From the same work: -
"For a temple absolutely holy and undefiled is the tabernacle of the word according to the flesh, wherein God visibly made his habitation and dwelt, and we assert this not of conjecture, for He who is by nature the Son of this God when predicting the destruction and resurrection of the temple distinctly instructs us by His teaching when He says to the murderous Jews, `Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.'"
From the same work: -
"When then the Word built a temple and carried the manhood, companying in a body with men, He invisibly displayed various miracles, and sent forth the apostles as heralds of His everlasting kingdom."
Of the same from his intrepretation of Psalm xcii: -
"It is plain then if `He that anointeth' means God whose throne He calls `everlasting,' the anointer is plainly by nature God, begotten of God. But the anointed took an acquired virtue, being adorned with a chosen temple of the Godhead dwelling in it."
The testimony of the holy Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria and Confessor. From the defence of Dionysius Bishop of Alexandria: -
"`I am the vine, ye are the branches My Father is the husbandman.' For we according to the body are of kin to the Lord, and for this reason He himself said `I will declare thy name unto my brethren.' And just as the branches are of one substance with the vine, and of it, so too we, since we have bodies akin to the body of the Lord, receive them of His fulness, and have it as a root for our resurrection and salvation. And the Father is called a husbandman, for He Himself through the Word tilled the vine which is the Lord's body."
Of the same from the same treatise: -
"The Lord was called a vine on account of His bodily relationship to the branches which are ourselves."
Of the same from his greater oration concerning the faith: -
"The scripture `in the beginning was the Word' clearly indicates the Godhead. The passage `the Word was made flesh' shews the human nature of the Lord."
From the same discourse: -
"`He shall wash His garments in wine' that is His body, which is the vestment of the Godhead in His own blood."
Of the same from the same discourse: -
"The Word `was' is referred to His divinity, the words `was made flesh' to His body, the Word was made flesh not by being reduced to flesh, but by bearing flesh, just as any one might say such an one became or was made an old man, though not so born from the beginning, or the soldier became a veteran, not being previously such as he became. John says, `I became,' or `was in the island of Patmos on the Lord's day.' Not that he was made or born there, but he says `I became or was in Patmos' instead of saying `I arrived;' so the Word `arrived' at flesh, as it is said `the Word was made flesh.' Hear the words `I became like a broken vessel,' and `I became like a man that hath no strength, free among the dead.'"
Of the same from his letter to Epictetus: -
"Whoever heard such things? Who taught them? Who learnt them? `Out of Zion shall go forth the law and the Word of the Lord from Jerusalem.' But whence did these things come forth? What hell vomited them out? To say that the body taken of Mary was of the same substance as the Godhead of the Word, or that the Word was changed into flesh and bones and hairs and a whole body; whoever heard in a church or at all among Christians that God bore a body by adoption and not by birth?"
Of the same from the same Epistle: -
"But who, hearing that the Word made for Himself a passible body, not of Mary, but of His own substance, would call the sayer of these things a Christian? Who has invented so unfounded an impiety, as even to think and to say that they who affirm the Lord's body to be of Mary, conceive no longer of a Trinity, but of a quaternity in the godhead? As though they that are of this opinion described the flesh which the Saviour clothed himself with of Mary as of the substance of the Trinity.
"Whence further have some men vomited forth an impiety as bad as the foregoing, and alleged that the body is not of later time than the godhead of the Word, but has always been co-eternal with it, since it is formed of the substance of wisdom."
Of the same from the same letter: -
"So the body taken of Mary was human according to the scriptures, and real in that it was the same as our own. For Mary was our sister, since we are all of Adam, a fact which no one could doubt who remembers the words of Luke."
Testimony of the holy Basil, bishop of Caesarea: -
From the interpretation of Psalm LX.