise prove that Ebion thought Christ to have been begotten from the union of Joseph and Mary; although Origen, book 2. Against Celsus, chapter 3, says there are two kinds of Ebionites; of whom some confess Christ to have been born of the Virgin; others however say he was procreated in the common state with the rest. But this most wicked dogma emerged while St. John the Evangelist was still alive, witness St. Jerome, book On Ecclesiastical Writers, chapter 19, where he writes of St. John: Last of all he wrote the Gospel against Cerinthus and other heretics, and especially then when the dogma of the Ebionites was rising, who assert that Christ did not exist before Mary. Which Tertullian had said before, book On the Flesh of Christ, chapter 14: This opinion, he says, may suit Ebion, who made Jesus a mere man, born only of the seed of David, and not likewise the Son of God. Hence Eusebius notes especially, book 3. of Ecclesiastical History, chapter 21, that his followers were deservedly called Ebionites, that is destitute of mind and understanding; for Ebion in the Hebrew tongue signifies poor and needy; seeing that they determined and opined poorly and abjectly concerning Christ and his doctrine.

Elxai, a certain Jew, impostor and Pseudo-prophet, established a middle sect between Jews and Christians about the year 249. He wrote a book which his followers wonderfully venerated as prophetic; they feigned it had descended from heaven: in which book he preached that Christ was a great king, but nevertheless he said he was a pure creature; created indeed from the beginning, but one which, that it might appear variously at divers times, had put on various forms. For he was a certain celestial power, whose sister is the Holy Spirit, who together with that Christ descended into Jesus begotten of Mary and Joseph. So Epiphanius, haer. 19.

Related to these was the heresy of the Helcesaites: whose parent Theodoret acknowledges, book 2. chapter 4, to be Alcibiades of Apamea. But he relates in chapter 1 that this heresy, repressed and extinguished from its origin, was restored through Artemon, or Artemas, who asserted that Jesus Christ was mere man, procreated of the Virgin, and more excellent than the Prophets; and that the Apostles indeed taught this, but their successors venerated him as God.

About the end of the second century burst forth the impious dogma of the Theodotians, its author being Theodotus, a Byzantine by country, a leather-worker by trade, exceedingly learned in letters, who when apprehended in the persecution had renounced the faith, and moved by shame betook himself to Rome, where since he could neither lie hidden nor bear the ignominy and reproach of his perfidy, that he might raise himself up from it, he began to preach that Christ is not God, but a mere man, and begotten like the rest of men. So Tertullian, book On Prescription; and Augustine, haer. 33, where he calls him Theodotion, perhaps to distinguish him more perfectly from Theodotus the money-changer, or banker, who also himself, says Tertullian in heresy 8, introduced another Sect, and says Christ himself is only man, conceived alike and born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary; but that this one is inferior to Melchisedech.

Paul of Samosata, Bishop of Antioch, about the year 265, renewed the heresy of the Jews and Ebionites; since he said that in God there is one person only, and distinguished a twofold Word: one eternal, which would be the same person as the Father; and another prolated, which he asserted was like a certain air; hence he taught that Christ was a just man, not true God, whom nevertheless he called God. For so St. Athanasius writes of him in the book On the Saving Advent: Paul, he says, confesses God born of the Virgin, God brought forth into light at Nazareth, and thence having received the beginning of existing, and having attained the Kingdom. Yet he acknowledges the efficacious Word from heaven, and wisdom in him, and thinks that by predestination he was before the ages, but that he first began to exist at Nazareth, that there may be one God, the Father. Yet he did not think Christ was God as soon as he was brought forth, but that he was made God by progress of virtue, as the same Athanasius relates, in his fourth Oration against the Arians. Against his impious dogma two Synods were convened at Antioch. The first indeed about the year 265, at which Firmilian Bishop of Caesarea attended, Gregory of Neocaesarea, and many other most holy Fathers: but Dionysius of Alexandria could not be present, excusing his age and health, yet sent in his place an Epistle in which he expounded his faith concerning the divinity of Christ. The same had previously rebuked Paul himself in another epistle; to which in turn that heretic replied, and proposed ten chapters against the divinity of Christ for his nefarious opinion; to which Dionysius responded in a small book, which exists in Volume two of the Library of the Fathers. Meanwhile Paul, compelled to appear before the Bishops assembled at Antioch, frustrated their diligence, promising that he would recall his former opinion, and craftily bearing forth the Catholic dogma, he mocked the judgment of the Fathers, who departed from Antioch thinking him truly converted. But when afterward the heresy resumed its advocacy with greater confidence, the Bishops again convene at Antioch, seventy in number, as St. Athanasius affirms in the book On Synods; or one hundred eighty, as is related in the supplicatory little book which Basil the Deacon offered in the Council of Ephesus against Nestorius: before whom Paul himself, cited and convicted of heresy by the industry of Malchion the Presbyter, a learned man and most keen disputant, was cast down from his see. But since he was unwilling to yield, Emperor Aurelian, appealed to by the Christian Prelates, commanded him to be expelled by force.

At nearly the same time burst forth the impious dogma of the Sabellians, its author being Sabellius: who since he acknowledged one person only in the Deity, also denied that the divine Word had been incarnate, but wished that the one person in God had been intimately joined to man; or, as Ferrandus the Deacon relates in the Epistle to Severus, which exists in Volume 3 of the Library of the Fathers, saying: Truth refuted those heretics who wished so to speak of the one God Trinity, that Him whom they confessed as Father, they feigned the same to be to themselves Son, the same Holy Spirit, namely God, who remaining in the heavens, was Father of the whole creation, so that extended into the Virgin he became even by birth Son among men; and again, the mystery of the human dispensation having been consummated, coming upon the Apostles in tongues of fire he was called Holy Spirit. Compelled by this error they believed not only the Son of God the Father, but the Father Crucified. Whence antiquity shows they were also called Patripassians. Hence Epiphanius, heresy 62, relates that those heretics declared their impious dogma by this similitude, saying that God is like the sun, whose one hypostasis it is, in which three things are discerned: the power of illuminating, as well as of warming, and the orb, or globe: thus in the one and singular person of God they said the Father was called the form of the whole hypostasis: but the Son was a certain power of illuminating, and the Holy Spirit as it were the ardor, and the implanted faculty of cherishing and warming: whence concerning Christ they pronounced that he was the Son sent forth; that is, a ray of divinity, which accomplished all those things that pertained to illustrating the minds of men with light, and with evangelical truth.

A favorer and imitator of Sabellius was Marcellus of Ancyra: who while he inveighs rather vehemently against the Arians, and defends most keenly against them the unity of the divine substance, lapsed into an error in the contrary direction, and transferred that same unity even to the hypostases themselves and persons. Hence, as Eusebius of Caesarea relates, who assailed him in five books, he said the Word was devoid of proper subsistence, and entered into the flesh merely as an indwelling utterance, and operated in it: and that then Christ existed, and Jesus, and King, and Image of God. Which Theodoret confirms, book 2. chapter 10, saying, there was devised by him a certain extension from the paternal Deity, and such an Utterance was it which descended into Christ: and which, all function completed, was reduced and contracted to God, from whom it had been extended. And he added that after the end of the world and the Judgment, the Utterance would depart from the flesh and return to the Father; so that the flesh alone, bereft of the Word, would remain.

Disciple of Marcellus was Photinus, Bishop of Sirmium, who, eloquent and skilled in the faculty of disputing, about the year 337 renewed the dogma of Paul of Samosata, as had Marcellus; so that those finally called Photinians had been named Paulianists. He was condemned in the Council of Sardica, but not acquiescing in the sentence passed, he went to Emperor Constantius, and asked for Judges before whom he might be heard anew: which when the Emperor had granted him, he delegated to him Semiarian Bishops, who convening at Sirmium condemned him again and cast him down from his see; that by that means those Judges might appear Catholic, insofar as they would condemn a man who denied the Son of God to have existed before Mary. But their guile Lucifer of Cagliari soon exposed, book On Not Sparing Those Who Sin Against God, where he thus addresses Constantius the Semiarian as Judge and condemner of Photinus: Behold Photinus professes only a man to be the Son of God: he says he was not before most blessed Mary: this profession is also yours, since assuredly you say that before all things, that is, before heaven, earth, sea, and all things that are in them, is the Son of God; but that he existed from nothing, that he is a creature — what difference do you judge there is between you and Paul of Samosata your rector, your disciple Photinus, except that you say he is before all things, while he after all things? Otherwise one and the same mind of belief and unbelief is yours, in that you say God has not a true Son.

SECOND CLASS OF HERETICS — Namely, of those who erred concerning the humanity of Christ the Lord. —

Since in man there are two things of which he consists and is constituted integrally; namely, the human body and the rational soul, which are joined together by a certain common bond, from whose union it follows for man to have various faculties, flowing forth now from the soul, now from the body; hence concerning the humanity of Christ the Lord heretics erred variously; whose errors, that they may appear more clearly and distinctly, we shall set forth first those who hawked certain nefarious dogmas concerning the body of Christ the Lord.

Errors concerning the Body of Christ the Lord.

Here I do not recount all those errors which maintained that the Incarnation was Judaic, fictitious, and merely outwardly shadowed forth. Among whom the principal and standard-bearer of them all seems Simon Magus; who, as St. Irenaeus relates, book 7. chapter 20, glorified by many as if God, taught himself to be he who among the Jews indeed appeared as Son; but in Samaria descended as Father; and among the remaining Gentiles arrived as Holy Spirit. Whence it followed that he should deny the Incarnation, and assert that flesh was received from God not truly, but in mere appearance. But passing over these, I make mention only of those who denied the true flesh of Christ; whose first comes forth

Saturnilus, or as some will have it, Saturninus, disciple of the same Simon, who propagated the heresy of Simon, and among other things taught that Christ was not truly born, but was only putatively a man, as Irenaeus says, book 1. chapter 22; or came only in a phantasm, as Tertullian teaches in On Prescriptions, chapter 46. His fellow-disciple Basilides adhered to him in all things, teaching Christ to have been a phantasm, and in no wise truly to have suffered; but in his place that Simon of Cyrene, upon whom when the Jews had laid the cross of Christ, Jesus changed this man into his own figure, and conversely assumed his proper one, and thus mocked the Jews and derided their endeavor. Hence he denied that martyrdom was to be undergone for Christ, because he had not undergone death himself, as they relate, besides Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, book 4. Stromata, and very many others.

At nearly the same time Valentinus taught the same nefarious dogma: who, as Eusebius observes, book 4. of History, chapter 10, flourished under Pius, that is, in the year of Christ 158, and remained until Anicetus, namely until the year 167; who among other deliria taught that Christ, sent down by the Father for the salvation of the whole world, had a body not earthly but celestial, and passed through the Virgin Mary like water through a channel, taking nothing from her womb, as Epiphanius writes, heresy 31. Tertullian also adds against the Valentinians c. 15 that he gave Christ a spiritual body, and that just as water passes through a pipe, so it made its way through the Virgin Mary, receiving or borrowing nothing from thence.

To Valentinus are to be reckoned several others who thought no less insanely than ineptly concerning the true body of Christ the Lord. Before all others however stand out the Cerdonians, from Cerdo, who is said first to have spoken of two Gods; one good, the other evil. This man, says Tertullian, book On Prescriptions, chapter 51, introduces two beginnings, that is, two Gods; one good, the other cruel: the good superior, the cruel Creator of this world. He repudiates the Prophecies and the Law, renounces God the Creator, treats of the Son of the superior One having come: he denies him in the substance of flesh, pronounces him to have been in mere phantasm, neither having suffered at all, but as it were suffering; nor born of a Virgin, but altogether not even born.

Disciple of Cerdo, and imitator and disseminator of the most wicked dogma, was Marcion, who, says Tertullian, book On the Flesh of Christ, denied the nativity of Christ, and that he might deny the nativity, he denied also the flesh. And as he adds in the book against Marcion, chapter 5, he established two Christs: one who in the times of Tiberius was revealed by a certain unknown God unto the salvation of all the Gentiles: another who was destined by God the Creator (that is, the evil one) for the restoration of the Judaic state, to come sometime. Between these he cuts a diversity and great difference, as much as between the just and the good; as much as between law and Gospel, as much as between Judaism and Christianity.

There follows the worst and most pestilential of all, Manes or Manichaeus; Master of diabolical falsehood, and founder of an obscure superstition, says holy Leo, sermon 2. On Pentecost: whose disciples, says St. Aug. On Heresies, c. 46, affirmed Christ to have been he whom our Scripture calls the serpent, by whom they assert the first parents were illuminated, that they might open the eyes of knowledge and discern good and evil; and withal said Christ came in the last times to liberate souls, not bodies; and was not in true flesh, but offered a simulated species of flesh for beguiling human senses: wherein he lied likewise not only concerning death but even concerning resurrection. To him, as Tertullian says, On Prescriptions, chapter 51, must be ascribed Appelles his disciple, who says Christ was neither in a phantasm as Marcion, nor in the substance of a true body, as the Gospel teaches: but that as he descended from the higher parts, in the very descent he wove for himself a sidereal and aerial flesh: that in the resurrection he rendered back to each single element what in his descent he had borrowed; and thus, the parts of his body dispersed each into heaven, established only spirit. I do not recount all the other heretics; such as the Priscillianists, and others like them, who, says St. Leo, epist. 93, do not believe Christ the Lord to have been born in the true nature of man, but wish him to have seemed shown forth by a certain illusion which were not true; following the dogma of Cerdo and Marcion, and according with their kinsmen the Manichaeans in all things. Nor those Fanatic Arians, who renewing the dogma of the Patripassians, says holy Fulgentius, book against the Sermon of Fastidiosus, chapter 11 — Their perversity, pursuing its course, precipitates them into this absurdity, that they believe in no way the divine nativity; but nevertheless assign to the Father consequently the nature according to the flesh, the passion and death likewise, resurrection also from hell, and Ascension into heaven, and all those things which in the Sacrament of the Incarnation pertain to the person of the one Son. Nor finally the Gaianites, who, as Leontius Scholasticus writes, act 10. book On Sects, confess that God the Word took human nature from the Virgin perfectly and truly, but say that after the union the body was incorruptible.

Errors concerning the Soul of Christ.

There come forth above all the Arians: for Arius, as Manuel Caleca observes, believed that the soul assumed together with the flesh existed before the Incarnation, and came from heaven: since he placed a prior existence of souls to bodies themselves; or as St. August. observes concerning certain Arians, they think Christ received mere flesh without a soul. That this was true Epiphanius did not keep silent. And I myself, he says, learned most certainly from certain of their writings and colloquies.

To these in error succeeded the Apollinarists, affirming that Christ God received flesh without a soul; their teacher and spokesman being the heresiarch Apollinaris, who was a man of remarkable learning, and before he lapsed into heresy illustrious for piety and virtue, and far most dear to Epiphanius himself and Athanasius and all Catholics: For, says Epiphanius of him, heresy 77, that man had attained no mediocre knowledge of letters: since he was cultivated in the humane and Greek disciplines, and excelled above all in Dialectic and all sophistic art: he was likewise endowed with exceptional gravity: and joined in the highest charity with the defenders of the Catholic faith, before he lapsed into that dogma: nay he even endured exile for refusing to agree with the Arians. So great was his erudition that St. Hier. writes of him, book On Ecclesiastical Writers, chapter 14: He wrote innumerable volumes, and his thirty Books against Porphyry are among his other Works especially approved.

Of that error and heresy various and manifold heads are adduced; but as regards the mystery of the Incarnation he erred in a threefold manner. First indeed he judged the nature of man in Christ to be semi-complete, that is, lacking a soul, whose place the Word itself made flesh supplied to the body. For, says Socrates, book 2. last chapter, Apollinaris held that altogether the soul was not assumed by God the Word in the dispensation of the Incarnation: then as if led by penitence, correcting themselves they added that indeed a soul was assumed, which however would not have a mind, but that God the Word was assumed unto man in place of mind. Which opinion was his second error; so that he thought indeed that the soul was assumed by the Word in that part whereby we are quickened and sense and perform the common offices with the other animals; but not in that part whereby it is rational. Whence Augustine in Tractate 47 on John declaims thus against them: Behold the absurdity and an insanity not to be endured. They wished him to have an irrational soul; they denied him a rational one: they gave him the soul of a beast, they withdrew from him the soul of man. His third error finally was that, thinking the flesh of Christ unlike and not taken from the flesh of the Blessed Virgin, a part of the very substance of God was converted into flesh, and came down from heaven. Hence Athanasius in the Epistle to Epictetus exclaims thus against that nefarious dogma: Whence pray, he says, have these things come forth? What infernal ones further belched forth that the body begotten of Mary is consubstantial with the Deity, or that the Word itself was converted into flesh, bones, hair, and indeed the whole body, and changed by its own nature? etc. More truly to insane astonishment was it that, as Nazianzen relates, Oration 16, Apollinaris affirmed that in no wise adventitious was the flesh which the only-begotten Son according to the dispensation assumed for restoring our nature: but that already even from the beginning that carnal nature was in the Son. Which impious fiction indeed he proved from that word John 3: No man ascends into heaven, but he who descended from heaven, the Son of man.

From those nefarious errors another was asserted by them heretics by consequence; namely, that the Divinity of Christ suffered and died, as St. Ambrose relates in the book On the Incarnation of Christ, chapter 6, tacitly naming the Apollinarists. There are some who have proceeded to such a pitch of impiety, he says, as to think that because the Divinity of the Lord was circumcised, and made imperfect from perfect, on the wood not flesh hung but that divine substance, worker of all things, curdled in the species of flesh. But who would not shudder? Who could hear that the Word made for himself passible flesh not from the Virgin Mary, but from divine substance? Asserting this they will slide so far as to contend that the body of the Lord was not assumed in time, but was ever coeternal with the Word of God. The authors of all these are they who said the Divinity and the flesh of the Lord were of one nature.

Errors concerning the Faculties of the Soul of Christ.

It is certain that the Apollinarists, of whom mention was just made, erred concerning the human intellect of Christ the Lord; inasmuch as they affirmed the Soul in Christ lacked its own mind and power of understanding; whose place the Divinity of the Word supplied, which as mind is far more excellent than the human intellect. Which opinion Apollinaris had expressed out of Platonic Philosophy, witness Nemesius at the beginning of the book which he inscribed On the Nature of Man. For certain ones, he says, among whom is Plotinus, establishing that soul is one thing and mind another, wish man to consist of three things, body, soul, and mind. These Apollinaris Bishop of Laodicea followed: for casting this foundation of his opinion, he superstructed the rest consonant to his dogma.

The Agnoetae also erred about the year of Christ 535, so called from ignorance, because they attributed ignorance to the intellect of Christ the Lord. Concerning whom Leontius Scholasticus relates these things, book On Sects, Action 5: While Theodosius lived privately at Byzantium, the dogma of the Agnoetae, so called from ignorance, was set in motion. For because the Lord says no one knows the hour of Judgment, not even the Son, except only the Father, inquiry was made whether Christ as man was ignorant of it: Theodosius denied that Christ was ignorant, and wrote against the Agnoites. Others however handed down that Christ was ignorant of the hour, just as we said he felt pain. Thence they were divided from Theodosius, who are called Agnoetae, and when they had made for themselves a peculiar Church, they communicated apart: and again: They say we are assimilated to Christ in all things: therefore if we are ignorant, he also was ignorant. Holy John Damascene also makes mention of them in the book On Heresies, observing that they were also called Themistians from Themistius, who was of the sect of the Theodosians. That error long buried Luther anew aroused: for he taught that Christ knew many things not, as man, in the Sermon on the Nativity of the Lord, expounding that passage of Mark 13: But of that day, etc. And Homil. 1. of the Sunday after Epiph., on these words, He advanced in wisdom and age.

Errors concerning the Will of Christ.

I pass over the Apollinarists, who by the very fact that they denied a rational soul in Christ the Lord took away from him also the human will; as well as the Arians resting on the same principle; and the Eutychians, of whom below. For from the fact that they established one nature in Christ the Lord, into which they wished the human to be converted, consequently they acknowledged one will only in him. I bring forward only those who, thinking well concerning the twofold nature, namely divine and human, of Christ the Lord joined in the hypostasis of the divine Word: nevertheless maintained there to be one divine will only in him, but none human.

There come forth above all the Monothelites: whose heresy had its beginning about the year of Christ 633, as Theophanes, Cedrenus, and others everywhere among the Greek Annalists relate; so narrate Baronius and Petavius. For when Emperor Heraclius, the Persian war finished, journeying through the East, had come to Hierapolis, a certain Athanasius Patriarch of the Jacobites approached him, whose Sect was Eutychian; when the Emperor had told him he would appoint him Patriarch of Antioch if he approved the Council of Chalcedon, and confessed two natures in Christ, and renounced the Eutychian dogma; enticed by this hope Athanasius began to profess two natures in Christ: then he proposed in turn to the Emperor the question lately agitated by Theodore of Pharan concerning the will and operation of Christ — whether it ought to be twofold or one. Hesitating over which interrogation, the Emperor consulted Sergius Patriarch of Constantinople by letter; who since he too was a Syrian, sprung from Jacobite parents, and secretly a defender of the same heresy, which acknowledged one nature in Christ, and therefore one will and operation, gave a response consonant to his own error: which when the Emperor had received, and communicated it to Cyrus Bishop of Phasis, and shortly after to the Patriarch of Alexandria, since Cyrus himself was infected with a like stain and heresy, thenceforth their counsels having been shared, those two Patriarchs, namely Sergius of Constantinople and Cyrus of Alexandria, together with Macharius Patriarch of Antioch, gave strength and force to this heresy; truly especially Cyrus, who at the beginning of his promotion to the Alexandrian Patriarchate, under the pretext of reducing to the Church the Theodosian heretics and Acephali, of whom there was an immense number in that city, convened a Synod: in which he publicly set forth nine Chapters with anathemas: of which the seventh was, that in Christ there is one Theandric, that is, Divine-human operation. Those Chapters moreover exist in act 13. of the sixth Synod.

