Scotus Academicus, Tomus septimus: De Incarnatione Verbi Divini

NOTE 1. That it is beyond doubt that the divine Word, from that time at which He appeared among men, was announced and called man, and there is no heretic who denies that constant truth, since the oracles of Scripture most openly testify it, not only of the Old Testament but especially of the New. Thus John 8 Christ Himself says: you seek to kill me, a man who have spoken the truth to you. And chapter 9 the blind man enlightened by Christ said: that man who is called Jesus made clay, etc. When Christ heard him say this, He did not correct him, but further asked of him that he believe even Him to be the Son of God. And chapter 10 the Jews saying to Christ: for a good work we stone thee not, but because thou being a man makest thyself God: Christ indeed first admitting it nevertheless confirms that He is God and rightly so called. Whence Caiphas

John 11 and 18, moved by a prophetic spirit, gave counsel to the Jews: It is expedient for you that one man die for the people, etc. Which man the Evangelist there declares to be Jesus Christ, who was about to die for the whole human race. Therefore only one doubt remains, whether that appellation of man was truly attributed to Christ, so that it designated true humanity in Him, or however it was only a certain metaphorical manner of speaking, as heretics formerly contended, whoever they were who denied that integral and true humanity existed in Christ.

NOTE 2. There have been various heretics, as we warned in the prelude of this Treatise, who denied a true soul in Christ: first indeed certain Arians taught that Christ had not a true rational soul, but that the Word was to Him in place of a soul, as St. Epiphanius reports, heresy 69, and St. Augustine heresy 19; which error indeed is also attributed to Eusebius of Caesarea and other Arians his followers in the 7th Synod action 6. Apollinaris, however, who at first had held the same opinion with the Arians, afterwards convicted of error by open texts of Scripture, yet not yielding, finally taught that in Christ indeed there was a sentient soul but not a mind, as Epiphanius reports, heresy 77, Nazianzen orat. 16, Augustine heresy 56. But what that heretic understood by the name of mind, namely whether the intellectual power, or the very substance of the rational soul, the said Fathers do not explain quite openly. For Augustine says: He denied the mind which is the rational soul of man. Epiphanius however reports that he asked the heretics what they understood by the name of mind and that they answered it to be substance or spirit: From which, says Suarez disp. 15 sect. 1, it follows that they denied a certain part of human nature, perhaps in that sense in which the heretics called Dimoerites said that of the three parts of human nature, body, soul, and mind, the Word assumed only the two former, as is evident from St. Epiphanius heresy 78, and from the epistles of Damasus, which Nicephorus reports book 12 of History chapter 17, in which Damasus against these heretics defines that Christ assumed a true rational soul, not obscurely indicating that those heretics denied it, and in this followed the error of Apollinaris.

NOTE 3. Various heretics likewise denied in Christ a true body born from the fecundity and seed of the Virgin. Simon Magus seems to have led the column of these with his followers. For just as he boasted himself to be Father, Son, Holy Spirit, he feigned such an appearance in Christ as in himself of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Then they compared the appearance of Christ with the appearances of the Old Testament, which having been made in aerial bodies, compacted and composed only for the time of the apparition, which afterward dissolved into air or into nothing, feigned for themselves such an indwelling character and nature of the body of Christ, and thought nothing about the Incarnation of Christ and its human nature personally assumed and never to be deserted. But when they observed in the Gospel that Christ could not be seen in the midst of crowds, and often withdrew Himself from the eyes of friends or enemies, they readily inclined to this opinion: the body of Christ was not altogether palpable and visible, and therefore Christ used it whenever He would meet men, but often showed by those disappearances that He did not altogether wear true flesh and a true body. To assert which they were moved also by those various appearances after His resurrection, in which He was not recognized by the Apostles even though He conversed familiarly with them; He went toward them, entered while doors were shut and bars strongly impeded and drawn, and performed various things which did not seem to persuade a real body and true flesh. Then by the very Apostles, when once He trod the waves of the sea on foot, He was held for a phantom, whence this delirium could reach others also and adhere more strongly in the minds of heretics than in the hearts of the Apostles, whom such a thought had occupied only for a moment. Wherefore St. John the Evangelist, that he might meet this most pestilential dogma and show that truly there existed in Christ the Lord two natures, namely human and divine, after the asserted and declared nativity of Christ the Lord, finally adds: And the Word was made flesh, by which words he signifies that the divine Word assumed true flesh, and refutes the impious dogma of the Simonians concerning the phantastic and masked flesh of Christ. — Nevertheless Marcion, imbued with this simoniaceous virus, dared to assert that in Christ there was only a phantastic and appearing body, as Justin Martyr reports, Apology 2 for the Christians, Irenaeus book 1 c. 19, who says that therefore this heretic expunged the opening chapters of the Gospel of Luke which are about the human generation of Christ, and Tertullian in those books which he published against Marcion. But there were other heretics who taught that Christ had a true body but not of the same kind as ours, who therefore were split into various parties: some said the body of Christ was formed from the elements, as Apelles disciple of Marcion and later deserter, says Tertullian; others that He had a celestial body, as Valentinus who, says Tertullian, book On Prescription chapter 19, said that Christ brought down from heaven some spiritual body, as water through a pipe, thus passing through Mary the Virgin, taking nothing thence, either receiving or borrowing. Finally some said He had a divine body consubstantial with the Divinity, or certainly formed from Itself, as Apollinaris taught, Justin Martyr reporting, Apology 2 near the end.

Therefore three things are here to be resolved strictly for the sake of greater clarity, which nevertheless converge into the same: First, that Christ assumed true and integral humanity. Second, that He had a true body consubstantial with ours. Third, that He also had a true rational soul altogether similar to ours.

Conclusion first. — THE DIVINE WORD ASSUMED TRUE HUMANITY. This is of faith against Basilides.

The Conclusion is proved first from open oracles of Sacred Scripture, namely from John 8: you seek, says Christ, to kill me a man who have spoken the truth to you. From Matthew 20: Behold we go up to Jerusalem, and the Son of man shall be betrayed and crucified, and the third day he shall rise again. From Luke last chapter: See my hands and feet, that it is I myself. Handle and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as you see me to have. The same He proved by eating with the Apostles, that through the truth of eating the truth of flesh might be shown, says St. Gregory. The same is confirmed from many other texts of Sacred Scripture, by which it stands that God was made man and like unto us, conversed and spoke among us in human fashion, tempted in all things without sin, through thirst and weariness, through passion and death. Therefore He was not a mask of man but true man. For how often, says Theodoretus, either does Christ call Himself man, or is He inscribed of the seed and stock of Abraham and David, so many times does He bear witness of true flesh and true soul: for if either part be wanting, truth does not underlie these appellations.

It is proved secondly from the most ancient symbols which before the Synod of Nicaea were read throughout the Church, and likewise from the decisions and professions of faith of Nicaea itself and of the following synods, while they set forth the Word incarnate and made man. Hence the second Synod of Constantinople among the Ecumenical, epistle to Damasus and others gathered in the Roman Synod, says: That it admits Him neither destitute of soul or mind, nor an imperfect reason of flesh: but knows itself confessing perfect the Word of God before the ages, and perfect man in the last days for our salvation. The Council of Chalcedon in the decree of faith promulgated at action 3 affirms Christ the Lord to be the same perfect in Divinity and perfect in humanity: God and man truly the same out of rational soul and body: consubstantial to the Father according to Divinity, and consubstantial to us according to humanity, and like to us in all things without sin: which the Symbol of Athanasius expressed in the same sentiment: Perfect, he says, God, perfect man, subsisting out of rational soul and human flesh. It would be long and superfluous here to write all the definitions of later Councils and authorities of the Holy Fathers, by which this Catholic truth is taught and confirmed: yet it pleases us to prove it by arguments which most of the Fathers use for confirming the same truth.

The first argument is deduced from this, that unless the human nature of Christ were integral, it would not be true, nor Christ true man, and therefore neither would He be man altogether: for what something truly is not, that simply it is not: thus Tertullian argues in the book On the Flesh of Christ: Otherwise, he says, Christ would not be called man without flesh: nor son of man without some parent man, just as neither God without Spirit of God, nor Son of God without God the Father... why do you halve Christ with a lie? The whole was truth. Hence book On the Resurrection of the Flesh chapter 10.

Moreover neither is the soul by itself man, which after being called a fiction of man is afterward inserted in the body: nor is flesh without soul man, which after the exile of the soul is inscribed corpse: thus the appellation man is in a certain way the clasp of two partner substances, under which appellation they cannot exist except cohering.

Gelasius forms the same reasoning in the book On the Two Natures, proving against the Acephali that Christ consists of two natures, because when the property of one thing is taken away:

In part Christ will be among them neither one, nor integral; and therefore not true: it follows that He be false, because by every mode it tends to this rupture, if anything is naturally removed thence, out of or in which Christ is one and integral: consequently on this account also true: therefore in order that He be true, it is necessary that He be integral: that He be integral one, and the same will persist.

Such is Gelasius.

The second argument can be drawn from St. Irenaeus, book 5 Against Heresies, chapter 1, and thus be retorted against Basilides: if Christ had been man only in species and according to appearance, there would be no difference between His incarnation and the apparitions made to the ancient patriarchs and prophets. For in those visions He appeared under the species of a sensible body. But this is openly false, both because those things said of the incarnation cannot be verified of such apparitions, namely that God was made man, that He died etc., and because as those visions represented the future true advent of Christ in the flesh, so the incarnation would be only a forewarning of another advent of Christ in true humanity. Such are the words of St. Irenaeus:

If when He was not man He appeared as man: neither did that which He truly was persevere, that is the Spirit of God, since the Spirit is invisible: nor was truth in Him in any way: for He was not what He seemed. But we have foretold that Abraham and the other prophets saw Him prophetically, prophesying through vision that which was to be: therefore if now also He so appeared, not being what He seemed, a certain prophetic vision was made to men, and one ought to await His last advent, in which He will truly be such as He is now seen prophetically.

The third argument is drawn from the same St. Irenaeus, who also supplies many others in the same place. Nothing more constant is asserted in Sacred Scripture than that Christ delivered up His body to be crucified for us, and washed away our sins with His own blood, and also taught us by word and example: but no one will say that we are redeemed in appearance only, and that the price for sins was paid putatively only. Therefore with His own blood, says St. Irenaeus in the cited place,

redeeming us as Lord, and giving His soul for our soul and His flesh for our flesh, and pouring forth the Spirit of the Father unto the union and communion of God and men, bringing down God indeed to men through the Spirit, but placing man again upon God through the incarnation, and firmly and truly in His advent granting us incorruption through communion which is with God, all the doctrines of heretics were blinded.

He concludes the same from this, that Christ was our true and only teacher and not merely in appearance:

For, he says, otherwise we could not learn the things that are of God unless our Teacher, being the Word, had been made man. Nor could another narrate to us the things of the Father, except His own Word. For who else knows the sense of the Lord? or who else has been made His counselor? Nor again could we learn otherwise than by seeing our Teacher, and perceiving through our hearing His voice, that we might be imitators indeed of His works and receive perfect proof.

Again book 3 against heresies, chapter 20:

If our Teacher, he says, did not truly suffer, no grace is to Him, since there was no passion: and when shall we begin truly to suffer, He will seem seducing us, exhorting us to seize and offer the other cheek, if He did not first suffer that in truth: and just as He seduced them so that He seemed to them Himself that which He was not, so He seduces us exhorting us to bear those things which He did not bear. Nay rather we shall be above the Teacher, while we are thought truly to suffer and sustain those things which neither did the Teacher suffer nor sustain: how then did He suffer leaving us an example that we should follow His footsteps, if He suffered only in specious pretence?

The fourth argument most of the Fathers suggest, which can thus be proposed: Truth, as it cannot be deceived, so it cannot deceive: but if the Son of God had assumed only a phantom of a man, He would have deceived men. Thus St. Augustine book 83 Questions, question 11: If the body of Christ was a phantom, Christ deceived: and if He deceives, He is not truth. But Christ is truth: therefore His body was not a phantom. The same reason St. Epiphanius thus presses:

But surely jocular prestidigitations must have been employed by the Word of God, that He might deliver another to death and to undergo the punishment of the cross in His stead (namely Simon of Cyrene whom Basilides feigned crucified for Christ); especially He who said: I am the truth and the life. Yet it belongs not to life to procure death for another: nor to truth, which truly indwells in itself, to dissemble it, and show other things for others: for truth ceases to be, if it be an artificer of fraud and error, and hide its very own work.

He adds still further to undermine that invention of Basilides:

If that Simon of Cyrene was lifted upon the cross, therefore salvation is not wrought for us through Christ, but through Simon: nor ought the world anymore hope to be saved through Christ, seeing that He in no wise suffered: neither through Simon, for Simon cannot be a cause of salvation: pure and mere man indeed, and nothing more.

The fifth argument is sought from this, that Christ the Redeemer ought to be among us and God a surety and reconciler, that is, a middle, or, as Scripture speaks, a Mediator: but it beseemed such a Mediator to embrace both, either part, in Himself, that He might the more easily establish concord. Thus argues St. Hilary book 9 near the beginning:

The Mediator, he says, Himself constituted in Himself for the salvation of the Church, and by that very sacrament of mediator between God and man existing as one with each, while He Himself from natures united into the same is the same thing of either nature; so however that He lacked neither in either.

St. Fulgentius urges this argument with luculent words book 1 to Trasimundus chapter 15, where he says:

Not in vain was the man Jesus Christ called Mediator of God and men: except because the same God received in Himself the whole nature of man, and the same man has in Himself the whole substance of Deity. For because man through sin was separated from God: between God wrathful and man sinning there must intervene the person of such a Mediator, which for propitiating God to man would have in itself the whole true God born of God, and for reconciling man to God would contain in itself the whole true man born of man.

The Heretics objected: He who was made in the likeness of men is not truly man but in appearance only: but the Son of God is said Philippians 2 to have been made in the likeness of men and found in fashion as a man: therefore He was not truly but in appearance only man.

I answer denying the major. For likeness does not always exclude truth, nay it says something common to things which are called similar; and supposes something whereby those same things differ. For likeness does not say entire identity, nor even does it say entire diversity, but there intervenes some agreement together with some discrepancy. Thus, to come to the minor, Christ is said to have been made in the likeness of men, because He agrees with them in human nature; but differs both by reason of the supposit, which in other men is created, in Him truly divine, and by reason of conception, because He was conceived not by the ordinary way but through the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit of the Virgin; and by reason of state, for others are liable to sin and servants, but He immune from all sin and alien to it; whence it is said Romans 8: God sent his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh. And Hebrews 4 it is had that Christ was tempted in all things according to likeness without sin, by which it is intimated that He had the truth of flesh, not of sin, and is in all things like unto us.

Tertullian explains this expressly, book 5 against Marcion, chapter 14:

Suppose now, he says, likeness of substance is said; truth of substance will not on that account be denied. Why then like, if true? Because true indeed, but not from seed; like in state, but true in sense, not dissimilarly true. Moreover in contraries there is no likeness. Spirit would not be called likeness of flesh, because neither would flesh take on the likeness of spirit, but it would be called phantom if what was not seemed to be. But likeness is said when that which seems exists: for it exists while it equals another. But a phantom, which only seems, is not a likeness.

And in the same place:

If, he says, the Father sent the Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, the flesh which appeared in Him will not on that account be said a phantom. Therefore understand the Son sent in the likeness of the flesh of sin thus: that He might redeem the flesh of sin by similar substance, namely flesh which should be like to sinning flesh, while itself is not sinful. For this also will be the power of God, to accomplish salvation in equal substance: for it would be neither great nor wonderful if the Spirit of God remedied flesh; but if flesh quite similar to sinning flesh did this, while it is flesh, but not of sin. Thus likeness will pertain not to the title of sin, not to the falsehood of substance.

Then the cited context ought to be understood as the following ones are understood Genesis 2: God saith: those contexts can no more be so explained that wife and son of Adam had not His true nature, than that the Son of God is not consubstantial to the Father. Therefore from the fact that Christ is said to have been made in the likeness of men, it is badly inferred that He is not true man. Wherefore to remove even the least suspicion concerning the truth of the humanity of Christ arising from these words, that truth is established there in these words: He humbled himself, being made obedient unto death; for neither could He exercise that highest humility and obedience and suffer death unless He had been true man.

You will urge: He who condemned flesh did not assume true flesh: but Christ condemned flesh through His Apostle saying 1 Cor. 15, v. 50: Flesh and blood shall not possess the kingdom of God: therefore etc.

I distinguish the minor. He condemned flesh, that is, the works of the flesh, I grant; that is, the substance of flesh, I deny. Thus Tertullian distinguishes in the cited place. But he himself discoursing how he would not have us be in the flesh while we are in the flesh, namely that we not be in the works of the flesh, shows he wrote this reason: flesh and blood cannot attain the kingdom of God; condemning not the substance but its works; which because they can be not admitted by us while still placed in the flesh, will pertain not to the guilt of substance but to conduct.

You will object 2: The Son of God appeared to the holy Fathers in the Old Testament clothed with flesh, nay walked, spoke and ate: yet His flesh was not true but putative: therefore neither in the New Testament did He assume true flesh.

I answer first. With St. Augustine in various places, but especially book 3 On the Trinity, chapters 10 and 11, these apparitions were made by the ministry of Angels, nor did the Son of God appear in His own person.

I answer secondly. According to the opinion of other

Fathers, denying that He did not appear to the ancient fathers in true flesh. For He Himself, says Tertullian, then appeared with the Angels to Abraham in truth indeed of flesh, but as yet unborn, because not yet to die, but also learning already to converse among men. This is had book 3 Against Marcion chapter 9. It can therefore be said that the Son of God then assumed a true body, not indeed hypostatically, but through a peculiar assistance and use.

I answer thirdly denying the consequence. Nay from the fact that those apparitions of God or Angels were made only in human species, because they were figures, it follows that the Son of God in the New Testament appeared in the truth of flesh, that those figures might be fulfilled, since as Tertullian says, in a like cause there would not have been a figure unless the body were of truth. Moreover an empty thing which is a phantom could not take on a figure.

You will urge: Angels appeared to the ancient patriarchs in phantastic flesh, although they walked, spoke, and ate: therefore, although Christ was seen to elicit similar actions, it cannot be gathered that He appeared in true flesh.

I answer. I deny the consequence. For the Angels although they moved a body compacted from air or other matter in the manner of a body informed by human soul, nevertheless they did not exercise actions of corporeal and animal life: whence the Angel says Tobit 10: I seemed indeed to eat and drink with you, but I make use of invisible food, which can be seen by no man. Besides those Angels were neither born, nor suffered, nor died: but Sacred Pages show all these to fall upon Christ.

You will press: Truth of body is unworthy of God who is purest Spirit; therefore etc.

I deny the antecedent. For although, says Tertullian, book 8 Against Marcion, chapter 20, nothing be worthy which God may clothe Himself with, yet whatsoever He shall have clothed Himself with, He makes worthy without falsehood. Add that, as is had in the same place, likeness of flesh was no less unworthy of God than truth, whence, he says, if He disdained it as earthly, why did He likewise despise its image: for the image of nothing to be disdained is to be disdained: likeness follows state.

You will object: If Christ had been perfect man, He would have been part of the world: but this cannot be said, because part of the world cannot bring salvation to the world: therefore He was not perfect man.

I answer 1. The major can be denied: since Christ is not only man but also God, by which reason He is not part of the world but Lord.

I answer secondly. Denying the minor: for what stands in the way that part of the world bring salvation to the world? Indeed it beseemed that man, like unto us, bring salvation to us, according to that of the Psalm: A brother shall not redeem, man shall redeem, not indeed pure man, but God-man, as St. Augustine explains.

