Five Tomes Against Nestorius

How then, say, didst thou fearing the appellation of weakness and bearing it away from Him, albeit the plan of the economy will it not, say that He hungers visibly, i. e., humanly, yet Divinely supplies food to the hungry? dost thou not say that it is a form of weakness to be in need of food and to be said to hunger as we? but against them who desire to be fault-finders, full strong will the mode of the economy array itself. We must therefore, either bearing Him away from all things that are said humanly and in mean wise, put such passions about a mere man, or considering that He being God has been made as we, confess that He is impassible in respect of the Nature of the Godhead, but say besides that He endured the weakness in our behalf, according to the human nature and after the flesh, I mean. Since, tell me who ask thee again, The Divine-uttering Paul says that He has been crucified out of weakness; but dost thou bear away this thing from God the Word, saying (I suppose) that it is small and ignoble and not worthy of Him? Other therefore than He is he that was crucified, Whom also our Divine instructor calls Lord of glory, saying, For had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. Hath He, then yet remained Lord of Glory Who put it aside and endured this ignoble and mean suffering? If therefore He hath remained so, neither hath He any loss through being weak. How then fearedst thou to say that the Word of God came to be in this case economically? But if He truly fell from being any longer Lord of glory, and any one affirm that it is so, he will incur the charge of the most utter blasphemy and that with reason: for to Him boweth every knee and every tongue shall confess Lord Jesus Christ, to the glory of God the Father. For over all that is under Heaven extendeth the glory of Christ Who suffered for us in the flesh, as we have full often said. When therefore thou nearest the Spirit-clad saying, He was crucified out of weakness but He liveth of the Power of God, understand it piously: for he says that He hath suffered humanly, albeit He hath a nature utterly beyond passion. And so having, He bare with the weak flesh and having suffered death humanly, He lived again Divinely, Himself quickening His own Temple, as the Might of the Father.

And verily when the time was now at hand in which He must endure the Cross for us, He went away and prayed saying, Father if it he possihle, let this cup pass from Me, but added hereto at the close of His Prayer, Nevertheless not as I will but as THOU. But since He albeit Word and God all-Powerful, has once been held to be in weakness like we, He giving the cause of this most economically, says, The spirit indeed is willing, the flesh weak. Consider therefore how He though Himself letting go nought, nor yet suffering weakness in His own Nature, permitted His Flesh to go after its own laws, and this thing is said to be His, because His Body is His own. Hence the being weak according to the Flesh proved to us that He was Man, the not enduring death and scaring away decay from His own Body that He is God Who knows not to be weak: for He is the Life and Might of the Father. For that the weakness herein unwonted and unwilled by Him , He made voluntary in the good-pleasure of God the Father, to save all under Heaven, Himself will teach saying, For I have come down from Heaven, not to do Mine own Will but the Will of Him That sent Me, that of all which He hath given Me I should lose nothing but should raise it up at the last day.

Yet how, if the will of the Father be good, does the Son say that He has His own Will, a good one surely, and other than this? For if it be not good, how is He any longer believed to be His Image and Impress? how will He be true, saying, I and the Father are One, and, He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father? for not in the not good, would one behold the Good by Nature. But verily the Son being Good hath sprung from a Good Father and is His exact Image in everything. What Will therefore, which He says is His own, does He letting go, say that He hath done that of the Father? He was about by the death of His own Flesh to set free from death those who had become subject thereto, i. e., us. But to die in the Flesh was ignoble, and unwonted (as I said) and repugnant to Him: yet hath He endured this too for our sakes in the Good-pleasure of the Father. For He knew, He knew and that well that a little dishonoured by reason of the sufferings of the Flesh He should save all, transforming them unto what was incomparably better. For if any be in Christ, a new creature, old things are gone by, behold all things have become new, as it is written.

The God-inspired Scriptures therefore proclaim to the world One Christ and Son and Lord and say that He is the Lord of Glory and that He of His own Will bare for our sakes the contumelies of the Jews, and economically endured Death upon the wood, not in order with us to remain dead, but that having undone the might of death which none might withstand, He might bring again to immortality the nature of man: for He was God in Flesh.

But this man again essaying to gather to himself from all quarters occasions of severing into two the One, arrays himself to no purpose against those who exist not at all, and makes accusal of certain as though they spake against the truth and desired to adulterate the plan of the mystery, and says,

"Here I would gladly enquire of the heretics who mix up into one essence the Nature of the Godhead and of the Manhood, who he is here who is by the traitor betrayed to the Jews: for if there have been a mixture of both, both were together holden of the Jews, both God the Word and the nature of the manhood: which is it that endured the slaughter? I am obliged to use meaner words that what I say may be plain to all. To whom (tell me) befell this deed? for if the Nature of the Godhead, how darest thou commingle both? God hath both remained unholden of the Jews and hath not shared with the flesh in its slaughter: whence (tell me) dost thou get in the mixture?