Then flourished at Alexandria Sophronius the Monk, a man of singular piety and doctrine, who when he recognized well the deceits and fallacies covered under the cloak of peace, pressed Cyrus vehemently that he rescind that seventh Chapter, which certainly he could not obtain. Wherefore he set out for Constantinople to Patriarch Sergius, that he might implore his aid against the arising heresy; but since Sergius was infected with the same stain, yet, as he was a crafty man, did not yet wish to divulge his error, he agreed with Sophronius himself that mention of one or two wills should be suppressed, as may be seen in the Epistle of Sergius himself to Honorius the Supreme Pontiff: where among other things he has this: Finally it stood and pleased, that the aforesaid venerable Sophronius should henceforth move no discourse about one or two operations, but let it suffice him to have advanced the cautious and tried tradition and doctrine of the holy Fathers, &c. — But when Sophronius himself shortly after was made Bishop of Jerusalem, a Synod celebrated, he decreed that two operations and wills in Christ must be admitted, as appears from that Epistle which he wrote to Sergius, which was read and approved in the sixth Ecumenical Synod; nay he even sent letters to Rome to Honorius the Supreme Pontiff through Stephen, Bishop of Dora, whereby he makes him more certain concerning the new heresy of the Monothelites, and shortly after died. — Sergius wrote to the same Honorius in the same year, concerning the controversy between Cyrus and Sophronius, not without malign interpretation of the mind and opinion of those who asserted two operations; as if it followed from thence that there were two wills contrary and conflicting with each other: wherefore it seemed more prudent to him that neither one nor two operations be named in Christ, but only one operator. Responding to which Honorius approved that counsel of Sergius, for the sake of preserving concord, otherwise professing that in Christ there are not two wills contrary to each other, but only one, that he might elude that conflict and discord of wills. — After these things Pope Honorius dies, succeeded by Severinus, whose ordination was delayed, because his election was not yet ratified by the Emperor, as was customary; and thus the Roman see lay vacant long. Meanwhile since the faction of the Monothelites gathered strength daily, and poured forth its virus, Emperor Heraclius, with Sergius as author, promulgated the Ecthesis, or exposition of the faith; wherein he asserted indeed one will in Christ, but as it were doing something else; since he expressly and openly established that no one name either one or two operations and wills in Christ. Which Ecthesis Sergius approved in a Synod held at Constantinople, and publicly proposed, and in the same year died; and Pyrrhus, partaker of the same heresy with Sergius, was substituted in his place; with whom John the Fourth, who had succeeded Pope Severinus deceased, pressed that the Ecthesis affixed in public places be taken down and condemned; which when he had been unable to obtain, a Council enacted at Rome, Emperor Heraclius in an Epistle to Pope John professed that he had not been the author of that Ecthesis, but Sergius, who had composed it, and had asked him to subscribe to it and order it promulgated in his name. — Two years after the promulgation of the Ecthesis Heraclius died, succeeded by Constantine his son, a Catholic Prince: but he dying after four months, not without suspicion of poison given by his stepmother Martina, whose counselor Pyrrhus was said to be, the other Heraclius reigned, or Heraclonas, together with Martina his mother; but those condemned to exile, and the nostrils of Heraclonas and the tongue of Martina cut off by decree of the Senate, in their place was substituted Emperor Heraclius, another son of Constantine, who therefore was named by the people Constantine and Constans, and emulating rather his grandfather than his father, defended most keenly the heresy of the Monothelites. Meanwhile Pyrrhus, harassed by popular sedition on account of the killing of Constantine, fled Constantinople, and withdrew himself into Africa, where he held a famous conference with holy Abbot Maximus, a man most religious and most learned, in a convent of Bishops and noble men; and the matter was conducted so that Pyrrhus convicted of error gave his hand to the Catholic truth: wherefore proceeding to Rome he offered to Pope Theodore, who had succeeded John the Fourth, a libellus, whereby his heresy being condemned he subscribed to the Catholic faith, and thus was received into communion. But afterward by order of Emperor Constans Olympius Exarch brought Pyrrhus with an army to Ravenna to resume his heretical profession; for which cause Pontiff Theodore deposed Pyrrhus and condemned him with anathema, and passed the same sentence upon Paul, who had been substituted in the place of Pyrrhus. Persuaded however by Paul himself, Emperor Constans promulgated an Edict, which they call the Type, in which, to sanction concord, he prohibited any one from claiming either one or two wills in Christ. — After the death of Theodore, Martin the First his successor convened at Rome the Lateran Synod of 105 Bishops, in which the Ecthesis of Heraclius or Sergius, and the Type of Constans, and therefore the favorers and dogmas of the Monothelites, are condemned. Moved by which Emperor Constans harassed Martin variously, that he recall the condemnation: but persevering he is sent into exile, where suffering various hardships he merited the crown of martyrdom. Finally, when Emperor Constans had been killed at Syracuse in Sicily by treachery, Constantine his son surnamed Pogonatus, that is Bearded, succeeded to the imperial dignity; who since he was a pious and Catholic prince, negotiated first with Donus, then with his successor Agatho concerning composing the peace of the Church; wherefore a General Council was celebrated at Constantinople; presided over by Legates of the Apostolic See, the Emperor present attended, in which the Monothelites heard anew, whose standard-bearer was Macarius of Antioch, it was decreed that in Christ there inhere two wills, and as many natural operations. The Council moreover was begun in the year 680, completed in the following. — It is disputed however whether the Monothelites truly asserted that there is one will in Christ; or rather merely denied the operation of the human will; so that indeed there was in Christ a twofold will; yet only the divine exercised its operation: nevertheless it is more probable that they admitted only one will, or volitive faculty: for first of all the aforesaid Ecthesis, although on first view it seems expressly to make mention neither of one only nor of two wills and operations, but merely established that, for the sake of granting peace, no one name either one or two operations and wills in Christ; nevertheless with double operation excluded, it pronounces one will alone to be asserted; that this may appear, I shall bring forward certain passages from it. For after a long and Catholic explanation of the Trinity and Incarnation, it in no way concedes to anyone of all to say or teach one or two operations in the divine Incarnation of the Lord: but rather as the holy and universal Synods handed down, to confess the one same only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ true God operating divine and human. It adds immediately the reason why it permits neither one nor two operations; Because, it says, the word of one operation, although spoken by some Fathers, nevertheless disturbs and estranges the ears of certain ones, thinking that the same was uttered for the perdition of the two natures, which are united in one subsistence in Christ our God. Similarly however, the word of two operations scandalizes many, as it were spoken by no one of the holy and principal Fathers: but also to follow therein, that we confess two wills reciprocally resisting each other: God the Word indeed accomplishing the most salutary Passion, but the Incarnation made in opposition to going against his will, and assaulting it, and thence two willing contraries introduced: which is impious, and foreign to Christian dogma. After however it thus determined concerning operation, so that it seemed to prejudge neither party, but with both suppressed provide for peace and concord, soon concerning the will it openly expresses the heretical virus, confessing one in Christ: Thence the holy Fathers, it says, following in all things and in this, we confess one will of our Lord Jesus Christ most true God. Therefore the Ecthesis has this proper to itself, that it prohibits saying one or two operations: but openly confesses one will. — It is proved further from that famous disputation of holy Maximus with Pyrrhus; in which especially that most holy man dwells, that he may prove that, because there are two natures in Christ, fitly there is apt to each to will and operate: likewise that Christ has a human will, because he has a perfect human nature; but natures cannot be called perfect without their properties. Likewise that Christ had a will, because he had an implanted power for defending his humanity, whence he subjoins: What good then did the Church of God do, if together with his humanity and created nature, it plainly confesses those things also which were implanted by himself in that creature, that soul, without which nature cannot exist? Finally Martin the First testifies the same in the allocution which he had to the Fathers of the Lateran Synod, in these words:

And Cyrus indeed before these eighteen years, defining one operation in Christ in the same city of Alexandria, ordaining his divinity and humanity in similitude of the Acephalan heretics, preaching chapters to the number of nine in another tome, with anathema against whoever should not think so, impiously promulgated. But Sergius through his proper Epistle written to the aforesaid Cyrus, receiving similarly the same one operation, dared with him to confirm with irrational presumption. And not only this, but also after several years the new invention of the same Cyrus, that is, fallen in the newly past twelfth indiction, himself also writing the heretical Ecthesis of the faith, under the name of Heraclius then reigning, instituted one will and operation in the same our Savior, according to the impious Apollinaris, from this because he says imprudently, that operation follows will.

THIRD CLASS OF HERETICS. — Concerning the union of the Divine nature with the human in Christ.

Among all the heretics who assailed the union of the Divine nature with the human in the unity of person, the most wicked of all were the Nestorians and Eutychians; but by a diverse and altogether opposite manner; since indeed the Eutychians contended that the human nature was transferred through the Incarnation into the divine, and as it were transubstantiated: but the Nestorians on the contrary asserted two natures at once, and persons, distinct in Christ: and this heresy preceded the other in time, therefore we have judged that we must begin from it.

NESTORIANS, so called from Nestorius, that impious and nefarious architect of that error, whom Suidas presents as grandson and son, that is disciple, of Paul of Samosata, that is, restorer of that condemned error. He was born at Germanicia in Syria: but having journeyed through various provinces, as Theodoret writes, book 1. On Heretics, c. 12, he finally settled at Antioch, where enrolled among the number of Priests, moderately learned in the liberal arts, he applied himself first especially to exercising his voice, which was by nature sweet and resonant in him: then because he was ready and eloquent in speech, and had obtained the office of teaching the people enjoined upon him, not an ingenuous one, says Theodoret, Epistle to Coradius, and fruitful character of speaking did he imitate, which could feed the minds of men; but declining toward popular favor, and angling like anyone else for the vain applause of the people, he stirred up the unstable and abject vulgar to desire of himself. There was added a certain affected species of sanctity, which both a black garment displayed, and a countenance composed unto sadness and gravity, and meanwhile no pallor of mortification as evidence: besides avoiding the concourse of the people he kept himself at home, where among books seeming to care for nothing of worldly matters, he lived a tranquil and quiet life; by which arts he stirred up very many into admiration and affection of himself: in which institute of living, when he had spent the greatest part of his life, and had conciliated for himself the highest veneration among all by this manner of living, finally it happened about the year of Christ 428 that, Sisinnius Bishop of Constantinople dying, he was chosen into his place; for since it seemed good to the Emperor to promote rather an outsider than a native to that dignity, he judged a Prelate ought to be sought from that city which before had given with such happy success John surnamed Chrysostom. Therefore he came to Constantinople in the year 428, and was ordained Bishop on the 10th day of April, with the highest gratulation of all Catholics, because they thought him a most keen defender of the faith. Hence St. Cyril, as soon as he heard him announced Bishop, wrote back letters full of office to him, as is gathered from his Epistle to Emperor Theodosius.

That estimation of himself, that Nestorius might sustain, he bore forth vehement zeal of his own against the Catholic religion, and hatred against heretics: which certainly he demonstrated above all in the first sermon which he held before Emperor Theodosius, in which, as Socrates narrates, he uttered this memorable word: Give me, O Emperor, a land purged of heretics, and I will give you heaven in return; uproot heretics with me, and I will crush the Persians with you. Of such persuasion therefore Emperor Theodosius issued a sanction against heretics: but while it seemed a splendid Catholic deed to undertake, he not only secretly favored his Pelagian friends; for indeed no mention is made of the Pelagians in that sanction; but even afterward he advanced to such audacity that he himself appeared the artificer of a new heresy, denying that the Son of God truly became incarnate man, or was begotten of the Virgin Mary according to the flesh; wherefore the impure man denied that the holy Virgin ought to be called θεοτόκος, that is, Mother of God: and wished to usurp in place of that name Χριστότοκος, that is, Mother of Christ: and therefore all his fury blazed forth in eradicating that little word Mother of God from use, as Theodoret relates.

Nestorius therefore established that the Person of the Son of God was one thing, and another the son of the Virgin Mary, and thence denied that she begot God and was Mother of God, but affirmed she begot mere man, who had been called Son of God with progress of time on account of some accidental union with the Word: which union indeed he first expounded by reason of indwelling, because the Divine Word dwelt in the person of the son of Mary as in a temple, according to that word John 2: Destroy this temple, etc., and that word 1. to the Colossians, in him it pleased that all fullness of divinity should dwell corporally; which exposition St. Cyril assails thus in defense of the first anathematism:

They strive to preach that Christ had God dwelling in him as one of the Saints, and persuade this is to be understood, not considering that God is also in us through the Spirit as in holy Temples; for it is written: Know you not that you are the Temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone therefore corrupt the temple of God, him will God corrupt: for the temple of God is holy, which you are. But although we are named temples of God, when we have God dwelling > through the Spirit: nevertheless we know another mode of Sacrament according to Christ.

He deduced moreover from this union of indwelling that there followed further some other union of affection between the Son of God and the son of the Virgin Mary. According to that word John 8: He who sent me is with me, and has not left me alone: because I do always the things that please him: so that such a union of man to God be understood as is that of which the Apostle says, 1 Corinth. 6: Who is joined to God, one Spirit is. Thirdly from this union of affection he deduced that there was some other union, which is of operation, whereby namely the Word of God uses the son of Mary as a certain instrument for accomplishing miraculous works. Hence in his ninth anathematism he condemned those who thought otherwise. Fourthly from this threefold union of indwelling, of affection, and of operation, he affirmed another union arose, which he called of participation and communication of the same excellence and dignity; for just as from a union of affection between two men it sometimes happens that names which properly belong to God be transferred to men, whence they are called gods, Sons of God, saints, and Christs: so also divine names are bestowed on the son of the Virgin on account of eminent sanctity by a certain singular privilege. Thus thought Nestorius, anathematism 8. Fifthly finally he taught that although the Son of God and the Son of Mary are two persons, nevertheless those two persons can sometimes be called one person, as it is said of man and woman that now they are not two, but one flesh; and that by reason of that union through affection and consent of will; wherefore Theodore of Mopsuestia, as related in the 5th Synod, Collation s. Canon 12, said such a uniting of the Word of God to Christ was made, as the Apostle said of man and woman, They shall be two in flesh one.

To these erroneous assertions the heresy of Paul of Samosata, Marcellus, and Photinus, of whom above, gave assent; as the Clerics of Constantinople proved against the same Nestorius, comparing together between themselves the principal heads of either Dogma, as may be seen in act one of the Council. He said Christ was simply born of Mary: this same one taught this: Paul asserted Christ attained every grace from the Holy Spirit, from which he obtained only the dignity of adoption: but Nestorius taught Christ had some communion whatever of divinity, when after Baptism the Holy Spirit descended into him in the species of a dove. Finally both thought that wisdom, or God, dwelt in Christ in no other way than in the Prophets, except that an ampler abundance of heavenly grace poured forth into him than into these. Now the origin of this promulgated heresy Socrates relates thus, book 7. chapter 32. Nestorius had brought with him from Antioch to Constantinople a certain presbyter Anastasius, associate and partaker of all his secrets and counsels: he, when once holding a sermon to the people with Nestorius present, boldly uttered this criminal word: Let no one name Mary Mother of God: for Mary was a man; but it is impossible for man to bear God: which when it had excited great tumults among the Clergy and people, so far was Nestorius from correcting this criminal man, that rather he approved his sacrilegious saying. Which a certain Bishop also named Dorotheus performed, devoted exceedingly to flattery in hope of sordid gain, who wishing to curry favor with Nestorius, speaking to the people at the synaxis of the Church with Nestorius himself present, dared cry out: If anyone say Mary is Mother of God, let him be anathema: which impious deed Nestorius approved, for he admitted that Dorotheus immediately to communion, as appears from the sixth Epistle of St. Cyril. Hence it happened, as the same Cyril relates, Epistol. 9. to Celestine Supreme Pontiff, that the whole population of Constantinople except a few light and vain men, and flatterers of Nestorius, abstained from his communion, likewise all the Monasteries, and their Archimandrites: nay even, as Socrates relates, chapter 28, Proclus, Bishop of Cyzicus, then living at Constantinople, when on a certain Sunday he held a sermon to the people, pronounced that Homily on the praises of the Virgin, which is read prefixed at the beginning of the Council of Ephesus, in which he calls Mary Mother of God.

St. Cyril relates also, book 1. Against Nestorius, that when Nestorius himself holding a sermon to the people uttered certain execrable things against the divinity of Christ, a certain layman from the midst of the crowd exclaimed with what contention of voice he could, that the divine Word, begotten of the Father before all ages, received another generation according to the Flesh, and from a woman; which when Nestorius heard, moved with sharp bile, he vomited many revilings upon that monitor himself, and threatened grave threats, at hearing which a varied murmur arose in the assembly, very many trembling and crying out against Nestorius: We have a ruler, we do not have a Bishop. — Meanwhile Nestorius spoke and wrote various Homilies in defense of his error, which were published through the East. These heard, Cyril Prelate of Alexandria wrote an Epistle to the Egyptian Monks, whereby he strove to forewarn them against the pestilent heresy, however without any mention made of its author. When a copy of which Epistle carried to Constantinople had been received and read by Nestorius, grinding against Cyril, he first acted with blandishments with him, that he should assert the Virgin was not Mother of God: but when Cyril had written back to him various letters, whereby he attacked and condemned his heresy, Nestorius by himself and his followers forging unheard-of crimes and calumnies against Cyril, strove to raise up his authority among the faithful and Catholics, and with libelli disseminated everywhere did not cease to refute him, and add strength to his erroneous dogma. Nay even to Pope Celestine he himself wrote first, and sent to him libelli of his expositions; which heard, Cyril also wrote to Celestine, responding to both he commands Nestorius that he renounce the heresy, and commits his vicariate to Cyril, and orders that unless within ten days after being admonished Nestorius profess the Catholic faith, renounce, he is rejected from the communion of the Roman See and of all Bishops. Cyril relying on the authority of Pope Celestine, when he saw Nestorius confirmed in heresy, a Synod convened wrote to Nestorius an Epistle with twelve chapters, whereby with as many anathematisms they struck his heresy, denouncing to him that, unless he condemn the error and subscribe to these chapters, the sentence passed upon him by Celestine would stand ratified. He gave also letters to the Constantinopolitans, namely the Clergy and people, likewise to the Monarchs, wherein he signified the same: but Nestorius driven into fury, himself also opposed to the twelve chapters or anathematisms of Cyril as many others; whereby against the Catholic dogma he affirmed his heresy. Nor only in words did he rage against the faithful, but he undertook also to lay snares for them: for the Constantinopolitans, who almost all had departed from his communion, he harassed in various ways. Abuse of power of Prefects, especially against Monks, whom he acknowledged as most intense assailants of his error. He also rendered Emperor Theodosius more moved against Cyril by his calumnies, as if he raised tumults in the Church: but by prayers of Juvenal Bishop of Jerusalem, and of Archimandrites and Monks solicited to this by Cyril, the Emperor himself wrote to Cyril and other Bishops that he permitted a Synod to be convened at Ephesus after Easter of the following year of Christ 131, on the sacred day itself of Pentecost. He sent also Candidianus, count of the domestics, to be present, as appears from the sacred letter which is had in cap. 35; but with law and condition that with questions and controversies which arise concerning dogmas of faith no one hold anything common: Lest it be lawful, he subjoined, for one not inscribed in the Catalogue of most holy Bishops to mingle himself in ecclesiastical affairs and consultations: truly then in order that by all means he remove from that city Monks, Laity, and others flowing together there for seeing the Synod, who would bring obstacle to the Fathers by their tumult: then for hindering graver contentions which could arise in the Synod itself from mutual eagerness to resist: then that he take care all things proposed which pertained to faith be responded to all: then lest anyone depart from the Synodus, affecting return even to the Emperor, before the cause finished: then lest any ecclesiastical business or controversy be moved before the question begun by Nestorius had been concluded: finally that no pecuniary or criminal cause whatsoever be agitated there against anyone.

Therefore the Council convenes at Ephesus at the appointed time. In the city long before, that is shortly after Easter, was present Nestorius. On the appointed day attended Juvenal of Jerusalem with the Bishops of Palestine: absent was Capreolus of Carthage, and with him also the African Prelates were absent: they gave reason of their absence to the Council by letters, because assuredly journeys were not free to them on account of the ferocity of the Vandals. They added Augustine to have died before the very Letters of the Emperor received, whereby Letters he was ordered specially to come to the Council. John of Antioch was awaited, who after two weeks elapsed signified that the Fathers ought not wait longer for him. This delay was, to gratify Nestorius. So assert the Fathers of Ephesus in an Epistle to Celestine sometime after the middle of the third action.

The Council is begun with Cyril of Alexandria presiding, who held the place of Celestine, sixteen days elapsed, as Memnon Bishop of Ephesus testified, from the advent of the Fathers, who were two hundred in number. Before all the Imperial Letters were read, whereby the Council was convened. They are had in 1. part. c. 32; which read Hermogenes, Bishop of Rhinocorura, reported, and with him three others, that by ordination of the Fathers they had met Nestorius, whom they admonished that he not wish to be absent from the Synod itself on the day named: who replied he would deliberate, and if he judged necessary would attend. They added also six or seven other Bishops who were in the company of Nestorius had signified, whose response was hardly dissimilar. The Council orders that he be again admonished to be present by several Bishops. They come to the house of the same, find a multitude of soldiers with clubs, who prevent their arrival being signified to Nestorius, and say they were ordered not to admit anyone for the cause of meeting him. The same response of certain Clerics whom those Prelates addressed. Finally a certain Tribune approaches them, who when he had ordered them to wait, about to bring a response, returning after some time with a certain cleric, said he had not been permitted to see Nestorius, who nevertheless signified through others that when all the Bishops shall have convened together, then he too would come. Which reported to the Synod, it is decreed that by several Bishops he be summoned by a third citation. They obey: within the vestibule they find armed soldiers, who say they have in mandate to permit absolutely none sent from the Synod to enter to him. But so great is their insolence that they permit not even the venerable Prelates to stand under the shade, nor pushing them hither and thither grant them a tiny bit of place where they can fix a foot. They return, having waited many hours, without other response.

After a triple citation the doctrine of Nestorius is weighed. The Nicene Symbol is read. The Epistle of Cyril to Nestorius is read, which exists in 1. part. cap. 8, and it is defined that it be consonant with the Nicene Symbol: the Epistle of Vestorius to Cyril is read, which exists there, cap. 9, and it is judged contrary to the Nicene Symbol: wherefore all, that heard, said anathema to Nestorius. Afterward the Epistle of Celestine to Nestorius is read, which is had in cap. 18, and it is judged consonant with the Epistle of Cyril. Read the Epistle of the Alexandrian Synod to Nestorius, which exists in cap. 26, the Bishops are heard through which those Letters were given to that Nestorius, who relate that he neither made response to them, nor was changed by them into better, but on the contrary taught much worse things even until this day. The Prelates also are heard, who testified Nestorius still persisted in his error. Then are read the opinions of the holy Fathers, Bishops, and Martyrs on that matter, whereby the tradition could be established. Are read also the Commentaries of that Vestorius, in which he openly affirmed that none of the Doctors existing before him had spoken to peoples the things he himself spoke. Finally is read the Epistle of Capreolus of Carthage, of which above, where he expressly thinks he stands on the ancient dogmas of faith, which was also the voice of all the Bishops; finally the proceeding came to the condemnation of Vestorius by the Bishops, tears meanwhile pouring forth, wherefore on account of blasphemous voices against Christ the Lord he was deprived of episcopal dignity, and defined to be alien from the whole fellowship and assembly of Priests. You have these in Action 1. Which when heard, the whole people of the city, who had waited for the judgment of the Synod from morning till evening, began to glorify God and praise the Synod, since the enemy of the faith had fallen; nay with such acclamations it escorted the departing Bishops with torches and firebrands even to the lodging. Whom Matrons also bearing thuribles preceded. Then lights hung throughout the whole city, in sign of joy.