Conclusion second. — Christ had a rational soul of the same species with the other souls of men. This also is of faith, as is evident from the preceding Conclusion. And it is proved further by those texts of Scripture in which Christ the Lord spoke concerning His soul. Thus John 12: Now is my soul troubled. And Matthew 26: My soul is sorrowful even unto death. By the name of soul the divine Word cannot here be understood; otherwise it would follow that it is passible and subject to human passions and affections, which not even the Apollinarists themselves admitted, seeing they believed the Word to be true God. Nor can these oracles be taken metaphorically, in the way in which in the Old Testament the soul of God is said, that is, divine will: thus Isaias first: Your new moons, and your solemnities my soul hateth, that is, they are odious to my divinity. For truly by the name of soul Christ sufficiently signified the true vivifying soul of His body distinct from the very divinity, when He says John 12: I have power to lay down my soul; and to take it up again. For this power of laying down the soul was in something distinct from the soul; not indeed in the body, since the body has no power of dismissing and resuming the soul of itself alone: therefore this resided chiefly in the divinity of Christ: therefore the divinity of Christ and His soul are distinguished. Nor can those testimonies be expounded of the sentient soul, both because there is not there speech of any rational sorrow whatsoever, but of voluntary sorrow, as is evident from the following words, yet nevertheless not my will but thine be done. And because from voluntary consideration and attention He excited in Himself that sorrow, as the 6th argues St. Thomas act. 8, which indeed is confirmed from John 10, where Christ addressing the Jews meditating His death thus says: I have power to lay down my soul, and to take it up again. From which it stands that He had liberty of arbitrium, and consequently a rational soul.

Moreover this truth was defined in most many Councils. First indeed in the Roman Council under Pope Damasus in the profession of faith which Theodoretus reports book 5 of History chapter 9; at Ephesus in the epistle of Cyril to Nestorius which is approved there Canon 3; at Chalcedon session 1 and others following: The divine Word assumed integral humanity consisting not of the members of the body only but also of rational soul. This is of faith against Apollinaris. All the holy Fathers hand down the same truth likewise, especially St. Leo in epistles 11, 72 and 93, and St. Augustine book Against Felicianus the Arian c. 13, where he demonstrates that truth with most many reasons, whose principal one he draws from the end of the Incarnation: both because without a rational soul Christ could not have prayed, merited, nor satisfied; and because since He became incarnate to redeem fallen man, He ought to assume that which had principally fallen in man and which most needed redemption; but this is the rational soul.

It can be confirmed even by Philosophical reasons: Since God cannot become form of a body; for form is a constitutive part of the whole composite: but every part denotes imperfection, which must be eliminated far from God. Then, even if He could inform somewhat, since the composite receives its denomination from the form, by no reason would Christ be true man, since He would not have the constitutive form of man. Finally, the rational soul is not in man distinct from the sensitive: therefore if Christ had assumed only a sensitive soul, He would have assumed not the soul of man but of a brute.

Apollinaris objected: If Christ received the whole and perfect man, it is consequent that human cogitations existed in Him: but it cannot come about that there not be in human cogitations something of sin; because, says the Apostle Romans 8: The wisdom of the flesh is death: and the wisdom of the flesh is an enemy to God; for it is not subject to the law of God. Whence Apollinaris concluded, as Leontius reports, that God did not assume the whole man, seeing that the whole man is not devoid of all sin on this way. The holy Fathers answer, especially St. Athanasius in the book On the salvation of adversaries, denying that vicious cogitations or affections of this kind were in the human nature of Christ: for they are not appendages of that nature but offspring of sin: wherefore in Adam before the fall those cogitations, which are reckoned under the name concupiscence, in no way existed: but, says Athanasius, after he transgressed the mandate he began to be bound by such cogitations: not that God created pressing cogitations of this kind, but that the devil through fraud and deception sowed them upon rational nature, after it was constituted in transgression of the law and rejected by God. Therefore since Christ was infected by utterly no cogitation of sinful Adam, He was immune from cogitations of this kind and the enticements of the flesh.

He objected 2: If Christ had truly had an integral rational soul and human mind, He would also have had two principal moderating faculties of human actions, namely the human mind and the divine will: but this ought not be said, since one moderator sufficed: therefore the other was superfluous: but nothing superfluous ought to have been in Christ: therefore He ought not assume a human mind, since the divine will was most sufficient for moderating His actions.

I deny the minor. For, says St. Maximus martyr in Euth. Panopl. title 1: Just as white wool dyed with the color of purple is not bicolor but of one color only, so in the assumed nature, deified by the mind of man, there are not two principals, God and mind, but one namely, God who made the divine mind. In which words Maximus does not wish the mind to have been extinguished in the soul of Christ through fellowship with divinity, just as the whiteness of wool is abolished when suffused with the redness of purple, but only that, the soul remaining safe and integral, and its principal part, which is the mind, nevertheless that did not hold principality of actions, but since it was imbued and fortified throughout by Divinity, applied itself to its guidance and moderation: so that the divine mind acted the human mind in Christ and governed it.

Conclusion third. — The divine Word did not assume a body formed of celestial matter, but one that was of the same kind with ours. This is of faith against Valentinus saying that Christ took nothing from blessed Mary the Virgin, but brought a body from heaven. But that error is refuted by open oracles of Sacred Scripture in the holy Fathers praised against him and to be adduced below: for thus St. Irenaeus proves our Conclusion book 3 against heresies chapter 32:

If Christ did not receive from man the substance of flesh, he says, neither was He made man, nor son of man; and if He was not made what we were, He accomplished nothing great in suffering and sustaining. But we, because we are a body taken from earth and receiving spirit from God, this also the Word of God became, recapitulating in Himself His own formation: and on account of this He confesses Himself son of man.

And the Apostle to the Galatians manifestly says: God sent his Son made of a woman; and to the Romans: Of his Son who was made to him of the seed of David according to the flesh. Moreover His descent into Mary is superfluous. For what descended into her, if He began to take nothing from her? Or if He had taken nothing from Mary, He never would have perceived those foods that are from earth, by which the body, that which is taken from earth, is nourished: nor fasting 40 days as Moses and Elias would His body hungering seek food: but neither would John His disciple writing of Him have said: But Jesus being wearied with his journey sat: nor would David have proclaimed over Him: Upon the pain of my wounds they have been added: nor would He have wept over Lazarus; nor sweated clots of blood. For all these things are signs of flesh taken from earth; which He recapitulated in Himself, saving His own formation.

Tertullian proves the same truth in five books against Marcion: especially however the book On the Flesh of Christ, whose principal reasons, for the benefit of religious youth to whom this Author is not yet familiar, it pleases us to report here summarily. He proves Christ had true flesh first from His Nativity:

Marcion, he says in chapter 1, in order to deny the flesh of Christ, denied also the Nativity; or, in order to deny the Nativity, denied also the flesh, namely lest the Nativity and the flesh should render testimony to each other and answer for one another, since there is neither a nativity without flesh, nor flesh without a nativity.

Thereupon in chapter 2 he censures Marcion because he cut out the opening chapters of the Gospel of Luke, in which the Nativity and infancy of Christ are delineated:

These devices, I think, says he, Marcion dared to employ in destroying even the original instruments of Christ, lest his flesh should be proved — and with what authority, pray tell? If you are a Prophet: foretell something; if an Apostle: preach publicly; if an Apostolic man: hold the view of the Apostles; if you are merely a Christian: believe what has been handed down; if you are none of these, I shall deservedly say: die — for dead indeed you are by not believing what makes Christians by being believed.

In chapter 3 he proves that this nativity and assumption of flesh is neither impossible nor unbecoming to God:

He cannot say, he says, that if He had been born and had truly put on a man, God would have ceased to be God, losing what He was while assuming what He was not: for there is no peril to His own state for God.

In chapter 4 he shows that this birth from a Virgin is neither unworthy nor foolish for God. Hence he addresses Marcion thus, setting out from his hatred of the nativity once it had been taken up:

Hold forth now, pray, on the filthiness of the genital members within the womb of the elements, the whole curdling of humor and blood, the feeding of the flesh from that same union through nine months; describe the womb swelling day by day, heavy, anxious, bound fast, wholly given over to lust, disgust, and gluttony. Rant away now also at the very birth-pangs of the laboring woman, whether to be honored for its peril or revered for its nature. You shudder assuredly, and so far does it lie poured forth amid its impediments, forgotten and disdained by you: that which is bound in swaddling clothes, that which is twisted in bands, that which is mocked with endearments. Hence, O Marcion, you despise the veneration owed to nature: yet how were you born? You hate the human being as he is born, and how can you love anyone? You plainly did not love yourself when you withdrew from the Church and the faith of Christ; but see whether you please yourself, or whether you were born otherwise. Certainly Christ loved that man in his impurities, coagulated in the womb, brought forth through shameful parts, born amid mockeries: for him He descended, for him He preached; for him He cast Himself down in every humiliation even unto death, and the death of the cross. He surely loved him, whom He redeemed at so great a price. He confirms this in chapter 5, showing that Christ had true flesh, because He truly suffered and was crucified:

For what, he says, is more unworthy of God? What more to be blushed at? To be born, or to die? To bear flesh, or to bear the cross? To be circumcised, or to be crucified? To be reared, to be laid in a manger, or to be entombed in a monument? Answer me here, murderer of truth: did not God truly suffer crucifixion? Did He not truly die, as truly crucified? Was He not truly raised again, as truly dead, namely? Did Paul then wrongly establish among us that the Crucified alone was the cross, wrongly thrust in such a burial, wrongly insist that He was falsely raised? Is our faith therefore false, and all that we hope from Christ but a phantom? Most wicked of men, who excuse the murderers of God. For Christ suffered nothing at their hands, if He suffered nothing truly. Spare the sole hope of the whole world, who destroyest the glory necessary to the faith: whatever in Him seems unworthy is profitable to me: I am saved if I am not ashamed of my Lord. Whoever shall have been ashamed of Me, He says, of him shall I too be ashamed; otherwise I find no materials of shame which may prove me, through contempt of disgrace, nobly shameless and happily foolish: the Son of God was born: I am not ashamed, because it is unfitting; and buried He rose again, it is certain, because it is impossible. But how shall these things be true in Him, if He Himself was not true? If He did not truly possess in Himself what was nailed, what died, what was buried and raised again? Flesh namely suffused with blood, built upon bones, interwoven with nerves, entwined with veins, which knows how to be born and to die, human without doubt, as born of a man.

In chapter 6 he presses hard against Apelles, the disciple of Marcion, who asserted that Christ borrowed flesh from the stars and substances of the upper world, although Angels fashion bodies for themselves out of celestial or aerial matter whenever they appear to men. Therefore he says:

Those who set before us as exemplar of the flesh of Christ that of Angels, saying it was not born, namely fleshy, let them compare, I beg, both the causes of Christ and of the Angels, on account of which they came into flesh. No Angel ever descended in order to be crucified, to undergo death, to be raised from death: if there never was any such cause for embodying Angels, you have the reason why they did not receive flesh by being born. They had not come to die, and therefore neither to be born: but Christ, sent to die, necessarily had also to be born, that He might be able to die; for only what is born is accustomed to die. A mutual debt exists between nativity and mortality: the form of dying is the cause of being born. As truly about to be a man even unto death, it behooved Him to put on that flesh of whose nature it is to die, and further that flesh of which nativity precedes dying.

Then, taking upon himself that passage of Luke 8, where Christ answers: Who is my mother, and who are my brethren? as though He had rejected His mother and brethren, he answers that He said this not to deny His mother, but to make those more excellent who hear the word of God and keep it. He therefore denied His parents in the manner in which He taught them to be denied for the work of God in Matthew 10. Finally in chapter 8, refuting the invention of Apelles, who dreamed that an angel of fire founded celestial things out of penance for a debt, he shows that if from that source the flesh of Christ had been drawn from the elements of sin, it would be sinful from a sinful sense, and would be equal in substance to ours, which Christ disdains to assume as sinful. In chapter 9 he demonstrates that all the signs of truly earthly flesh existed in Christ:

Consider, he says, each single quality: the muscles as clods, the bones as rocks, even certain pebbles around the breasts. Behold the tenacious connections of the sinews and their transplanted roots, the branching courses of the veins like the windings of brooks, the down like moss, the hair like turf; attend likewise to those very treasuries of marrow like mines of flesh: all these are earthly signs of origin, and they existed in Christ: these are the things that concealed Him as the Son of God. For the tokens of earthly flesh we enumerated are so much so, that they belong to our own as well. What do you say of that, ⟦that He takes food and slumbers?⟧ He trembles at death: for the flesh, He says, is weak; lastly He shed blood. These, I suppose, are celestial signs: but how, I ask, could He have been contemned and made to suffer, if anything of celestial nobility had radiated in that flesh?

Finally Tertullian proves in chapter 17 and following, from the fact that Christ was conceived and born of Mary, and not merely in Mary the Virgin:

If the first Adam, he says, is handed down as from the earth, deservedly the following, or last Adam, as the Apostle said, accordingly from the earth, that is, from flesh not yet consigned to generation, was brought forth by God unto a quickening spirit. But reason also defends this here, that God by a rival operation recovered His image and likeness captured by the devil: into the Virgin, still Eve, had crept the word that builds up death: in the Virgin equally was to be introduced the Word of God that builds up life, so that what had perished through such a sex might be restored to salvation through the same sex. Eve believed the serpent; Mary believed Gabriel: what the former ruined by believing, the latter destroyed by believing: yet Eve then conceived nothing in her womb from the word of the devil: nay rather she did conceive, for thereafter, so that she might bring forth cast out and bring forth in sorrows, the word of the devil made seed for her: finally she brought forth the devil a fratricide: on the contrary Mary brought forth Him who would one day preserve safe the carnal brother of Israel, his own murderer. Into the womb, therefore, God the Word brought down His good brother, that He might escape the memory of the evil brother: thence Christ was to come forth for the salvation of man, from that place whither the condemned had already entered.

And in chapter 20, answering the objection of Valentinus, saying indeed that Christ was born through the Virgin, not of the Virgin, and in the womb, not of the womb; because also the Angel said in dreams to Joseph: What is born in her is of the Holy Ghost; he did not say of her: thus he makes sufficient answer to this objection:

Even if He had said of her, He said in her: for that which was of her was in her: therefore it amounts to the same thing: and both when He said in her, and of her, it accords: because that which was in her was of her. But well does Matthew say the same, tracing the origin of God descending from Abraham down to Mary. Jacob, he says, begot Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Christ. But Paul too imposes silence upon these Grammarians: God sent, he says, His Son, made of a woman. Was it perhaps through a woman, or in a woman? This the more emphatically, because he says made rather than born; for he would have expressed it more simply by saying born: but by saying made, as also the Word was made flesh, he sealed and asserted that the truth of flesh was made of the Virgin.

And in chapter 21:

I will go even further against their meeting: behold, says Isaiah, a virgin shall conceive in the womb. What then? Assuredly the Word of God, not the seed of man, certainly so as to bear a Son, for

and she shall bear, he says, a Son: therefore as it belonged to Him that she conceived, so what she bore belongs to Him: although that which she conceived may not have been His. On the contrary, if the Word became flesh of itself, for it conceived and bore itself, then the prophecy falls void. For the Virgin neither conceived nor bore, unless whatever she bore from the conception of the Word is flesh of her own. Shall this alone voice of the prophet be evacuated? or also the Angels announcing the conception and birth of the Virgin? or also all Scripture already, whatsoever announces the mother of Christ; for how a mother, except because He was in her womb? but He received nothing from her womb which would make her mother, in whose womb He was.

This name foreign flesh ought not to claim. The womb of a mother names none but the daughter of the womb, flesh. Further, there is no daughter of the womb, if she is born of herself. Shall then Elizabeth also be silent, bearing a prophet, an infant already conscious of his Lord, and moreover filled with the Holy Ghost? For not without cause does she say: and whence is this to me, that the Mother of my Lord should come to me? if Mary carried in her womb not a Son but a guest, Jesus, how does she say: blessed is the fruit of thy womb? What fruit of the womb is this, which did not spring from the womb, which took no root in the womb? which is not His whose is the womb, and which assuredly is fruit of the womb? It is Christ; therefore of this fruit God swears that He shall sit upon the throne of David, from the loins of David, that is, from the posterity of his flesh; if from the loins of David, how much more from the loins of Mary, for whose sake He was in the loins of David?

And in chapter 22. Matthew, the most faithful commentator of the Gospel, as companion of the Lord, for no other cause than to make us partakers of the carnal origin of Christ, thus arose: the book of the generation of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham. From these fountains of origin, with the stock flowing on, when the order is gradually traced down to the nativity of Christ, what else is described than the very flesh itself of Abraham and David, through each of its successive generations descending even into the Virgin, dwelling inwardly in Christ? but Paul also, as both disciple and master and witness of the same Gospel, since he is the apostle of the same Christ, confirms Christ of the seed of David according to the flesh, namely of that same flesh. Therefore the flesh of Christ is of the seed of David; but according to the flesh of Mary it is of the seed of David: therefore it is of the flesh of Mary, while it is of the seed of David.

And further below: What quality of flesh ought we and can we acknowledge in Christ? surely none other than Abraham's: since Christ is the seed of Abraham: nor any other than Jesse's, since Christ is from the root of Jesse: nor any other than David's, since Christ is the fruit from the loins of David: nor any other than Mary's, since Christ is from the womb of Mary: nor any consequent one other than Adam's, since Christ is the second Adam. Consequently they must either contend that those men had spiritual flesh, whereby the same condition of substance is traced down into Christ; or grant that the flesh of Christ was not spiritual, which is not reckoned as of a spiritual stock.

You will say. — St. Paul in 2 Corinthians chapter 5 says: If we have known Christ according to the flesh, but now we know him so no longer, that is, as Faustus Vanichaeus explained, Paul at first thought Christ had true flesh; but later, having become more learned, he changed his opinion, and acknowledged Him veiled not in true but only in apparent flesh.

I answer, that exposition of Faustus is impious. Whence a twofold sense can be assigned to that oracle: First, that Paul speaks of that time when he was persecuting Christ in His faithful ones; as though he said, although at one time according to the flesh, that is, judging carnally concerning Christ, we held an unworthy estimation of Him, yet now we know Him so no longer, or esteem Him thus. Or the second sense can be, that he speaks of the condition of passible flesh, in which he knew Christ while He led a mortal life: but now knows Him no longer such. Which exposition is given in the acts 6 of the VIIth Synod, and by Augustine book 11 against Faustus, and fits the words of Paul; since he afterwards subjoins: and who live now may not live to themselves, but to him who died for them, and rose again.

You will say 2. — The same Apostle in 1 Corinthians 15 teaches that Christ is the heavenly man come down from heaven to earth; for he says: The first man was of the earth, earthly; the second man from heaven, heavenly; but Christ is not called the heavenly man except by reason of a body formed from celestial matter: therefore the body of Christ was not of the same substance and nature as ours. — The same thing St. John teaches us in chapter 3 of his Gospel, where we read: No man ascendeth into heaven, but he that descendeth from heaven, the Son of man who is in heaven. And chapter 6: I am the living bread which came down from heaven, says Christ the Lord.

