B. How do you mean?
A. Will (tell me) that which is by nature bond be said not incongruously to take bondman's form, or that which is truly free and is Essentially above the measures of bondage?
B. The free I suppose: for how will it be made what it was by nature?
A. Consider then that the Only-Begotten Word of God albeit made as we and having entered on the measures of bondage according to the human nature, hath witnessed to Himself freedom by Nature, saying in His joint-contribution of the didrachma, Surely free are the sons. He receives therefore bondman's form, making His own the results of the emptying and not spurning the likeness to usward: for it were not possible otherwise to honour the bond unless that which befitteth the bond had been made His that it might be made illustrious by the glory that is from Him: for that which excelleth ever hath the pre-eminence and the shame from our bondage was wiped out by us. For He Who is above us has been made as we and the Free by Nature was in the measure of the servants. Hence the dignity hath passed unto us too: for WE too have been called sons of God and inscribed as our Father Him Who is properly His Father; for our human things have been made His also.
Therefore in saying that He took bondman's form, is the whole mystery of the Economy with flesh. But if confessing One Son and Lord, the Word from forth of God the Father, they say that a man, him who is forth of the seed of David has been simply connected with Him, a partaker of His Sonship and of His glory, time is it that we in friendly grief over them who choose thus to think should say, Who will give to my head water and to my eyes a fountain |263 of tears, and I will weep this people day and night? for they are turned aside to a reprobate mind, denying the Lord Who bought them. For a pair of sons unequal in nature is proclaimed to us, and the bond is crowned with God-befitting glory, and some supposititious son is glorified with equal excellencies with the by Nature and truly Son, albeit God says plainly, My glory I will not give to another: for how is he not other and apart from the by Nature and truly Son, who has been honoured with mere and sole connection and taken as an assistant and vouchsafed sonship even as we ourselves are, and has partaken of glory from another and attained thereto by gift and grace?
B. We must not therefore sever Emmanuel into man severally and into God the Word.
A. By no means: I affirm that we must say that He is God Incarnate, and that He is in the Same both One and Other. For neither hath He, made man, ceased from being God, nor doth He hold the Economy unacceptable, despising the measure of the emptying.
B. Therefore (they say) consubstantial with the Word was His body, for thus and no otherwise will He be deemed One Only Son.
A. Yet how is not this now raving and clear proof of a mind wandering? for how can one behold in sameness of essence things so far removed one from another in respect of their nature? for one thing is Godhead, and another manhood. For of what do we say that the Union was made? for a person will not say that the things united are one in number, but either (it may be) two or more.
B. We must therefore sever (they say) the things named.
A. We must not sever (as I said) into a several diversity, in regard I mean to their being away from each other and apart, but must rather bring them together into an indissoluble union. For the Word has been made flesh, as John saith.
B. Have they therefore been confused and both become one nature?
A. But who will be thus distraught and unlearned as to |264 suppose that either the Divine Nature of the Word has been turned into what it was not, or that the flesh went over by way of change into the Nature of the Word Himself (for it is impossible)? but we say that One is the SON and One His Nature even though He be conceived of as having assumed flesh with a rational soul. For His (as I said) hath the human nature been made, and He is conceived of by us none otherwise than thus, God alike and man.
B. There will then be not two natures, of God and of man?
A. Godhead and manhood are one thing and another, according to the mode [of being] existing in each, yet in Christ have they come together, in unwonted wise and passing understanding, unto union, without confusion and turning . But wholly incomprehensible is the mode of the Union.
B. And how out of two things, Godhead and manhood, will One Christ be conceived of?
A. In no other wise (I suppose) than that whereby the things brought together one to another unto a union indissoluble and above comprehension will be One.
B. As for example?
A. Do we not say that a man like us is One and his nature one, although he has not simpleness [of nature] but is compounded out of two, I mean soul and body?
B. We do.
A. Does anybody, taking anew the flesh apart by itself, and sundering from it the soul that was united to it, divide a single person into two and not thereby destroy the right description of him?
B. Yet the all-wise Paul writes, For even though our outward man perish yet is the inward renewed each day.
A. You said right: for he knew, he knew well from whence he is one, and makes the distinction [between the two] one to be grasped in idea only: he calls the soul, the inward man, and the flesh, the outward. For I call to mind |265 the holy Scriptures which sometimes signify to us the whole living thing from a portion, as when God says , I will pour forth of My Spirit upon all flesh, and Moses says to them of Israel, In seventy five souls did thy fathers go down into Egypt. And we shall find that this has been done in regard to Emmanuel Himself: for after the Union, I mean that with the flesh, if any call Him Only-Begotten and God from forth of God, he will be conceiving of Him as not apart from flesh or manhood, and if he say that He is man, he will not be excluding Him from being God and Lord .
B. But if we say that the Nature of the Son is One, even though He be conceived of as Incarnate, all need is there to confess that confusion and commixture take place , |266 the nature of man being lost as it were within Him. For what is the nature of man unto the excellency of Godhead?
A. In highest degree, my friend, is he an idle talkerwho says that confusion and commixture have place, if one Nature of the Son Incarnate and made man, is confessed by us: for one will not be able to make proof thereof by needful and true deductions. But if they set their own. will as a law to us, they devised a counsel which they cannot establish, for we must give heed, not to them but to the God-inspired Scripture: if they think that needs, on account of the nature of man being nothing compared to the Divine Excellency, must it be lost and consumed as they say, we again will say, Ye do err not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God: for it were not impossible for God Who loves man to make Himself endurable to the measures of the manhood. And this He foresignified to us darkly, when initiating Moses and limning the mode of the Incarnation as yet in types, for He came in likeness of fire on the bush in the wilderness, and the fire kept playing on the shrub yet was it not consumed. And Moses marvelled at the sight. Yet how is not a tree a thing that has no alliance with fire? and how is the readily consumed wood patient of the onslaught of flame? But this matter was (as I said) a type of a mystery, which exhibited endurable to the measures of the human nature, the Divine Nature of the Word , at His Will, for to Him is nothing impossible.