The day after, the sentence of deposition was sent to Nestorius by the Synod, which made the Constantinopolitan Clergy more certain of it. Meanwhile Candidianus the count, devoted to Nestorius, before the Synodal acts were completed and sent to the Emperor, wrote to him a relation full of lies, and calumnies against the Synod; the same did also Nestorius with ten Bishops, complaining of violence and injury inflicted on him by Memnon of Ephesus: chiefly because of John, and

They had been unwilling to await the advent of the Orientals. The Legates of Celestine approved this definition of the Council, who came to the Synod when it was done, after they had had the Epistle of Celestine, which they carried according to the ancient custom of the Church, read first in Latin speech, then in Greek, whereby it was received unanimously by the Synod, as appears from Action 2.

But John of Antioch, who had come to the Synod after the condemnation made and before the advent of the Legates, favoring Nestorius and Candidianus, and bearing with indignation that he was condemned absent himself and without his counsel, Nestorius compelled a Conciliabulum of thirty Bishops, favorers of Nestorius, or disciples of Pelagius, or of some criminal matter, in which Theodoretus was ordered to refute the anathematisms of Cyril: episcopal honor and name taken away from Cyril and Memnon, as if they thought the same as Apollinaris; and whoever had attended the Council were excommunicated. To this pseudo-Council they give the name of the Council of Ephesus. They write to the Emperor that Cyril and Memnon are deposed, who deluded by the false relation of schismatics wrote to the Ephesian Synod through Palladius Magisterianus, ordering null what had been done hitherto, and a legitimate judgment to be instituted anew. Meanwhile the Oriental schismatics together with the Nestorians plotted nothing not toward oppressing the Catholic Synod and obliterating its acts. Indeed with feigned calumnies and lies against it they filled the ears of Emperors and Princes: Candidianus and Irenaeus Counts laboring strenuously for this, who holding in their power all ways and ports and ships, diligently acted lest any letters from the Ecumenical Synod reach the Emperor whereby he might know the matter certainly as it was done; while meanwhile only the commentaries and Epistles of the Orientals were carried to Constantinople.

The Fathers of the Council having received the Emperor's Epistle write back to him through the same Palladius, narrating the order of the matter done from truth, and form a complaint concerning the counts Candidianus and Irenaeus, by whom they suffered many unworthy things. But Palladius did not give the received Epistle of the Synod to the Emperor; wherefore the Fathers of the Council entrusted other letters written to Bishops and Monks to a mendicant man, wherein they expounded the truth of the matter. These letters received, the Monks gave strenuously their aid, and before all Dalmatius Archimandrite, a most holy man, who for whole forty-eight years had not lifted his foot from the Monastery, although he had often been asked about him by the Emperor. But that he might then go out he was compelled by a voice sent from heaven, and with other Archimandrites and very many Monks approaching the Emperor opened the whole matter, as it was.

The Emperor demands legates be sent to him from either side. For the Orientals is sent Irenaeus count, who proceeding to Constantinople found there the legates of the Catholic Synod, and so profited by frauds and lies that the Emperor circumvented again — which is very marvelous — suffered himself by that leader to order ratified the deposition of three, Nestorius, Cyril, and Memnon, whom all judged condemned by a legitimate Synod, concerning which sacred letter, as was customary to call it, he wrote to the Ephesian Fathers through John Count of the sacred largesses: who when he had come to Ephesus gave those three into private custody, and the letters of the Emperor to those Fathers, whereby power was made to the Fathers of departing. Finally seven Bishops chosen from either side are sent to the Emperor, who, the truth found out, restored Cyril and Memnon free to their Churches, condemns Nestorius and orders him into exile, and substitutes another in his place on the Constantinopolitan see. Nestorius returned to Antioch lived four years in the Monastery of holy Euprepius where he had once dwelt; but since there he corrupted many by his colloquies and letters, at the admonition of John of Antioch Theodosius ordered him relegated into Oasis; where agitated by many calamities, with the same tongue whereby he had uttered sacrilegious voices against the Mother of God, eaten away by worms even while yet alive, shortly after, either crushed to the ground, as Evagrius wishes, book 1. chapter 7, from madness and fury; or as Theodoret has it, book 4 of heretical fables, swallowed up by the lurking gulf of earth he died most miserably. But although extinguished thus unhappily, his heresy did not lie altogether buried: for since his books had been prohibited by Ecclesiastical and Imperial constitution, his defenders emitted three books, of which the first was that of Theodore of Mopsuestia, Master of Nestorius, which they translated into various idioms; the second of Theodoret; the third was that book or Epistle of Ibas Bishop of Edessa city to Marin the Persian; concerning which three books or chapters action was taken in the fifth Synod.

EUTYCHIANS. — The Eutychian heresy began about the year of Christ 448.¹ Its author Eutyches, who was Presbyter at Constantinople, and presiding over the Monks in the most celebrated Monastery, and archimandrite, as Liberatus says. Renowned for surpassing piety, but far more renowned on account of the work strenuously performed in the Nestorian heresy, both growing and sprouting again after condemnation needing to be vanquished; who since he inveighed most fiercely against the Nestorians admitting two persons in Christ, declined extremely into another error no less pernicious, affirming indeed two natures in Christ before the union, but in the union the human absorbed into the divine, and thenceforth one subsisting alone. Of whose error indeed ignorance gave rather the beginning than affected malice, witness Leo the Great in Epistle 13. which he wrote to Augusta Pulcheria:

That error, he says, which, as I judge, was born more from unskilfulness than from craft, let it be taken away, before it acquire for itself any strength from the consent of imprudent men through pertinacity of depravity: because also ignorance sometimes falls into grave lapses, and often heedless simplicity rushes into the snares of the devil, through which I understand the Spirit of falsity to have crept in in the aforesaid case.

— Now the capital dogma of the Eutychian heresy was threefold. First indeed, that the flesh of Christ denied being taken from the Virgin. So testifies Vigilius at the beginning of book 3. Against Eutyches;

The Eutychian heresy, he says, has slipped into so great an error of impiety, that it believes not only one nature of Word and flesh: but truly says this same flesh was not assumed from the sacred body of the Virgin, but says it was brought down from heaven, according to the unspeakable error of Valentinus and Marcion; so pertinaciously asserting the Word made flesh, that it seems to have passed through the Virgin as if water through a pipe; not however seeming to have assumed from the Virgin anything of our kind.

This same Eutyches himself had attested in the Constantinopolitan Council, as Flavian relates in his Epist. to Leo, which is in the acts of the Council of Chalcedon. Theodoret similarly affirms, book 4. Of heretical fables, chapter 13, that Eutyches denied a body was assumed by God: For nothing, he says, proper to man did God the Word receive from the Virgin, but himself without any mutation converted, and only flesh, passed only through flesh. — The second head of the error of the Eutychians was, that before union two natures existed; as Pope Leo indicates, Epist. 10. to Flavianus: where he marvels that so absurd, and then so perverse profession of his was reprehended by no rebuke of judges: and that speech too senseless and too blasphemous was sent forth, as if nothing whereby it would offend were heard. And he subjoins in the Epist. to Julian of Coe that he suspects such a speaker to have persuaded himself of this, that the soul which the Savior assumed first dwelt in the heavens before he would be born of Mary Virgin, and that the Word joined it to himself in the womb. By which it is established Eutyches understood that priority, whereby it pertained to the humanity of Christ to exist before it was assumed by the Word, to be not merely priority of nature, but of time; for since he had learned from common Christian profession that God-man was made, and nevertheless asserted one nature in Christ; he could reconcile these things and extricate himself no otherwise than by saying one nature was made out of two: and therefore two natures existed before they were joined together among themselves.

— Third finally, and indeed the principal head of the Eutychian heresy was, that it acknowledged one nature only in Christ after the union: which he himself professed before Flavian and the Fathers of the Constantinopolitan Synod, of which we shall speak soon: for asked whether he thought our Lord born of the Virgin to be consubstantial with us, and consisting of two natures after the incarnation, he thus opened his mind: I confess our Lord to have been of two natures before the union: after the union truly I profess one nature. The same Flavian testifies, Epistol. to Leo, where relating the dogma of Eutyches he says: Before the inhumanation indeed of our Savior Jesus Christ there are two natures, of divinity and of humanity: after the union truly one nature made. Which erroneous dogma its Assertors expounded variously, just as Eutyches himself (as is the custom of heretics) nowhere constant with himself: for now he asserted that superior nature to be human, into which Divinity seemed converted and as if absorbed, whence Theodoret relates that Eutyches asserted God converted without conversion, and made flesh: whence he taught the Divinity of the Only-begotten nailed with nails and affixed to the cross to be uncircumscribed, indeterminate, and incomprehensible, inasmuch as it had descended into human nature. But Theodoret himself in the second dialogue introduces the Eranistes, or Patron of the Eutychian error, disputing with the Orthodox, pronouncing thus, that the divinity alone remaining he says the human nature was absorbed: for to the Catholic inquiring how after union he acknowledged one nature, whether one conflated from both; or with the one remaining he thought the other extinguished: responds the Eranistes, I say the Divinity remained; but humanity was absorbed by it.

In which dogma chiefly Eutyches agreed most with Apollinaris and Valentinus, who said the nature of Christ was one. This Eutychian error was brought forth into public, and condemned in the year 448. When a Synod of 40 Bishops was collected at Constantinople for disputation of the controversy between Florentius, Bishop of Sardis, Metropolitan of Lydia, and two Bishops of the same Province, John and Cossinius. This suit decided, since Eusebius Bishop of Dorylaeum sat among the Judges, familiar and most friendly of Eutyches, who had accused him of error by private colloquies, and had more often admonished him not to speak such things, he brought to the Synod a suppliant libellus, wherein was contained the Eutychian error, demanding Eutyches be summoned to plead the cause; but he called the third time, when he had responded once and twice to delegates of the Synod that it was not lawful for himself to go out from the precincts of the Monastery, in which he lay shut as it were in a sepulcher, finally cited the third time, excusing ill health asked time be prorogued to himself until the seventh day: which obtained, finally he came, not as it were to a Council, but as it were to war; attended namely not only by an immense crowd of Monks, but also by a numerous crown of soldiers lent to him by Patricius the Florentine by favor of Chrysaphius the Eunuch, whom he had received from baptism. There interrogated by the Bishops, and by Florentius himself, he professed his heretical dogma before all, nor could he be induced that he renounce it: therefore he is damned by the sentence of the Council, and stripped of Sacerdotal dignity and every prefecture of the Monastery, removed from all Ecclesiastical communion, as may be seen in act one of the Council of Chalcedon.

But relying on aid of the same Chrysaphius he plots nothing not against Flavianus prince of that Synod; complains especially of him, and of the rest of the Synodal Fathers before Leo supreme Pontiff; to him Flavianus equally writes, and transmits the Synodal acts; which received Leo held ratified the damnation of Eutyches, and among others wrote to Flavianus that most celebrated Epistle, whereby he declared most abundantly and learnedly the Catholic dogma of the Lord's Incarnation. Meanwhile Chrysaphius plotted nothing not in behalf of Eutyches and for oppressing Flavianus before Theodosius, striving by fictitious criminations and calumnies to call Flavianus into suspicion; whereby he cast him down from episcopal see; wherefore the Emperor orders a general Synod convened at Ephesus in year 449. He orders Dioscorus of Alexandria to preside, and Juvenal of Jerusalem to attend, Domnus of Antioch, Flavianus of Constantinople, asking equally Leo Roman Pontiff that he deign to attend the Synod, which he could not perform. He sent legates Julian, Velgibus Bishop of Puteoli, Renatus Presbyter, and Hilary Deacon with letters of Leo himself: one to Savianus, another to the Synod, containing the right and Catholic faith. Also Barsumas the Syrian Archimandrite — or trulier say, an immense sicarius — the Emperor wished to attend the Council, who should act for Eutyches against the Bishops who had condemned him; whom likewise the Council wished to attend not as judges, but as actors.

Therefore the Council convenes, and the Legates of the Roman Pontiff ask that his Epistle be read first according to the ancient custom of the Church. Dioscorus obstructs, procuring for Eutyches, who before all have the Constantinopolitan acts examined, wherefore the Legates withdraw from the Council, both on account of letters not read, and also because the first place was not conceded to them. Then Dioscorus, the acts of the Constantinopolitan Synod read, soon wished the decree of the Ephesian Synod against Nestorius read, whereby it was prohibited that anyone inquire or retract further beyond those things which were there established concerning faith; otherwise if he were Bishop or Cleric he would be deposed; after these things Dioscorus against Flavianus and Eusebius Bishop of Dorileum as violators of that Decree, because they had constituted something new of faith, passed the sentence of deposition, and restored Eutyches in integrum, forcing the other Bishops to subscribe to his own sentence by violence threatened by three hundred Monks and very many soldiers, who with armed hand, the sentence of Dioscorus heard, break into the Synod, extort the judgments of the Bishops against Flavianus, and drive them to subscribe in white membranes, into which whatever they wished they might afterward add, as was attested in act one of the Council of Chalcedon. The Legates of the supreme Pontiff protest, but even they are compelled to place their safety in flight; Flavianus appeals to the Roman Pontiff; but immediately he is cast into chains by Dioscorus, assailed with kicks, as Evagrius relates, book 2. chapter 2; harassed by very many blows even, and injuries by soldiers, says Liberatus; and as the acts of the Synod of Chalcedon relate, he is killed by Barsamas with his Monks crying out, Kill, Kill. Meanwhile Pope Leo groans, who a Synod convened at Rome rescinds whatever had been done at Ephesus.

Finally Emperor Theodosius, the Epistles received from Leo supreme Pontiff, hearing that the Eutychian heresy was condemned and proscribed, and the flagitious acts of the Ephesian Synod, which afterward was called the Robber Synod of Ephesus, the truth of the matter found out, took action against those by whom he had been circumvented: Chrysaphius author of all evils he relegated, and shortly after dies: Marcian succeeding him took Augusta Pulcheria to wife; who by exhortation of Pope Leo acted first against Clerics and Monks, who leaving behind the true cult of orthodox Religion, had followed the heresy and abominable dogmas of Apollinaris or Eutyches. Then he decreed a general Synod to be convened.

Therefore a general Council is convened in the year 451, that of Chalcedon, of 630 Bishops; the Legates of Leo preside, namely Paschasinus and Ascelanus Bishops, likewise Basilius and Bonifacius Presbyters. Dioscorus attends also, and when what had been done in the Constantinopolitan Synod and pseudo-Ephesian by Eutyches and Dioscorus were read, he is ordered to depart; and afterward all things duly weighed, he is deprived by the Synod of episcopal honor and all functions of Priests. After these things very many of the Bishops who had sat at Ephesus beg pardon and confess their crime: the Epistles of Leo to Flavianus are read, at which the Fathers acclaimed in this manner: Peter has spoken through Leo. Eusebius Bishop of Dorileum is pronounced truly Catholic: Flavianus is declared martyr, who fell asleep in defense of the Orthodox faith, and in act eleven this voice is read: Flavianus lives after death a martyr; let him pray for us.

Meanwhile Chrysaphius, by the nod of Pulcheria, as Marcellinus says, was killed, and Eutyches by command of Marcian is sent into exile; but what thereafter was done about him, whither he was deported, and what end of life he had, deep silence is among authors: thus the most celebrated Synod had a happy exit, in which the robber acts of Ephesus were rescinded, and a certain ratified form of faith written. But the devil, who always oversows cockle, assailed the Synod of Chalcedon with the greatest endeavors of heretics. For Eulogius Patriarch of Alexandria writes that after the death of Marcian, when Leo had succeeded him, the Egyptians returned from the Synod stirred up the greatest tumults throughout the whole world; everywhere disseminating that Cyril was condemned in that Synod, and Nestorius received as Catholic. Thence burst forth very many detractors of that Synod of Chalcedon, truly especially at Alexandria, who were called Acephali; because succeeding Peter Mongus their Patriarch, himself

also Eutychian, they communicated apart, and without their head: for neither did he openly assail the Council of Chalcedon, but only secretly strove to raise up its authority. Yet afterward Severians were named from Severus, an Eutychian Monk, then constituted Bishop of Antioch, and then sprouting into many other heads, now Gaianites from Gaianus, Theodosians from Theodosius, Jacobites were named from Jacob. All complained that the Council of Chalcedon had been a gathering of Nestorians: for so familiar is it for heretics to accuse Catholics of the heresy set opposite to Catholic truth.

Errors concerning the filiation of Christ. — It is the common dogma of the Catholic Church that Christ the Lord, even as man, is the natural Son of God. Nevertheless two Bishops, Felix of Urgel and Elipandus of Toledo, Charles the Great reigning in Gauls, Adrian I indeed sitting at Rome, about the year of our Lord 790, restoring in part the extinguished and compressed heresy of Nestorius, contended Christ God and man has within him as many sons as there are natures in him; one natural, which is God, and Word: another adoptive, which is man; concerning whom Eginhardus writes thus in his Annals:

Orgellis (others name this Urgella) is a city situated on the ridge of the Pyrenees mountain: whose Bishop named Felix, Spanish by nation, consulted by letters by Elipardus Bishop of Toledo, what he ought to think concerning the humanity of the Savior God, and our Lord Jesus Christ: whether according as he is man he should be believed and called proper or adoptive Son of God: very imprudently and inconsiderately, and against the ancient doctrine of the Catholic Church, not only pronounced adoptive, but also took care with books written pertinaciously most to defend to the aforesaid Bishop the opinion of his depravity. For cause of this thing he was led to the Palace of the King, who then resided at Regino (Regensburg, a city of Bavaria, in which he had wintered); where a Council of Bishops gathered, he was heard, and convicted of erring, sent to Rome to the presence of Pope Adrian; where even before him he confessed and abdicated the heresy; which done he returned to his city.

— But two years later, since Elipandus continued to defend and propagate that depravity of error already condemned in many Councils, especially truly at Forojulium and Ratisbona, and had impelled Felix to resume its patronage: nay even had written an Epistle for it to King Charles; he summoned from every Province of his dominion Bishops, and men renowned in fame of erudition, to a Synod at Frankfort; who meeting together, the epistle of Elipandus read, likewise that of Pope Adrian to the Bishops of the Spains, and the sacred-syllable book of Paulinus of Aquileia against the heresy of Felix and Elipandus, with unanimous consent of all in that Council this heresy was condemned and proscribed. Moreover Charles the King wrote a luculent epistle to the Spaniards against the same heresy, which he sent to them together with the epistles of Adrian and of the whole Synod, and the book of Paulinus.

These are the principal heads of hereses assailing the Incarnation of Christ the Lord: for the rest, which fight against Christ, seem rather to war against his divinity, or merit, or cult, than against the mystery of the Incarnation. But if any remain sprouting again from those more ancient heresies — as I do not deny there truly are several, especially in these latter times, into which not only the ends of ages seem to have come, but the throats of errors to have flowed forth — we shall commemorate scatteredly in the elucidation of the following Disputations and Questions. Wherefore the ampler relation of heresies omitted, now the Tractate of Theology must be auspicated.

From the Subtili Doctore in 1. dist. 2. qu. 1. n. 10. a twofold possibility can be distinguished: namely, the logical and the physical. The logical possibility, he says, is the mode of a composition formed by the intellect, whose terms do not include a contradiction; and in this way the proposition, that God can be produced, and that God is God, is possible in this manner. Real, or physical, possibility however is that which is taken from some potency in a thing, as from a potency inherent in something, or terminated to it as to its term. That is, that is called physically possible which can be the real term of some productive potency, just as before creation the world was possible; and innumerable creatures are still said to be possible, which God by His infinite power could produce, yet which by the counsel of His wisdom He never produces. Of both possibilities there will be question here: for we undertake to determine whether that proposition, God is man, involves any contradiction, or whether the union of Divinity with humanity does not exceed the supreme power of God.

NOTANDUM 2. It is certain that no medium is given between these two, being possible and being impossible; for no medium is given between involving a contradiction, which is impossible, and not involving a contradiction, which is possible; yet a medium is admitted between these two: demonstrating that something is possible, and demonstrating that something is impossible; for many things are possible, concerning which nevertheless no positive natural medium is given by which their possibility is demonstrated; but these, because they are possible, cannot be demonstratively proved to be impossible, for truth is not opposed to truth, but to falsehood alone: wherefore if it be true that something is possible, it is false that it be impossible: but an argument which concludes a falsehood can in no wise be demonstrative.

NOTANDUM 3. For God to become incarnate is not for God to be transmuted into flesh, but for God remaining God to become man in the unity of supposit; so that the Divine person not only terminates and supposits the Divine nature, but also the human; wherefore as Peter is said to be man, because his person sustains and persons the human nature, so God is said to be man, because the Divine person of the Word sustains and terminates the human nature. From this termination moreover there follows in God an intrinsic denomination, whereby He is said to be intrinsically united to man: for this denomination suffices that the human nature be substantially and intimately united to the Divine person. Yet it is not on this account an intrinsic denomination, as though the human nature informed God, who is said to be man: hence that denomination, God is man, approaches in some way to extrinsic denomination, and also recedes from it. It approaches indeed, because the human nature does not inform God, who is said to be man, while nevertheless other intrinsic denominations are drawn from an informing form. It recedes truly, because other extrinsic denominations are either from forms accidentally united, or from terms existing outside the subject denominated: but this denomination is taken from a human nature personally and substantially united to the Word, which terminates its personal dependence.

These things thus premised, two things especially must be determined in this Question: First indeed whether that personal union of the divine nature with the human is possible. Second, whether all the reasons can be solved which seem to assail that possibility.

Conclusio prima. — It is made possible for the human nature to be united to the Divine Word in the unity of supposit.

Proof first: From act to potency is a legitimate consequence: but that union has in fact been accomplished; therefore it is possible to come about. The major stands, for what truly is has no repugnance to existing. The minor is of faith, and stands with all those moments by which we shall prove in the third following Section against the Jews that the Messiah has come, and that the Mystery of the Incarnation has been accomplished.