I answer, by distinguishing and expounding such contexts: Christ is a heavenly man and descended from heaven by reason of His person and divine nature, I concede; by reason of the assumed body, I deny. Or that the very body of Christ came down from heaven by reason of the matter of which it was compacted, I deny: by reason of the power by which it was formed, I concede. Thus St. Hilary expounds these passages of sacred Scripture, lib. 10. De Trinitate: Hence the Lord Himself showed that greatest and most beautiful mystery of the man assumed, saying: no man ascendeth into heaven, etc. That He descended from heaven is the cause of His origin conceived of the Spirit. For Mary gave the body no origin from herself; although toward the growth and birth of the body she contributed everything natural to her sex. That the Son of man is so called is the issue of the flesh assumed in the Virgin. And afterward, explaining how God, who fills all things and is everywhere, could descend, he says the Word descended because He began to be present in a certain special manner in the assumed body, in which He was not previously present on earth: because the power of the Word, he says, had not remained in the earth after bodily modes, and there was not wanting whence He might descend. — And soon after: The Apostle spoke absolutely, saying: the first man of the mire, the second man from heaven; for by saying man he taught the nativity from the Virgin: which workshop executed the nature of her maternal sex in conception and birth: and when he says the second man from heaven, he attested His origin from the approach of the Holy Spirit supervening upon the Virgin: and thus He both is man, and is from the heavens: the offspring of this man is both from the Virgin, and conceived of the Spirit. Finally, in the same place he adds: The Lord Himself, unfolding the mystery of this nativity, spoke thus: I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of my bread he shall live forever; calling Himself His own bread: for He Himself is the origin of His own body; lest indeed the power and nature of the Word be thought to have failed of itself in the flesh by this, that descending from the heavens He is bread, He showed that His body did not take its origin from human conception. But whereas the profession of His own bread is that of the body assumed through the Word, for he subjoined: unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you; that by the bread descending from heaven, and by the flesh of the Son of man, the assumption may be understood both of flesh conceived of the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin. — Wherefore Christ is not called the heavenly man because His body was compacted of celestial matter, but He is so called according to His person, by which He is divine by reason of the formation of His body, because it was formed by the power of the Holy Ghost without seed: or He is called a heavenly man because He lived a heavenly life: wherefore the same Apostle calls men imitating Christ celestial in the same place: but Adam is said to be the earthly man, as subjected to sin: wherefore St. Paul subjoins: Such as the earthly is, such also are the earthly; such as the heavenly is, such also are the heavenly. In which manner Tertullian also explains it, book De carne Christi, chapter 8. Not, he says, with respect to difference of matter, but only did he oppose the earthly substance of the flesh of the first man behind, namely, to the celestial substance of the Spirit of the second man, namely Christ: and he refers the man to spirit, not to celestial flesh, so that, comparing them thus, it may stand that in this earthly flesh men become celestial, namely by the spirit: but if Christ were celestial also according to the flesh, they would not be compared to Him who are not celestial according to the flesh: if therefore those who become celestial, such as Christ is, bear an earthly substance of flesh; hence also it is confirmed that Christ Himself likewise in earthly flesh was celestial, as are those who are made equal to Him. Thirdly, finally, Christ is called a heavenly man on account of the glory which He had from the beginning: for although it did not redound to His very body from the beginning, but only at His resurrection: nevertheless it was connaturally owed by reason of His union with the Word: but the first man is said to be earthly on account of the mortality contracted from sin. So St. Chrysostom Homily 12 on 1 Corinthians, and Augustine book 15 De Civitate, chapter 23.

You will say 3. — If Christ had assumed earthly flesh, He would have been of worse condition than an Angel, which is not immersed in earthly things in its flesh: yet Christ was not worse than an Angel. Then our like flesh would have obtained the same condition of nativity: but the condition of the flesh of Christ was far different, inasmuch as conceived of the Holy Ghost it caused no burden or pain to the pregnant Virgin: therefore etc.

I distinguish the minor: Christ was not inferior to the Angels qua God, I concede; qua man precisely taken, I deny. They read, Tertullian says, book De carne Christi, chapter 16: Thou hast made him a little less than the Angels, and they deny the inferior substance of Christ, and pronouncing themselves not man but Word acknowledge man mingled with God, and deny the man: they believe He died, and contend that what died was born of incorruption, as though corruption were anything else than death.

I answer the second, distinguishing the major: flesh like ours would have been similarly born if it were the flesh of mere man, I concede: if it were the flesh of man mingled with God, I deny. But Christ is a man mingled with God, to speak with Tertullian, that is, man is personally united to God; whence although He was born of the Virgin in a new and wholly wonderful manner, the Holy Ghost having made her fruitful, He nonetheless had flesh of the same condition as ours as regards substance. Hence Tertullian, chapter 29 of the aforesaid book, says: Christ was born of God, because the Word of God: but since the flesh was not of blood, nor of the will of flesh and of man, nay rather of the will of God was the Word made flesh; for to the flesh, not to the Word, belongs the formal denial of our nativity, because thus the flesh was to be born, not the Word. But denying that He was born also of the will of the flesh, why did He not deny also of the substance of the flesh? For He denied, because He denied of blood; He removed not the substance of flesh, but the matter of seed. We understand, therefore, that the nativity of the Lord was denied of concubinage, which savors of the will of man and of flesh, not of participation of the womb.

Note 1. That the parts of the assumed humanity are manifold; for some are physically essential, as body and soul: others integrating, as head, arms, legs: and others excrementitious, as hair, nails, and all those things which, as superfluous, contribute nothing to nutrition and the integrity of the body. Moreover, of the integrating parts some pertain precisely to the integrity of the human body, as head, bones, flesh, and the rest; some only to its truth, but not to its integrity, as blood, vital spirits, and other humors, which are said of the truth of the body by reason alone, since the human body cannot subsist without them, at least without blood, which is the basis and foundation of life. The question is asked whether the Divine Word hypostatically joined to Himself all those parts. All agree indeed that He assumed and joined to Himself all the parts that belong to the integrity of the body; otherwise He would not have assumed a true and perfect human body, which is contrary to the preceding Conclusion. But a grave difficulty concerns the parts pertaining to the truth and life of the body.

Note 2. Certain theologians with Cajetan, question 51, article 2, distinguish a twofold blood in the human body: one merely nutritive, and another natural, or such as he says belongs to the truth of nature. Nutritive blood is only a certain sanguineous humor little concocted and purified, which has not yet the true nature of blood, although in color and other accidents it is like it. Such is that which is proximately generated from food, either in the liver or in the veins leading to the liver, which physicians call Mesaraic: and the Philosopher reports that this blood is sweated out by some, in the book on the history of animals. Natural blood, however, is that which is made from the former by greater decoction and elaboration of the formative virtue of blood residing, according to Galen, in the liver, or according to Aristotle in the heart, whereby it becomes far purer and obtains the true substantial form of blood. It is called natural, moreover, because although it serves in some way for nourishing the whole animal, this function is not adequate to it, but besides it concurs also to the natural integrity and life of the body. — Cajetan teaches, however, with very many Thomists, that the former blood does not live, nor is it animated by the vivifying form of the body; but that the latter is animated. Yet it must be observed from St. Bonaventure in 4 dist. 11 p. 1 quest. 1 ad 2: A thing is said to live in three ways: either because it receives the influx of life: or because it disposes to life: or because it has its origin and constitution from an act of life. In the first way the corporeal substance and flesh are vivified: in the second way spirits and humors grow: in the third way hairs and even nails: and because all these have connection with life, all will rise again. Therefore, since blood does not belong to the official members, but only to the similar parts, nor is it animated by the rational soul, nor does it vivify, but only serves vivification, as do also the spirits we call vital, the question arises by what reason it was united to the divine Word, and whether, separated from the body of Christ, it was always joined to the Divinity. Whether, moreover, the blood was assumed immediately, or only mediately through the humanity, so that it had its own proper subsistence without subtraction of the subsistence of the Word, is a grave controversy among theologians. For Durandus in 4 dist. 10 qu. 1 denies that any blood, whether natural or nutritive, was hypostatically assumed by the Word. Cajetan, however, and most Thomists, establishing a distinction between nutritive and natural blood, assert that the latter was assumed, but not the former. Other theologians teach that every blood which was in Christ while He lived in a mortal body subsisted by the subsistence of the Word; for they reject that distinction of blood into nutritive and natural.

NOTE 3. That about the year of Christ 1351 a grave controversy arose at Barcelona; for while some in the aforesaid city asserted and publicly preached that the blood of Christ shed in the Passion was separated from the Divinity, and therefore was not to be adored during the three days of death with the worship of latria, and, as Wadding relates in our Annals under the same year, n. 3, Franciscus Baiuli, Guardian of the Minorites, taught this ex professo; Nicolaus Rosselli, then Inquisitor in the kingdom of Aragon, learned through his letters that Ioannes Morlandinus had been assumed to the Cardinalate together with the General Pastor of the Order of Minors by his uncle Clement VI in the year last past: this Morlandinus replied that he had received by the oracle of the living voice from the Pontiff, on the 20th of July, instructions in mandate that those who had so preached should be compelled to recant, and that it had been judged that this opinion must altogether be accounted heretical. The process having been completed, the Inquisitor Nicolaus, relying solely on the letters of that Cardinal, severely punished all who had been assertors of that proposition, and brought it about that before the Curia and in the presence of the Bishop of Barcelona they abjured that sentiment. Thus at that time, without tumult, the affair was quieted and concluded: yet after one hundred and thirteen years the same opinion revived among the Brescians in the year 1462¹ preached by blessed James Picenus, commonly surnamed of the March, a man indeed of outstanding sanctity and conspicuous in very many miracles. But when James of Brescia of the Order of Preachers, Inquisitor in Lombardy, contended keenly that that opinion had been condemned as heretical by Clement VI, bitter disputes came about, and public disputations before Pius II. Nevertheless nothing was decreed by the supreme Pontiff in this matter, as will appear below.

Three things, therefore, are chiefly to be resolved in this Question: First, whether the Word truly assumed human blood immediately: Second, whether it is of faith: Third, whether the Word also immediately assumed the excrementitious parts of the human body.

First Conclusion. It is probable that all the blood of Christ the Lord's humanity was immediately assumed by the divine Word and hypostatically united to Him. This is the more common opinion among theologians.

Proof. 1. By all those texts of sacred Scripture in which the price of our redemption is attributed to the blood of Christ the Lord shed forth. So Rom. 5 v. 9: Justified in his blood. Ephes. 1 v. 7: Having redemption through his blood, the remission of sins. Also Coloss. 1 v. 20: He made peace through the blood of his cross, both as to the things that are on earth, and the things that are in heaven. Heb. 9 v. 12: Christ, by his own blood, entered once into the holies, having obtained eternal redemption. If the blood of goats etc. v. 13: sanctify the unclean unto the cleansing of the flesh etc. v. 14: how much more shall the blood of Christ cleanse our conscience from dead works, to serve the living God? 1 Pet. 1 v. 2 the faithful are called elect unto the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. And ibid. v. 19 they are said to be redeemed with the precious blood, as of a lamb unspotted and undefiled, Christ. 1 John 1 v. 7: The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. Apoc. 1 v. 5: He hath washed us from our sins in his own blood. From all these texts it appears that the blood poured forth by Christ the Lord, especially upon the cross, was at once the price of our redemption and the saving laver wherein all sins are washed away. Further, that blood of Christ the Lord would not have had that power and efficacy unless it had been assumed by the Word and joined to the Divinity, by reason of which union it was of infinite worth and price.

It is confirmed further by this argument: Whatever pertains to the integrity of the human body was hypostatically assumed by the Word: but it is more probable that blood pertains to the integrity of the human body: therefore the divine Word hypostatically assumed it. The major stands from the preceding Question, in which we proved that the divine Word assumed the entire humanity, and consequently a body consisting of all its parts. The minor, however, is proved: First indeed by the authority of Aristotle, book 3 De Historia animalium, chapter 2, where he ranks blood among the similar parts of the animal body. To him Seneca gives suffrage, book 2 Quaestiones Naturales, where he writes thus: Blood is as it were a part of us, which nevertheless is even matter, for it prepares other things too, and none the less is numbered among those of which the whole body is made. St. Damascene also subscribes, book 2 De Fide, chapter 12, where he says: Every body is compounded of four elements, but the bodies of living creatures from four humors. The same St. Augustine taught, epistle 116, saying: The nature of flesh is tempered by four humors. Also that authority of St. Paul to the Hebrews 2: Therefore because the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself in like manner hath been partaker of the same. Wherefore St. Cyril, in the epistle which was read and approved in the Council of Chalcedon, Action 1, interprets that saying of John, the Word was made flesh, thus: He assumed flesh and blood. And Nazianzen, oration 50: The Word, he says, was made flesh, not putatively, but truly, because He assumed a body consisting of flesh and bones and blood. Yet it could be answered here that in these places blood is signified indeed to be a part of man, not integral, but only accessory, which, since it is the seat and vehicle of the animal spirits, by whose benefit man lives and moves, therefore by synecdoche the whole man is wont to be designated in the Scriptures by the name of blood. So Matthew 16: Flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee. And 1 Cor. 15: Flesh and blood shall not possess the kingdom of God.

From these it is gathered that the conclusion has no most efficacious foundation, neither from authority nor from reason, whereby its most constant truth may appear: for what is wont to be adduced from Councils and the decrees of supreme Pontiffs we shall declare does not patronize this assertion in the following Conclusion. Nevertheless we have called that opinion the more probable: partly because it is more conformable to the manner of speaking of Scripture and the Holy Fathers, who seem to attribute our redemption to the price and worth of the blood of Christ the Lord: partly because a more numerous company of theologians accords with that opinion: finally, because the supreme Pontiffs, before whom this controversy was agitated, seem to incline the more toward it. For Spondanus relates under the year 1462 that

the contention growing and a schism being made by the people on account of the controversy stirred up between blessed James of the March and the Friars Preachers, and the Bishop of the place not prevailing to calm the tumult, the matter was referred to the Apostolic See: concerning which Pope Pius II at that time commanded the Superiors of the Orders to send their most learned theologians to the Curia, whom he heard disputing for three days at the Nativity of the Lord in the Apostolic Palace, in the presence of Cardinals, Bishops, and Doctors of divine and human law who were at the Curia. Finally after three days, when they had produced whatever parts they wished, the assembly having been dismissed, he treated of the matter with the Cardinals on most days; approved the greater part of the sentence of the Preachers, few sided with the Minors, and Pius also inclined to the major part: but it was not thought well at that time to make a decree of declaration, lest the multitude of Minors, whose preaching against the Turks was necessary, be offended: and therefore it pleased that decision be deferred to another time, which nevertheless it never pleased to decide. How empty and futile this reason of Spondanus is, namely that the supreme Pontiff was unwilling to settle this controversy by his decree lest he offend the Minorites, will appear in the following Conclusion.

You will object. 1. If the divine Word had assumed human blood, it would follow that He assumed several natures: but this is absurd, seeing He assumed only one human nature: therefore, etc. The major is plain, because since blood is not of the integrity of the nature, it must be another nature than the human.

I distinguish the major: To have assumed several natures ordered to constituting one and the same whole, I concede; otherwise, I deny. And in this there is nothing absurd, since it stands that Christ assumed body and soul: and the body consists of heterogeneous parts.

You will say. 2. If the Word had assumed blood, it would follow, by the communication of idioms, that one could say, the blood is God, and God is blood: but this is absurd: therefore also that from which it follows.

I deny the consequence of the major, because by the communication of idioms two entire natures can indeed be predicated of one another, but not a part of a whole, nor a whole of a part: hence although the Word immediately assumed soul and body, still it is not rightly said, God is body, and body is God.

Second conclusion. It has not been proved with certain certainty that the blood of Christ was properly and immediately united to the Word of God, especially during the three days of death: in such wise that the contrary opinion could be defended without heresy and without error. This is against Suarez, Vazquez, and many other Moderns.

And the conclusion is proved: If that which was the foundation of the contrary opinion, whereby it was held as most certain that Christ the Lord must be believed to have assumed human blood, especially because, as the adversaries will, it was so defined by Clement VI and Pius II: but this reason is nonexistent: therefore, etc. The major is evident from Suarez and Vazquez themselves, who judged all the testimonies which they adduce from sacred Scripture and the Holy Fathers in support of their assertion to be so weak that they had recourse to the decree of Clement VI and Pius II as to a most solid foundation. The minor our Wadding proves in the place praised just above: First indeed from the fact that Pius, the supreme Pontiff, by his diploma absolved blessed James of the Marches, well deserving of the Church and of the Catholic faith, from every note of heresy and error on account of the asserted contrary opinion: for while this blessed man complained before the same supreme Pontiff that his adversaries were boasting at Barcelona that the process drawn up against him had been confirmed by Papal authority, and that he was therefore regarded by many as a heretic, he answered him with his diploma, which Wadding transcribed from the autograph, as follows:

Pius Bishop, etc., to his beloved son Fr. James of the March. Beloved son, health and Apostolic blessing. You wrote that you are greatly anxious on account of that matter of the blood shed by our Lord and Savior, which in certain places is commonly said to have been decided and determined by Us, against your opinion and preaching. We wonder at this, nor do we know whence such a report arose. For We have not thus far determined that matter itself, nor, on account of various occupations, have We been able to determine it, but God willing, We intend to do so when first a more opportune occasion shall present itself, and We shall not be distracted by so many occupations. But lest you should think that We neglect your honor and reputation, since you write that from Milan even to Verona you have been publicly preached to be a heretic, We will that you write to our brother the Bishop of Verona, to whom We likewise hereby give command, that he reduce to writing the things preached in this matter, and transmit them to Us in authentic form: for if the Preachers have behaved less honorably in their preaching, and have said anything of you that ought not to be said, We shall show them that this displeased Us, nor shall their transgression go unpunished. But as touching the authentication of that opinion, or of the process celebrated at Barcelona, made by that Prelate to whom this affair was committed by Us, know that it was not done so that by it faith or authority might be added to this kind of opinion or process; but that it might be a certain testimony of a thing done, that is, lest the knowledge of that deed, whatever it may have been, perish; for it was not Our intention, by reason of the commission, to confirm or approve the opinion or the process. For whereas supplication had been made to Us on the part of the Friars Preachers that We should wish to have them authenticated, We could not do otherwise than commit the cause: but the Commissary judged, as you have already seen. Wherefore let not your heart be troubled, > neither let it fear; be of quiet mind, and let not your soul be scandalized at this, for We know your sincere charity, nor is your zeal unknown to us, but persevere in the best faith, which God, the searcher of hearts, knows well, and let not the rumors of the crowd or the voices of calumniators delay you. Sufficiently known to God is your conscience, and it can rest content that We have conceived a paternal opinion of you, and retain what we have conceived. Concerning attendance at the Chapter of your Order soon to be celebrated, We are content, and exhort you to attend, and to do those things that are pleasing to God and to the honor of the Order and conducive to the salvation of your soul. But concerning access to the Duke of Venice We are content, and we exhort you to approach him. For We know him to be a good prince and one who fears God. We think that you wish to address and see him for no other than a good and honest cause, and We judge your access to him will be useful. Given at Macerata in the diocese of Siena, under the Fisherman's ring, on the 28th day of April 1461, in the sixth year of our pontificate.

Therefore the Pontiff did not mark the opposing opinion with any note of error.

This same judgment of the Pontiff is confirmed — namely, that he defined nothing by any Apostolic authority concerning this controversy — from the fact that the same supreme Pontiff eight days before his death, namely in the year 1464, issued another diploma, which Laurence Cherubinus reports, wherein he enacted,

that it shall not be lawful hereafter to any of the Orders of Minors or Preachers to dispute concerning the aforesaid doubt, or to preach, or to speak publicly or privately, or to persuade others that it is heretical or sinful to hold or believe that the same most sacred blood, as premised, during the three days of the passion of the same our Lord Jesus Christ was in any way divided or separated, or not divided or separated, from the divinity itself, until concerning the decision of this kind of doubt, what is to be held, shall have been defined by the Apostolic See. He commanded therefore all and singular the Brothers of the same and of whatsoever other Orders constituted throughout the whole world, of whatsoever state, grade, or condition they may be, present and future, under pain of the sentence of excommunication latae sententiae, which they would incur ipso facto, and from which, unless constituted in the article of death, they could be absolved only by the Roman Pontiff, not to presume in any way to come against, or to do, or to attempt anything against the aforesaid statute and ordinance.

