"`I have said ye are gods and all of you children of the Most High but ye shall die like man.' This He says to them that did not accept the gift of adoption, but dishonour the incarnation of the pure generation of the word of God, deprive man of his ascent to God, and are ungrateful to the Word of God who for their sakes was made flesh. For this cause was the word made man that man receiving the word and accepting the adoption should be made God's son. "
Of the same from the same book: -
"Since then on account of the fore-ordained dispensation the spirit came down, and the only begotten Son of God, who also is Word of the Father, when the fulness of time was come, was made flesh in man and our Lord Jesus Christ-being one and the same-fulfilled all the human dispensation as the Lord himself testifies, and the apostles confess, all the teachings of men who invented the ogdoads and tetrads and similitudes are proved plainly false."
Testimony of the Holy Hippolytus, Bishop and Martyr, from his discourse on "The Lord is my shepherd": -
"And an ark of incorruptible wood was the Saviour Himself, for the incorruptibility and indestructibility of His Tabernacle signified its producing no corruption of sin. For the sinner who confesses his sin says `My wounds stink and are corrupt because of my foolishness.' But the Lord was without sin, made in His human nature of incorruptible wood, that is to say, of the Virgin and the Holy Ghost, overlaid within and without, as it were, by purest gold of the word of God."
Of the same from his discourse on Elkanah and Hannah: -
"Bring me then, O Samuel, the Heifer drawn to Bethlehem, that you may shew the King begotten of David, and anointed King and Priest by the Father."
From the same discourse: -
"Tell me, O Blessed Mary, what it was that was conceived by thee in the womb; what it was that was borne by thee in a Virgin's womb. It was the Word of God, firstborn from Heaven, on thee descending, and man firstborn being formed in a womb, that the first born Word of God might be shewn united to a firstborn man."
From the same discourse: -
"The second, which was through the prophets as through Samuel, he revokes, and turns his people from the slavery of strangers. The third, in which He took the manhood of the Virgin and was present in the flesh; who, when He saw the city wept over it."
Of the same from his discourse on the beginning of Isaiah: -
"He likens the world to Egypt; its idolatry, to images; its removal and destruction to an earthquake. The Word he calls the `Lord' and by a `swift cloud' he means the right pure tabernacle enthroned on which our Lord Jesus Christ entered into life to undo the fall."
Testimony of the Holy Methodius, bishop and martyr, from his discourse on the martyrs: -
"So wonderful and precious is martyrdom that our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, the Son of God, testified in its honour that He thought it not robbery to be equal with God, that He might crown with this grace the Manhood into whom He had come down."
Testimony of the holy Eustathius, bishop of Antioch, confessor. From his interpretation of the xvith Psalm: -
"The soul of Jesus experienced both. For it was in the place of the souls of men and being made without the flesh, lives and survives. So it is reasonable and of the same substance as the souls of men, just as the flesh is of the same substance as the flesh of men, coming forth from Mary."
Of the same from his work about the soul: -
"On looking at the education of the child, or at the increase of his stature, or at the extension of time, or at the growth of the body, what would they say? But, to omit the miracles wrought upon earth, let them behold the raisings of the dead to life, the signs of the Passion, the marks of the scourges, the bruises and the blows, the wounded side, the prints of the nails, the shedding of the blood, the evidences of the death, and in a word the actual resurrection of the very body."
From the same work: -
"Indeed if any one looks to the generation of the body, he would clearly discover that after being born at Bethlehem He was wrapped in swaddling clothes, and was brought up for some time in Egypt, because of the evil counsel of the cruel Herod, and grew to man's estate at Nazareth."
From the same work: -
"For the tabernacle of the Word and of God is not the same, whereby the blessed Stephen beheld the divine glory."
Of the same from his sermon on "the Lord created me in the beginning of His way": -
"If the Word received a beginning of His generation from the time when passing through His mother's womb He wore the human frame, it is clear that He was made of a woman; but if He was from the first Word and God with the Father, and if we assert that the universe was made by Him, then He who is and is the cause of all created things was not made of a woman, but is by nature God, self existent, infinite, incomprehensible; and of a woman was made man, formed in the Virgin's womb by the Holy Ghost."