The Doctor proves secondly in 3. dist. 1. q. 1. n. 4: That is possible which presents no repugnance: but in no wise does it conflict for a nature to be united to the Word in the unity of supposit: therefore it can be done. He proves the Minor: if any repugnance existed, it would be sought either from the side of the Word assuming, or from the side of the nature assumed: but from neither head can a repugnance be deduced. Not indeed from the side of the Word assuming: for it would conflict either because the person is divine, or because the person of the Word is peculiar. Not the first, because, says the Doctor, to terminate the dependence of the human nature infers nothing repugnant to the divine person; since it does not import composition, to which act and potency are required; seeing that the divine person is not an informing act, but only the term terminating the dependence of the human nature. Nor does it equally enter into any potentiality, limitation, or dependence, because for that termination or union nothing is required per se except that the terminator be independent of that which it terminates: but the Word is independent of the human nature which He terminates, as God, although He terminates the dependence of creatures upon Himself, He is not held to depend upon them in any wise.

Nor does it conflict because the person of the Word is peculiar; for if from this head any repugnance would arise, most of all because there could not be given a union to one person unless necessarily there were given union to the rest — for no other reason can be assigned: yet it is not so. For although that which convenes with the divine nature is likewise common indivisibly to each of the three persons; nevertheless that which convenes with one personalization ought not to be common to all: for it convenes with paternity to constitute the Father; but this same does not convene with filiation, nor with passive spiration: therefore there can convene with one of the divine persons the ratio of terminatively uniting the human nature hypostatically without this same convening with the others. But the reason, says the Doctor, wherefore each divine person can terminate the dependence of an alien nature is, because each divine personality is in itself and of itself formally independent: but anything independent in some genus can terminate another which has dependence in such genus: therefore a divine person independent in itself and of itself can sufficiently terminate such a dependence of the created nature.

Finally, that hypostatic union does not conflict from the side of the nature assumed: for if it conflicted, most of all because the singularity of some person could not be separated from that same personality, and consequently since no nature can be assumed unless existing, and consequently unless singular, because existence belongs to singulars, therefore neither could it be assumed unless personated; which since it conflicts, it would also conflict for a singular nature to be assumed: but this reason is null, for it has been sufficiently proved in the Metaphysics that personality is really distinct from singularity and separable, nor does it conflict that some substance be singular and yet further communicable; therefore God will be able to unite to Himself a singular nature with its personality set aside, and consequently from no head does that union of divinity with humanity conflict in the unity of person.

Conclusio secunda. — By no natural reason can the impossibility of the divine Incarnation be demonstrated.

Proof: Truth cannot be contrary to truth: but it is true that the Incarnation is possible, as is clear from the preceding Conclusion: therefore no natural reason, which presents any truth, can urge its impossibility. Further, if any reason could evince this impossibility, it would be sought either from the side of God as unable to assume the human nature in the unity of person, or from the side of the very nature itself, which would not be assumable in such a way: but from neither head does it conflict, as was proved above, and it will stand more amply from the solution of all the reasons soon to be objected: therefore, etc.

You will object 1. Pure act is not unible with any other: but each divine person is pure act: therefore it is not unible with an alien nature. The minor stands. The major likewise; for if act were united, it would no longer be pure act, because it would signify potentiality toward another with which it would be united: therefore, etc.

The Doctor distinguishes the major in book 11, n. 16. Actus purus cannot be united with another as a component part, so that with the other to which it is united it makes one per se, composed of parts standing to each other as matter and form: this he grants; it cannot be united in the manner of an infinite term supplying the place of some created term: this he denies; and, the minor having been granted, he denies the consequence.

You will insist: A divine person cannot be united to the humanity unless it constitute with it some one thing per se: but one thing per se is not constituted out of several things unless one of them have the role of act and the other that of potency: therefore if the divine Word is united to the humanity, it is necessary that it have the role of a component part.

I distinguish the minor: that one thing per se which comes about through composition and informing cannot be made except from parts, of which one is act and the other potency — this I grant; that which comes about through the termination of the dependence of one upon the other — this I deny. Now the divine Word is united to the humanity so as to constitute one Christ per se, not indeed in the manner of formal composition, but only in the manner of a divine person terminating and supplying the place of a created person.

You will urge: That union which would come about in the manner of a term would supply the place of human personality; therefore it would effect a true and real composition. The consequence is proved: Whatever supplies the place of personality ought to perform the same function as personality itself: but human personality effects a true composition with the individual nature; for it is an act informing and affecting that nature itself: therefore if a divine person supply the place of human personality, it ought to effect a composition with the nature assumed.

I deny the consequence; and in proof of its proof I answer first by distinguishing the major: that which supplies the place of personality ought to perform the same function as personality itself, inasmuch as it is the ultimate terminating efficient term, lest the nature have any further communication — this I grant; inasmuch as it is an act affecting and perfecting that nature itself in the manner of a form — this I deny. The former belongs to the formal and special notion of personality, precisely inasmuch as it is personality; not so the latter, because the notion of affecting and perfecting is common to personality with the other modes and forms, both accidental and substantial, if, as some hold, created personality itself be a mode or positive form.

I answer secondly by denying the minor; for, as we proved more fully in our Metaphysics, it is more probable, according to the mind of the Subtle Doctor, that the formal notion of person is not something positive, but only connotes, above the notion of the individual, the negation of any further communication of the individual nature to another as a supposit, with which it is deemed to make one being per se.

You will object 2. Among things that can be mutually united there must intervene a certain proportion: but between the divine person and created nature no proportion intervenes; for the divine person is infinite, created nature finite; and between the finite and the infinite there is no proportion: therefore they are not mutually unifiable.

The Doctor distinguishes the major in the same place: there must be a proportion of entity to entity — this he denies; of relation, such as is between cause and effect, object and power, terminator and terminated — this he grants. Between God and a creature there is indeed no proportion of entity, but of termination, both on the part of God and on the part of the creature itself: for the creature, in the role of effect, terminates the fecundity and causality of God, by which it is produced; and God in turn, in the role of object, terminates the activity of the created intellect and will, by which He is perceived: therefore although there be no entitative proportion between the Word and the humanity itself, because the Word exceeds it infinitely in perfection and dignity; nevertheless there is a personal terminative proportion sufficient for the union of which we speak: for since the Word is an infinite person, it has the power of terminating all communication of a personable nature, whereby it depends upon Him as upon its cause.

You will insist: The infinite and the finite cannot even be at once in the roles of terminator and terminated: therefore no solution. The subsumption is proved: contraries cannot exist at once, on account of their repugnance: but the finite and the infinite conflict with each other more than contraries do, because they are more diverse, seeing that they do not agree in any genus, as contraries agree in the genus of quality and accident: therefore they cannot subsist at once.

The Doctor denies the subsumption, and of its proof he denies the minor. For contraries are not mutually incompossible because they have diversity: for quantity and whiteness are more diverse than whiteness and blackness, inasmuch as quantity and whiteness belong to different predicaments, whereas whiteness and blackness belong to the same predicament; whence things of different genus can subsist together, as quantity and whiteness, whereas things of the same predicament cannot be together, on account of their natural opposition: and consequently the incompossibility of contraries arises solely from their natural repugnance. But the divine and the human nature have from their particular nature no repugnance whatever with respect to the same supposit; hence, although they are more diverse than contraries, they can subsist together more easily in the same supposit than contraries can.

You will object 3. If the divine Word could become incarnate, it could also suffer: but it cannot suffer: therefore neither can it become incarnate. The major holds, because just as to incarnate is to act, so to be incarnate is to suffer; for to every action there corresponds a passion.

The Doctor denies the major, and in proof of its proof says that although to every transient action there corresponds a passion, and consequently although to active incarnation there corresponds some passion, as to active heating there corresponds the passion of passive heating: nevertheless the passion corresponding to the incarnating action is not signified by this word Incarnari, but is designated by the word to be assumed, or united: from the fact that Incarnare signifies to unite flesh effectively, or the human nature, to the supposit of the Word, making it be assumed by the Word through that special dependence which it has from Him by reason of the hypostatic union. Therefore the passive verb properly corresponding to the active verb Incarnare is not Verbum Incarnari, but the verb to be united, or assumed. From which it follows that that passion corresponding to active incarnation is only in the human nature, which is assumed, and not in the Word, which assumes. Although, therefore, grammatically speaking, says the Doctor, incarnari is a passive verb which seems to correspond to the active verb incarnare, yet really and significatively it is not the passive verb corresponding to it.

You will object 1. It implies that God is changed: but if He were incarnate, He would truly be changed, for He would acquire a new nature, and would be terminated by it, which previously He had not, and did not have: therefore, etc.

I deny the minor: for from the positing of the possibility of the Mystery of the Incarnation it does not therefore follow that God is changed, for that whole change is extrinsic to the Divine Word, since He receives no form in Himself by which He would be intrinsically affected anew; but that whole change is reflected back upon the human nature, which receives the person of the Word, to which it is substantially united, and by which that whole communication is terminated. The Apostle intimates this in Philip. 2, where he says: in habit found as a man, which words St. Augustine splendidly explains in lib. 83. qq., question 73, where, after premising a multiple notion of habit, he has this:

Habit, therefore, is said of that thing which happens to us as something had. Yet there is this difference, that certain of those things which happen to us so as to make a habit are not changed by us, but they themselves change us, remaining whole in themselves; just as when wisdom comes back to a man, it is not itself changed, but changes the man, whom it makes wise out of a fool. But certain things happen in such a way that they both change and are changed, just as food itself loses its own species and is turned into our body: while we, refreshed by food, are changed from weakness and languor into strength and vigor. There is, moreover, a third kind, when the very things which happen are changed, and in a certain manner are formed by those to which they make a habit, as is clothing: for when it is stored away or cast off, it does not have the form which it takes on when it is put on and drawn over the limbs; but the limbs themselves remain in their state both when clothed and when unclothed. And there can be a fourth kind, when those things which happen to make a habit neither change those to whom they happen, nor are themselves changed by the same; as a ring upon a finger.... Now this habit (by which indeed the Son of God is said to be found as a man) is not of the first kind; for the nature of man, remaining in itself, did not change the divine nature. Nor of the second; for man did not change God, and was not changed by Him. Nor of the fourth; for man was not so assumed that neither did God change him, nor was he changed by Him. But rather of the third; > for man was so assumed as to be changed into the better, and to be formed by Him ineffably more excellently and more closely joined, than clothing when it is put on by a man. By this name, therefore, of habit the Apostle sufficiently signified how he said made in the likeness of men, because he was made not by transfiguration into a man, but by habit.

The same holy Augustine again explains this by a most apt example, Serm. 27. De tempore.

For, he says, not because it was said: the Word was God, and the Word was made flesh, was the Word thus made flesh that He would cease to be God. For just as the Word which we carry in our heart becomes a voice when we utter it with our mouth, yet it is not changed into that voice, but, itself remaining whole, is assumed by it as it proceeds: so that it may both abide within to be understood, and sound without what is heard. Hence the same word is nevertheless uttered in sound which before had sounded in silence: and thus the word, though it is a voice, is not changed into voice: but abiding in the light of the mind, and assuming the flesh of the voice, it proceeds to the hearer, and leaves the thinker.

But to the argument brought forward for the confirmation of the minor I say that: that which acquires a new nature is indeed changed if it acquires it as receiving; but not if as bestowing and communicating itself to it: whereas when God in the Mystery of the Incarnation acquires human nature, He does not receive it into Himself, but communicates Himself to it, and thereupon is not changed: thus when any creature is newly produced, it has a real relation to God the creator, by reason of which God, who communicates Himself to that creature, acquires the character of terminus with respect to it, yet is not on that account changed.

You will insist: By the same reason that human nature is said to be changed by the Incarnation, the Divine Word would be said to be changed: therefore, etc. Proof of the antecedent: therefore human nature is said to be changed, because it receives into itself the divine nature, which it did not have in itself, or to which it was not personally united: but the Divine Word also, through the Incarnation, has personally conjoined to itself the human nature, to which it was not before united: therefore by equal reason it is said to be changed by the Incarnation.

I deny the antecedent: and the reason of the disparity is, that the Divine Word conjoins human nature to itself by the mode of terminating its dependence, in the character of person; but human nature receives into itself the person of the Word as its intrinsic complement; inasmuch, namely, as the Word supplies the place of created personality, which belongs to the substantial complement of the nature itself, whence it comes about that the nature itself is said to be perfected by that personal union of the Word, because the personality of the Word supplying the place of a created person confers upon the nature itself its complement, without which that nature would remain incomplete. It is otherwise, however, with the Divine Word, because the Divine Word acquires no perfection nor complement through that termination: for it would not be less infinitely perfect even if it did not supply the place of created personality.

You will urge: Although the Divine Word have the character of terminator with respect to the assumed nature, it would nonetheless truly be said to be changed: therefore the solution proposed above is null. Proof of the antecedent: it stands so, proportion preserved, that divine personality in the character of terminator is related to the nature, as the divine intellect is related to an intelligible object: but the divine intellect would truly be said to be changed, if it were newly terminated upon some intelligible object upon which it was not before terminated, inasmuch as

God would be judged to know something anew, which He did not previously know: therefore, etc.

I deny the antecedent, and against its proof, I deny the parity. The reason of the disparity is, that the divine intellect has for its object every intelligible being, by whatever account it may be intelligible; hence if it were newly terminated upon some object which it did not previously attain, it would truly be changed; because it would follow that it did not extend itself to everything that is intelligible, nor consequently equal the breadth of its object, toward which it naturally tends by its infinite power; it is otherwise, however, with the divine personality, which by its innate power does not demand to terminate personally every nature whatsoever, whether uncreated or created, but precisely and of itself is borne only to terminating the divine nature: wherefore its power is no less complete where it terminates only the divine nature than if it were to terminate whatever created natures.

Subsumes: Therefore the divine intellect extends itself to everything that is intelligible, and would be changed if it did not attain it from eternity, because it has infinite power of understanding: but also the divine personality has infinite power of terminating the communication of nature: therefore by the reason by which the divine intellect would be judged to be changed, if it were newly to perceive some intelligible object, by equal reason the divine personality would be judged to be changed, if it were newly to terminate the communication of some nature.

I deny the parity: because the knowable object, inasmuch as it is knowable, of itself pertains to the adequate object of the divine intellect, which is every intelligible being: but any nature terminable hypostatically does not of itself pertain to the divine personality, because each nature, by reason of its formal and natural principle, demands to be terminated by its own personality: whence the case is not the same for a knowable object with respect to the divine intellect as for a terminable nature with respect to the divine personality. To these points add that the knowable object contributes to the perfection of the knowing power: for the more excellent an object is known, the more excellent is the intellectual knowledge; but a terminable nature does not of itself contribute to the perfection of the terminating personality; rather, personality itself of itself confers upon the nature personated and terminated its dignity and excellence, for the more worthy the supposit is, the worthier is the personated nature.

You will urge further: That which passes from potency to act is truly changed: but the divine nature by the Incarnation would pass from potency to act, because what was unifiable would become united: therefore it would be changed.

I distinguish the major: that which passes from potency to act passively or subjectively, that is, by way of inhering or informing, is changed, because it receives a new form which it did not have — I concede; actively, and by way of communication, I deny. And likewise, the minor being distinguished, I deny the consequence: for the divine nature is united to the human by way of active power; because that union is nothing other than the communication of the divine personality, whereby the Divine Word assumes the human nature into the unity of person.

You will object 5. From two beings in act there cannot be made one per se: but the divine nature and the human are beings in act; for each has all that which is required for its perfection: therefore either the union of both cannot be brought about, or what is united will not be a being per se.

I answer, that the human nature in Christ is indeed perfect in the order of nature, yet imperfect and incomplete in the order of person: because it lacks a proper personality, and thus it can subsist through the divine personality, and together with it make one per se, namely Christ.

You will object 6. Two contradictories cannot be verified of the same thing: but if the divine nature could be joined with the human in the same person, it would follow that it is at once finite and infinite, creator and creature, mortal and immortal, which are contradictories: therefore these things cannot come about.

I distinguish the major: contradictories cannot be true of the same thing according to the same respect — I concede; according to diverse respects, I deny; for man is at once mortal and immortal; mortal indeed by reason of his body, immortal however by reason of his soul. But Christ is said to be mortal by reason of the assumed humanity, immortal however by reason of the divine nature.

You will object the last: God cannot supply the effect of a formal cause: therefore neither can He supply the effect of created and human subsistence.

I distinguish the antecedent: every effect, I concede; some effect, I deny. Now human subsistence involves two things: first, that it affect by the mode of a form, should there be some substantial mode affecting the individual nature itself, as some hold; and this effect God cannot supply. The other, that it terminate the nature ultimately, and thus, by terminating, denominate that nature subsistent; and this God can supply equivalently by His own subsistence, not indeed by bestowing a connatural subsistence, but another equivalent one and far more worthy, namely His proper subsistence, which terminates the further communication of the created nature; but in a far worthier and more excellent manner than it is terminated by a proper personality.

You will insist: The personality of the Word cannot stand in place of a created person unless it contain that person eminently and virtually: but such is not the case, since, as the Doctor says, since the divine personalities are not formally perfect nor infinite, they cannot contain virtually the perfection of a created personality. Add that even if it contained it in such a manner, still on that account it could not stand in its place; seeing that the divine nature, which contains virtualiter created personalities, just as it contains any creature whatsoever, because it is formally infinite, nevertheless cannot supply the place of a created personality: therefore neither will the personality of the Word be able to accomplish this.

The Doctor denies the major in the same place, n. 1. For not because the person of the Word is infinite or perfect can it supply the place of a created personality, but because it is in every way independent in the order of person; therefore it can supply the place of any dependent person whatsoever: and for this reason, although the divine essence contains virtualiter and eminenter created personalities, nevertheless it cannot bear their place, because it is not itself formaliter independent in the order of person. Therefore, says the Doctor:

not from the perfection of personal being is it gathered that the personality of the Word can supply a created personality, but from this, that that personal entity is independent; and being independent at such a point, it can terminate the dependence of another upon itself, which dependence is naturally apt to have such a term. But this dependence is naturally apt to have a person for its term, and not a nature: therefore a divine person, being independent, can sufficiently terminate such a dependence of a created nature upon itself.

The mystery of the Incarnation.

NOTE 1. There is a threefold light which, as is customary, shines upon us, whereby supernatural truths can be made known: The first is the light of infused faith, by which they are perceived through a mirror and in an enigma. The second is that of demonstration, or of knowledge divinely bestowed, or acquired from revealed principles with the aid of reasoning. Finally, the third is that of persuasion, whereby a thing is sought out from conjectures and reasons, and is supported and confirmed by similitudes. Faith informs and enlightens the believer through the authority of the one revealing, in whom he believes: knowledge confirms and convinces the Philosopher through the evidence of demonstration and of inference from naturally evident principles regarding some lesser-known truth: persuasion, finally, instructs the unskilled and the ignorant, and disposes them to receive the truth through a knowledge of those things which lie within their view. But whether the Mystery of the Incarnation is proved by this threefold light is disputed among theologians. All agree indeed that it is made known by the light of faith; inasmuch as the sacred Scriptures bring forth nothing more frequently than this Mystery, which is to be adored: wherefore Christ rightly admonished the Jews, John 5: Search the Scriptures, for you think that in them you have life everlasting; and they are they that give testimony of me. The difficulty therefore concerns only the light of knowledge and persuasion; namely, whether this Mystery can be clearly uncovered either by demonstration or by conjecture, both by Philosophers and by the more unlearned and ignorant.

NOTE 2. Supernatural things are distinguished in two ways: for certain things are called supernatural as to their substance, while others only as to their manner. Of the former kind and order are all those things which so exceed nature that by no effort whatsoever of any intellect can they be detected and known by their native and proper power: for instance, the Trinity of persons in the unity of essence, the decree of predestination of this or that man. For what man knows the things of a man, says St. Paul, 1 Cor. 2, but the spirit of man that is in him? So the things also that are of God no man knows, but the Spirit of God. Of the latter kind, however, are those things of the natural order indeed as to their entity, although not so as to their manner of existing. Thus, for example, sight restored to a man born blind is natural according to its entity, since that visual faculty is of the same order and kind as that which is possessed by generation: but it is supernatural as to its manner; because it exceeds the powers of nature, and the manner and order which God is accustomed to preserve in acting by his ordinary providence. It is disputed among theologians, however, whether all faith and divine revelation set aside, the Incarnation of the Word is so supernatural according to its entity that it cannot be perceived naturally. Some judge that since it was accomplished only by an extraordinary power of God, it follows from this that it cannot evidently be proved. Yet some theologians, whom Raymond Lull is said to have anticipated, contend that the Incarnation can be evidently proved against the objections of the Philosophers.

NOTE 3. The Incarnation may be regarded either as possible, or as future, or as accomplished, concerning which threefold state there can be a difficulty: how it may be known by man as wayfarer, and likewise by the Angels, both the blessed and the damned.

First Conclusion. — No angelic or human intellect can uncover by the powers of nature the possibility, or the future occurrence, of the Incarnation: nor can it evidently and certainly know its existence.

Proof of the first part: Supernatural entities as to their substance cannot be attained by the powers of nature: but the Incarnation is supernatural according to its entity: therefore by no effort of natural intellect can it be perceived. The major stands, for entities of supernatural order according to their entity are called such because they transcend every grasp of nature. The minor is also evident, since it is altogether supernatural that God should be united hypostatically to man, that created nature should be stripped of its connatural mode of subsisting, that natural subsistence should be supplied in place by divine personality, etc.

Furthermore, in order that an intellect might comprehend the Mystery of the Incarnation, it would have to know evidently the obediential power of rational nature with respect to all that to which that power can extend itself; it would likewise have to know the power of the divine Omnipotence with respect to the supreme effect which that power can produce; since the Incarnation is the greatest and most excellent work of the divine Omnipotence: but a created intellect cannot evidently grasp both of these by its own powers: therefore neither can it uncover certainly and evidently the Mystery of the Incarnation.

Finally, in order that that possibility could be conjectured and come into anyone's mind, there would need to be some medium in created things from which a created intellect could detect that possibility: but there is no such medium: partly because that mystery is a work of God's supreme liberality and freedom; and consequently there is no connection of it with natural causes and effects: partly because since each created nature is infinitely distant from God, it has nothing at all of itself whereby it may show forth a possible intimate union of itself with God: therefore by no medium, and by no power of a created intellect, faith and revelation set aside, can the possibility of this mystery be uncovered.

The second and third parts are proved together: First indeed from Scripture, which declares this mystery hidden from creatures. Thus Paul, writing to the Ephesians 3, speaking of the Mystery of the Incarnation calls it the unsearchable riches of Christ, and the Sacrament hidden from eternity in God: and in 1 Cor. 2 he calls it the wisdom in a mystery which is hidden. Wherefore Christ is said in Isaiah 8 to be a hidden God, on account namely of the Sacrament of the assumed man. This St. Ambrose excellently proves in the second chapter of the latter Epistle to the Corinthians, where he concludes thus: Therefore the wisdom of God was hidden while it was not in words, but in power: possible not by human reason, but believable by the efficacy of the Spirit. To these words equally applies that of Isaiah 35: Who shall declare his generation? Whence St. Ambrose, book 1 On the Faith, chapter 3: For me indeed it is impossible to know the secret of the generation: the mind fails, the voice falls silent, not mine alone, but even that of the Angels. And shortly after: Not only is the generation of Christ from the Father admirable: admirable also is his generation from the Virgin.