It is not true, therefore, what Suarez and Vazquez affirm, that Clement VI and Pius II condemned that doctrine which asserted that the blood was separated from the divinity during the three days of death, since they can bring forward nothing for the establishing of this assertion of theirs besides those alone-written letters of John the Cardinal Dominican, against which our Francis de Ruvere, Cardinal of the Franciscans — who afterwards was Pope under the name Sixtus IV — opposed many things, together with the little book, or process drawn up by the Inquisitor likewise a Dominican, which Gabriel Vazquez wrongly says was formed by mandate of Clement through Apostolic letters: whereas copies of it exist, and no briefs, or Bulls, or Pontifical diplomas are seen there, except that one letter of the Cardinal: and this alone did the aforesaid Inquisitor of Brixia allege as foundation of the definition, while he was vehemently pressing the cause against B. James of Picenum. Add that Dominic de Dominicis, a learned man of almost that age, in the book which he wrote on the blood of Christ, asserts that the decree of Clement is not authentic, nor does it rest on approved testimonies. And certainly the little book, or process formed by Rossellus, rests on no other credit than its own, being strengthened neither by the hand of a Notary, nor by the testimony of any public minister. Whence I can scarcely wonder enough for what cause Sylvester, in the Golden Rose, tract. 8, qu. 31, asserts that Clement the supreme Pontiff damned the aforesaid proposition, and what is more wonderful, that the condemnation and retraction made at Barcelona by the aforesaid Inquisition was approved by Pius II: for Pius himself denies this in express words in the aforesaid diploma given to B. James of the Marches. To these things add that, for anything to be declared as a dogma of faith, it must rest upon the authority of Scripture, or some tradition: but it is difficult to show either of these on which the supreme Pontiffs rested and were moved to bring forth that definition; for all the authorities, whether of Scripture or of the Holy Fathers, by which to the blood of Christ shed is attributed the remission of our sins and the other subsequent benefits, press but little: because, as we said in the prior Conclusion, all these things are appropriated to the blood, not that we were saved or delivered by the mere shedding of blood, since there were other meritorious works of our salvation in Christ, and he could have saved us by sweat and tears, had he so willed, but because all his merits were terminated and consummated in death and passion. Hence these benefits are referred principally to the death of Christ: to the shedding of the blood indeed, as to the means through which death followed, just as to the cross these same benefits are attributed as to an instrument.

He urges — Vazquez urges, bringing forward what he thinks a firm foundation of this definition, which he boasts himself to have collected from the VI Synod, act 16, where a certain heretic named Constantine is condemned because he said the blood was dismissed from the Word during the three days of death, and from the same Synod act 8, where the confession of Macarius Antiochene Bishop, albeit a Monothelite, is proved, in that he said Christ assumed flesh and blood, and from the Epistle of the Alexandrian Council, which is the 10th, recited and approved by Cyril in the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon, anathematism 5, where the divine Word is said to have been made partaker of flesh and blood. Truly these urge nothing, for as regards the condemnation of Constantine, it was deservedly pronounced; Vazquez himself admits it, because Christ plainly confessed in the Council that he had laid aside not only the blood, but also the flesh and the human will: for the Synod questioned him: Where then did that flesh and blood remain? Constantine answered: He laid it aside. And the Synod again asked: And did he lay aside the human will together with the flesh? Constantine answered: Yes, Lord. Whence he was partly condemned as a Manichean, and partly as an abettor of the Monothelites, because he confessed only one will in Christ. The same must be said of Macarius, who as a heretic was deposed in that Synod, and whose confession was condemned, in that he confessed only one will and operation in Christ; whence it is vain to seek testimony from his confession. As to the authority of Cyril and of the Councils approving that epistle, we have spoken sufficiently above.

Third conclusion. Hairs, nails, tears, sweats, and other excrementitious parts were not assumed hypostatically by the divine Word immediately, but only because they were in the human nature which was assumed. This is the more common view, against Suarez disp. 15, sect. 1, who holds as more probable that nails, teeth, and hairs were assumed according to hypostasis by the divine Word.

It is proved: First, because those excrementitious parts do not pertain to the integrity of the human body, whence they will not remain in glorified bodies: then, because those parts in no way, neither directly nor indirectly, conduce to the end of the Incarnation, namely the salvation of men: therefore they do not seem to have been assumed.

You will say: St. Ambrose lib. On the Incarnation cap. 6, and Athanasius in the Epistle to Epictetus, treating against heretics who said the divinity and the flesh of Christ were of the same substance, seem to infer that consequently they would say the Word was converted into flesh, hairs, blood, and bones: therefore those Fathers judged that these parts of the body pertain to its integrity.

I deny that the Fathers infer that, but only report the error of those heretics: for St. Ambrose writes thus: Thereupon all these men, namely the heretics, say that the Word was converted into flesh, hairs, blood, and bones, and changed from his own nature. Occasion is given them to twist the infirmity of the flesh into an infirmity of the Divinity by a certain fictitious mutation of the divine nature. And St. Athanasius against the same heretics writes thus: Nay rather you pass over into another impiety, asserting that the Word, his former nature having been left behind, passed away into flesh, into bone, into hair, sinews, and indeed wholly into body. Therefore the aforesaid Fathers do not argue as absurd that the Word was changed into hairs if it had been changed into a living body, as though even the hairs lived: but they suppose this from the opinion of those heretics.

You ask: whether some particle of the blood of Christ has truly remained on earth substantially, and is still preserved.

I answer. That there is a great controversy among Theologians concerning this difficulty; for very many, with John of Turrecremata, judge that no particle of the blood of Christ remained on earth after his resurrection: but that the blood which is carried about under the name of Christ is not that which flowed from his body, but from a certain image of Christ struck by the Jews of Berith, whose history Athanasius relates in the book On the Passion of the Image of our Lord Jesus Christ. Which author, although he is not held by some to be the great Athanasius, yet that book ought not to be of slight authority, since the aforesaid history was recited under the name of Athanasius and approved in the Second Council of Nicaea, Act 1. This author moreover, cap. 7 of that book, speaking of the blood which flowed from that struck image, says: This is that blood of the Lord, which is said to have been found among very many, nor is it to be lightly esteemed by true Catholics beyond what is written by us, as though something from the flesh and blood of Christ could be found in the world, except that which daily is spiritually wrought upon the altar through the hands of Priests. Other Theologians however think that particles of the blood of Christ are still preserved on earth, nor was all the blood shed in the passion resumed by Christ. Sylvester proves it in the Golden Rose tract. 3, question 31. First indeed by the authority of Pius II, who in a Bull to the Abbot of the Monastery of Xanten thus defines: The petition exhibited contained this, that although for so long a time, of which no memory exists in the Church of the said house, there is piously believed to be a certain particle of the precious blood of our Lord Jesus Christ shed healthfully for the redemption of the human race upon the wood of the cross, etc. We therefore, who have certain knowledge of the premises, attending to the fact that it nowise repugns the certitude of faith to affirm that our Redeemer left upon earth, out of most pious memory of him, some part of the aforesaid blood, etc.

Therefore the supreme Pontiff judges it most probable that some particle of the blood of Christ the Lord remains substantially on earth. Add what Platina relates in the life of Leo III, that the Pontiff went to Mantua to see the blood of Christ, which then was in great veneration on account of constant miracles: and thence, the blood having been approved, it was brought to Charles. It is confirmed from book 6 of the Revelations of St. Bridget, where the Virgin addresses her in these words: When the time of my call from this world drew near, I myself commended that sacred membrane (namely of the foreskin) to St. John my keeper, together with that blessed blood which remained in his wounds when we took him down from the cross. There come besides innumerable narrations, all of which cannot be condemned as false by any man of sound sense, and yet from these it is beyond doubt that some portion of the blood shed by Christ survives (under another form, however, than that of blood). Such is that redness which is still seen in many instruments of the Lord's passion: the redness is not a bare color left from the sprinkling of blood (for second qualities are not propagated in that way), but the true substance of blood, which first adhered to those instruments and persists fixed to them. Likewise concerning the thorn of the royal chapel of Paris, and the iron of the lance formerly kept at Nuremberg, now at Rome, and concerning the sacred shroud of Turin, and the Holy Face of Rome, or the veil of Veronica, many writers relate. And specially as regards the Turin shroud Julius II declared that the redness which is then seen in it is relics of shed blood, and those who treat of Veronica's sudarium say the same of it. Finally all these things are confirmed from the fact that the flesh of the foreskin is reverently kept and worthily honored under the eyes of the supreme Pontiffs and in the sight of the Roman Curia; for every year in the presence of the Cardinals, in the Easter days, it is shown in the Lateran Basilica, and with a Latin and Italian proclamation from the high pulpit there is set before the people to be adored the blood and water which flowed from the side of Christ dying. Therefore it is not improbable that some substantial particles of the blood of Christ the Lord still remain on earth.

The Adversaries object all those texts of Scripture cited in the superior Conclusion, by which the blood of Christ the Lord is said to have been shed for the price of our redemption and salvation. Truly I answer that those texts are not to be understood of the blood of Christ separated from his body either dead or risen, but of his actual shedding thereof, whereby Christ himself, while still living, offered his own most precious blood to the Father for the redemption of the human race: whence the Apostle attributes the price of our redemption not to the blood alone, but also to prayer, to strong crying and tears and supplications, Heb. 5 v. 7, where of Christ he says: Who in the days of his flesh, with a strong cry and tears, offering up prayers and supplications to him that was able to save him from death, was heard for his reverence: and indeed whereas he was the Son of God, he learned obedience by those things which he suffered: and being consummated, he became, to all that obey him, the cause of eternal salvation. In which words the Apostle taught two things especially: first, that not the blood alone, but also the prayers, supplications, and tears of Christ meriting were offered for our redemption: the other, that the whole merit of Christ and his satisfaction were terminated for us in his death. Being consummated, he says, he became, to all that obey him, the cause of eternal salvation. Whence Heb. 2 v. 10: For it became him, he says, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, who had brought many children into glory, to perfect the author of their salvation by his passion. Whence Tostatus admirably, on Gen. cap. 13, question 351, says the Church was founded rather on Christ living than dead: because, he says, our redemption is from the merits of the passion of Christ, in which passion all foundations instituted by Christ have their efficacy: but the passion of Christ is in the living, and not in the dead, because the dead can suffer nothing sensibly. It is to be noted by the wise: the same blood of Christ from the body of Christ living, and its penalities then profited unto our redemption: but that which was in Christ after death contributes nothing effectively to our redemption, because there is no meritorious action there, but only for signification: just as the burial of the body of the Lord does not contribute effectively or meritoriously to our redemption. And so the blood which flowed from the dead redeemed us not, but the blood which flowed from the living: but that which flowed from the dead signifies redemption and cleansing; it does not effect them.

They object 2. That common axiom from St. Damascene lib. 3, On the Faith cap. 23, where of the divine Word he says: What he once assumed he never dismissed: since therefore he once assumed blood, he never dismissed it.

The Theologians answer commonly that that axiom is to be understood of the principal parts of the humanity, namely soul, body, and its integral parts: whence Richard of Mediavilla, 3 dist. 2 art. 2 qu. 1, says that if a foot had been cut off from the body of Christ, it would always have remained joined to the divinity: but not of parts less principal, and accustomed to flow off from the body, which, since they were no longer parts of the body, had no conjunction with the divinity. Such likewise was the foreskin cut off from the body of Christ in circumcision, which even to this day is kept and shown in the Lateran Church: yet it is not adored as joined to the divinity. So therefore the blood shed in the passion and not resumed by Christ in the resurrection, which is kept at Rome, Mantua, in the monastery of St. Mary of Xanten, and at St. Maximin, although it flowed forth from the body of Christ the Lord at the time of the passion: nevertheless, since it is no longer joined to him, it seems neither on that account joined to the divinity nor to be adored with the worship of latria.

NOTE 1. From the Subtle Doctor in 2 dist. 15: that the faculties of the rational soul are not really distinct from it, as we abundantly proved in the Physics, disp. On the Soul, q. 3, conclusion 2. Which truth St. Augustine plainly hands down lib. 1. De Trinitate, cap. 11, where he says: These three therefore, memory, understanding, and will, since they are not three lives but one life; nor three minds, but one mind; certainly not three substances, but one substance. To him subscribes St. Bernard Sermon 11 on the Canticles: There are, he says, certain things in the contemplation of the soul, memory, understanding, and will. And this triad is the very soul itself. And the Doctor proves this truth: First, because nature always tends to unity and suffers no plurality unless some necessity demands it: but no necessity appears for establishing a real distinction between the soul and its faculties; especially since they cannot exist apart, nor does the soul physically produce its faculties: for if the soul produced its faculties by a real action, it would follow that it was productive independently of them, and consequently such faculties would be superfluous to it; for why should it not be able to elicit its vital acts as immediately as its faculties? From which it is clearly gathered that, if this natural reason is considered, since Christ assumed the rational soul, he must also be said to have assumed intellect and will, and its faculties. Truly, however, since heretics contend against this truth, of whom some, as we saw in the prelude of this Treatise, take away from Christ the Lord a human intellect, others proscribe the human will, contending that he understood and willed only with the intellect and will of the Word: therefore I judged it worthwhile in this Question to demonstrate that Christ the Lord truly had an intellect and human will.

NOTE 2. That the Monothelite heretics, of whom we treated in the prelude of this Treatise, acknowledged two perfect and entire natures in Christ, divine and human, against Apollinaris and Arius, and these not confused, against Eutyches; but whether they truly denied a double will in Christ, acknowledging only the divine; or rather denied only a double action, which they thought was one of both natures, and that divine — is disputed among Theologians. For Vazquez in 3 part. disp. 53 cap. 11 contends that the Monothelites did not deny in the man Christ the power of operating and willing, but only the action.

Their error, he says, was that in Christ there was only the effect of the divine will, but not the human, by whose bidding the lower members were moved to their actions and works: so that the members obeyed only the motion of the divine will, which stood in place of the human; but that there was no human one, whereby, as in us, the members would be moved to their actions. So that they called that effect of the will in Christ, whereby they said the members were moved to their operations, one will, and one operation only, and that theandric, which word St. Dionysius first used in Epistle 4, which is to Caius. And they said the theandric operation in Christ was composed not of two operations, namely of two affections of two wills, which they called operations; but of one operation of the will, and the action of the members, or of another will, which they called operation, or motion, or work.

Which legitimate sense of the error Vazquez boasts himself first to have detected. De Lugo subscribes to him, disp. 25, and some others. But the other Theologians cry out against this, contending that those heretics took away not only the operations of the human will, but this faculty of willing besides. Which truth Petavius proves most copiously from the Holy Fathers themselves lib. 8 cap. 1, especially from the fact that the Saints who attacked those heretics always distinctly assert that they denied two wills and two operations in Christ. Here I bring forward Euthymius alone in the Panoplia near the end of title 15, among other sentences of the Fathers which he collects there: Of those, he says, whose nature is the same, their will and operation are the same: but of those whose nature differs, their will and operation differ. Moreover we do not call those wills and operations hypostatic, nor personal, nor gnomic, that is, the faculty of willing and operating. Nothing indeed is clearer than this, to show that the will and operation about which the question lay between the Monothelites and Catholics is not only action, but also faculty. I add that the heretics themselves denied human will and operation as two things: for in the 6 Synod, Act 8, Macarius Bishop of Antioch, patron of the Monothelites, asked whether he confessed two natural wills and two natural operations in the Incarnation of Christ the Lord, answers that he acknowledges neither two natural wills nor two natural operations.

NOTE 3. That the Monothelites were not the first inventors and asserters of that heresy; for, to pass over the rest, Hippolytus relates in his Collectanea that Simon of Valentine, having rejected his heresy, having constituted a single and singular operation, confounded the divinity and humanity of Christ. Similarly Apollinaris taught one operation in Christ, as Pope Martin reports from some sayings of his in the Lateran Council. For he said: Of those who have one operation, these have one essence: therefore the essence of the Word and of flesh was made one. Before all these the Eutychians shone forth, whom they called by the common name Monophysites, whose offspring we said the Monothelites were in the prelude: for they too, arisen long before this, established one operation and will in Christ, and condemned the two with anathema: thus Severus, mentioned by Pope Agatho in the synodal epistle which is in the Acts of the sixth Synod, pronounced anathema upon the Synod of Chalcedon and upon the epistle of St. Leo to Flavian, and upon all those who say, or have said, that our Lord Jesus Christ after the ineffable and incomprehensible union is one in two natures, and consequently confessing two operations or properties. Yet from the very Monophysites the Monothelites differed in this, that these acknowledged with the Catholics two perfect and entire natures in Christ, as is evident from the 6 Synod, in which this heresy was diligently expounded and damned, inasmuch as in Act 6 Macarius of Antioch, chief of that faction, in that profession of faith which he published at command, distinctly preaches that Christ after the Incarnation exists in two perfect natures without confusion and division, in one person and one hypostasis, nowhere differing by the removal of the union of the natures: but rather the natures concurring into one person and one hypostasis with each property preserved. Those heretics, however, did not agree among themselves in rendering the reason of their heresy and making its exposition. For some established a certain operation of God and man in Christ, which they called both Divic and Theandric: others acknowledged two operations and wills, as Pope Agatho of Rome relates in the Synodal Epistle, which is recited in Act 1 of the Synod; others decreed that neither one nor two should be said, as in the Ecthesis of Heraclius, and the Typus of Constans, of which we treated in the prelude of this Treatise. — There remains therefore to be proved against these and other heretics, that there were truly in Christ two intellects, two wills, and the operations of those faculties; which we shall accomplish in the two following Conclusions.

First conclusion. — Christ had a twofold intellect, divine and human. This is against the Apollinarians contending that the divine Word did not assume a human mind, or faculty of understanding, whose office they affirmed the divine Word to discharge.

It is proved first from sacred Scripture, by all those oracles wherein it appears that Christ the Lord exercised the operations of the human intellect, and especially those in which he is said to have wondered. Thus Matth. 8, he wondered at the faith of the Centurion; which wonder, the Theologians teach, befitted Christ the Lord as regards experimental knowledge: just as he who knows a coming eclipse by science no less wonders when he knows it by experience. From which I thus argue: Christ could not wonder by reason of the divine intellect, since we wonder only at those things whose cause does not lie hidden; nor yet by reason of the sensitive soul, whose part it is not to investigate and uncover the causes of things: therefore it remains that that wonder befitted Christ on the part of the rational soul endowed with its intellect: and therefore in Christ there was a human intellect. — Second, this same thing is clear from those places in which Christ the Lord is related to have had knowledge and wisdom, counsel, and the other perfections pertaining to human intellect; for none of these could belong to him by reason of the divine intellect; especially if you attend to that argument of experimental knowledge, according to which it is said Luke 2, Jesus advanced in wisdom, and age, and grace with God and men. — Finally this Catholic truth is gathered from those oracles in which it is held that Christ the Lord prayed, and spent the night in prayer to God; for prayer is the elevation of a created mind to God. — Add to these what we said in the 1 Question, demonstrating that Christ assumed the entire human nature, because he assumed everything that was to be healed: but the intellectual faculty was wounded through sin, as was said in the fourth volume, where we demonstrated that all the faculties of the soul are vitiated in many respects through original sin: therefore, that it might be healed, it behooved to be assumed by Christ together with the soul itself. There is nothing weighty, or at least but light, that heretics can thrust against this truth.

Second conclusion. — Christ truly has a divine and human will. This is determined of faith in very many Councils against the Monothelites, especially in the 6 Synod, where this heresy was examined and proscribed, and in the Lateran Council under Martin I, Consultation 5, Canons 12, 13, and 14, and in the VII Synod Act 7, and in the confession of faith wherein the aforesaid heretics are condemned; and in the Florentine Council in the decree of Eugene.

And it is proved above all from Scripture by the testimonies by which two wills are intimated in Christ. Thus Matth. 26, not as I will, but as thou; Luke 22, not my will, but thine be done: John 6, I came down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him that sent me. He had therefore a will subject to the Father: not the divine, therefore the human. Likewise from those oracles in which Christ is read to have obeyed: thus Phil. 2, made obedient unto death. Hebrews 5, He learned obedience by those things which he suffered. For obedience is an act of will: not the divine, because obedience acknowledges a superior. But God has no superior: therefore the human. Third, the same truth is confirmed from those places in which Christ is said to have merited salvation for us. For merit pertains to the will: not the divine, because merit is of one tending toward perfection: therefore the human. — Finally it is gathered from those places in which Christ is said to have performed studious and praiseworthy acts, as an exemplar which we ought to imitate: such studious acts he could not exercise without a human will. For if there is no human will, neither will there be free choice; without liberty, moreover, an act can be neither praiseworthy nor studious.

