Chapter XV.
Finally, never has the abundance of compassion and patience of our Redeemer been more apparent than when He undertook the task of this mystery, namely, to assume our substance and to take on the rights of the gallows and the tomb. Therefore, in our favorable circumstances, His adversities were spent, and divine and human nature in our Redeemer entered into a sacred exchange; so that divinity might bear witness to humanity, and humanity might receive its reward from divinity. That is to say, our God showed the magnitude of His love for us by the wounds of His body, and our mind and body recognized the repayment of divine fellowship for their obedience. Therefore, it must be considered with what faith and devotion we ought to adhere to and serve this Lord, who has been so generous in bestowing such great gifts upon us; he who has given as much to the faithful as he himself possesses in his kingdom. He has chosen to make us his heirs and even to share in our nature; yet not so as to strip us of our substance from the stronghold of divinity, but rather to draw us, weak and languishing in the extreme poverty and necessity of death, to the glory of resurrection. Because, therefore, He has shown in Himself whatever He promised us, and taught that the substance of this flesh does not perish by rising again, and He showed by His Ascension where His habitation would be after the resurrection. This, therefore, is a great and altogether great sacrament of piety, which was manifested in the flesh, as the outcome of things, so the Teacher of nations announced. But He was justified in the Spirit, since the mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, not only offered to us the hope of happiness, but also presented an example of assuming the truth. Certainly, the sacrament of piety, by which our creator and redeemer embraces us, shone forth in testimony of virtue, and was also celebrated in the ascension assumed in glory by the ministries of angels. Therefore, the nature of human flesh, which has deserved to enter into the substance and fellowship of the holy Trinity through the Lord Christ, should not be despised. I indeed think that, with God's gift, enough has been said about the mystery of the holy Trinity and the incarnation of the Lord Savior. But since the resurrection of our flesh is placed at the end of our teaching, it is necessary to repeat the same more firmly from us on account of heretics and more frequently.