The other holy Fathers testify the same: above all Dionysius, book

On the Divine Names, chapter 2: Jesus, he says, appeared in the flesh, and is ineffable in speech, and wholly unknown to understanding: even to the most ancient prince of the Angels himself not sufficiently perceived. To him accords St. Cyril of Alexandria, book On the Incarnation of the Only-Begotten, chapter 7, saying that the union of the Word with flesh is superior to all human cognition. This St. Augustine openly demonstrates in Epistle 3 to Volusianus, where speaking of this mystery he says: Here if reason is sought, it will not be marvelous: if an example is set forth, it will not be singular. That God can do something which we confess we cannot do is incredible. In such things the whole reason of the deed is the power of the one doing it.

You will say 1: Natural reason does not judge evidently that the incarnation is impossible: therefore it can judge it to be possible. The consequence is evident, because between contradictories, such as possible and impossible, no middle is given.

I deny the consequence: for although on the part of the thing itself there is no medium between a mystery being possible and impossible; nevertheless there is a medium between judging that mystery to be possible, and judging it to be impossible: for between both of these judgments there is given a suspension and denial of the act. Hence if some Philosopher were asked whether he judged the union of God with man to be possible or impossible; either he would suspend the act, affirming and denying nothing; or if he uttered anything, that would certainly exceed the capacity of his own intellect, and would send a sickle into another's harvest: since the Incarnation is of the supernatural order, it exceeds the natural sphere of created intellect, and has no connection with natural principles, from which alone the Philosopher can borrow his certain knowledge.

You will say 2: An angel evidently knows that God can effect whatever does not imply contradiction: but it is also evident to him that there is no contradiction in God being made man; since he naturally knows that God is subsistent and independent in the manner of a person, he likewise knows that the subsistence of human nature is separable from it: therefore he can gather that a divine person, by reason of its independence, can supply the place of created personality.

I deny the minor: for although an angel can know that divine subsistence is communicable, and that created subsistence is naturally distinct from human nature, yet he would not know in what way the Word could be united to human nature; indeed it would not be known to him whether that human subsistence were really separated from its nature, and whether that nature subsisted by the subsistence of the Word, since that mode of subsisting is of the supernatural order.

You will insist: Created subsistence is of the natural order, and within the breadth of the natural object of an angel: therefore an angel can know it to be absent from the individual nature of Christ; and consequently he can know that nature to subsist by the subsistence of the Word.

I deny this last consequence; for although an angel could acknowledge the human nature of Christ not to have its own subsistence, yet he cannot infer thence that it subsists by the subsistence of the Word; indeed he could judge that God preserves that individual nature without any subsistence, just as in fact He preserves the Eucharistic species without any subject.

You will say 3: An angel can know the resurrection of man to be possible; therefore he can also judge the Incarnation to be possible.

I deny the antecedent: for although the resurrection of man is not supernatural as to its substance as the Incarnation is, nevertheless since it is of the supernatural order as to its manner, and depends upon the free will of God, and there is no natural cause by which it can be brought about, hence it is that an angel certainly cannot know by natural light that the resurrection is possible.

You will say 4: Some most skilled Philosopher will be able to solve evidently all the arguments persuading the impossibility of the Incarnation: therefore he will be able to infer it to be possible.

I distinguish the antecedent: that he will be able to solve them negatively, that is, by denying the principles from which they are inferred, and by showing that the conclusions drawn from those principles do not convince, nor persuade altogether, I concede; that he will be able to solve them positively, by showing evidently that the principles from which they proceed are false, and consequently that their contradictories are true, I deny: for it does not follow that he who proves evidently by certain arguments that something is not impossible, persuades and demonstrates by those same arguments that it is possible; because the possibility of a thing does not depend upon the arguments which persuade it, but upon its own intrinsic principles from which it comes about that that thing is possible. Add to these, that even if the Philosopher solved all the arguments proposed to him against the possibility of the Incarnation, still he certainly could not judge that there is no argument which would assert that impossibility; nay, he could suspect that far more pressing arguments might be proposed, which would demonstrate that impossibility.

You will say 5: Natural reason persuades that the Mystery of the Incarnation is evidently credible: therefore it likewise persuades that it is evidently possible.

I deny the consequence; for credibility is sought from one source, and the possibility of the thing from another: for possibility proceeds from the internal principles of that thing, from which it has that it does not conflict, nor is there a contradiction that it be; but credibility is taken from the authority of one speaking worthy of faith, whence the more one is judged truthful in speaking, the more easily and firmly also is faith given to him.

You will say 6: In truth the demons knew the Mystery of the Incarnation, and that Christ is the God-man: but they did not know it through revelation, seeing that they are incapable of every divine benefit: therefore they must have known it by their native power of understanding. The major is established: first indeed from that passage of Matthew 8, where it is said, that when Christ the Lord had come across the strait into the region of the Gerasenes, there met him two possessed with devils, exceeding fierce, so that none might pass by that way, and they cried out, saying: What have we to do with thee, Jesus Son of God? art thou come hither before the time to torment us? And Luke 4: And devils went out from many, crying out and saying: For thou art the Son of God: and rebuking them he suffered them not to speak, for they knew that he was Christ. Second, the same is established from all the oracles uttered by the devil himself in idols: for it is established, as Suetonius relates in Octavius chapter 91, Nicephorus in book one chapter 17, and several other sacred Annalists, that when the Emperor Augustus had consulted the Delphic Apollo, and the shut-up demon gave no accustomed responses, when the Emperor asked what was the cause of so great a silence of the speechless Apollo, he at last elicited from him these responses:

Me puer Hebraeus divos Deus ipse gubernans, Cedere sede iubet, tristemque redire sub orcum: Aris ergo dehinc tacitus abscedito nostris.

Wherefore the same Authors add that Augustus, having returned to Rome, erected an altar on the Capitol, inscribed with these words: Ara Primogeniti Dei.

I answer by distinguishing the minor: that they did not receive it through a revelation made to them immediately, I concede: through a revelation made both through the Prophets and through Angels, and set down in the divine Scriptures, and declared by miracles, I deny. For it is certain, as Tertullian says in his Apologeticum, chapter 22, that the demons

know most easily what is done everywhere, just as they proclaim it; swiftness is believed to be divinity, because their substance is unknown: they even snatch away the dispositions of God, then when the Superiors preach, and then when the readings resound they pick them apart, and so taking from this source certain lots of times, they emulate divinity while they steal divination.

The demons therefore could know from the reasonings of the Prophets that Christ was that Messiah so longed for in so many vows, and promised in so many oracles; for indeed if the Jews, from the promises made and set down in the divine Scripture, could know that Christ was the Messiah, much more easily could the demons come to know it; not indeed certainly and evidently, but conjecturally, both on account of those prophecies, and on account of the marvelous works which Christ himself had wrought. For if they had truly known him, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory, that is, would never have suggested that he be crucified, as the gloss upon 1 Corinthians 2 says. Hence also the demons strove to hinder the death of Christ the Lord, as is gathered from the dream of the wife of Pilate, who, as we read in Matthew 27, said to her husband: Have nothing to do with that Just One: for I have suffered many things today in a vision because of him: for then the devil, greatly doubting whether Christ was the Messiah, tried to dissuade his death: whence although the demons acknowledged very many signs of divine virtue in Christ, yet because they also beheld in him examples of human infirmity, they did not hold for certain that he was truly the Son of God, whence the tempter came to him saying: If you are the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. Nor does it stand against this that the Evangelist said, He suffered them not to speak, because they knew him to be the Christ: for the particle because is not taken there causally, but historically and recitatively; that is, Christ did not suffer the demons to assert that they knew him to be the Son of God, partly because they lied, when they intended to signify that they knew it with certainty, when they knew it only conjecturally; partly because they said it chiefly to probe whether it were truly so.

You will urge: Doctor Subtilis in 1. dist. 10, question 8, number 12, teaches that whatever Angel, even a bad one, if he be permitted absolutely to use his natural cognitive power, can understand mysteries of grace already existing: which he seems indeed to assert concerning the Mystery of the Incarnation, and proves expressly through that whole Question concerning the Existence of the Body of Christ. For the respondent says in answer to the third argument:

Concerning the bad Angels I say that, if any bad Angel whatsoever be permitted absolutely to use his natural cognitive power, he can understand any intelligible thing caused; and consequently he could understand the thoughts of hearts, and the Mysteries of Grace. Whence he infers that if a demon did not know the Mystery of the Incarnation, that happened for this reason, because, he says, it was not permitted on account of certain causes, lest our redemption be impeded; for if they had known it, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory, that is, would never have procured my redemption by his death; therefore the Doctor Subtilis opposes us, and we him.

I deny the consequence; for the Doctor speaks not of evident and certain cognition, but of argumentative and conjectural cognition. And if you contend that it must be understood of prior cognition, I answer with Fabro, in the first Disputation, chapter 13 last, that the Doctor speaks of supernatural Mysteries of grace, which do not involve an order to something uncreated, such as is the Mystery of the Incarnation, which involves an order to the Word, which order surely, being supernatural, so transcends the powers of any natural intellect, that without revelation it cannot perceive it with clear and evident cognition, whether mediate or immediate, but only with argumentative and conjectural cognition.

You will say seventhly: Very many unbelievers had some knowledge of the Incarnation of the Word, as is gathered from Theodoret in the book De Graecanicis Haeresibus, Eugubius book 1. De perenni Philosophia chapter 3, Sixtus Senensis book 2. Bibliotheca sancta, the Serbian Sibyl, and St. Augustine book 18. De Civitate, chapter 23, where he recites and weighs the prophecies of the Sibyls, especially indeed the Cumaean Sibyl, concerning the Incarnation of the Word; and that so distinctly and expressly that she expressed even the name of Jesus Christ acrostically; by which testimony also the Holy Fathers made use, as many as undertook to defend against the Gentiles the cause of the Christian Religion. Nay, St. Paul did not disdain to make use of the testimony of those Sibyls, as Clement of Alexandria relates in book 6. Stromatum, in these words:

As God willed the Jews to be saved, giving them Prophets: so also Paul declared that the Greeks, the most eminent among them, trained in their own language, were believed by Him according as they could desire the beneficence of God, through the preaching of Peter, saying: Take up also the books, recognize the Sibyl, how she signifies one God, and the things that are to come. Take up the Hydaspes, and read, and you will find the Son of God written far more clearly and openly, and how many Kings would array a battle line against Christ, who hold him in hatred, and who bear his name, and his faithful ones, and constancy, and tolerance.

Which Clement surely recites not from the Epistles of Paul, but from sermons delivered to the peoples, certain words of which must be thought to have fallen so into the ears of the hearers that oblivion never effaced them, but they were propagated by a fortunate and continuous tradition down to the time of that same holy Clement. For why should not St. Paul be believed to have made use of Sibylline testimony, when he was wont to cite the Greek Poets, as we read in Acts 17? Hence at first the Christians were frequent in reading the Sibylline books, that thence they might make use of testimony against the Gentiles for the Christian Religion: wherefore, as Origen avers in book 5. Contra Celsum, the Gentiles themselves were accustomed to call the Christians Sibyllists. Whence Justin Martyr relates in his Oration to Antoninus Pius that, by the work and instigation of evil demons, the punishment of death was established against the labors of the books of Hydaspes, the Sibyl, or the Prophets, that through fear men might be withdrawn from them (lest, reading their writings, they should attain knowledge of good things, but should be held in their servitude): which indeed they were unable to accomplish, nor to carry through to their end. Whence it came about, as Lactantius relates in book 4. chapter 15, that overcome by these testimonies the Gentiles were wont to take refuge in saying, that those were indeed Sibylline Verses, but forged and composed by ours: Which surely no one would think, says the same Lactantius, who has read Cicero and Varro, and others besides, who mention the Erythraean Sibyl and the rest, from whose books we bring forth those examples: which authors died before Christ was born according to the flesh. Nor was Virgil ignorant of these things, seeing that from the same Sibylline Verses he ascribed to Saloninus, son of Pollio, with great flattery, the first Eclogue, in which things were foretold concerning Christ about to be born of a Virgin. For he sings:

Under your guidance, if any traces of our guilt remain, they will render void the lands, freed from perpetual fear, He shall receive the life of the gods, etc. Noble offspring of the gods, great increase of Jupiter, etc.

But that these things were to be understood concerning the Incarnation of the Word, the Emperor Constantine splendidly argued in his Oration to the assembly of the saints. Thence a settled persuasion had even come among the Gentiles, as Suetonius relates in his life of Vespasian, chapter 11: It was contained in the fates that at that time men from Judaea would seize the reins of power, which Suetonius, surely ignorant of the matter, thought must be attributed to Vespasian Augustus. To these add what St. Thomas relates, 2. 2. q. 2. art. 7. ad 3.: It is found, he says, in the histories of the ancients that at Constantinople in the time of Constantine and Helena his mother, a certain sepulchre was discovered, in which lay a man bearing on his breast a stone tablet, on which was engraved this epigram: Christ is born of a Virgin, and I believe in him! O sun, under Helena's and Constantine's times you will smile upon me again. Therefore from these and similar testimonies it is established that the Gentiles had knowledge of the Incarnation of the Word, and consequently that Mystery did not exceed the natural grasp of man.

I deny the consequence: for although I do not doubt that all these things narrated in the objection are true, yet it does not follow from them that this knowledge was acquired by the Gentiles by the mere guidance and light of nature; for it could have been brought in from elsewhere. First indeed by tradition, which could have prevailed from Adam through the Patriarchs to the posterity of Noe: for that a promise was made to our First Parent of the Incarnation of the Divine Word, the restorer and savior of men, is doubted by no one; and by happy tradition this prevailed among his posterity. Second, from the gift of Prophecy generously granted by God to very many Gentiles: in which manner St. Jerome, book 7. Contra Iovinianum, judges that the Sibyls were illustrious by the gift of Prophecy: Of whom, he says, signal was their Virginity, and the reward of virginity divination: whence the consentient opinion of Christians holds, as Lactantius relates, book 1. chapter 6., that the Sibyls prophesied many things by divine instinct concerning the Mysteries of the Christian Religion, but especially concerning the Incarnation of the Son of God, and above all his Passion. Third, from the oracles of the demons themselves, to whom this Mystery had been revealed before their fall. For St. Bernard judges that the demons fell and became the utter foes of God for this reason, because God, proposed to them as the man who was to be, as head and prince of all, to whom all creatures ought to be subject as to a superior, they refused to submit themselves. Nay, even after their fall this Mystery was intimated to the demon, as the sacred Interpreters gather from those words of Genesis, chapter 3., where God thus addresses the devil, the explorer and assailant of the First Parents under the masked figure of a serpent: I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel. Add that, as we said above, the demons, being endowed with the highest power of understanding, were able to know all the prophecies of the holy Prophets written in the Scriptures concerning Christ who was to come, and to intimate them to their followers. Finally, the Gentiles could borrow that knowledge from their communication with the Hebrews; who, scattered among various nations through many captivities, were able to announce to them what they held in their sacred writings and prophecies: for since the whole hope of the Hebrews was placed chiefly in Christ who was to come, who would deliver them from all their miseries and hold the empire of the whole world, and this they would chiefly have as their solace in their straits, it is no wonder if they intimated this eminent hope of theirs to the Gentiles.

Second Conclusion. — Faith and divine revelation being supposed, natural reason, illumined by that divine light, can by conjectures and examples scale the mystery of the Incarnation.

The truth of this Conclusion is evident from the holy Fathers, who labored to intimate this Mystery to infidels and the more unlearned by various examples and similitudes. And this especially by the example of the union of the rational soul with the body, which St. Augustine elegantly employs in both ways, Epistle 3., which is to Volusianus, where speaking of this Mystery,

Thus, he says, certain persons demand that a reason be rendered to them how God was mingled with man so that one person of Christ should come to be, when this had need to be done once, just as if they render reason concerning a thing which happens daily, how the soul is mingled with the body so that one person of man comes to be. For as in the unity of person the soul is united to the body that man may be, so in the unity of person God is united to man that Christ may be. In that person therefore there is a mingling of soul and body; in this person there is a mingling of God and man: provided however the hearer withdraw from the custom of bodies, whereby two liquors are wont to be so commingled that neither preserves its integrity — although even in bodies themselves incorrupt light is mingled with air: therefore the person of man is a mingling of soul and body: but the person of Christ is a mingling of God and man. For when the Word of God was mingled with the soul having a body, at the same time he took to himself both soul and body. The former happens daily for the procreation of men: the latter was done once for the liberation of men. Nevertheless the commixtion of two incorporeal things ought to have been believed more easily than of one incorporeal and another corporeal. For if the soul in its own nature, comprehending itself to be an incorporeal nature, is not destroyed, far more incorporeal is the Word of God; and for this reason the mingling of the Word of God and the soul ought to have been more credible than that of soul and body. But this we experience in ourselves; that we are bidden to believe in Christ. Yet if both alike, being unexperienced by us, were commanded to be believed, which of the two would we sooner believe? How do we not confess that two incorporeal things could have been mingled more easily than one corporeal and another incorporeal — provided however it be not unworthily admitted to that name of mixtion or mingling, on account of the custom of bodily things, which are far removed from one another and known otherwise? The Word therefore of God, and the same the Son of God, coeternal with the Father, the same power and Wisdom of God, reaching from the supreme end of the rational creature even to the innermost end of the corporeal creature, attaining mightily and disposing all things sweetly, present and hidden, nowhere confined, nowhere divided, nowhere swollen: but without bulk everywhere entire, > in a manner somehow far other than that wherein he is present to the other creatures, took up man, and made himself and him one Jesus Christ, mediator of God and men, equal to the Father according to divinity, less than the Father according to the flesh, that is, according to man, unchangeably immortal equally as equal to the Father according to divinity, and the same changeable and mortal according to the infirmity known to us, in which Christ at that time, which he himself knew to be most opportune, and had disposed before all ages, came to men as magisterium and aid, for the attaining of everlasting salvation.

Fitly also is this marvelous union expounded through the union of an accident with its subject, which the Doctor uses in o. dist. 1. question 1. But that this similitude may appear, first there must be distinguished a twofold relation of accident to subject. The first is that of informing to informed, to perfectible: and this, says Poncius there, denotes imperfection in the subject, because potentiality and perfectibility do not accord with God, our purpose being such. The second is the relation of a substantiated natural posterior to the prior substantiating, from which it depends as from a pure terminus: and this latter notes no imperfection in the subject; because it denotes only the natural properties in it, and the substantiation of the accident, which is a note of perfection. Therefore, the imperfections being removed from this union, it will be most like the hypostatic union, and consequently will render it most intelligible, on account of its manifold congruence. The first is: as the subject sustains the accident, and the accident depends on the subject, so the Divine Word sustains the human nature, and this depends on him by special motive. Second: as accident and subject united together make a certain one supposit, so in this union, although there are two natures, yet they have one unique supposit. But the third is: as the accident accrues to the subject already existing, so humanity to the Word. Fourth: as the accident is not of the essence of the subject, so neither is humanity of the essence of the Word. Fifth: as the nature of the subject is neither confounded nor commingled with the nature of the accident, nor conversely; but each remains integral and unmingled, so it is said of the divine and human nature. Sixth finally: as the properties of the accident, and the accident itself in concreto, are communicated to the subject and enunciated of it, and conversely; so the properties of human nature, and the nature itself, are communicated to the Divine Word, and enunciated of him, and conversely; as will be seen where we treat of the communication of idioms.

Reason also persuades the same thing. For it is established by the natural light itself that God, as the greatest of all goods, is supremely communicative of himself: and accordingly it is fitting that he communicate himself in respect of all that which his infinite entity contains; namely, according to entity, perfection, and hypostasis; therefore as he had communicated his entity in the order of nature to all creatures, which are participations of his infinite entity and certain outflowings from it; but most of all to man, who is the breathing and truthful image of his divine entity: as he had implanted his divine excellencies, gathered together and expressed as it were in his sublime sanctity, in just men in the state of grace, that he might constitute them his adoptive sons: finally, as he had implanted his felicity and beatitude in the most blessed minds in the order of glory: so likewise it was fitting to his supremely good nature that he communicate himself with his human nature hypostatically and personally in an individual, inasmuch as man might thereby be able to be raised up to the order of divinity.

You will say. If, faith being supposed, the human intellect can by its natural power scale this mystery with probable reasons: then also without any light of faith, the same intellect will be able by those conjectures and reasons to judge this mystery possible, or to come.

I deny the consequence: for the intellect illumined by the light of faith can investigate more things for confirming a truth than it can when destitute of those aids. For things found out and known are proved more easily than unknown things are found out. Therefore; because these reasons and conjectures, which the intellect now illumined by faith employs, faith set aside would not suffice for overcoming the difficulty and repugnance which the natural light suffers concerning this mystery: and therefore, faith set aside, those reasons and conjectures do not avail sufficient for rendering judgment even probable, that such a mystery is possible, or to come.

A twofold convenience can be distinguished. One indeed intrinsic to the thing, according to which something is said to be convenient, insofar as it is ordered by God. For, says the Apostle to the Romans 13: Those things that are of God are ordained. The other, however, extrinsic, whereby it consists in a certain relation, or bearing, of the thing itself toward those things to which it is fitting. Now since the Incarnation can be considered with respect either to God its author, or to human nature as its terminus, or to the whole orb of the earth, and like unto an encyclopedia of lands: therefore the convenience thereof must be treated with respect to those three things: namely, whether the Incarnation was convenient, both with respect to God, and with respect to man, and with respect to the other creatures.

Note 2. Since every good is diffusive and communicative of itself: and since God is the most excellent of all goods; diffusion of Himself and communication belong most of all to Him. Now the communication of God is twofold: one indeed ad intra, either through the fecundity of light and knowledge, whereby the eternal Father communicates Himself to the Son, who is God of God, light from light, true God from true God; or through the fecundity of love, whereby the Father and the Son, burning with divine love toward themselves, produce the Holy Spirit, who is the fruit and terminus of the mutual love of the Father and the Son. The other communication, however, is ad extra, whereby those three adorable persons communicate themselves to creatures in the order of nature, grace, glory, and divinity. In the order indeed of nature, by bestowing upon them all natural goods owed to them connaturally for their integrity and perfection. In the order truly of grace, by conferring upon the rational creature those gratuitous gifts by which it can be promoted to the supernatural order and end. In the order of glory, by exhibiting all His excellencies and delights of divinity to be beheld and enjoyed by the purest and most blessed minds. Finally, in the order of divinity, through hypostatic union; whereby one of those adorable persons communicates Himself substantially to human nature through His own proper subsistence, whereby it comes about that God becomes man, and in turn man God: taking upon Himself body and soul in the unity of person, so that in man there dwells the whole fullness of divinity corporally.