It is proved secondly by all those arguments wherewith the Holy Fathers attacked the heresy of the Monothelites: the first of which is formed from the fact that the Monothelites acknowledged a double perfect nature in Christ. For thus the Fathers of the 4th Synod in their discourse to Emperor Constantine:

Perfect therefore in divinity and in humanity, perfect according to the ancient traditions of the Fathers and the divine formula sanctioned at Chalcedon we preach: and as we have received two natures, so also we acknowledge two natural wills, and his natural operations. For we do not forge to assert either nature in Christ devoid of will or operation in his Incarnation, lest, losing their properties, we perish the natures into one.

St. Damascene uses the same argument lib. 3 cap. 15, saying: The difference of the natures being preserved, the operations also will be preserved, for no nature is devoid of operation, etc. In the same way reasons St. Maximus in the Epistle to Nicander:

How, he says, if nature properly God, and nature properly man, were the same, had He not also a divine will and operation by proper nature, and a human will and operation by proper nature, deficient in neither of these according to nature; through which, preferring the names congruent with things, and again affirming the very things by these names, He was manifestly acknowledged as the same, obtaining and exercising both divine and human things naturally, and thence reasoned to be what He was believed to be from, and in, and whereby? Whereas if natural will and natural operation be taken away, who will be God, or man? Who will be shown to be this and that according to substance, if he retains not the property of both natures without any defect?

They prove secondly: If there were only one will in Christ, it would be either simple or composite. If simple, it would be proper either to God alone, or to man alone: if composite, many absurdities would follow from it, as that it would be created and uncreated at once, and then that Christ would be neither God nor man, but something mixed of both: which argument St. Maximus thus presses in Euthymius title 18:

If only one will in Him, says he, and one operation is said of us, we shall plainly profess that the same is either not by nature man, but God only, or by nature man only, and not God; or neither man nor God, just as if we perchance said a natural will of God. Either this will be altogether divine, or human: if divine, then by it the divine Word naturally willeth, showing Himself by nature God only, and of one will with His generator, not man: for nature does not suffer that from that which is by nature divine, that which is by nature human should take its own proper form and character: even as it cannot come to pass that through that which is according to substance human, that which is divine should be distinguished in substance. Nor will the reason of consequence differ, if we say that the same will of Christ is human.

The Monothelites objected first indeed certain authorities of the ancient Fathers. — But it was demonstrated in the VI Synod that these were partly fictitious, partly fraudulently contrived and depraved by them; partly finally misinterpreted and twisted elsewhere; for their arts and calumnies there were openly detected and convicted: for certain books falsely attributed by those men to the ancients are mentioned. So act. 3 and 12 and 11, the Epistle of Mennas of Constantinople to Pope Vigilius concerning one will of Christ: and two books of Vigilius himself, one to the Emperor Justinian, the other to his wife Theodora, asserting one operation. In action 8 and 5 of the same Synod many passages collected from various monuments of the Holy Fathers by Macarius of Antioch are alleged, which, compared with authentic codices of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, the Synod discovered had been gathered in bad faith and truncated, and therefore they were condemned by the common suffrages of all. Further, the testimonies which flatter their heresy under some appearance are few. First indeed they drew from St. Cyril book 4 on John, where that great light of the Church says: Christ showed one kindred operation through both natures. — But St. Martin the Pope answers this objection in Euthymius:

One, he says, he calls action by reason of union: but kindred by reason of the parts; inasmuch as it was of the same efficient dominion over all, and of the attraction of holy flesh: for by both these God the Word manifestly showed it, in that He quickened through the flesh, demonstrating it to be vivific through the whole. Even as fire burning through iron, by that vision whereby it is joined with it, makes the iron endowed with the power of burning. So that therefore the burning is thereafter not of fire alone according to nature: but also of the iron by reason of the union: and similarly the divine operation of the Word in miracles comes not on account of its own nature only; but also of His holy flesh itself, by reason of the hypostatic conjunction with it: since He made it partaker with Himself of action in performing divine things.

They objected further the testimony of Gregory of Nyssa, as may be seen in the 6 Synod, Action 12, who writing against Eunomius asserts: That the Divinity itself wrought through the body which He put on the common salvation truly of all, so that the suffering of the flesh might be an operation of God. Consonant with this is that saying of Philo in the book De Cherubim, where he says: It is proper to God to do, which it is unlawful to attribute to anything made: but proper to the creature to suffer. From these they gathered that the human nature in Christ was not operative, but that the divine only operated in Him. — But St. Maximus in the disputation against Pyrrhus, and St. Damascene book 3 chapter 13, turn back that argument upon the heretics: for if therefore there ought to be one operation in Christ because action belongs properly to the Divinity alone, but passion to humanity; the same necessity of consequence will make that there be only one nature of God in the same Christ, if namely that alone operates, and the created alone is passible: since nature is gathered only through motion and operation. Therefore where there is the operation of one nature only, there also one nature only: nor does it matter that every created nature suffers; for this does not hinder it from being also active, for every created agent, especially corporeal, while acting undergoes passion.

They objected 3. Every instrument has no action from itself, but only from the principal agent: but the human nature, according to the Holy Fathers, is called the instrument of the Divinity: therefore from itself it was not operative, but only served, as instrument, the operation of the Divinity itself. The major stands from the Philosophers.

But they proved the minor from St. Cyril in the dialogue De Incarnatione Verbi, part 5, where he says: Christ used His own flesh as an instrument for works of the flesh, and for natural infirmities and other such things, which were without reprehension, likewise His own soul for human passions devoid of vice: for He is said to have hungered and to have borne the labors of long journeys, etc. The same has St. Athanasius in oration 1: Being God, he says, He had His own body, and using this as an instrument, He was made man for our sake. Therefore those things are said to belong properly to the flesh itself because they were inherent in it, such as hungering, thirsting, etc.

I distinguish the major: An artificial instrument, which lacks a principle of acting, and is moved only by the impulse of the mover, I concede: a natural, or substantive instrument, which is endowed with its own form and virtue and power of effecting, and has true affection of itself, and converts into the work to be done, I deny. Similarly, distinguishing the minor, I deny the consequence. For the human nature in Christ, if it is an instrument of the divinity, is not an artificial but a natural instrument; because it exercises its own action from itself, nor merely undergoes. — Add that since Christ had operations of a twofold kind, some indeed purely natural, as cognition, volition, speech, touch, etc.; others exceeding the power of nature, as all miraculous operations which Christ performed either by touch or by word, as the curing of infirmities, the raising of the dead, and other such miracles, whose natural cause was not the human nature; the humanity itself was the principal cause of the former actions: but not a mere instrument; but the latter actions the Divinity alone wrought, and the human nature used the action, namely touch or speech, for accomplishing those marvelous effects, as an instrument.

Finally they objected: If Christ had had two wills, He would also have had a battle of wills, since the human would have resisted the divine, and consequently He would not have been wholly without sin, for everyone sins who struggles against the divine will: but to assert this is injurious to Christ the Holy of Holies: therefore, etc. — I deny the major, for although Christ had two wills, it does not follow thence that the human resisted the divine; nay rather it was subject to it in all things always: since Christ was made obedient to the eternal Father unto death, Philippians 2. Hence Matthew 26 He said: Not as I will, but as thou wilt, and Luke 22: Not my will, but thine, be done. Wherefore He testifies John 5: I seek not my own will, but the will of him that sent me. Add that by this argument the Monothelites ought no less to have denied the sentient appetite in Christ: for this appetite seems much more easily to war with the divine will than the human will does; nor thence, as the heretics wished, need it be guarded that Christ be shaken into sin: for, as St. Ambrose noted in book De Incarnationis dominicae sacramento, chapter 7, He who delivered others from the slippery fall of the flesh, could He fear lest He too be conquered by a certain dominion of that flesh?

They objected moreover that the supreme Roman Pontiffs, chiefly Vigilius and Honorius, stood on their side and patronized their sentiment, as appears in the disputation of Pyrrhus with St. Maximus. — But how false and mendacious that assertion was, that it may appear more clearly, it is worth while here to examine more fully whether truly those two supreme Pontiffs stood on the side of the Monothelites, which I shall indeed perform in the two following paragraphs.

§ I. — Whether Vigilius the Roman Pontiff was a Monothelite.

Thus he is accused by Pyrrhus in the disputation with St. Maximus the martyr, affirming that that Pontiff by his vote approved the little book offered by Mennas Patriarch of Constantinople, in which it is affirmed that there is one will in Christ. But the most holy Martyr purges this calumny in these words:

I wonder how you, being Patriarchs, wish to lie: he who preceded you wrote in his letters to Honorius that he had indeed been warned concerning that little book, but that it was neither offered nor shown to him; but you yourself said in your Epistle to Pope John that it was offered and shown, and even read through the quaestor Constantine: which therefore shall we believe? You, or him whom you succeeded? For both cannot have spoken the truth.

Whence when Pyrrhus granted that it was so written by Sergius his predecessor, he was forced to confess that Vigilius could not be blamed on this head.

You will urge: Truly Mennas offered his little book to Vigilius, as is clear from the epistle of Sergius to Cyrus Bishop of Alexandria, which was read in the sixth Synod, act 12, wherein it is affirmed that that little book was handed to Vigilius himself by Mennas. For he says:

When we had signified to him by our rescripts those things which were within our knowledge, sending also the acclamatory discourse of Mennas of holy memory once Patriarch: this, for the preserving of that royal city, offered by him, here preceding the present Vigilius of holy memory, predecessor of your holiness, having also various paternal testimonies concerning the one operation and one will of our Savior Christ.

Therefore truly that little book was offered to Vigilius, and approved by him. — I answer, denying the consequence; for although it were true that the little book was offered to Vigilius himself, it does not nevertheless follow that it was approved by him. I answer secondly, that in that little book of Mennas those words about the one operation and the one will of our Savior Christ were added by the Greek Monothelites: for when the Monothelites had produced this little book in the VI Synod act 3, as read, namely that there is one will in Christ, then, as is related there, rising up, the Legates of the Apostolic See cried out that the codex had been vitiated by the Monothelites, and that that epistle, or little book, in the name of Mennas to Vigilius had been added, because the genuine acts themselves did not contain it; and they brought forward for this a certain sure argument, that Mennas died in the year 21 of Emperor Justinian; but the fifth

Synod, at whose beginning the epistle of Mennas is said to have been read, was assembled only in the year 27 of his empire. Hence it must necessarily be inferred that a little book could not have been sent by Mennas to Vigilius at the time of the fifth Synod, since Mennas had already died six years before the Synod was assembled. Moreover the falsification of that little book and the imposture appeared by example, as is clear from the acts of that 3rd session, where these things are had:

And then inspecting, the most pious Emperor with the most glorious Judges together with certain ones from the holy Synod, Bishops beloved of God, and opening and discerning, they found three quires applied at the beginning of the book, not having the notation of number which according to custom is affixed upon quires: but in the fourth quire having the first number, and in the following quire the second, and third, with a fourth subsequent; otherwise, and unlike, were the letters of the same, in the beginnings of the submitted quires, in which was contained the discourse called Mennas to Vigilius.

From which appears the fraud and craftiness of the heretics. — But when the Monothelites pressed it in defense of their error, in act 12, so that again that little book might be read, the Judges and Council said:

Superfluous has been the present reading of the discourse, which is altogether fictitious and false, because in the deposited records of this venerable Patriarchate the discourse of Mennas of most holy memory Antistes of this royal city, called Mennas to Vigilius, did not appear among the letters.

In the same Act 3 it is again objected by the Monothelites that Vigilius wrote two books: one to Emperor Justinian, the other truly to Theodora Augusta wife of Justinian; in which books was contained: But we anathematize Theodore, who was Bishop of Mopsuestia, as one who always stood aloof from the Church, and an adversary of the Holy Fathers, who does not confess that the Word of God was made incarnate, that is, that Christ is one subsistence, and one person, and one operation. The Monothelites moreover added that these books are found in Act 7 of the 6 Synod. — But the Legates of the Roman See again accused the Monothelites of falsity; because they had plainly added "and one operation": and they set forth the argument for demonstrating the falsity and imposture; because if mention of one operation had been made there, doubtless that would have been inserted in the definition of the Council. — Besides, the Synod itself ought to have professed the error of that same one operation, seeing that Vigilius was received by the Synod. Which since it cannot be said, neither must that be thought of Vigilius. — Whence in Act 12 of the same Council, while the same little books were again brought forward, thus the Judges, thus also the Council:

We hold in memory that then (that is, in Act 3) they pursued, who on the part of the Apostolic See of ancient Rome proclaimed that the 7th Act had been falsified, because two fallacious little books are contained in it, as if offered by Vigilius, to Justinian, and Theodora of pious memory.

From these things it stands that Vigilius the Roman Pontiff is falsely accused of the error of the Monothelites. But as regards Honorius, the matter is far more difficult, as will appear in the following §.

§ I. — Whether Honorius professed the dogma of the Monothelites and patronized its assertors.

The affirmative part is defended not only by heretics but also by certain Catholic theologians with Melchior Cano book 6 De Locis Theologicis, last chapter; who judge that Honorius truly patronized the error of the Monothelites: Both because in his two Epistles, which were read in Action 12 and 13 of the sixth Synod, he approves the doctrine of Sergius, chief of the Monothelites, and decrees that it is not to be said that Christ has two wills or two operations: And because in that same VI Synod he is condemned as a heretic, because, say the Fathers of the Council Act. 13, we find through the writings which he made to Sergius that he followed his mind in all things, and confirmed impious dogmas; whereupon, decreeing, the same Council expunctuated his name from the sacred diptychs, and his writings were burned with fire as profane and pernicious to the soul: Then because in the VII Synod, in the final Action, anathema is said against Honorius together with Sergius and the other Monothelites, as is read in the Epistle of the same Synod to all the Clergy: Then because in Action 7 of the eighth Synod there was read and approved the Epistle of the Roman Council under Adrian II, in which it is related that Honorius was judged after death by the VI Synod because he had been accused of heresy: Finally because from Agatho's Epistle to the Emperor Constantine, which is found in Act. 1 of the VI Synod, anathema is said against Honorius as of the Monothelites; and from Leo II's Epistle to the same Emperor, which stands at the end of that same Council, it is written that Honorius died in the heresy of the Monothelites, and therefore had been condemned by the just sentence of anathema.

Nevertheless, not notwithstanding these things, the more numerous and more noble company of Doctors protests, together with Ecclesiastical Annalists and Historians, whose sentiment I judge to be truer and more certain; that we may prove it more efficaciously and demonstrate it more clearly, three things must here be demonstrated severally: First indeed, that Honorius truly was not an assertor of the error of the Monothelites; Second, that he is not to be accused of the same error on the ground that at the beginning of the controversy he communicated with Sergius by letters given and received; Third finally, that in the VI Synod he was not at all condemned and proscribed as a heretic. But that these may appear more clearly, those things must be repeated which we said at the beginning of this Treatise concerning the origin, propagation, and condemnation of the heresy of the Monothelites. Especially must be recalled that when Cyrus Patriarch of Alexandria had convoked a Synod under pretext of recalling to the Church the heretics the Nestorians, in it it was defined in chapter 1 that there is one God-man operation in Christ; whose Synod's acts he sent as soon as possible to Sergius Bishop of Constantinople, together with an Epistle full of flattery, which was read in the VI Synod Action 13; but when this definition of the one operation of Christ had become known to Sophronius Patriarch of Jerusalem, he strove with all his might with Cyrus that he would rescind it; and since he could not obtain this, he wrote to Sergius of Constantinople, and also to Honorius the supreme Pontiff, that that definition of the Alexandrian Synod be rescinded. But when Sergius had received those letters from Sophronius, he wrote to Honorius the celebrated Epistle which is found in Action 12 of the VI Synod, in which he explains that for the good of peace it seems to him that both opinions should be repressed by silence, whether that which defends one will and one operation in Christ, or that which admits two: yet he submits his own opinion in all things to the judgment and censure of the Apostolic See. Having received the letters from Sergius, Honorius wrote a twofold Epistle to him, in which the adversaries will have it that he patronized the Monothelites. Honorius dying, Severinus was substituted in his place: whom Ioannes IV succeeded, who having convened a Council at Rome condemned the Monothelites. Ioannes dying, his successor Theodorus anathematized Paulus Bishop of Constantinople because he favored the Monothelites, and deprived him of his Episcopate. Martin, successor of Theodorus, convenes a Lateran Council, in which the Monothelites are again condemned, and it is defined that there are two wills and operations in Christ, in hatred of whose assertion Martin is driven into exile, wherein amid various hardships he merits the crown of martyrdom.

But when after his death Constantinus Pogonatus, truly orthodox, held the Empire, he treated first with Domnus successor of Martin, then with Agatho, who had succeeded Domnus upon his death, about convening a general Council. Therefore the VI general Synod is convened at Constantinople: the Legates of the Apostolic See preside, the Emperor himself also is present with graver men. The Monothelites, whose chief was Macarius Patriarch of Antioch, are heard peacefully. Finally it is defined that there are two wills and two actions in Christ, and anathema is pronounced against the authors and principal holders of that heresy.

Honorius is not to be called a Monothelite on account of the Epistles given and received with Sergius at the beginning of the controversy.

Proof: No one ought to be called a heretic who communicates by letters given and received with some Bishop who is celebrated by all and held as a Catholic, and falls under no suspicion of another's error: but when Honorius received the Epistle from Sergius and wrote back to him, Sergius was held by all as a Catholic, and fell under no suspicion of anyone's error: therefore on account of communication with him, Honorius is not to be condemned as a heretical Monothelite. The major stands: otherwise all the holy Fathers who communicated with heretics before they fell under suspicion of error would have to be accused of heresy, as Jerome with Rufinus, Augustine with Julian. The minor, however, is proved, namely that Sergius at that time was held as a Catholic and the best Pastor of the Church of Constantinople. It is proved, I say, first from the Epistle of Sophronius Bishop of Jerusalem to Sergius, where he celebrates him with many encomiums:

To you, he says, we send (the confession of faith) who know not only how to discern approved dogmas from adulterated ones, but can perfectly supply what is lacking, on account of perfect charity in Christ. I shall proceed therefore to say those things which I learned, fostered and nourished from the beginning in the holy Catholic Church, and received from my tenderest years, and to hear them preach divinely, etc.

Therefore at that time Sergius was held as a Catholic. — Next, he who submits his doctrine to the judgment of the Roman Pontiff, nor does it contain manifest error, cannot be held a heretic: but Sergius in his Epistle to Honorius submits his doctrine, containing no manifest error, to his judgment; for he says near the end:

We exhort you, most holy ones, to read all these things, and following the charity pleasing to God and most full, which is in us now also, if you find anything more or less, to fill it up through the grace given you by God, and by your holy syllables together with desirable charity preserve, let it be signified concerning those things which we have said above that they please.

