Five Tomes Against Nestorius

How deep the matter of his cogitations! dread and hard to escape is clearly the compulsion resulting from the reasonings of him who hath compiled such things! Whence comes he having gathered into the midst unto us such fables? or who ever sank down to this extent of unlearning in his conceptions, as to think or say that the Godhead of the Only-Begotten has not its existence before the ages from the Father but rather makes flesh and blood the beginning of its passing into being? who is so distraught and slight of understanding and wholly without ear for the holy Scriptures? who remembereth hot Isaiah who hath cried aloud of Him, Who shall declare His generation? John too who hath written clearly, In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God; all things were made through Him and without Him was not any thing made? And if all things through Him, how will He Who is before every age and time be later in birth than the things that were made through Him? why then do you bring in what is repudiated by all, as though it had been said? cease accusing those who rightly blame what you say, and who laugh at the vastness of the unlearning that is therein. Since therefore there is no one who says that the Virgin hath borne from forth her own flesh the nature of the Godhead, do not contend to no purpose, twining for us reasonings not made out of premises that are true and acknowledged by all.

But what was it that persuaded you to let loose a tongue so sheer and unguarded against those who are zealous to think aright, and to pour down accusal dire and all-cruel upon every worshipper of God? For you said again in Church,

"But I have already full often said that if any simpler one either among us or any other, rejoice in the word Mother of God, I have no grudge against the word; only let him not make the Virgin a goddess."