Note 3. That this last communication is the most excellent and greatest of all. For some communication can be judged greater than another in two ways: namely, either intensively, or extensively. It is said to be greater indeed in the prior way, when something more noble and more perfect is communicated: but in the second, when it extends itself to more subjects or supposits; by which reasoning the communication of natural goods is greater extensively; but the communication of supernatural goods is greater intensively, inasmuch as supernatural goods excel natural ones. But the communication which comes about through the Incarnation is without doubt the greatest of all communications, not only intensively, because the very uncreated substance of the Word, which is of infinite dignity and perfection, and thereupon surpasses all goods of the order of nature, grace, and glory, communicates itself to humanity: but also extensively; since it contributes not only to the honor and ornament of men and Angels, but also of the other creatures, as will be evident in the following Conclusions.

First Conclusion. — The Incarnation of the Word was most convenient to God.

Proof. That thing is most fitting to God which contributes to manifesting His divine excellencies: but through the Incarnation the perfections and excellency of God shine forth most greatly: therefore it was most convenient to God. The reason of this stands firm; for it is convenient to God to demonstrate His invisible perfections through visible effects. For this purpose indeed He founded the universe, that the invisible things of God may be understood through those things which have been made; His eternal power also, and divinity, says Saint Paul to the Romans 1. But the minor is proved: although the divine excellencies and divine gifts be innumerable, yet especially with respect to God, and to creatures, before all others there shine Goodness,

Goodness, I say, whereby He wills to communicate Himself to them and to bestow on them participation in His being: Power, whereby He performs and executes the same: Wisdom, whereby He weighs, orders, and establishes creatures in due and decent order, and directs them to their convenient end: Justice, whereby He distributes to each what accords with perfection: finally Mercy, whereby He supplies and restores the defects of the rational creature: and all those five divine perfections shine forth most greatly in the Mystery of the Incarnation.

First indeed the divine Goodness shines forth supremely in that mystery: for the divine Word, by bestowing His own person upon humanity, bestows at the same time divinity itself, and pours out upon man as it were all His divine excellencies. Hence that divine communication is called the measure of the divine love toward men; whence Christ Himself, from this ineffable Mystery, commends above all the goodness and charity of God toward men, saying John 3: So God loved the world, as to give His only begotten Son: and the Apostle judges that love so supreme and excellent that he did not blush to call it superexcellent and exceeding, to the Ephesians 2, saying: God, who is rich in mercy, for His exceeding charity wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together in Christ (by whose grace you are saved), and hath raised us up together, and hath made us sit together in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus: that He might show in the ages to come the abundant riches of His grace, in goodness towards us in Christ Jesus. Hence the same Apostle, commending that divine goodness toward us, to the Romans 8, says: If God be for us, who is against us? who spared not even His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all: how hath He not also, with Him, given us all things? Wherefore to Titus 3 he says: The benignity and humanity of our Savior God appeared. Which Saint Bernard expounds thus, Sermon 1 on the Nativity of the Lord:

There had appeared before, he says, power in the creation of things: wisdom was appearing in their governance: but now the benignity of mercy appeared above all in His humanity. Power had been made known to the Jews in signs and wonders; whence also in the Gospel you will often find: I am the Lord, I am God: to the Philosophers also, abounding in their own sense, majesty was made known, since according to the words of the Apostle, what is known of God is manifest to them. Yet nevertheless the Jews were oppressed by that very power, and the Philosophers, searchers into majesty, were weighed down by the glory. Power exacts subjection, majesty demands admiration, neither imitation. Appear, Lord, O goodness, wherewith man, created to Thine image, may be conformed: for majesty, power, wisdom, we can neither imitate, nor does it profit to emulate.

Omnipotence likewise shines forth in wondrous manner in the Mystery of the Incarnation; whence the Prophet Jeremias 31, to commend this most excellent work, calls it new. New, He says, hath the Lord created upon the earth: a woman shall compass a man. These words Saint Bernard expounds thus, homily 2 super Missus est: There was, he says, a man in Jesus, born not only of wisdom, not of age: of vigor of mind, not strength of body: of maturity of senses, not corpulence of limbs. And a little before: In this new and unheard-of prodigy is recognized length that is brief, breadth that is narrow, height that is subject, depth that is full. There is recognized light not shining, the Word an infant, water thirsting, bread hungering. You may see, if you attend, > power ruled, wisdom instructed, virtue sustained: God at last nursing at the breast, yet refreshing the Angels, groaning, yet consoling the miserable. You may see, if you attend, sadness joyous, the poor confident, salvation given over to pestilence, life dying, fortitude weakened. But what is no less to be wondered at, sadness itself is there seen rejoicing, comforting the poor, passion saving, death vivifying, infirmity strengthening.

Wherefore the Incarnation on account of its excellence is called the Work of God in Habacuc 3: Lord, Thy work, in the midst of the years make it live: and the most Blessed Virgin in her Canticle says it is the work of the omnipotent arm of God: He hath wrought power in His arm. Which truth Saint Bernard commends thus, in Sermon 3 for the Vigil of the Nativity of the Lord:

Three works, he says, three mixtures did that omnipotent Majesty make in the assumption of our flesh; so singularly marvelous, and marvelously singular, that such things neither have been done, nor are ever again to be done upon the earth. For there were conjoined one to another God and man, Mother and Virgin, faith and the human heart.

And He commends that first mixture thus:

He wished, He says, to exalt our weaker parts with more abundant glory, and majesty contracted itself, that what it had of better, namely itself, it might join to our mire; so that in one person God and mud might be united to each other, majesty and infirmity, such vileness and sublimity; for nothing is more sublime than God, nothing viler than mud, and yet with such condescension God descended into the mud, and with such dignity the mud ascended unto God, that whatever God did in Him, the mud is believed to have done, whatever the mud endured, God is said to have endured in Him: a sacrament as ineffable as it is incomprehensible. And attend to this: just as in that singularity there is Trinity in persons, unity in substance; so in this special commingling, there is Trinity in substance, unity in persons: and as there the persons do not divide the unity, nor does the unity diminish the Trinity, so here also the person does not confuse the substances, nor do the substances themselves dissipate the unity of the person. That supreme Trinity exhibited to us this trinity, a marvelous work, a singular work among all things, and above all His works. For the Word, and the soul, and the flesh came together into one person, and these three are one, and this one is three, not by confusion of substance, but by unity of person; this is the first and superexcellent mixture, and this the first among the three.

The divine Wisdom is celebrated equally, especially in the manner of reconciling divine Justice with His mercy. For St. Augustine says in his book, Cur, quando, et quomodo Deus, etc. chapter 6.

God had required from man justice, so that he who had offended by sin should make satisfaction through justice. For this the diversity of natures, and the unity of person in Christ availed, and was necessary for the human race, so that what human nature could not do, the divine nature would accomplish, and would exhibit even what in no way befitted human nature: and not one being and another, but that the same self should exist, perfect from both, who through the human nature might pay what He Himself owed, and through the divine nature could accomplish what was expedient. The debt of Adam was such that he ought not to pay it unless he were man, but he could not unless he were God: hence it was necessary that He should be the same man who was God. Wherefore it was necessary, in the unity of person, that God should assume man, so that man, who ought by his nature to pay and could not, might be in the person of Him who could, because satisfaction for sin could not be made except by God; but it was not owed except by man: therefore it stands that, for the restoration of that supernal city to be wrought in men (which could not be brought about unless the aforesaid satisfaction for sins had been made, which none could render unless he were God, nor ought he unless he were man) it was necessary that God made man should accomplish it.

Which reason St. Leo lucidly expounds in Sermon 1. on the Nativity, saying among other things: But by the property of both substances, converging into one person, infirmity is received from power, humility from majesty, mortality from eternity, as befitted the remedy for our body, that one and the same mediator of God and men might be able both to die from the one and to rise again from the other. It shines forth therein especially, that the adversary of the human race, who had conquered our First Parents together with their whole posterity, should be conquered and overcome by God through man. For, says Hugh of St. Victor, book 1. De Sacramentis p. 8. chapter 6: He who had cast out by justice, it was fitting that he be conquered not by fortitude, but by prudence, so that in the very thing wherein he had raised himself up as victor, he should be laid low as vanquished, according to that of Job 26: And his prudence struck down the proud one. Which reason St. Augustine likewise expounds thus, in the book Cur, quando, et quomodo Deus, etc. c. 6.

Subtly God wished to assail the subtle enemy, concealing beneath the bait of humanity the hook of divinity, so that he might find one who owed him nothing: which nature when he unlawfully touched it, he deservedly lost that which in a certain manner he possessed: for thus was the ancient serpent to be deluded, that he who had deluded men should himself be deluded by the God-man. And as he had cunningly subjected unguarded man to himself, so through man divinely guarded he should be subjected, not cunningly, but wisely. Here truly appears the highest wisdom, when that is set before the enemy which is first cast down by the enemy: and as it were, that which had fallen should recover its strength, and assailed by the enemy, should again presume to fight against the enemy. The enemy is therefore provoked again to battle, that he who before rejoiced that he had conquered might afterwards, vanquished, succumb entirely, and thus man would become far more glorious by his resumption than if he had never chanced to fall.

To this St. Leo accords his voice, saying:

According to the fullness of time, which the inscrutable depth of the divine counsel disposed, humanity took upon itself its nature to be reconciled to its leader, and the author of death, the devil, was to be conquered through the very one whom he had cast out: in which conflict undertaken on our behalf he was prostrated by a great and marvelous law of equity, while the omnipotent Lord engages with the most savage enemy not in His own majesty, but in our humility, setting against him a fallible form, and a fallible nature: partaker indeed of our mortality, but wholly without experience of sin.

Hence the Church sings: The order of our salvation required: that the manifold art of the traitor might be deceived by art, and the remedy borne thence whence the enemy had wounded. Finally, the divine wisdom excels chiefly in this, that this Mystery contributes above all to establishing the glory of God; nay, even to increasing it. For, says St. Bernard, Sermon 2. on the Ascension: Christ, since by the nature of His divinity He had nothing whereby He might grow or ascend, because beyond God there is nothing, found how He might grow by descending: coming to be incarnate, to suffer, to die, lest we should die for eternity. Wherefore St. Gregory of Nyssa in his Catechetical Oration chapter 14 calls that descent of the divine Word an overflowing abundance of power: That, he says, which is the abasement of descent, is a certain signal and overflowing abundance of power. To which fits that verse of the Psalm: He ascended above the setting sun; the Lord His name. Whence St. Gregory, Homily 17. on the Gospels: Above the setting sun the Lord ascends, because whence He lay down in His Passion, thence He manifested His greater glory by rising again: namely, above the setting sun He ascends, because the death which He endured He trod underfoot by rising again.

Equally the divine Justice shines forth excellently in this adorable Mystery: since through the passion and death of Christ the Lord He accepted a condign satisfaction for the sins and offenses of men: inasmuch as the God-man offered Himself not only as victim and expiation upon the altar of the cross to the eternal Father, but also exposed Himself like a target to the arrow, and to the most severe vengeance of the divine justice. Hence St. Paul to the Romans 3, expounding most brilliantly the satisfaction and redemption of Christ the Lord, says: Justified freely by His grace: through the redemption, of the preeminent offenses, in the forbearance of God. The divine Justice is commended also especially from this, that it displayed its rigid and exact severity in avenging sins in the Passion and Death of Christ. For if the eternal Father chastised with such severity His most loving Son, who had constituted Himself surety for the sins of men, and who had only put on the likeness of the flesh of sin, what terror and dread must abide in each sinner obstinate in so many and so great crimes, when they stand before that divine justice to judge and to punish? For, says the Savior Himself Luke 23: If in the green wood they do these things, what shall be done in the dry? Finally the bitterness of the divine justice appears in that infinite price which He willed to be paid for our redemption. For St. Peter says, 1. Epistle chapter 1: Not with corruptible gold or silver are you redeemed from your vain conversation of the tradition of your fathers, but with the precious blood as of a lamb immaculate.

Finally, the divine Mercy shines forth supremely in this Mystery. Although it be proper to God always to have mercy and to spare, and all the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth, whereby He sustains in much patience the vessels of wrath fitted for destruction, that He may show the riches of His glory; nevertheless that divine mercy did not so shine forth before as after the Incarnation. Indeed, for complete and perfect mercy two acts are chiefly desired: namely, to repel the misery of another, and to be affected by the miseries of another as if they were one's own: for one is called merciful as it were having a miserable heart, because he is affected by the misery of another as if it were his own misery. The first indeed of those acts befitted God by reason of His goodness and infinite power; but the second was most alien to Him, inasmuch as He is immutable, and enjoys infinite and unchangeable felicity. Wherefore, that the divine mercy might be absolute in every respect, it was necessary that God become man, that He might be able to compassionate our infirmities, or as the Apostle says to the Hebrews 2: In all things He ought to be made like unto His brethren, that He might become merciful. Hence chapter 4 he says: We have not a high priest who cannot have compassion on our infirmities, tempted in all things like as we are, without sin. The divine mercy shines forth also especially in this, that the Son of God assumed a mortal body, and suffered death itself, that He might deliver us from death. Hence the Apostle to the Romans 5: God commendeth His charity towards us: because when as yet we were sinners, according to the time, Christ died for us. Commendeth, I say. For St. Anselm says in book 2. Cur Deus homo: what can be understood as more merciful than that, for a sinner destined to eternal punishments and having nothing wherewith he might redeem himself, God the Father should say, receive my only-begotten, and give him for thee: and the Son Himself, take me, and redeem thyself? Which superabundant divine mercy towards us St. Bernard elegantly expounds thus, Sermon 3. on the Nativity of the Lord:

I was playing outside in the street, he says, and in the royal secrecy of the royal bedchamber judgment of death was being passed upon me. His only-begotten heard this, and went forth with little haste, clothed in sackcloth, sprinkled with ashes on His head, bare of foot. Weeping and wailing, because His poor servant had been condemned to death... By consideration of the remedy for my peril I estimate the magnitude. I knew it not; I seemed to myself sound, and behold the Son of the Virgin is sent, the Son of the Most High God, and commanded to be slain, that He might heal my wounds with the balsam of His precious blood. Know, O man, how grievous are the wounds for which it was necessary that the Lord Christ be wounded. If these wounds were not unto death, and unto death everlasting, never for their remedy would the Son of God die. Therefore it is shameful, most beloved, negligently to dissemble our own passion, for which I see such great compassion shown by so great a Majesty.

You will say 1. Whatever is unbecoming to the supreme majesty of God cannot be judged fitting and expedient: but to assume flesh is unbecoming to the supreme majesty of God: therefore, etc.

I answer: The Seraphic Doctor, distinguishing the major: whatsoever is unbecoming to the majesty of God, both by reason of itself and by reason of what is united to it, neither befits nor is expedient: this he grants; by reason only of what is united to it, he denies. Indeed it is unbecoming to the majesty of God in itself to be humbled, since, the divinity being altogether immutable, in itself it covets neither exaltation nor humiliation. But by reason of what is united to it, it can be humbled unto the greater manifestation of its own height: for in this, that God assumed humble and infirm flesh, he crushed the most mighty adversary and strengthened infirm man: and therefore although the work of the Incarnation in itself may not seem to conduce to the honor of the divine majesty, yet it conduces to it most of all when the end and effect, unto which it is ordered, is considered: since it is the highest glory to God that he chose the weak things of this world, that he might confound the strong, and exalt the humble.

You will say 2. As excessive exaltation is blameworthy, so excessive abasement is to be blamed: but just as the exaltation was excessive, when a creature desired to be God: so the abasement is excessive, that God should become man, who is a creature; therefore as that exaltation is to be blamed, so also would the abasement appear blameworthy, whereby God became man: but nothing blameworthy can befit God: therefore etc.

I answer: The same Seraphic Doctor replies that there is no parity: both because the divine nature was not humbled by any abasement of itself, seeing that the Divine Word, in assuming the human, lost nothing of the divine; whereas when the creature desired to be God, it was inflated with some elation, whereby it wished to be carried beyond its natural lot and its own state, and therefore on this side that excess and overflowing of elation tended into vice: and because the emptying, which was wrought in the assumption of humanity, proceeded from an excess of love and charity: but the elation, whereby man wished to be like unto God, was from an excess of presumption. Now every presumption is confessedly to be blamed, not so love and charity: and thereupon the emptying of Christ was not blameworthy, but praiseworthy, even as the elation of the first parent was blameworthy.

You will say 3. Injury is done to God when he is thought to have some created effigy. For, saith St. Paul, Acts 17: We ought not to think that gold, or silver, or stone, the graving of art and thought of man, is to be likened to the divine: therefore the greatest injury would be done to God, if a human effigy were attributed to him: but this would have to be attributed to him, if he were truly man: therefore, etc.

I answer: The same Seraphic Doctor replies that it is true and must be maintained when one believes that God truly has, according to his deity, some bodily effigy, as the idolatrous Gentiles thought: but otherwise when one judges that God indeed has not in himself any created effigy, but only by reason of the assumed humanity, as comes about through the Mystery of the Incarnation.

You will say 4. That rather conduces to the glory of God which more illustriously commends his mercy alone. For, as St. James saith, ch. 2: Mercy exalteth itself above judgment: and the Church testifies on the 10th Sunday after Pentecost: O God, who dost manifest thine omnipotence chiefly by pardoning and showing mercy: but far greater would have been the mercy in freely remitting to man his debt, than in exacting satisfaction: therefore it would have been more fitting for God freely to forgive the offense of men, than to exact satisfaction for it through the Incarnation of his Son.

I deny the major: for that work is more perfect in which, together with the highest mercy, the highest justice also shines forth, than that in which mercy alone is chiefly commended; because all the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth, since he himself is supremely just and merciful:

And therefore, saith the Seraphic Doctor, in the reparation of mankind, which is the most excellent of the ways of the Lord, it is fitting that mercy and justice run together, and therefore it was seemly that God should exact satisfaction for the injury done to him: which if man could not render, then mercy would give a Mediator, who should pay the debt: for if God had not remitted the fault, but had exercised vengeance alone, mercy would not appear: if truly he had not exacted satisfaction, justice would not be manifested: therefore it was fitting that out of mercy a Mediator should be furnished, who should pay the debt out of justice, for thus Mercy and Truth met each other, Justice and Peace kissed.

You will say 5. It seems unjust to punish the innocent for the guilty: but that takes place in the Mystery of the Incarnation: therefore it befits not the divine justice.

I distinguish the major: if that be done by way of punishment and vengeance, I grant it: if by way of satisfaction and reparation, I deny it. For although in punishing sin he must be chastised who sinned, nevertheless in making satisfaction one can bear the punishment for another; for in vengeance the iniquity of the sinner is regarded: but in satisfaction for another the charity of him who satisfies is beheld.

You will say 6. Whatsoever offends the divine equity is unbecoming to God: but it conflicts with the divine equity that the life of the Son of God, since it is most precious, should be exposed to be poured out for a thing most vile, such as the redemption of sinful men: therefore, etc.

I deny the minor: both because Christ subjected himself not to death, that he should be swallowed up by it, but that, death being cast down, he should rise again immortal: and because the salvation of man is only an effect of the death of Christ, but not its end: and moreover because both the life of Christ and of men is ordered to the glory of God, which is more excellent than the life of Christ.

Second Conclusion. — The Incarnation of the Word is most fitting for human nature.

Proof. That thing is most fitting for human nature which conduces in an eminent degree to its being recalled from evil and advanced toward good: but the Incarnation serves both purposes to the highest degree.

First indeed, that man be recalled from evil; for every fount and origin of evil arises either from the devil instigating, or from the flesh alluring, or from the spirit growing proud: but this threefold fount and root of all transgression is removed and torn up by the Incarnation. Indeed through it the devil has been cast down from his authority: for 1 John 3. the Son of God appeared, that he might destroy the works of the devil, and Christ our God says that the prince of this world would be cast out, and the Apostle says to the Colossians 1. He has delivered us from the power of darkness, and has translated us into the kingdom of the Son of his love, in whom we have redemption through his blood, the remission of sins: seeing that, as St. Augustine adds, book 18. On the Trinity, chapter 15, for this redemption the blood of Christ was given as the price for us: upon receiving which price, the devil was not loosed, but bound, that we might be loosed from our sins. He adds in chapter 17 that by this mystery the pride of the demons was dragged down and the abjection of men raised up. It was shown to man, he says, what place he held among the things which God created: since human nature could be so joined to God as to become one person out of two substances: and thereby the same out of three, namely God, soul, and flesh; so that those proud wicked spirits, who interpose themselves as a middle term for suspending, as it were for adjuring, should not dare to propose themselves to man on the ground that they have no flesh: and especially because the Son of God deigned even to die in that same flesh, lest those same spirits, who are believed to be immortal, persuade themselves to be adored as gods. Likewise the flesh, vitiated in its origin, was healed and consecrated through the assumption and union with the Word. For since in Christ dwelt the whole fullness of the Godhead bodily, as the Apostle says, whence it came about that our bodies were made members of Christ, and temples of the Holy Spirit: therefore that flesh, which was an incentive to sin, became a stimulus to salvation and justice: for, as Tertullian says in the book On the Resurrection of the Flesh, chapter 8, The flesh is the hinge of salvation; for the flesh is washed, that the soul may be made spotless; the flesh is signed, and the soul is illuminated; the flesh is shadowed over by the imposition of hands, that the soul may be preserved; the flesh feeds on the Body and Blood of the Lord, that the soul may be fattened on God. Finally the exaltation and pride of mind is broken; for, as St. Augustine says above, The pride of man, which is the greatest hindrance to clinging to God, can by so great a humility of God be reproved and healed: and let man learn how far he has departed from God, and what is owed him for medicinal sorrow, when for our salvation there came a Mediator, who as God aids men by his divinity, as man suits them by his infirmity. Hence St. Bernard, in Sermon 3. on the Nativity of Christ, says: What is more unworthy, what more detestable, what more deserving of punishment, than that man, seeing the little one who is God of heaven, should still go on to magnify himself above the earth? Intolerable impudence it is, that where Majesty has emptied itself, a little worm should puff himself up and swell.

Secondly, this mystery also conduced most greatly to the advancing of man toward good. For first human nature is raised up in the supreme degree; for, as St. Augustine says in the book On the Predestination of the Saints chapter 15.