By which it stands how humbly Sergius submits himself to the judgment of Honorius, while he asks that the Roman Pontiff himself, if he should know anything less or more in the Epistle, add likewise or take away; although these things were put forward subtilely by him, lest he be detected as a heretic. — Finally, there was nothing in the Epistle of Sergius to Honorius from which it could be judged that Sergius himself patronized the Monothelites: for he declares his opinion so that he seems only to pursue the good of peace and to provide for the tranquillity of the Church: since elsewhere he attested his sound and integral faith concerning the divinity and humanity of Christ in the unity of person; for he says:

You truly considering that from this contention begins to blaze forth among certain here, and knowing that always from such contentions those dissensions of hereses have been effected; we judged it necessary to bestow all study upon calming and cutting away that superfluous conflict of words, and we wrote to the often named most holy Patriarch of Alexandria, that after he composed unity with those who formerly separated themselves, with His aid, he permit thereafter no one to bring forth one or two operations in Christ our God, but rather, as the holy and universal Councils delivered, to confess the one same only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ true God operating, as well divinely as humanly, and every operation worthy of God and worthy of man proceeding undividedly from the one same incarnate Word of God, and reducing to one same; because the voice of one operation, although said by certain holy Fathers, nevertheless seemed strange, and to disturb the ears of certain suspecting that this is brought forth confusedly unto the perdition and according to subsistence of the two natures united in Christ our God, which never is, nor ever was. Similarly however, the saying of two operations scandalizes many, as issued by no Saint, nor by probable institutors of the Church. Moreover, its consequence is to preach two wills, having contrarieties mutually among themselves, as though indeed God the Word willeth salvifically the passion to be fulfilled, but His humanity resisting His will, and opposing it, and accordingly two contraries willing being introduced; which is impious. For it is impossible in one same subject two wills simultaneously, and contraries toward this very thing, to subsist. For the salutary doctrine of the Fathers bearing God instructs worthily, that never did the intellectually animated flesh of the Lord separately, and from its own appetite contrary to the assent of the Word of God united to itself according to subsistence, effect its natural motion, but when, and what sort, and how much God the Word Himself wished. And (that it may be said more fully) even as our body is ruled and adorned and disposed by our intellectual and rational soul; so also in the Lord Christ the whole admixture of His humanity moved always by the very Deity of the Word in all things, was movable by God, according to Gregory of Nyssa saying against Eunomius thus: according as He was God the Son, He is assuredly impassible and immortal: but if any passion of Him is said in the Gospel, certainly through the humanity, which underwent the passion, He wrought things of this kind. For truly the Deity operates through the body which is around Him the salvation of all, that there be indeed in the flesh the passion, but the operation of God.

But he relates that there he seems to disapprove the opinion of Sophronius blaming the definition of the Alexandrian Synod, and to approve the opposite definition and the sentiment of Cyrus: for that he does only to signify how much tranquillity that definition gave to the Church of Alexandria: which peace indeed he judged hard to disturb by rescinding that definition of the Alexandrian Synod.

How, he says, would it not be hard and very burdensome, when to dissolve this and overturn it was going to destroy all that concord and unity, which had been well effected, as much in the great city of Alexandria as through all the provinces subject to it, which had at no time up till now acquiesced, even to make simple mention of the name of our divine and laudable Father Leo, or of the holy and great universal Council of Chalcedon; now truly preaching this with illustrious and great voice in the divine mysteries of the Masses?

Therefore there is no reason why from thence Sergius should be accused by Honorius of any error. Wherefore Honorius had no cause at that time why he should withdraw himself from communication with Sergius, and consequently therefore is not to be charged with the error of the Monothelites.

Nor is he to be reproached with error on account of the doctrine expressed in his letters to Sergius.

For Honorius, as we said above, gave two Epistles to Sergius himself: but in neither of them is contained the error of the Monothelites, nor anything that tends to the patronage of that same error: therefore Honorius is not to be condemned on account of those Epistles.

The minor is proved: First indeed from the prior Epistle: since in it he teaches: First, that Christ the Lord is God and man, who shone forth in flesh full of divine miracles, He Himself, and having become fleshly, fully God and man. Secondly he confesses that He suffered passions and reproaches not in both natures, since it stands that the divinity can undergo no human passions, and therefore His humanity was assumed not from Heaven but from the holy Genetrix of God. Thirdly he teaches that on account of the ineffable conjunction of the human and divine nature God is said to have suffered, and the humanity to have descended from heaven: For, he says, He Himself speaks thus in the Gospel: No man ascendeth into heaven, but he that descendeth from heaven, the Son of man who is in heaven, surely instructing us that flesh passible was united to the Divinity ineffably and singularly, and discretely and without confusion, so indivisely believed to be joined, that assuredly it may be known to be united wonderfully with marvelous keeping of the differences of both natures. Fourthly he teaches Christ the Lord to have wrought divine things mediately by humanity naturally united to the Word of God, and the same to have wrought human things ineffably and singularly. By which he signifies that on account of the communication of idioms he believes one willing and operating in Christ, as one is His person: although he asserts that on account of the diverse properties of two natures simultaneously indivisely and without confusion conjoined, equally distinct and unconfused wills also are found in Him. — Finally, he confesses that there is one operator of divinity and humanity: Because, he says, that our Lord Jesus Christ Son Word of God, through whom all things were made, Himself is the one operator of Divinity and humanity, the sacred Letters abundantly demonstrate more clearly: but whether on account of the works of divinity and of humanity twofold operations ought derivatively to be said or understood, that pertains not to us, leaving those things to Grammarians, who are wont to vend exquisite names by speaking them to little ones. Therefore Honorius professes one operator in Christ, saying that the unity of operation agrees not to the person, but to the operator. So St. John Damascene book 3 chapter 11 treating of these things teaches that by reason of one person there cannot be said one will, but one willing, nor one operation, but one operating, namely in two natures, which while he asserts indivise, without confusion, and inconvertibly conjoined, he plainly necessarily introduces two operations and wills. In these things indeed nothing more Catholic could be said, nothing more pious and holy, nothing finally in those times could seem more usefully devised for preserving peace in the Churches. Which Catholic truth indeed (I shall say freely with Campensis, says Baronius) not only could no Synod ever condemn, but if an Angel from heaven should announce another thing besides what has been said, let him receive anathema inflicted on such by the Apostle.

You will say: The same Pontiff in the same Epistle openly said: whence also we confess one will of our Lord Jesus Christ. — St. Maximus answers in the disputation against Pyrrhus that he said one will not of humanity and divinity together, but of humanity alone; for when Sergius had written that certain men called the two wills in Christ contraries, Honorius answered, says the holy Martyr, we said that Christ had not two contrary wills; of flesh, I say, and of spirit, as we have after sin, but only one, which naturally signified His humanity; which response indeed is confirmed from the very Epistle of Honorius, for when he had said, We confess one will of our Lord Jesus Christ; immediately he subjoins:

Because chiefly by the divinity was our nature assumed, not guilty, that certainly which before sin was created never after the transgression vitiated. And below: it was not therefore assumed, as we prefaced, a vitiated nature by the Savior, which would resist the law of His mind: but He came to seek and to save what had perished, namely the vitiated nature of humankind: for there was not another law in the members, or diverse or contrary will to the Savior; because He was born above the law of the human condition. And since it is written: I came not to do my own will, but the will of him that sent me, the Father, and: not what I will, but what thou wilt, Father, and other such like: these are not of diverse will, but of dispensation of the humanity assumed; for those things were said on our account, whereby He gave example that we may attain His footsteps, the pious Master imbuing disciples, that each of us prefer not his own will, but rather the will of the Lord to all.

These words of Honorius: therefore when you hear Honorius say one will, you must understand him so to speak with respect to the two mutually warring contrary wills toward evil and good.

You will insist: Honorius in the same Epistle says that Sergius wrote rightly and providently to Sophronius when he took away the novelty of the word, evidently disapproving the dictum of Sophronius who admitted two wills in Christ. — I answer, Honorius did not more blame Sophronius because he admitted two wills than the adversaries who professed one will in Christ; but he wished only that for the sake of preserving peace the assertion of one or of two wills be silent: For you, he says, we have perceived from the sacred Letters not one operation or two, not one Jesus Christ, and His Holy Spirit, but multiformly we have known Him operating. By which he signifies that indeed one operator of divinity and humanity must be said. — But whether there were two wills or operations he was unwilling to define, for a twofold cause: The first is, because in defining new things one must proceed cautiously: but he judged that thing new: for neither in the Gospels nor in the Synods did the matter seem clear to him.

It behooves, he says, that dogmas be referred back to these Ecclesiastical ones, which neither synodal decrees examining above, nor canonical authorities ever condemned: that anyone should presume that one or two virtues of Christ God are preached, which neither Evangelic or Apostolic letters, nor the synodal examination held concerning these, ever terminated.

The second is, lest if two operations, he might seem to favor Nestorius; if one, Eutyches.

And we, he says, according to the sanctions of the divine Oracles ought to think or hope, refuting namely those things which even now are known to generate scandals in the holy Churches of God, and neither being offended at the appellation of two operations, following Nestorians, they judge our pride to have been cut down: nor certainly, if again we judged that one operation of our Lord Jesus Christ must be confessed, should we be thought to confess with most eager ears the foolish madness of the Eutychianists.

The second cause why he decreed nothing concerning this controversy was perhaps lest by this definition the Ecclesiastical peace be disturbed and the unity of the Churches be utterly taken away. Add to these that Honorius would seem no more blameworthy on this account because he judged that both assertions, of one or of two wills, were to be kept silent than Sophronius himself, who judged the same silence to be observed: but Sophronius is accused by no one of heresy because he judged abstention from that new manner of speaking to be necessary: therefore neither on that account ought Honorius be blamed. That Sophronius however consented to abstain from this formula of speaking stands from the epistle of Sergius to Honorius, where he says:

Finally it stood and pleased that the aforesaid venerable Sophronius should henceforth move no discourse concerning one or two operations, but let it suffice him with the cautious and well-trodden tradition and doctrine of the Holy Fathers prestated. Content with these things, therefore, the often named venerable Man, certifying that he keeps these, etc.

Similarly in the posterior epistle of Honorius there is nothing for which at that time he could be accused of heresy: since in it only these things are contained:

The appellation of one or of twofold operation newly introduced let it be removed from the preaching of the faith: for those who say these things, what else do they suspect than that, according to the appellation of one or twofold nature of Christ God, so also one or twofold operation is suspected, on account of the simplicity of men, and that inextricable labyrinths of questions are to be cut away, rather than that one or two operations are defined in the Mediator of God and men? But both natures in one Christ conjoined in natural unity operating with communion of each other we ought to confess as operating and operatrix, and indeed the divine, whereby they are of God, operating, and the human, whereby they are of flesh, executing, teaching neither dividedly nor confusedly or convertibly the nature of God into man made, nor the human converted into God, but confessing whole the differences of the natures. And below: Taking away therefore, as we said, the scandal of the novel invention, neither does it behoove us detaining to preach one or two operations, but instead of one (which certainly they say) operation, it behooves us truthfully to confess one operator Christian the Lord in both natures, and instead of two operations, removed the appellation of twofold operation, rather those very two natures, namely of Divinity and flesh assumed in one person of the only-begotten Son of God the Father without confusion, indivisibly, and inconvertibly with us preach as operating properly. And this indeed we have provided to be intimated to your most blessed fraternity, that we might show to your unanimity of holiness the purpose of one confession, that assuredly breathing in one spirit, we may inspire with equal document of faith. He adds moreover: writing also to the common Brothers Cyrus and Sophronius antistes lest they seem to insist upon or dwell upon the new word, namely the appellation of one or twofold operation; but erased the appellation of this new word, may they preach one Christ the Lord in both natures, divine or human, operating. Although this, which the aforesaid brother and Conbishop of ours Sophronius sent to Us, We instructed, lest they strive to preach princes of two operations; which most urgently they promised the aforesaid man would do, if also Cyrus Brother and Conbishop of ours shall depart from the appellation of one operation.

So far from the posterior epistle of Honorius to Sergius the sixth Synod; from which it appears that he signified that the appellation itself of one or of two operations must be equally kept silent by either party, for the good of peace: which also the Legates of Sophronius promise to observe. Therefore since Sophronius on account of the imposed silence concerning either expression, nor on account of communication and consent with Sergius fell anywhere into suspicion of error; so neither ought Honorius on account of the same come into suspicion of heresy: especially since with this reason Honorius consulted peace so that he committed no prejudice to truth. For prejudice could be done to truth only in one of these two ways, either because he had confirmed the heresy of the Monothelites concerning the one will and operation of Christ: but not so; because he expressly forbids saying one unique, just as he forbids saying two: or because by his simulation and indifference he might seem secretly to favor the Eutychians: but not so, because he wills expressly that we believe both natures in Christ conjoined in natural unity, neither dividedly nor confusedly or convertibly the nature of God into man, nor the human converted into God; but whole the differences of the natures: therefore so far is he from being judged a heretic on account of the epistles, that rather it stands, as we rightly established, that he at that time prudently provided for the affairs of the Church, lest namely the Church long vexed by the heretics the Eutychians and Nestorians, and not yet enjoying peace firm and solid in every respect, suffer herself to be harassed by new controversies arising.

It is more probable that Honorius in the sixth Synod was not reckoned among the heretics, nor condemned.

This last part of the vindication of Honorius appears far more difficult of proof than the preceding ones; because in the acts of the sixth Synod, which circulate through the universal Church and are in the hands of all, he is read to have been reckoned among the heretics; which some subsequent general Synods also did, as we warned at the beginning of this controversy. Nevertheless I judge it must be said with the more noble company of Doctors and Annalists of the Church, truer, that the name of Honorius was inserted by the Monothelites themselves, together with the other condemned holders of their error, that they might the more easily elevate the authority and definition of the sixth Synod, and summon patronage for their pretensed innocence and just condemnation. For they valued so highly the memory of Honorius, that even until now Monothelite Patriarchs of Constantinople preserved his name inserted in their diptychs, the names of his successors expunctuated, by whom they had been condemned: but toward defending this opinion I am moved by arguments not lighter, but, as it seems to me, most weighty.

First I recall from the Lateran Synod celebrated under Martin Pope and Martyr in the year of Christ 649, that is, ten years after the death of Honorius: to which Synod one hundred and five Bishops were present, the supreme Pontiff himself presiding, in which the cause of the Monothelites was exactly weighed and treated; and after diligent inquisition there were condemned together with the heresy, and with their writings, Theodore Bishop of Pharan, Cyrus Patriarch of Alexandria, Sergius, Pyrrhus, and Paulus successors of the Patriarch of Constantinople, authors and champions of the error: but concerning Honorius there was so deep a silence that he suffered no calumny whatsoever from the heretics concerning heresy, nor was he assailed by the holy Synod even with the lightest suspicion: since otherwise Honorius would not have escaped the same sentence with the other condemned authors and patrons of that error; or certainly Martin with the Council would have gravely failed in his duty, who accepted the person of the same to the prejudice of truth; which indeed no one can judge without crime of so great a Pontiff and glorious Martyr. For with this exception he would have approved the doctrine of Honorius himself, and thus by silence seemed to approve what by decreeing he disapproved: therefore if the silence of that Council is the most valid testimony of the innocence of Honorius, is it credible that the sixth Synod could have pronounced sentence against that innocent Pontiff, and numbered him with the heretics? What knowledge could the sixth Synod have concerning the mind and sentiment of Honorius which escaped the Fathers of the Lateran Council? For the memory and doctrine of Honorius was more recent among these than among those; and with easier negotiation the Lateran Fathers could know his mind, inasmuch as they still had very many survivors of the familiars of Honorius, with whom Honorius had treated that cause, and from whom they could learn his mind. It is said that Honorius was condemned in the sixth Synod on account of the mere reading of his two epistles to Sergius: but were these unknown at Rome, or less understood by the Roman and Latin Prelates than at Constantinople, whose Synod the greatest part was Orientals? whereby it behooved those epistles to be translated into the Greek idiom: certainly no one judging equitably will esteem this.

The second argument is sought from the Roman Council celebrated under Agatho in the year 680, that is, in the same year in which the sixth Synod was celebrated, to which one hundred twenty-five Bishops were present, as stands from the synodal epistle, which was as it were the instruction of the Legates who were sent by the same Agatho to the sixth Synod, and exists in action 1 of the same sixth Synod; in which synodal epistle three things are contained: The first is the profession of faith, wherein expressly is contained the Catholic doctrine of the two wills and operations in Christ. The second, the condemnation is repeated of the same patrons of the Monothelite error, Theodore, Cyrus, Sergius, Pyrrhus, and Paulus; nor is slight mention indeed made that Honorius similarly erred: which certainly ought not to have been dissimulated, if it were true. Third finally, it is affirmed that the predecessors of Agatho taught the same faith always, and defended it constantly even unto the exit of their soul, not seduced by blandishments, nor terrified by perils, etc. But with what face would these things be subscribed by one hundred twenty-five Bishops, together with the supreme Pontiff, if not long before Honorius labored under the same error which was condemned in that Lateran Synod, and whose condemnation was to be procured from the Legates setting out to that sixth Synod? Who is so light as to believe that so many Prelates wished so shamefully to impose upon the whole Church gathered in an OEcumenical Council, and that they were so heartless and prodigal of their fame, who, that they might preserve the name of Honorius untarnished, would rather expose themselves to the open peril of mendacity before the whole assembly of the Church? It is confirmed from the epistle directed in the name of Agatho alone to the Emperors Constantine, Heraclius, and Tiberius through the same Legates, which likewise is related at the beginning of action 1 of the same sixth Synod, where the Symbol of faith, which expressly contains the truth of the twofold will and operation, is brought forth, and the Pontiff subjoins with free mouth and firm and reiterated contestation professes that never at any time has the Apostolic See deviated from the right path of faith. For he says: By the assisting protection of Christ this Apostolic Church of his hath never turned aside from the way of truth in any part of error. And shortly after:

This is indeed the rule of true faith, which in prosperity and adversity this spiritual mother of your most tranquil Empire, the Apostolic Church of Christ, has vigorously held and defended, which by the grace of almighty God will be proved never to have erred from the path of Apostolic tradition, nor corrupted by heretical novelties to have succumbed: but as from the beginning of the Christian faith she received it uncorrupted from its authors the chief Apostles of Christ, so she has remained even unto this time. And concerning his own predecessors shortly after he adds specially these things: Let your tranquil clemency consider, therefore, since the Lord and Savior of all, whose is the faith, who promised that the faith should not fail, admonished to confirm His brethren: that the Apostolic Pontiffs, predecessors of my littleness, have always confidently done this, it is known to all: whose my littleness also, although unequal and least, yet having undertaken the ministry of divine condescension, desires to be a follower. For it will be a tedium to me if I neglect to preach the truth of my Lord, whom they sincerely preached.

These words of Agatho, which indeed he could not assert so firmly, preach freely, and confess sincerely, if for confirming the same heresy which he confesses, Honorius could have been brought into accusation. Which you will judge most true if you consider who said these things, where, to whom, and when he wrote; namely the most holy Agatho, praised by the mouth of all, in the great synodal convention of the Fathers, writing these things with the consent of all to those very Emperors dwelling at Constantinople, whose predecessors had favored the error, as stands from the Ecthesis of Heraclius and the Typus of Constans: and he would write this at the time when the OEcumenical Synod was about to be celebrated, namely in that city whose Patriarchs Agatho himself had condemned with his Council; but he would have exposed himself to just accusation of accepting persons if to the prejudice of truth he had excepted guilty of that error with the same favorers and patrons of the Monothelites. — Add to these that long before those supreme Pontiffs St. Maximus vindicated Honorius from that very calumny, in that disputation which he held with Pyrrhus; for when that heretic clamored that Honorius stood for him: What, he kept saying, do you have to answer concerning Honorius, who openly handed down to my predecessor that there is one will of our Lord Jesus Christ? Holy Maximus liberates him from this insimulation of error, showing that he was always a keenest champion of the true faith, and said one will in the Lord, not of His divinity and humanity, but of humanity alone, lest he admit contrary wills of flesh and spirit in Christ. It is confirmed from this, that in the year 610, that is, second after the death of Honorius himself, when the Monothelites attempted to draw him over to their party on occasion of the aforesaid epistles to Sergius, Ioannes then sitting in the Chair of Peter summoned him, who had written those two epistles to Honorius, that he might disclose the mind of the deceased Pontiff, and write to the Emperor Constantine what he had judged. He obeyed, and as St. Maximus martyr relates, he signified to the Emperor that thus far only Honorius said one will in Christ, so far as he denied the human will contrary, namely of flesh and of spirit; not truly that he denied the double, whereof one is divine, the other human. Therefore it stands that before the sixth Synod, both from the letters of Honorius himself, and from the writings of St. Maximus, and from the two Councils celebrated at Rome, then from the letters of the Roman Pontiffs Ioannes, Martinus, and Agatho, by no means can Honorius be charged with error; and consequently no just estimator of things can be induced to believe that the name of Honorius, with other patrons of that heresy, was inserted by the sixth Synod; nay rather he will easily judge that this was compacted by the crafty artifice and fraud of the Monothelites. In what manner however this was done, we shall soon disclose.