This is that singular assumption of man by God the Word, effected ineffably, that he might at once be called Son of God and Son of man: Son of man on account of the assumed man, and Son of God improperly, and properly on account of the assuming, the only-begotten God; lest not a Trinity but a quaternity be believed. There was predestinated for this human nature so great, and so lofty, and so supreme an elevation, that it had nothing higher to which it might be raised, just as for our sakes the divinity itself had nothing lower to which it might humble itself, than the assumed nature of man with the infirmity of the flesh even unto the death of the cross.

Whence it is no wonder if the Angels, who before that divine exaltation of human nature suffered themselves to be adored by men, as Abraham and Loth adored them, Genesis 18. and 19., afterward refused such honor to be paid them by a man; for St. John the Evangelist, when he wished to adore the Angel who was speaking to him, immediately heard him saying, Apocalypse 19. See thou do it not: I am thy fellow servant, and of thy brethren who hold the name of Jesus. Hence St. Leo admirably admonishes in Sermon 1. on the Nativity, Know, O Christian, thy dignity, and having been made a sharer of the divine nature, do not return to thy former baseness by a degenerate manner of life, etc.

Thirdly, through the Incarnation man had the most excellent exemplar of all virtues whatsoever, which before he lacked. For, as St. Augustine says in Sermon 52. on Diverse Subjects: Man was not to be followed who could be seen. God was to be followed, who could not be seen: that therefore there might be exhibited to man one who could be seen by man, and whom man might follow, God was made man. For an exemplar, that it be complete in every respect, ought to be at once upright and perceptible to sense. Indeed God was upright by reason of holiness; but invisible by reason of his infinite majesty: man truly, who was visible, on account of the many defects with which he was stained, deflected from the upright rule of virtue: wherefore it was necessary that a union intervene between both, that thence a perfect exemplar of virtue might be granted to man. Wherefore Christ also admonished, John 13. I have given you an example, that as I have done, so you also may do. For he who was invisible in the majesty of his divinity presented himself visible in the infirmity of his humanity: as Paul speaks most excellently in 1. to Timothy 3., where he calls the Incarnation a great sacrament of piety, which was manifested in the flesh. For all the actions of Christ were truly the acts of the God-man, or, as St. Ambrose speaks, the acts of the Lord's flesh are an exemplar of the divinity, and things invisible concerning him are shown to us through those things which are visible. Hence he names himself, John 11. the way, the truth, and the life: indeed the way in example, the truth in promise, the life in reward, as St. Bernard says in Sermon 2. on the Ascension.

Fourthly, it was most fitting that God become incarnate, that man might be made perfectly blessed. For therefore, says the Author of the book On the Spirit and the Soul, chapter 9. (among the works of St. Augustine), God was made man, that he might beatify the whole man in himself, and that the whole conversion of man might be toward him, and the whole deferral of man might be in him, since with the ascent of the flesh he would be seen through the flesh, and with the ascent of the mind seen through the contemplation of the divinity. Whence each of the Blessed can say with Job, chapter 19. In my flesh I shall see

my God: whom I myself shall see, and my eyes shall behold; or with the same Seer: My heart and my flesh have rejoiced in the living God.

Finally, to this end did the Incarnation of the divine Word conduce most greatly, that we might have whatsoever we need, both for the health of the body and of the soul. For, as St. Bernard says most excellently in Sermon 3. on the Circumcision: He was given whole to me, he was spent whole for my uses. Indeed he says in Sermon 24. on the Passion: What do you seek in him that you may not find? If you are sick, he is the physician: if you faint, he is the fountain: if you are assailed, he is the champion: if you thirst, he is drink: if you are cold, he is a garment: if you are sad, he is joy: if you are darkened, he is light: if you are an orphan, he is Father. In one word, as Ambrose says in book 3. On Virgins: Christ is all things to us, and he has given all things to us. To these add, that through the Incarnation the faith of man is especially illustrated, hope is strengthened, charity enkindled.

Faith, I say, is illustrated: for, as St. Augustine says in book 11. Of the City of God, chapter 2. ⟦uncertain⟧ That man might walk more confidently in faith toward the truth, the Truth itself, the Son of God, assuming man, joined us to God, and strengthened faith, that the way to God might be for man through the God-man. Hope also is raised up and strengthened: for, as the same St. Augustine says in book 13. of the City of God chapter 10.

What was so necessary for the raising up of our hope, as that, weighed down by the condition of mortals through the abjection of mortality itself, in order to deliver us unto immortality from despair, there should be shown to us how much God loved us, and how dearly he loved?

Finally, Charity is kindled in a wondrous manner: for, as Saint Augustine says in book 1 of his de Catechizandis Rudibus, cap. 1: What greater cause is there of the coming of the Lord, than that God might show forth His love toward us? And further on: If it grieved us to be loved, at least let it not grieve us to be loved in return.

You will say 1. It seems unfitting that by so great a price as is Christ so few men are saved: and it seems more fitting that God should have assumed some other means whereby all men would be saved: therefore the Incarnation of the Word was not most fitting for human nature.

I answer 1, the salvation of each elect soul is of such worth that God judged it not unworthy to be wrought at the expense of His own Son: whence, although few attain salvation, this ought not on that account to be judged incongruous to the divine wisdom. I add that if all men had been saved, this would redound less to the glory of God: since He would not have displayed His Justice and Mercy so perfectly toward us: whence Saint Augustine, Epist. 105: If both were delivered, it would be hidden to whom the punishment of sin was due; if no one, what would grace have to bestow?

I answer 2. The failure of salvation in the reprobate is not to be charged against the Incarnation itself, but against the perverse will of men: since the Incarnation of Christ was a means all-sufficient for the salvation of all men; for Christ the Lord is the true light which enlighteneth every man coming into this world: He is also the mediator of God and of men, who wills all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

You will say 2. That manner of repairing human nature is more fitting by reason of which nature itself is the more bound to God, and owes Him ampler thanks: but man would be more bound to God if He had freely forgiven him his offence; for he owes greater thanks to one whose debt a judge freely remits than to one from whom satisfaction is exacted: therefore etc.

I deny the minor, and in proof I say that the ground of the disparity is that God, in exacting satisfaction from us, gave us His own Son, who might satisfy for us, and thereby merited and bestowed most abundant thanks, whereby we also, after our measure, could make satisfaction together with Him, our adored Redeemer. But it seems more honorable to be able to pay one's own debt than to ascribe its remission solely to the clemency of the judge.

Third Conclusion. — The Incarnation of the Word was fitting also for the whole universe.

First, indeed, whatsoever creatures there are in the universe have received something of sublimity in the very promotion of man to fellowship with the divine: for since man is a microcosm, and the epitome of the whole universe, his dignity and excellence overflow upon the other creatures. Hence the Apostle, Ephes. 1, says: The eternal Father, namely, purposed in the dispensation of the fulness of times to renew all things in Christ, which are in the heavens, and which are on the earth, in Him.

Next, the supreme perfection of the whole universe was that there should be in it the greatest and most perfect grade of being, which should unite God and creature together: for the more excellent and the more numerous the grades of being throughout the whole world, the more excellent and perfect is it accounted: and this has been granted through the mystery of the Incarnation, wherein we have God and man subsisting in one person.

Finally, it was fitting that all the differences of things be found in the universe, so that just as in us there is one nature in one person, and in God one nature in several persons, so likewise there should be several natures in one person: which indeed came to pass through the Incarnation, for three natures, namely, the Divine, the Spiritual, and the Corporal, are united in the one person of Christ.

From our Alensis, part 3, question 1, member 6: that the similitude of man to God appears far greater and more manifold than that of the Angel. For in the soul of man there shines forth the image of God in nature, in person, and in power. In nature indeed, as St. Augustine says in sermon 21, which is on the Image, just as God is everywhere whole, vivifying, moving, and governing all things: so the soul is everywhere whole in its body, animating, moving, and governing it: which does not befit an Angel, because he is not a substance ordered to the vivifying of a body. Moreover, in man there is a similitude according to the reason of person, because man proceeds from man, as one Person in the divinity proceeds from another: but one Angel does not proceed from another. Finally, there is a similitude in power, because in man there is a power responding wholly to the exemplar: for since in the divine exemplar there exists eminently the reason both of corporeal and of spiritual being, the soul attains to both these reasons, inasmuch as it is ordered to spiritual and corporeal actions; which an Angel cannot have, for since he is simply spiritual, he is not ordered by his nature to corporeal actions: from which it appears that man has a greater affinity with God than the Angel.

Note 2. Truly the Angelic nature, and the human, would have seemed unworthy to be united to the divinity, especially had the fallen Angels been considered. For the Angels no less, indeed more gravely, provoked the divine attention and vengeance than men did: since the prevaricating Angel no less than man aspired to the divinity: the former indeed by emulating the supreme majesty and power of God, according to that of Isaiah 14, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, I will sit in the mountain of the testament, etc. The latter, however, pursued the divine wisdom promised him by the serpent, Genesis 3. Whence it was the supreme mercy of God, and that pure mercy, that He undertook to redeem men rather than Angels: yet since the divine wisdom undertakes nothing without reason, hence we inquire what those reasons may be, which stood forth as so many incentives of the divine love toward men, such that He relieved us rather than the Angels from eternal misery.

Note 3. That God could have become man in various ways: namely, either by creating for Himself body and soul, and assuming each independently from any commerce with any creature, nor deriving His origin and birth from a Mother: or if He had wished to have a Mother on earth, as He had a Father in the heavens, He could have formed her outside the line and propagation of Adam: so that she, formed by His alone extraordinary power, and not begotten of men, would not be reckoned among the posterity of Adam, nor would she in any way pertain to his progeny. Whether, however, either of these modes would have been more fitting than that by which in fact the Divine Word assumed flesh, must be determined in the present Question, to be resolved by two Conclusions: whereof the First will show that it was more fitting for God to assume and repair the human nature than the Angelic. Second, that it was more expedient to assume a nature propagated from Adam than one formed from elsewhere.

First Conclusion. — It was more fitting to assume and repair the human nature than the Angelic.

That this indeed is abundantly proved by the very operation of God, since His divine wisdom weighs and works all things in weight, number, and measure. Nowhere did He apprehend Angels, but He apprehended the seed of Abraham, says St. Paul to the Hebrews 2.

Moreover the reason of this greater fittingness can be sought, partly on the side of the very constitution of human nature itself, partly on the side of its greater capacity for reparation. On the side indeed of its constitution, and this for a threefold cause, which the Seraphic Doctor assigns and examines in Book 2, dist. 2, qu. 2; whereof the first is sought from the reason of origin and propagation of one man from another: for since one man takes his origin from another, which does not befit an Angel, it was the more becoming that the Person of the Son, who is distinguished from the Person of the Father according to origin, should receive that nature in which the property of filiation resides. And this indeed was done in the assumption of human nature: for He Himself, who was eternally the Son of the Father, in time was made the Son of the Virgin Mother. The second reason is, on account of the greater similitude of man with God by reason of the rational soul itself, which, as we said in the first Notable, emulates, as it were, the immensity of God, being whole undivided in its whole body, as God is whole in each single part of the world. Hence, says the Seraphic Doctor, the rational soul represents God not only as He is considered in Himself, but inasmuch as it is united to the body, which it rules, and in which it inhabits, as God fills heaven and earth. Thirdly finally, the reason of greater congruity is sought from the manifold composition of man; for since man is composed of corporeal and spiritual nature, and in a certain manner is every creature: for he has being with the elements and inanimate things, life with plants, sense with animals, understanding with Angels: hence it is, that when human nature is assumed and deified, in a certain manner every nature is exalted in it, while in a part like to itself it is hypostatically united to the deity: whence the assumption of human nature would contribute far better to the perfection of the universe than the Angelic could have contributed, if it had been assumed.

That greater fittingness also appears on the side of reparation, and this for three causes: First indeed, because human nature stood more in need of reparation: Second, because it was less unworthy thereof: Third, because reparation would have profited men more than the prevaricating Angels.

Human nature indeed stood more in need of reparation than the Angelic, for Alensis says, qu. 1, memb. 2, that in the first man was the whole human nature; therefore, by his sinning and perishing, at once all his progeny perished: but it is otherwise concerning the fallen Angels, since none of them comprised the whole Angelic nature, but their sins were personal; nor on account of the fallen prevaricating Angels did the whole Angelic nature perish; since very many remained faithful and obedient to God; and therefore there was not so much need for them of remedy and reparation: otherwise with humanity, which through the sin of one man had been corrupted and lost in all; moreover it did not befit the divine mercy, and the supreme goodness of God, to consign the rational nature most akin and similar to Himself to eternal ruin and perpetual damnation. For that was unworthy of the goodness of God, that things created by Him should pass away into destruction on account of the fraud of the devil against men, says St. Athanasius, in the book De Incarnatione Verbi Dei.

Second, man was less unworthy of the divine mercy; since human sin was not so grave as Angelic sin, whether you consider the genus of the sin, or the circumstance, or the occasion. Considering indeed the genus of the sin: for although man and Angel sinned through pride; yet far disparate is the guilt of each, since, says Alensis, man sinned by coveting all the knowledge of God, but the Angel His omnipotence: now God in no wise wills to communicate His omnipotence to any creature in any state whatever, because by reason of that omnipotence He is the principle of all creatures, which pre-eminence He wills to be common to none; but knowledge He wills to communicate to a creature in the state of glory, for He demonstrates Himself, and all things that are in Him, to the blessed minds, upon whom He bestows the light of all His knowledge. Since therefore it is supreme inordinateness to covet that to which no creature is ordained: hence it is that the Angel sinned more gravely by coveting omnipotence, than man by emulating knowledge, to which he was ordained.

Graver also was the sin of the Angel than of man by reason of circumstance, since man sinned by reason of some nescience: for he deemed the divine threat made to him to be intended rather for trial than for punishment: but the Angel sinned from certain knowledge, and therefore from malice; and thus his sin was against the Holy Spirit, and consequently irremissible. Finally also less was the sin of man than of the Angel by reason of occasion, for man did not sin by his own propensity and determination to evil, but instigated and importuned by his wife, who, deceived by the serpent, led her husband into deception. It was just therefore that he who had fallen through another should also be raised up through another, since he could not rise by himself: but it was otherwise concerning the Angel, who had fallen not by the cunning of another, but by his own malice. Finally less profitable would redemption have been for the lost Angels than for men, since the Angels, once fallen, possess a will hardened in evil, nor are they further capable of doing penance. Add to these, that the ruin of the Angels could have been repaired by men, namely by promoting them to the seats of the fallen Angels, as St. Anselm excellently demonstrates in book 1, Cur Deus homo, chapters 16 and 17; but the fall of men could not fittingly have been supplied by substituting another nature in place of the human: since no creature inferior to man appears capable of the divine glory.

All these reasons St. Bernard passes over luminously and divinely in the first sermon on Advent, in these words:

Let it be known that the higher Angels passed over into an affection of malice and wickedness, nor did they sin from any ignorance or infirmity; wherefore it is necessary that those unwilling to be punished perish: for the love of the Father and the honor of the king loves judgment. On this account He also created men from the beginning, who might fill up that place and restore its ruins. It is written to me that no redemption lies open to the Angels: namely, the pride of the Devil dies, which pride is the root of pride, and the pride of the Devil admits no remedy of penance, and therefore is not redeemed; nevertheless He afterward created no creature from his light: hinting by this very fact that man was yet to be redeemed, since he had been tripped up by another's malice, so that another's charity might profit him. Thus, Lord, I beseech Thee, may it please Thee to care for me, because I am weak: because out of my land I was secretly taken away and not without guilt was cast into the pit: not wholly guiltless indeed, but as regards him who seduced me, in some measure guiltless.

You will say 1. That nature appears more unible with God which has a greater affinity with Him: but the Angelic nature has a greater and more intimate affinity with God than the human: therefore etc. The major is evident, for things to be united must have a certain proportion to one another. Likewise the minor, because, says St. Isidore in the books De Trinitate, the more subtle a nature is, the more fully does it stand forth in expression toward a likeness of the divine unity: but the Angelic nature is subtler than the human, being devoid of all commerce and society with body: therefore it approaches more closely to the likeness of the divine nature than the human does: and consequently is more unible with it.

I distinguish the major: that they have a greater affinity with the divine nature under that aspect by which it is unible with itself, I concede: otherwise I deny: but the human nature has a greater likeness and proportion with the divine nature under the aspect by which it is unible with it than the Angelic nature; because the notion of person, through which God is unible to man, is more expressed by man, who draws origin from another, than by an Angel, who does not proceed from another Angel in such a way: therefore although the Angel, by reason of his simplicity, expresses the divine essence more fully under the aspect of essence, because he is wholly spiritual; yet he does not so perfectly express the divine persons and the mode of procession, whereby one draws origin from another, as men do; and hence he does not have a greater, but rather a lesser affinity with the divine nature, under that aspect by which God is unible with a creature.

You will say 2. That nature must be said to be more unible with God which on account of its excellence is worthier and more apt to be raised up and exalted: but the Angelic nature, since it is far more excellent than the human, is also worthier and more apt to be raised up through incarnation: therefore it was more fitting that it be assumed than the human. — The Seraphic Doctor answers dist. 2 q. 2 ad 2, that although the Angel is higher in nature than man; yet it befitted man rather than the Angel to be exalted through the grace of union, both for the confutation of the pride of Lucifer, who wished to make himself equal to God, and for the commending of the grace of God, that it may appear that elevation in glory comes not from nature, but rather from divine grace: wherefore the Savior, associating to Himself, chose the poor and lowly rather than the rich and powerful, that He might break the pride of men, and that no creature might glory in His sight.

You will say 3. The major appears from mercy, where misery is greater: but far greater is the misery of the lost Angels, since their sin was graver than that of men: therefore it beseemed the divine mercy more to redeem them than men.

I deny the minor: for far greater was the misery of lost men than of Angels, seeing that not all the Angels fell, as men did, nor did the whole Angelic nature perish, as did the human; wherefore it was more fitting that men be repaired than Angels. Add to this, that the lost Angels were less worthy of mercy on account of their pride and hardened malice: for since they are universally obstinate in malice, says the Seraphic Doctor ad 1., they would not be inflamed toward humility, nor would they be kindled to charity by the exhibition of so great a benefit and example; for we see this today in many sinners, for whom on account of their habitual perversity the Passion of Christ the Lord profits but little.

You will say 4. From him should redemption congruously have begun, from whom the transgression took its beginning: but this has its origin from an Angel, who was the author of the whole transgression: therefore reparation ought likewise to have been begun from him. — The Seraphic Doctor answers, that

The transgression of the human race took its beginning from the devil, and from man, but with this difference, that it proceeded from man as from the principal author, but from the devil as suggester and instigator: since however Christ is the author of our redemption, it was more fitting that He inaugurate it from the author of the transgression, inasmuch as restoration directly corresponds to perdition: and as in the first Adam the consummation of our transgression was made, so through the second Adam the perfection of our redemption would be wrought.

You will say finally. The sin of man was as mortal as that of the Angel: but mortal sin is irremediable: for it is called mortal for this reason, that it brings eternal death and devours one guilty unto perpetual damnation: therefore both man and Angel were unworthy of and incapable of redemption; and hence it was not more fitting that man be repaired than the Angel. — Alensis answers q. 1 memb. 2. To the first argument,

that irremediable is said in three ways, as also invisible: namely, negatively, privatively, contrarily. Irremediable negatively is that which can in no way be remitted: irremediable privatively is that which has nothing worthy whereby it ought to be remitted: irremediable contrarily is that which has a contrary disposition to remission, without which it can in no way be remitted. In the first way the sin of the Angel is called irremediable, and the sin of the damned: in the second way sins against the Holy Spirit are called irremissible, namely despair, presumption, etc., because they are under dispositions contrary to remission. In the third way every mortal sin is said to be irremissible, because no mortal sin has anything whereby it is worthy of remission. By this last reason the sin of man was irremissible, but not by the two first ways, and hence there is not the same reason concerning the reparation of man as of the Angel.

Second Conclusion. — It was fitting that the human nature be assumed sprung from the stock of Adam, rather than formed elsewhere. This Conclusion follows from what precedes, and St. Anselm proves it in the second book of Cur Deus homo, chapter eight, by a threefold argument:

First, it is just that he who makes satisfaction be either the same one who sinned, or someone from his origin: otherwise he who offended would not devote satisfaction: but it was just that satisfaction be made to God for the fault of man: therefore equally it is just that the man making satisfaction either be Adam, who offended, or someone from his offspring.

Second, if Adam had not sinned, the whole human race would have stood of itself in innocence, without the help and sustenance of another creature: therefore if it must rise again, it is more fitting that it rise through the help and aid of someone who is of the same genus: but if the man assumed were formed from elsewhere than the offspring of Adam, he would not be of the same state with the human race: therefore the human race would not rise through the help of one of its own genus.

Finally, when God first formed human nature, He produced only Adam, and from him drew forth the woman; by which He signified that He willed all men to be propagated from him as from one principle: wherefore Adam was the head and prince of all men before sin: therefore if that dignity must be repaired by the Incarnation of the Word, it was necessary that it be repaired either by Adam himself assumed, or by another man formed from his offspring: but Adam could not be assumed, because the properties of the man assumed are attributed to the divine person assuming: and consequently just as it would be true to say of Adam that he sinned, so also it would be true to say of the divine person that he had sinned: but this absolutely conflicts with the divine holiness: therefore it also conflicts that Adam himself be assumed by the Word: hence it is necessary that another man be assumed, who although he be from the offspring of Adam, nevertheless has had no sin.

You will say 1. It was fitting that the man who had to make satisfaction for the guilt of all should be most estranged from all sin: but such a one would not be, if he were from the offspring of Adam: therefore it was more fitting that the man making satisfaction be formed from elsewhere than from the stock of Adam. Proof of the minor: he who has no similarity of sinful flesh, nor any commerce with sinners, is more estranged from sin than he who is marked with those characters: but such would be the man formed from elsewhere than the blood of Adam; and such a one would not be he who was propagated from him: therefore it was more expedient that the man be created anew, to be assumed, than that he be propagated from Adam.

I distinguish the minor, and its proof: if that similarity of sinful flesh be by reason of guilt, I concede: if only by reason of the punishment due, I deny: but in the man assumed by the Word, that is, in Christ, there is no similarity of sinful flesh by reason of guilt; but only by reason of punishment, because the divine Word assumed a mortal body, that by His most bitter passion, and the frequent straits of His whole laborious life, He might expiate and discharge the punishment due to our sins.