The third argument, whereby the faith of Honorius can be vindicated whole, and that his condemnation in the sixth Synod appear fictitious, is gathered both from the terms and from the circumstances of that condemnation, which is read and written out in action 28 of this Council, whose words are these:

The holy Council said: according to the promise which has been made by us to our glory, reexamining the dogmatic epistles which were written by Sergius formerly Patriarch of this royal city preserved of God, as well to Cyrus who was then Bishop of Phasis as to Honorius formerly Pope of ancient Rome; similarly also the epistle ⟦that⟧, namely written back by Honorius to the same Sergius: and finding ⟦incernientes⟧ that they are altogether alien from the Apostolic dogmas and from the definitions of the holy Councils and of all probable Fathers, but follow the false doctrines of heretics; these we reject altogether, and execrate as noxious to the soul. But those whose, namely of the same, impious dogmas we execrate, their names also we judge to be cast out from the holy Church of God. (namely Sergius formerly Bishop of this royal city preserved of God, who undertook to write concerning such an impious dogma, Cyrus of Alexandria, Pyrrhus, Peter, and Paulus, who also themselves exercised the office of bishop in the see of this city preserved of God, and felt things similar to them: ⟦ad haer⟧, and Theodore formerly Bishop of Pharan): of all the above-written persons mention was made by Agatho most holy and thrice most blessed Pope of ancient Rome, in the suggestion which he sent to the most pious and confirmed of God our Lord and great Emperor; and afterwards he casts them out, as feeling things contrary to right faith, whom we define to be subjected to anathema. With these we command with justice to be cast out together from the holy Catholic Church of God, and at the same time anathematized, Honorius also, who was Pope of ancient Rome, because we find through the writings which were made by him to Sergius that he followed his mind in all things, and confirmed impious dogmas.

So far, the sentence as it is carried against the heretics condemned in the Synod.

This is the principal stronghold of the adversaries, whereby as many as will have it that Honorius was guilty of the error of the Monothelites rely upon it. But I demonstrate that the aforesaid sentence has been falsified, and that the name of Honorius was falsely inserted by the craft and fraud of the heretics, by several arguments, and those not lighter. First indeed, because the Synod says it condemns those whom it says were precondemned by Pontiff Agatho in his own epistle to the Emperor: but in that epistle Honorius is not found among the condemned heretics; nay rather Agatho testifies most constantly that never hath the Apostolic Church turned aside from the way of truth into any part whatsoever of error, nor through the grace of almighty God ever erred from the path of Apostolic tradition, nor corrupted by heretical novelties succumbed: which certainly would be most false if he had judged that Honorius himself had lapsed into the error which he himself Agatho condemned: therefore since the Synod testifies that only those are condemned whom Agatho precondemned in his epistle to the Emperor, the consequence is that Honorius in that Synod was not condemned, inasmuch as he was not named among the heretics condemned by Agatho. Secondly it is said in that sentence that Honorius was therefore condemned because his epistle to Sergius is alien from Apostolic dogmas and from the definitions of the Holy Councils and of all probable Fathers, but follows false doctrines of heretics: but all these things are most false, as has been proved above; seeing that in those epistles there is nothing that does not breathe Catholic doctrine. Then even if those epistles (which cannot be said) presented something of error, ought Honorius himself to have been condemned by the Synod on account of them, and not rather, after the manner of the ancients, inquiry made whether it could be found that he, his opinion changed, abjured the error before he closed the last day? Moreover, since it was known that there existed the posterior epistle of the same Honorius to the same Sergius: why was its reading not awaited, which was only made in the following session, from which posterior epistle it could stand as certain argument, as we said above, that the Pontiff himself asserted two operations, and as many wills in Christ? Surely there is no one who does not judge this preposterous and headlong condemnation of the Roman Pontiff suspect of imposture and falsification. Thirdly, since the Legates of the Apostolic See presided over that Synod, how would they have kept deep silence hearing the Antistes of that same see condemned with such premature violence, especially in a matter so open and already sufficiently discussed, both through the preceding judgment of Ioannes Roman Pontiff sent to Constantinople, and through the defense of St. Maximus martyr, promulgated to the whole Catholic world in the public disputation with Pyrrhus, which had repelled this calumny from Honorius? Finally since in the epistles of Agatho, whose offices they discharged, they had most expressly that none of the Roman Pontiffs had lapsed into any error? In what manner would they have labored under so profound a lethargy that not even one or other of them perceived and rose up, at least as defenders of the letters of Agatho, especially since from those letters they had received that nothing was to be decreed by themselves except those very things alone which were contained in the same letters? Add that even if truly the epistles of Honorius breathed some error, why did not the Legates urge that proceedings be suspended until it stood established that he had not laid aside that error, but died in it? Can it come into anyone's mind, who knows with what firmness of soul the Legates themselves resisted the Monothelites while they attempted to draw Vigilius the Roman Pontiff over to their party; yet they heard with quiet mind the other Antistes of the same see condemned, not even a word being uttered for his detention? What? On account of the condemnation of Theodore of Mopsuestia and the condemnation of the writings of Theodoret and Ibas Bishop, the whole Christian world ought to have been moved and an OEcumenical Synod convened; yet it was accomplished only with the greatest labor: but the Antistes of the first See, who judges all and is judged by none, was to be condemned from the simple reading of those Epistles, no inquisition being made whether before he should meet his last day he had abjured that error? Fourthly, if truly Honorius had been condemned as a heretic, why after the celebration of the sixth Synod was his name not expunctuated from the sacred diptychs together with the names of the condemned Patriarchs? for Anastasius Bibliothecarius relates that when the Synod was concluded the names of all the condemned Patriarchs were deleted, and their images removed from the Churches. But it stands that Honorius was buried with orthodox Pontiffs in the Basilica of St. Peter, and his sepulchre adorned with very many elogies and honorific titles, which Baronius relates under the year of Christ 638 n. 2 and following. Among other things however his Epitaph offers this:

Whom mighty in doctrine, whom the rule of sacred life, alike of Pontiffs the glory decreed to have. Of thy master ever of holy speech the inventions shone forth in thee as though exceedingly fruitful. For the footsteps of Gregory so great a just one while eagerly thou followest, and bearest his merit, of eternal light Christ vouchsafing everlasting, with the holy Fathers possess now the day.

Which verses although they carry no elegance about them, and savour of the ruder Muse of that age: nevertheless sufficiently disclose him to have been an upright man and imitator of St. Gregory: which certainly the Roman see would not suffer to be said of a heretical man, nor would allow his name to be inserted in the list of orthodox Pontiffs, nor would suffer his image woven in mosaic in the apse of the Church of St. Agnes, which he himself had restored, to be seen hitherto publicly exposed to the veneration of Christians. — From these things therefore it ought to stand sufficiently that the acts of that Synod were falsified, and that the name and Epistles of Honorius were deceitfully inserted with the assertors of the condemned error by the craft of the Monothelites.

THIRDLY IT IS INQUIRED: who can be induced to believe that anyone arrived at such audacity as to corrupt the acts of a general Council? — I answer, that this does not seem wonderful to a man expert in Ecclesiastical affairs; for this trick was most frequent among the Greeks, whom we saw above falsifying the acts of the fifth Synod, and convicted of falsehood in the cause of Vigilius. — Moreover, St. Gregory book 5 Epistle 11, which is to Narses, testifies that they corrupted the acts of the Council of Chalcedon, where he adds that he suspects that they corrupted also the Ephesine Synod, whence he subjoins there that the codices of the Romans are more truthful than those of the Greeks: Because, he says, the Romans have as they have no acuteness, so neither impostures. Similarly that they corrupted the Canons of the second Synod is evident from Action 16 of the Council of Chalcedon and from the letters of St. Leo concerning the Patriarch of Constantinople. — Finally, that they corrupted the acts of the seventh Synod no less than those of the preceding, Anastasius Bibliothecarius testifies in the prefation of the History to the sixth Synod; after which he subjoins:

Thus therefore the Greeks, having accepted the occasion of the universal Councils celebrated, frequently are made clear to have acted, now diminishing, now adding or changing, now in the absence of colleagues, now in hidden corners, now outside the Synod, now after the Synod with their craft, nay fraud, abusing common sanctions, and unto their ⟦liking⟧ violently bend all things which shall have seemed good to them.

FOURTHLY IT IS INQUIRED: who indeed that bold interpolator may have been, who dared to tamper with such synodal acts, and insert the name of Honorius with the condemned patrons of the heretics. — I answer, it does not seem improbable, as Baronius teaches under the year 681 n. 29, that the artificer and author of this imposture is held to be Theodore Patriarch of Constantinople, a Monothelite and the most audacious defender of that heresy, who broke out into such insolence as to take away the names of the Roman Pontiffs deceased since the controversy arose from the sacred diptychs, and above all Vitalian's, retaining only the name of Honorius, as stands from the fact that George of Constantinople, who had been substituted in his place, in the sixth Synod Action 8 demanded that the name of Pontiff Vitalian be restored, which was granted spontaneously. But when that most crafty man had been restored to his own see with simulated penance in the year 682, George dying namely after three years and as many months, it is credible that he, having obtained the summit of affairs, and gained the prototype of the Synod, deleted his own name from the number of the condemned. Nor indeed can it be said that he was not condemned in that Synod: Both because the Synod passed judgment upon all the Bishops of Constantinople since this heresy arose, and condemned Sergius, Pyrrhus, Paulus, and Petrus: but Thomas, Ioannes, and Constantinus, predecessors of that Theodore, were declared orthodox; why therefore not Theodore himself, since he felt the same as the other heretical Patriarchs, and on that account had been deposed, be likewise condemned with the heretics? Then because Anastasius Bibliothecarius, who reduced the actions of the same sixth Synod into compendium, has this:

Thereupon, he says, the most pious and most serene prince brought forth the tomus to be reread, in which alone the heretical dogma of Macarius had been conscribed, and its subscription in his hand openly affirming one will in the Lord: beneath whose subscription, and of Theodore Patriarch certainly close by, the tenor of subscription was there.

Therefore it stands that Theodore was guilty of the same error; and yet nothing of this sort is found in the acts which are in hand: whence no light argument is drawn that he expunctuated from the autograph of the synodal acts those things which tended to his own ignominy, and inserted the name of Honorius and restored it in place of his own name, both that he might attempt thereby to fulfill that hatred which he had conceived against the Roman Church: and especially that his own guilt and that of the other successors of Sergius, and also of Sergius himself might seem less, inasmuch as they had had as companion in the same error the Pontiff of the universal Church.

You will urge: How then in the seventh Synod in the final Action was that fraud not detected? since in it anathema is said against Honorius and Sergius and the other defenders of the Monothelite heresy; which is also found in the Epistle sent in the name of the Synod to Emperor Constantius and Irene his mother. — I answer, that likewise the acts of that Council were interpolated by the Greeks out of hatred of the Roman Church, the name of Honorius being substituted in place of Theodore, as had been fabricated in the sixth Synod by Theodore himself Patriarch of the Constantinopolitan See, that the guilt of the condemned might appear less, whom certainly the Pontiff of the Roman Church Honorius had preceded. — Some answer, that the Fathers of this seventh Synod, deceived by the corrupted acts of the sixth Synod, pronounced anathema against Honorius. Truly that has no appearance of probability; for the Legates of Adrian the Roman Pontiff, who presided over the Council in his name, would not have suffered so great an injury to be inflicted upon the Roman Pontiff, whom Ioannes supreme Pontiff and St. Maximus Martyr had declared immune from error.

You will urge: If these things are so, why then does the Roman Council under Adrian II testify that Honorius was rejected in the sixth Synod? for in the Epistle of that Council it is held: That Honorius was judged after death by the sixth Synod, because he had been accused of heresy. — I answer, that in it is not said that Honorius was condemned by the sixth Synod, as the objection falsely supposes, but only that he was condemned by the Orientals: which indeed we do not deny; but we rightly have cause to complain of that unjust condemnation, both because Honorius was altogether innocent; and because the first See is not to be judged by another inferior. Therefore his condemnation did not emanate from an OEcumenical Synod, by which however he would truly have deserved condemnation if he had been infected with that error.

Some object the authority of Agatho, as though in it Honorius were condemned. — But the contrary stands most openly, seeing that it contains, as we saw above, most expressly that the Roman Church never departed from the path of the Apostolic See, nor corrupted by heretical novelties succumbed; which would be plainly false if he himself condemned Honorius in it.

Finally they object the epistle of Leo II to Emperor Constantine, which is had at the end of the sixth Synod, whose acts it confirms and approves: in which it is written that Honorius died in the Monothelite heresy; for he says: Likewise we anathematize the inventors of the new error, namely Theodore Bishop of Pharan, Cyrus of Alexandria, Sergius, Pyrrhus, Paulus, Petrus, successors of the Church of Constantinople, rather than Prelates, and also Honorius, who did not illustrate this Apostolic Church with the doctrine of Apostolic tradition, but attempted by profane betrayal to subvert the immaculate faith. — Baronius answers under the year of Christ 687 n. 19 and following, that Epistle of Leo to be spurious; and he proves it because it contains contradictories: for first it is written: given on the nones of May indiction tenth: and yet in the context it is had that Leo received the imperial letters and the synodal acts, elapsed recently of the tenth indiction, in the month of July, and received the Legates returning from the Synod. Secondly because Leo could not have received the Legates together with the letters and acts of the sixth Synod in the month of July; seeing he sat barely ten months, but was created Pontiff in the month of August. Thirdly he says he received in the month of May, tenth indiction, the Epistle of the Emperor, and yet it stands that it was sent by the Emperor only within the same indiction, in the month of December. Which things all plainly contradict one another, it must be confessed that that Epistle circulated under the name of Leo is spurious and counterfeit. And therefore from all these arguments it stands that Honorius was utterly immune from that error, and by no means reckoned among the heretics by the sixth Synod, nor condemned with them.

You will urge: Therefore Leo Pontiff wrote to various Prelates of the Christian world, but especially to the Spaniards and their King Ervigius, to whom he transmitted this definition and the acts of the sixth synod through Peter notary regionary, so that they might be fortified by the subscriptions of all those, which had been enacted in that OEcumenical Council: but in those very acts transmitted by Leo there is found that condemnation of Honorius and proscription of the same Epistles: therefore truly Leo approved that condemnation of Honorius, and held it legitimate.

Baronius denies the major under the year 683 n. 21 and following, and demonstrates those Epistles which circulate under the name of Leo to the Prelates of Spain and King Ervigius to be spurious and supposititious: first because in each of those Epistles it is asserted that the same OEcumenical Synod was concluded in indiction 9. But it stands from the last action of the same Synod that it was concluded only in indiction 10. Secondly in the Epistle to the Prelates of Spain these things are had: But of the diverse Councils subject to this holy Apostolic See, whose ministry we exercise, Archbishops have been sent by us, who with the pious Prince, at once and with all, who convened by his mandate, presiding over the Prelates of Churches; and confidently first indeed the five holy universal Councils, etc. But it is false that any Archbishop sent from Rome assisted at the Synod; for none is reported in the acts of that Synod: therefore this appears fictitious. Finally thirdly, in the Epistle to King Ervigius he says that the Emperor wrote to Pope Agatho that Legates be directed to Constantinople to celebrate the Synod: but it stands both from the letters of Agatho and from the acts of the Synod themselves that the Emperor wrote not to Agatho, but to his predecessor Pope Donus. Add that that Epistle relates that the Emperor wrote these things in the ninth indiction; which is found equally most false; since those letters of the Emperor to Donus are found given in the sixth indiction on the day before the ides of August, which certainly corroborate the argument of imposture.

This Question is commonly proposed by theologians in other words: namely whether in Christ there is one esse or manifold: for a threefold esse is commonly assigned by the Philosophers, namely of essence, of existence, and of subsistence. The esse of essence is that whereby things are constituted in some determinate species of being, namely that which coalesces from the essential and quidditative parts of each thing, from which is derived the abstract essence, which differs by reason alone from its concrete esse, as the Doctor teaches passim, especially in 1 dist. 8 last question but one. The esse of existence is that whereby a thing is in act, and is really placed outside causes and outside nothing; whence existence and actual essence do not differ really. The esse of subsistence of substance is that very real existence of any substance whatsoever whereby it is called a being subsisting per se: for subsistence is taken in various ways, chiefly two: first inasmuch as it is the mode of an existent being per se, and independently of any subject of inhesion sustaining it, whereby it differs from accident; or inasmuch as it signifies the mode of existing incommunicably, as this something and as whole, that is, after the manner of part and superior. Subsistence taken in the prior way is called difference of substance and mode of its existence: but in the latter it is called supposit in things devoid of reason, and person in things endowed with reason.

Note 2. That all Catholic Doctors agree that in Christ there is one unique esse of personal subsistence, because in Him there is one only person; since the human nature of Christ subsists by the very personal subsistence of the Word, as we proved above: but all those same Doctors do not agree whether there is also in Christ one unique esse of substantial subsistence; since most of the holy Fathers to be praised below admit in Christ a threefold subsistence, as likewise substance and essence, namely divine, corporeal, and spiritual. Whence a grave controversy on this matter arose at some time between the Spanish Prelates and Benedict II. For the writers of Spanish history, as Ambrosius Maurus book 12 chapter 38, and Mariana book 6 chapter 18, relate, when the Fathers of the Twelfth Council of Toledo had said in their confession of faith that there are three substances in Christ, when Benedict II received that confession transmitted to himself by those Prelates, that it might be approved by Pontifical authority, he noted three things in it which did not seem rightly enough said: especially truly, that they professed three substances in Christ. Which he certainly signified verbally through a Spanish man whom they had sent to Rome with Peter notary regionary Legate of the Apostolic See: when the Toledo Fathers had received this, Julian Toletan Antistes, in the name of the whole Council and of the prelates of Spain wrote an apologetic book, King Egica requiring it, in which with many testimonies he confirmed that three substances in Christ, according to the sentiment of the holy Fathers and OEcumenical Councils, must be admitted; and they transmitted that book to Benedict himself; but since he was already deceased, Sergius his successor received it, who, as Rodericus Archbishop relates in his History chapter 13, and likewise Garcias Loaysa Doctor Complutensis and Archbishop of Toledo in the annotations on Council 15, gratefully held and approved, Sergius the Pontiff. — But whether that Apologetic was written by the succeeding Thirteenth Council of Toledo or truly at that time between the Twelfth and Fifteenth is disputed among those same authors; and Baronius thinks that Apologetic was written and transmitted under the year 684 and 685 before the celebration of Council 13; and he notes that Benedict suspected more than three propositions in that confession of faith, and proves it from the same Council 13 where the Fathers speak thus: Considering truly the third and fourth chapter, we have shown that we tasted beforehand not only the sense but even the very words from the books of blessed Ambrose and Fulgentius. But they say monstravimus certainly nowhere else than in that prior Apologetic sent to Benedict for the defense of the same propositions; there therefore all four chapters noted by Benedict were confirmed, and transmitted to the same Benedict during that intervening time between the Councils of Toledo 12 and 13; although afterward it was enlarged, as seems to be gathered from those words of Council 13 read again more studiously, (etc. and approved by the unanimous consent of the Fathers of Council 17: which indeed stands, because in the acts of that Council, after the confession of faith, it is had: from which it appears that the controversy is not uselessly raised whether three subsistences are to be admitted in Christ.