You will say 2. It was more fitting that he who contracted the debt should pay it: but Adam himself contracted the debt of sin: therefore it was fitting that he himself pay it, and accordingly that his individual be assumed by the divine Word. —

I distinguish the major: if he can pay that debt of himself alone, or by the benefit and help of him with whom he has no absolute incompossibility, I concede: otherwise, I deny. But Adam could neither pay the debt of himself, nor by the help of any divine person with whom he might be united: because he was of limited entity and operation, and consequently could not exactly make satisfaction for the debt, which held the sum of indignity by reason of the Divinity offended. Nor indeed could he be joined with God in the unity of person, because since he was a sinner, it would follow also that the divine Person could be called sinful, which is altogether absurd: therefore this could neither be done nor ought to have been done.

You ask. Whether it was more fitting for Christ to be born of a Virgin than of a man and a woman. — I affirm: both because it was seemly that he who has the Father a Virgin in heaven should also have a Virgin Mother on earth: and because, says St. Anselm above:

In four ways can God make a man, namely, either of a man and of a woman, as constant usage shows; or neither of a man nor of a woman, as He created Adam: or of a man without a woman, as He created Eve: or of a woman without a man, in which way He may assume that man whom we seek.

Finally, because this more commended and illustrated the purity and integrity of the Incarnate Word.

It is certain that any one of the divine persons can assume human nature, whether propagated from Adam, or formed from elsewhere; since if another person than the Son were to assume human nature from the Virgin, it would not follow, in point of fact, that there would be a diminution of equality among the divine persons, nor a confusion of persons: for there is no confusion in the fact that one person bears several appellations mutually opposed; or that he who is Father should also be Son; since we now believe that one and the same person is temporal and eternal, immortal and dead, immense and circumscribed. Nor indeed is there any diminution of equality, seeing that the divine Word, when he took flesh, although he is less than the Father according to his humanity, is nevertheless equal to the Father according to his divinity, for in assuming what is human he did not lose what is divine. Hence the present question does not concern possibility, but only fittingness; namely, whether it would have been more congruent that the Son, rather than the Father or the Holy Spirit, become incarnate.

Note 2. That although the Incarnation, insofar as it is an effect ad extra, is the work of the whole Trinity: nevertheless it is certain that it is attributed peculiarly to one divine person alone. Because, as St. Bonaventure says in 3 dist. 1 q. 2:

a creature can be compared to the Creator in two ways; just as the Creator can be compared to the creature. For a creature can be compared to the Creator either according to its reception of some perfection, or according to the relation of a habit of dependence. The first comparison necessarily regards three persons indistinctly and indivisely; since in them there is one and indivisely the same essential perfection. But the second comparison can be made with respect to some determinate and distinct person, without regarding another, because the divine persons are distinguished among themselves by relations, and really. Similarly God can be compared to a creature in two ways: namely, in the character of a causative principle, and in the character of the supposit subsistifying it. According to the first comparison the three persons agree together and communicate with one another, because in them there is one nature, and one productive power of creatures: but according to the other comparison a creature can have a distinct relation to one divine person alone; because although one person agrees with another in nature and power, it is nevertheless distinguished from that other in supposit and personal property.

Since therefore in the union of natures, or incarnation, the divine person is the supposit, or hypostasis, of the human nature; so that union, or incarnation, signifies not merely a habitude of God to the creature by way of cause, but also by way of supposit; hence it comes about that, from the comparison of God to creatures, one person can be united to human nature without another being similarly united. On the part of the creature the same holds; since since the creature signifies a comparison to God, not only with respect to the reception of its complement, but also with respect to the habitude of relation; hence it follows that the Incarnation can belong to one person without belonging to another.

Note 3. That although the divine persons agree among themselves so indivisibly in the unity of essence as to be one God; nevertheless certain things are proper to them peculiarly, either according to their own properties, or according to appropriated attributes. According to their own properties, paternity is attributed to the first person, filiation to the second, and passive spiration to the third. But according to appropriated attributes, power is attributed to the Father, wisdom to the Son, goodness and love to the Holy Spirit. For this reason a triple operation is likewise attributed peculiarly to these divine persons, namely creation to the Father, re-creation to the Son, glorification and justification to the Holy Spirit; because creation is the work of power; re-creation, or restoration, the work of wisdom; and justification and glorification the work of divine goodness. Now those three divine excellencies shone forth in a wondrous manner in the Incarnation of the Word. Power indeed, for, as St. Damascene says, book 3, chapter 1, God being made perfect man is perfected, which is the greatest of all modes: which alone knows itself through that alone by which the infinite power of God is shown forth: for what is greater than that God should become man? Goodness likewise shines forth in a wondrous manner in this, that God did not despise man, miserable and condemned by his own fault, but his divine bowels of Mercy were moved over his infirmities, that he might deliver him from them. Finally wisdom, on account of that manifold reason assigned in Question 1 of this Section. But it is asked whether it was more fitting that the Incarnation be reckoned the work of infinite wisdom rather than of goodness or of power: or, which amounts to the same thing, whether it was more expedient that the Incarnation be wrought by the Son rather than by the Father or the Holy Spirit.

Single Conclusion. — Truly it was more fitting that the Son become incarnate than the Father or the Holy Spirit.

The Seraphic Doctor praised above proves this conclusion in question 3, in almost the following way: the Incarnation can be considered either in itself, or inasmuch as it is ordered to the redemption of the human race: but under both considerations it was more congruent that the person of the Son become incarnate than the others.

First indeed, if the Incarnation be considered in itself, and with respect to the person who becomes incarnate, this is openly evident: because the second person can be considered either inasmuch as he is Son, or inasmuch as he is Image, or inasmuch as he is Word: and by this threefold reason it was more expedient that he himself become incarnate. — First indeed, inasmuch as he is Image; since the image of God, worn away by sin in man, had to be restored: therefore that natural image and likeness of God had to be applied, after whose likeness man, formed, could be restored, and emulate and reproduce the lineaments of the first divine perfection. — Secondly, inasmuch as he is Word, because as the Word of the Father he proceeds from the Father, that the Father may manifest himself through him; and therefore just as for the manifestation of thought our intellectual word is joined to sensible voice, so for the revelation of divinity it was congruent that the Word of the Father take flesh: wherefore St. Paul says to the Hebrews 1: God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, last of all in these days has spoken to us by his Son. — Lastly, because he is Son, it was fitting that he assume flesh, that he might be of the race of men, and thus the Son of man: for, as St. Anselm says, in book 2 of Cur Deus homo, chapter 9, if any other person were incarnate,

there would be two in the Sacred Trinity, namely the Son of God, who is Son even before the Incarnation, and he who through the Incarnation would be the Son of the Virgin, and thus there would be in persons, which must always remain equal, an inequality according to the dignity of natures: for he born of God would have a more noble nature than he born of the Virgin.

This same reason Saint Augustine also proves in book De Ecclesiasticis dogmatibus, chapter 2, saying:

Not the Father assumed flesh, nor the Holy Spirit, but the Son alone, so that he who was in the divinity the Son of God might become in man the Son of man, lest the name of Son pass to another who would not be Son by eternal generation. The Son of God therefore was made the Son of man, born according to the divinity of nature from God the Son of God, and according to the truth of nature from man the Son of man; and the truth of the begotten one not by adoption, not by appellation, but in both births he should have the name of Son by being born, so that he might be true God and true man, one Son.

The second argument, suggesting this same truth, is drawn from the very comparison of the Incarnation with the Redemption of the human race. For on this account it was more fitting that the Son become incarnate than the Father or the Holy Spirit, whether we consider the fall of man, the manner of repairing him, or the fruit of that reparation.

First, I say, if we consider the fall of man, this appears: for man fell by desiring the likeness and equality of God, which in divine things is attributed especially to the Son: hence he himself was as it were the occasion of man's fall; and therefore man ought to take his reparation from that whence he had taken the occasion of his fall. This reason Saint Bernard weighs out no less elegantly than piously, Sermon 1 De Adventu, in these words, wherein he introduces the Son speaking thus:

Behold, on my occasion the Father loses his creatures. My height the first Angel coveted, and he had a people that believed him: but straightway the zeal of the Father avenged himself upon him, striking him together with all his followers with a plague past cure, with cruel chastisement. Knowledge also, which nevertheless is mine, man wished to steal: and neither did his eye pity him nor spare: he had made only two noble creatures partakers of reason, capable of beatitude: namely, the Angel and man: but behold, because of me he lost many Angels, and all men. Therefore, that they may know that I also love the Father, let him receive through me those whom he seems in a certain way to have lost: if because of me this tempest has arisen, take me, and cast me into the sea: all envy me, behold I come, and show myself to them of such a kind, that whoever strives to imitate me, there may be wrought in him a change into good.

To these things add, that since men sinned specially against the Son, it belonged to him to pardon and remit the sin against whom the offense had been committed. This reason Saint Anselm brings forward in the place just praised. Quasi specialius, he says, adversus personam Filii peccaverant, qui vera Patris similitudo creditur: illi itaque cui specialius fit iniuria, convenientius attribuitur culpae vindicta, cui indulgentia.

Second, if we consider the manner of reparation, that befitted the Son more than the other persons: for we are repaired through the obedience and supplication of the Mediator: now the role of Mediator befitted the Son rather than the other persons; for it was becoming that he who is middle among the divine persons should also set himself forth as a mediator between God and man, so that he might exist as the mediator of God and of men. Likewise it befitted the Son more to supplicate the Father and to obey: For, says Saint Anselm in the same place, Convenientius erat Filium supplicare Patri, quam aliam personam. — Lastly, if we consider the fruit or effect of reparation, it was more congruous that the Son become incarnate; because the Incarnation is ordered to this, that we be sons of God: but it was fitting that we attain the dignity of sons through him who is the natural Son. Hence Saint Augustine lib. 8. De Trinitate, chapter 9: Ut homo ex Deo nasceretur, primo ex ipsis natus est Deus: for it was necessary that through him we be made adopted sons, who is the natural Son.

You will say 1. To recreate and repair man belongs to him to whom it belongs to create and form him: but creation is attributed especially to and befits the power of the Father: therefore also to him should be attributed the restoration and reparation of man through the Incarnation. —

I answer. The Incarnation can be regarded either effectively or formally: in the first way it equally befits the three adorable persons; not so in the second way. —

I distinguish the major: to repair belongs to him to whom it belongs to form effectively; I concede; formally, I deny. Effectively, I say, the Incarnation is attributed especially to the Father, who so loved the world as to give his only-begotten Son; and he spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all: formally, however, it is attributed uniquely to the Son, since the personality of the Word alone terminates the dependence of human nature, and by formally affecting it makes it subsistent and personated.

You will say 2. To him belongs the adopting of sons into whom belongs the begetting of sons: but to the Father alone belongs to beget: therefore to him alone belongs to adopt men into sons through the Incarnation. —

I distinguish the major: authoritatively, and principally, I concede: sub-authoritatively and according to mission, I deny. Therefore there belongs to the Father the authority of adopting principally, because, as the Apostle says to the Galatians 1, God sent his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, that he might redeem them who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.

You will say 3. It is more fitting for the Father to have something which the Son has not, than for the Son to have something which the Father has not, because what the Son has, he has from the Father: but through the Incarnation one person has something which the other has not: therefore it is more expedient that the Father, rather than the Son, become incarnate. —

I distinguish the major: it is more fitting for the Father to have something which the Son has not, according to eternal origin, I concede: according to hypostatic union, I deny. Indeed the Father ought to have, according to eternal origin, something which the Son has not, because the Father has the generative power of the Son, but in turn the Son has not the generative power of the Father. But it is otherwise concerning hypostatic union, for since through it one person is subjected to another, it is more fitting that the Son have that by which he can be subjected to the Father, than that by which the Father would be deemed inferior to the Son; and forthwith it is more expedient that the Son have the human nature by which he is less than the Father, than that the Father by reason of it would be subjected to the Son.

You will say 4. The Incarnation most accords with him to whom it belongs to confer upon man the highest grace, for that is the highest of all graces: but the bestowal of the highest grace belongs especially to the Holy Spirit: therefore the Incarnation must also be attributed to him more fittingly. —

I distinguish the major: to whom the bestowal of the highest grace is attributed, whether effectively, or formally, I concede: effectively only, I deny. Indeed the Incarnation is appropriated effectively to the Holy Spirit, because the supreme work of the love and goodness of God toward men, such as is the Incarnation, is appropriated especially to that person which is called the love and goodness of God: formally, however, it belongs to the Word alone, inasmuch as only the Word by his own personality made human nature subsistent.

The present difficulty is raised chiefly concerning the threefold circumstance of the time at which the Incarnation ought to have taken place, namely at the beginning, the middle, and the end of the world's duration: for since Adam fell at the world's outset, it seems to have been more fitting that relief be brought to his misery a little after he fell from the state of his felicity: for that medicine appears healthier and more opportune which is prepared and administered not after a long illness, but at its beginning. Since, however, divine Wisdom weighs all its acts and motions with a just and even balance, and disposes all things sweetly, the reasons must be investigated why it deferred so long, and so late, that wholesome and saving medicine being bestowed upon the human race.

Note 2. The time in which the Incarnation was accomplished is designated by various names in sacred Scripture. First it is called the last day. Thus Isaiah 2: It shall come to pass in the last days that the mountain of the Lord shall be prepared. Second, the fulness of time: thus to the Galatians 4: When the fulness of the time was come, God sent his Son. Third, it is called the midst of years, thus Habakkuk 3: Thy work, in the midst of the years thou shalt quicken it; in the midst of the years thou shalt make it known. It is called the midst of years not as though by that name the middle of the world's duration were signified — otherwise we could know at what time the day of judgment would be: which directly conflicts with that oracle of Christ: But of that day no man knoweth, etc. — but so that the time appointed by God might be declared: for it is familiar in Scripture to call that thing "in the midst" of something which lies within it. Thus Psalm 100: He that worketh pride shall not dwell in the midst of my house. Jeremiah 51: Flee out of the midst of Babylon. It is called the fulness of time, moreover, to signify either the time in which God willed to fulfil what he had promised and destined, or in which the figures were to be fulfilled, or especially that in which the fulness of grace was to be bestowed and made manifest. Finally it is called the last day: since this inestimable Mystery was accomplished in the last age of the world, through which the law of grace is to endure, nor is it to have any further age succeeding to itself: that this may be declared more fully and more fully

NOTE 3. The whole duration of the world is wont to be distributed through six ages, according to the notable variations and most celebrated events which befell in the world, but especially among the people of Judah. The first is reckoned from Adam as far as Noe, or the flood: the second from Noe as far as Abraham; the third from Abraham as far as David; the fourth from David as far as the Babylonian captivity: the fifth from the captivity as far as Christ: the sixth finally from Christ the Lord as far as the end of the world. On which account Christ the Lord is said to have come in the last days, because he came in the last age, and at the world's eventide. The first age lasted one thousand six hundred fifty-six years, as is clearly gathered from Genesis 5 and 7, according to the old Hebrew edition and the new. The second seems to have lasted 322 years, for although from Genesis 11 only 292 years are gathered, nevertheless since there the generation of Cainan was passed over, which the Seventy Interpreters added, and also S. Luke chapter 3, therefore at least thirty years must be added to that number, by which Cainan lived before he begat sons. The third seems to have lasted 941 years: for from the birth of Abraham down to the promise made to him there flowed 75 years, Genesis 12; but from that promise down to the end of the people's captivity in Egypt, or down to the giving of the law, which happened three months after that exodus, there flowed 430; but from the giving of the law down to the beginning of the kingdom of David there were 436, as is evidently taken from book 3 of Kings chapter 6; which 436 added above five hundred make the said number 941, through which this third age seems to have lasted. The fourth age, moreover, in which the kingdom of the Jews endured, from the beginning of David's reign down to the captivity

Babylonian, was completed in 170 years, as is to be gathered from book 3 of Kings chapter 2 verse 11 and chapter 22, and book 1 from chapter 5. The fifth age is of all the most difficult as regards its duration; for sacred Historians and Chronologists are torn into various opinions on this matter. For Genebrard, book 2 of the Chronologia, assigns to this age 501 years. Bede, however, in the book De sex aetatibus, numbers 560. Driedo, book 3 De Dogmatibus, chapter 5, computes 596. Eusebius, in the Chronica, wills it to be 785. Certain others, with Suarez in 3 part. q. 1 disp. 6 sect. 1, assign six hundred years to this age; from which he gathers that the Incarnation took place about the fourth thousandth year from the creation of the world: whether that opinion be the truer is not the business of this place to resolve, but only to open up the reasons which can persuade that it was accomplished at a fitting time.

Single Conclusion. — It was fitting that the incarnation of Christ the Lord neither be sought from the beginning of the world, nor deferred to its end, but be wrought as it were about the middle of the ages. This Conclusion consists of three parts, of which

The first S. Bonaventure thus proves in 3 dist. 1 q. 1, and that by a fourfold reason: the first indeed is sought from the side of divine justice. For in this, he says,

the severity of divine vengeance is made manifest, in that for so long a time it endured so many cries and so many lamentations of men, whereby they besought the Saviour, and did not hear them sooner: and that there might appear to Adam himself exiling in tears, and to all his posterity, how great was the gravity of his offence, and with how bitter a vengeance God chastised him.

The second is sought from the curing of the disease; for man ought first to know his own impotence to provide for himself the necessary remedy, before he received it divinely, that thus convicted of his infirmity he might take refuge in divine grace, and thus taking refuge might be cured. The third it repeats from the order of the universe: for because, he says, this was the plenary and greatest benefaction, it ought to be deferred even to the fulness of days. The fourth reason was on account of commending the benefit of the Incarnation; which, since it is the most precious among the benefits of God, ought first to be desired and expected, than exhibited. Therefore it was fitting, for the commendation of so excellent a mystery, that most many ages precede its execution: that namely through the course of so many centuries Christ the Saviour should be sought by the Patriarchs, foretold by the Prophets, prefigured by the shadows of the Mosaic law, and be desired by all nations: for, as S. Aug. says, tract. 31 on John, The greater the judge who was coming, the longer the series of heralds that ought to precede him. — S. Thomas adds, q. 1 art. 5, that it was not fitting for the Word to become incarnate immediately after sin was committed: First on account of the condition of sin, which drew its origin from pride; for man had to be humbled before he was delivered; wherefore the Lord left him first in the liberty of free choice under the natural law, and under the written law, that thus by his own nature he might acknowledge his infirmity; which known, he might cry out to the physician, and seek the help of grace. Second, that befitted it on account of the order of promotion into good, for man ought to be promoted from the animal state to the spiritual state, according to that of 1 Corinthians 15: Not first that which is spiritual, but that which is animal; afterwards that which is spiritual. The first man of earth earthy: the second man from heaven heavenly. Third, on account of the dignity of the Word becoming incarnate: for, as Tertullian says, book 3 against Marcion, chapter 2: So great a work was preparing for man's salvation, inasmuch as it was about to be believed, that it might profit, in so much did it desire to be prepared, that it might be able to be believed, laid beneath the foundations of disposition and preaching, by which order faith being informed, it was deservedly both enjoined upon man by God, and God exhibited in man.

The second part also holds: both because, whereas Christ came to merit grace and glory for us, and glory ought to be bestowed chiefly at the end of the world, it seems fitting that he come first bestowing grace, before glory: and because if he had deferred the advent of his Word into the world even to the end of the world, while the sins of men grew strong day by day, the knowledge and reverence of God, and the honesty of morals, would have been utterly spent upon the earth: wherefore as he delegated Abraham, that he might restore the knowledge of God among men, among whom it had already begun to be extinguished: as afterwards he delegated Noe, that he might restore the worship and reverence due to himself, which had well nigh been spent: so also it was congruous that when he saw the Jews and the gentiles to have shaken off all fear and law of God, he should delegate his Son to the lands, that he might reform the morals of men: and finally, that through the more abundant largition of grace very many might be saved.

From these, therefore, the third part is gathered, namely that the Incarnation took place at a fitting time, around the fullness and middle of time; so that just as the Sun, placed in the midst of the planets, illumines those above and those below it: so Christ, that true sun of justice, coming in the midst of the ages and manifesting himself to the world, would enlighten and illume the ages that went before through faith and hope in his future advent, and would sanctify and consecrate those that followed through evangelical doctrine and the Sacraments.

You will say 1. To one who is sick, laboring perilously and at the point of death, aid must be brought as soon as possible, and more effective remedies prepared: but as soon as man fell into mortal sin, he labored under a most dangerous disease: therefore it was fitting that God should come to his aid through the Incarnation, which is the remedy and most efficacious means of removing the sickness of sin. —

I distinguish the major: if it be thus expedient for curing the sickness, I concede; otherwise, I deny. Now it was not expedient for healing man's infirmity that he should cure him by the Incarnation as soon as he fell into sin: lest he either despise that remedy out of pride, or consider it owed to him: he ought therefore first to acknowledge his own infirmity, poverty, and weakness, and thus more effectually implore the charity of the physician.

You will say 2. From 1 Timothy 1: Christ came into this world to save sinners: but more would have been saved if from the very beginning of the world they had been enlightened by his doctrine, grace, and examples: therefore, etc. —

The Seraphic Doctor answers, that divine wisdom, and the chief order of providence, require that the common good be preferred to the private good, and the perfection of the whole universe to the perfection of any single person: and therefore it pleased the Creator of the universe to reserve the benefit of the Incarnation for the last age, that he might show forth in some the benignity of mercy, preserve in others the severity of justice, yet pour out his grace upon all more abundantly. Where sin abounded, grace did more abound. Whence it is that he furnished sufficient means to men in every age of the world, whereby, if they wished, they could merit their salvation.

You will say 3. And that against the second part: things done through many are done in vain which can be accomplished through fewer: but men could have been saved through the last advent of Christ the Lord: therefore the prior advent was superfluous for the salvation of men. —

I distinguish the major: if they be thus opportunely done, I concede; otherwise, I deny. To the minor I say, that although indeed men could have been saved through a single advent of Christ, had God so ordained that whoever placed in him their faith, hope, and love would straightway have been predestined, even as the holy Angels were predestined because of the obedience rendered to God by man in a single moment of time, as St. Bernard holds; nevertheless it was more fitting that men, who are subject to time and succeed one another in their operations, should have various advents of Christ, inasmuch as through them they might advance themselves more diligently and more excellently toward the later one. Hence the same St. Bernard, in Sermon 3 De Adventu, says:

We know a threefold advent of Christ: to men, in men, against men: to men indeed indifferently, not so in men or against men. The first was through the Incarnation: the second takes place through the infusion of sanctifying grace: the third will be through the last appearing of Christ in his majesty. The first in the humility of the flesh: the second in the consecration of the mind: the third in the retribution of the reward. The first was unto the good and the evil, that they might become just: the second only unto the just, that they might persevere in holiness: the third unto the elect and the reprobate, that unchangeably they may pay the penalty, or be illustrious with crowns.

Now it was more fitting that the two prior advents go before, in order that by a just ordination the third might follow.