Note 3. That among Scholastic Doctors there is the greatest controversy concerning the resolution of the first difficulty. For most Thomists with Cajetan in 3 par q. 17 art. 2 and Capreolus in 3 dist. 6 q. 1 contend that the humanity of Christ does not exist by created existence, but that by hypostatic union it has been assumed unto existing by the very existence of the divine Word, and they strive to confirm this by the authority of St. Thomas from his sayings in 3 par in the same question. Truly, as Suarez observes disp. 36 sect. 2, St. Thomas is to be understood of the esse of personal subsistence, not indeed of the esse of existence and substantial subsistence. Other theologians however with Subtili Doctore in 3. dist. 6 q. 1 contend that there is in Christ a twofold existence, namely divine, by which the divine nature exists, and created, by which the human nature really exists.

First Conclusion. — THERE ARE IN CHRIST TWO ESSES OF EXISTENCE: ONE UNCREATED OF THE DIVINE NATURE; THE OTHER CREATED OF THE HUMAN NATURE. This is the opinion of the Doctor; and he proves it with eight arguments, whereof the first is: The term of generation, or that which receives esse through generation and passes from non-existing in the order of nature to existing esse, is either the very existence itself or something having existence: otherwise it would not receive esse of existence through generation: but the humanity of Christ, or Christ Himself qua man, is truly begotten of His Mother, and brought forth in time by her, the Holy Ghost cooperating: therefore that humanity receives esse of existence through generation, which it had not before: but the uncreated esse, or existence of the Word, is not produced through temporal generation: therefore the term of that generation had another esse of existence distinct from the existence of the Word. The major is Aristotle's Metaphysics 5 text 7. The minor truly is St. Damascene's book 4 De fide, chapter 13.

The Thomists reply: that the uncreated esse terminated generation not absolutely, but under humanity. — Against this: the uncreated esse, as it was in humanity, denoted nothing but a respect toward it: but such a respect cannot be the terminus of a real and actual generation.

Moreover, there are two natures in Christ having distinct actual entities: therefore also distinct existences, because existence is nothing else than actual entity; whence as personal or subsistent esse cannot be understood without subsistence, so neither can actual esse without existence; and this argument indeed is founded upon our general principle, by which we say essence and existence are not distinguished really.

Thirdly the Doctor proves the conclusion from that saying of Aristotle, To live to living things is the same as to be: but the humanity of Christ lived an actual life distinct from the life of the Word: otherwise as the Word truly did not die, so the humanity would truly not have died if it had lived no other life than the life of the Word: therefore it had an actual esse distinct from the esse of the Word: but actual esse is the esse of existence: therefore etc.

Fourthly, the humanity qua condistinct from the Word is either something or nothing. If nothing, then the Word assumed nothing; if something, either it is only in objective potency, as Antichrist, or in act. If only in objective potency, the Word assumed humanity no more than any possible being whatever. If in act; therefore the humanity qua condistinct from the Word has existence, for humanity in act and existing humanity are the same. It is confirmed: for the Word assumed humanity either outside causes and outside nothing, or still only existing in its causes. If the first, we have our intent; if the second, the Word assumed not so much the humanity itself as its causes, because a thing in its cause is nothing else than the cause itself, as productive of that thing.

Fifthly, if the assumed humanity were dismissed, it would not be necessary for it to be annihilated, but it would truly exist; which supposed, it would exist either by force of a certain new production, or by force of the ancient production through which it was first effected, so that it might be assumed by the Word. Not the first, because no necessity appears why it be produced anew: therefore it would exist by force of its own production: therefore that production is terminated to humanity actually existing.

Sixthly, he argues ad hominem, because the Word could assume an angelic nature: but according to the adversaries the angelic nature assumed would not lose its own existence: therefore neither ought the assumed human nature lose its own existence. The minor the adversaries admit, for they teach that existence in purely spiritual things is really indistinct from essence. The consequence the Doctor proves: first, because proper existence is no more connected with an angelic nature than it is connected with a human nature. Secondly, because for this reason it is said that human nature has not its own proper existence in the Word, because it would follow that the same supposit has in itself several existences: but the same follows from the assumption of the angelic nature with its proper existence: therefore if this proper existing existence can be assumed, that one also can be.

Seventhly, the foundation of a relation as such precedes the relation as such: therefore the foundation of an actual relation really existing precedes it according to real existence: but the union of the human nature to the Word is an actual relation really existing: therefore it precedes it according to real existence, and consequently ought to have real existence antecedently to that union with anteriority of nature; not truly of time, because from what was said above the human nature of Christ did not exist earlier in time before the union: but what it had for that prior condition, it had in the same instant of time: therefore for that instant of time it had the same existence. But that existence was not the existence of the Word: therefore in that instant it had another existence; which is our intent. The Doctor confirms it: because before the nature was assumed as nature, the soul perfected the body of Christ, since the nature was constituted of body and soul, and consequently that nature could not be before the soul perfected the body: but in that prior condition the soul could not perfect the body unless both existed: therefore both existed before the nature was perfected. But in that prior condition they had not the existence of the Word: therefore another: but that other was not lost on account of the assumption: therefore it remained with the assumption, and consequently remained with the existence of the Word, which had come through the assumption.

Eighthly, every mode, especially extrinsic, supposes the thing whose mode it is: but hypostatic union is a mode extrinsic: therefore it supposes humanity: accordingly as that union is actual, so it supposes humanity existing.

They object 1. Certain authorities of the Holy Fathers: the first indeed drawn from the synodal epistle of Sophronius approved in the 6 Synod action 11, where speaking of the humanity of Christ he says: In Him (namely in the Word) and not in itself it had one existence. Likewise St. Damascene book 3 De fide, chapter 22 saying that human nature exists by the existence of the Word. Thirdly, the testimony of St. Leo Pope epistle 11 saying that the humanity of Christ was created by the very assumption. And St. Fulgentius book De Incarnatione chapter 3, where he says thus: The very acceptance of flesh was virginal conception: therefore they judge those Holy Fathers held that human nature did not previously exist before it was assumed by the Word, and therefore exists by the existence of the Word. — I answer first to Sophronius: he wished to signify that humanity did not exist twice, once in itself, and afterward in the Word, but that as soon as possible it existed thus in the Word, so that it did not previously exist in time than it subsisted in Him. Which certainly is confirmed from the preceding and following words of his epistle; for it is said: At once flesh, and at once the flesh of the Word of God; at once flesh animated rational. And it is subjoined: therefore in Him, and not in itself it had one existence, namely it did not previously exist in time in itself than in the Word. Which we grant spontaneously; but it is one thing to have existence in the Word, and another to exist by the existence of the Word. For the former does not repugn created existence; but the latter does. To these add that it can be answered that Sophronius understood by existence personal subsistence. For Budaeus observes in the Commentary on the Greek language that sometimes existence and subsistence are expressed by the same name. — To St. Damascene I say that authority is fictitious; since he teaches the contrary, for in the same chapter 22 he says: That the flesh is united from the last articulation to God the Word; nay rather that it existed in Him, and had personal identity with Him; where observe he does not say the flesh existed by the Word, but in the Word, because the Word is not the very existence of humanity, but the terminus of that existence. — To Saints Leo and Fulgentius I answer that they wish nothing else than that in the same instant of time humanity was formed and assumed; for thus says Leo: Our nature was not so assumed that first it was created and afterward assumed, but that it itself, namely, in the very assumption was created; where that prior and posterior are manifestly referred to succession of time. Fulgentius however thus expounded the matter: He showed this flesh then from the nature of the Virgin conceiving when in her God came to be conceived: therefore some interval must not be judged between the beginning of flesh and the advent of Majesty.

They object 2. From the opposite opinion three absurdities follow: The first, that the divine Word exists by created existence. The second, that created existence is a perfection of the Word. The third, that the Blessed Virgin is not the Mother of God. The first they prove a simili, because as the Word is said to will by created will and understand by created intellect, since He has created will and intellect, so He is said to exist by created existence if He be said to have created existence. They prove the second thus: existence is complement and perfection of subsistence: but in Christ there is one subsistence only, namely of the Word: therefore created existence will be complement and perfection of it. They prove the third, because from the opposite opinion it follows that the action of Virgin Mary was terminated to created existence, or to created being, and accordingly she will have from such created being that she is an action productive of a created being, not truly of God, and accordingly she will not be Mother of God. — The Subtle Doctor answers that it is not absurd that the Word be said to exist by created existence; not indeed qua He is God, but inasmuch as He is man; nor on that account ought the Word be said to exist by created existence secundum quid, but simpliciter, for that existence tends to make that which it affects existent simpliciter, not however secundum quid: for although Paul exists by the existence of white, because formally he is white, yet not simpliciter, but secundum quid does that existence exist, because that existence is secundum quid; and especially with respect to the existence which is in itself existence simpliciter; but in the supposit the existence of the human nature is in itself existence simpliciter, inasmuch as being is divided into simple being and being secundum quid, and ens simpliciter is subsistence, ens secundum quid is accident; but the existence of the human nature is the existence of substance: therefore since the divine Word is simpliciter man, that existence exists simpliciter, although he may say that this existence of the human nature is not the existence of this supposit, but supervening upon it, already having perfect esse, and therefore seems to be the existence of the supposit secundum quid, if it is not born to give secundum quid existence, such as every substantial nature is, however it stands toward that to which it gives esse. But if altogether the dispute be made, that the first supposit and not simpliciter be taken for the same, there is contention only about the word. — It will also be answered concerning the second absurdity that there is none, because so far is existence from being the complement of subsistence that rather subsistence farther actuates existence and supposes it. — To the third I say that the Virgin Deipara is not called Mother of God for this reason that she did not generate some created being; but that that created being generated by her was farther completed and terminated through the subsistence of the Word. Whence although the formal terminus of that generation be humanity with its existence; nevertheless the ultimate terminus which is generated is not humanity, but this man, because that humanity and its existence is not produced in itself, but in the Word, and therefore the Word is truly said to be generated and born of the Virgin: as the murderers of Christ, says Suarez disput. 36 sect. 1, truly deprived the humanity of Christ of its own existence, for the humanity did not exist during the three days of death; yet because the humanity did not suffer nor was deprived of existence per se, but as existing in this supposit, therefore this man is truly said to be slain, and God dead.

They object 3. If the humanity of Christ has its own created existence, Christ will not be ens per se. The consequent is proved: humanity having created existence is formally ens in actu; also the divine Word is ens in actu: but from two beings in actu there is not made ens per se: therefore etc. — I answer, that from two complete beings in actu there is not made ens per se, but well from two incomplete beings in actu, as in our hypothesis, since humanity destitute of proper subsistence is not accounted a being in actu altogether complete.

Second Conclusion. — WITH RIGHT REASON IT CAN BE SAID THERE ARE IN CHRIST THREE SUBSTANCES, AND CONSEQUENTLY THREE SUBSTANTIAL SUBSISTENCES.

It can be proved first by the authority of the Councils of Toledo 12 and 15, in which that proposition is asserted also through the apologetic book first published by Julian Archbishop of Toledo, and then approved by that Council 15 not only through Sergius successor of Benedict, but even through Benedict II himself, if those things are true which Rodericus relates lib. 3 Historiae Hispanicae cap. 13, where relating this controversy he says: Earlier in time the book concerning three substances, which long ago the most holy Primate Julian had sent to Rome, and treating less cautiously Benedict the Roman had declared to be reproved, for this reason that will grieved over will. It is added:

But St. Julian strengthened with truthful testimonies in this Council through their oracles, which he had transmitted to Rome, that it was true; and he made an apology, and sent it to Rome through his Legates Priest, Deacon, and Subdeacon men most learned servants of God in all things and imbued with divine Scriptures, together with acclamatory verses also, according as formerly he had transmitted concerning the praise of Roman Empire. Which Roman Pontiff Benedict receiving worthily and piously proclaimed to be read by all, and by acclamating, Thy praise, O God, unto the ends of the earth, made known it was often read; who also remitted the rescript to Lord Julian through the aforesaid Legates with thanksgiving and with honor, and brought forth that all things whatsoever he wrote were just and pious.

From these things it follows that that proposition, that in Christ there are three substances, although not first proven by Benedict, and, together with the other noted propositions, seemed to have been imprudently posited, as if the Fathers of Toledo had willed something far different, nevertheless, upon a change of judgment, Benedict approved the exposition of Julian and his book.

It is confirmed by the authority of the Holy Fathers, who taught that there are three substances in Christ, or that Christ was composed of three substances. For thus St. Augustine, lib. 3. De Trinitate, cap. 17, says: Since

human nature could be joined to God, so that from two substances one person might be made, and thereby already from three, God, soul, and flesh: by which he clearly teaches that Christ consists of three just as of two substances. Similarly St. Isidore in lib. De differentiis, cap. 7: We, he says, subsist of two substances, namely of soul and body: that one (namely Christ) of three, of the Word, of soul, and of body: which manner of speaking the Eleventh Synod of Toledo also imitated in the profession of faith, where, having said that there are two natures in the Son, it adds: The same Christ in these two natures exists in three substances: of the Word, which is to be referred to the essence of God alone: of body, and of soul, which pertains to the true man. — To these subscribes Stephen, Bishop of Edua, in lib. De Sacramento altaris, cap. 17: We believe, he says, that in Christ there were two natures, divine and human, and three substances, the divine, flesh, and soul. To these we can add St. Bernard, sermon 3. De virginitate nativitatis after the middle, where he speaks thus: And attend, because as in that divine singularity there is a Trinity of persons, a unity of substance: so in this special conjunction there is a trinity of substances, a unity of person.

You will say: Very many of the Holy Fathers disapprove this way of speaking: therefore it is to be rejected. The antecedent is proved; since St. Damascene, lib. 3. De Fide, cap. 16, does not think it should be said that Christ is composed of three substances: For, he says, every composition is said to be made only from those things which proximately compose, for we do not finally say that a house is composed of water and earth, but of bricks and wood; otherwise it will be necessary to say that man consists at least of five natures, namely of four elements and a soul. Thus in Jesus Christ our Lord we consider not parts of parts, but those things which are proximately composed with one another, divinity and humanity. In a similar manner speak the Fathers of the Council of Frankfurt in the Synodal Epistle to the Bishops of Spain, as well as Paulinus of Aquileia in his sacrosyllabic little book: therefore, etc. — I answer, that the aforesaid Fathers do not disapprove such a way of speaking as truly erroneous, but because it could perhaps lead someone either to think that Christ consists of three distinct natures, or has three substances personal as well as substantial; or to signify that the opposite way of speaking is more proper and fitting, so that we may profess our faith simply: notwithstanding that against the Apollinarian heretics denying the soul in Christ, and against the Valentinians and Marcionites denying in Christ a true body, one would rightly say that there are three substances in Christ. For, as the Council of Frankfurt says in the place soon cited, it is one thing to contend against heretics, another faithfully to confess pure faith; there indeed the truth of soul and flesh in Christ must be shown, here perfect humanity in the same must be confessed. Add that, as St. Damascene says, in composition remote parts are not reckoned, but proximate ones: for it must not be said that man is composed of five substances, but of two; because the four of them, namely the elements, concur in one body. By this reason, therefore, the way of speaking of the Council of Frankfurt and of Damascene seems more sincere, that Christ be said to consist of two natures and substances, namely the divine and the human.

Peres: whether Christ can be called some two? — I answer with the Doctor in 3. dist. 6. qu. 2, that neither in the masculine nor in the neuter can Christ be called two simply. Not indeed in the masculine, because these names, one, whole, other, two, taken in the masculine gender, signify hypostasis and person, as we said in the treatise on the Trinity; but in Christ there are not two persons, nor two supposita: therefore Christ cannot be called two in the masculine gender. Nor even then could he be called two in the neuter, because if Christ could be called two in the neuter, especially on account of the two natures that he has: but for that reason he cannot be called two, for from Logic abstracts cannot be predicated of concretes simply, but only with addition and explication: for it is not said, white simply is whiteness, because white says more than whiteness: since whiteness signifies only the form; white, however, the form and subject. Whence this enunciation is not legitimate: Christ is nature divine, or nature human, because Christ says more than the divine nature separately and the human nature: since besides those natures he says also the suppositum of the Word. Hence Athanasius in the Symbol says: Perfect God, and perfect man; yet not two, but one is Christ. Nevertheless, just as by exposition it can be said that white is that which has whiteness, so in an expository sense it can be said that Christ is that which has two natures; or more rightly, in which there are two natures, namely divine and human.

You will say: Wherever there is one thing and another, there are two: but in Christ there is one thing and another: therefore in him there are two. The minor is proved: Christ according as man, is something; and also according as God, is something: but according as man, he is not the same something as according as God: therefore he is another something. — The Doctor answers in the same place, that the particle according as, or inasmuch as, can be taken in two ways, namely reduplicatively or specificatively. In the former way it signifies that the term which is appended is the reason why the predicate is said of the subject: and thus the minor and its proof are to be denied. For just as it does not follow, milk inasmuch as white is something; and inasmuch as sweet is something: therefore milk inasmuch as white is the same something as it is insofar as sweet, or is another something: for it cannot be said that it is the same something, because it is certain that milk insofar as sweet, speaking reduplicatively, is not white: therefore it is another something: therefore it is true that milk is two, which is absurd: because if milk were called two, it would follow that there are two supposita. Therefore just as there is no first consequence of this argument, so neither does the minor of the argument about Christ stand in the reduplicative sense: whence just as of milk it cannot be said that inasmuch as sweet in the reduplicative sense it is white or not white; because sweetness is an impertinent reason for milk to be called white or not white, since it could be white even if it were not sweet; in the same way the suppositum of Christ, neither inasmuch as God, is the same as it is inasmuch as man, because it could be God without being man; nor yet is it thus diverse from it, because otherwise the suppositum of the Word, or Christ, could not truly be called man. But if the particle inasmuch as, or insofar as, is taken specificatively, so that the sense is that Christ insofar as man, that is, who is man, or notwithstanding that he is man, is also God, thus the minor can be denied, as well as the minor of its proof; for Christ, who is man, is entirely the same who is God, because the same suppositum of Christ is God and man. Nor does it thence follow that God is the formal reason on account of which he is man; or humanity the formal reason on account of which he is God, because that would only be true if the particle inasmuch as were taken in the reduplicative sense.

You will say 2. Christ is not only God: therefore he is God, and something else: and consequently he is two. The consequence is proved: because if it is true that a man runs, and does not run alone, it follows that something else besides the man runs: therefore similarly if the exclusive particle is posited on the part of the predicate, as happens in the aforesaid argument, saying that Christ is God, and is not only God, it follows that he is something else. — The Doctor answers by denying the consequence, together with the consequence of the proof; because one must not reason in the same way about the exclusive particle when it is added to the subject as when it is added to the predicate; for when it is added to the subject, it signifies that every subject not having the form to which the predicate is attributed also cannot have that predicate, although all things that have such a form can also have such a predicate; thus e.g. when it is said, only the white runs, it does not follow that the man and dog and white horse does not run, but only that the black does not run, nor anything else that is not white. But when the exclusive particle is posited only on the part of the predicate, then it could be said that no other predicate belongs to the subject: thus when it is said, milk is only white, the sense would be that of the qualities only whiteness would belong to milk. And in this sense it is denied that Christ is only God, because by that proposition it is signified that nothing belongs to him except Deity, which is false; equally by parity of reason it should be denied that he is only man. But it is conceded that he is not only God, nor only man; but thence it is not inferred that he is something else than God, or something else than man; for although of Christ no predicate is said that is other than God, and of which it could not be said that it is not God; nevertheless of him a predicate can be said of which God is not said essentially and formally. Therefore the parity of example does not hold; namely, that when it is said that not only the man runs, it is signified that some other suppositum runs: whereas when it is said that Christ is not only man, it is not signified that he is another suppositum: which signification, however, hangs on the institution of men, who by one exclusive particle signify another suppositum, but not by another.