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Hippolytus
Among Christians it is settled as the doctrine of piety, that, according to nature itself, and to the activity and to whatever else pertains thereunto, God is equal and the same with Himself,[1758] having nothing that is His unequal to Himself at all and heterogeneous.[1759] If, then, according to Beron, the flesh that He assumed to Himself became possessed of the like natural energy with them, it is evident that it also became possessed of the like nature with Him in all wherein that nature consists,—to wit, non-origination, non-generation, infinitude, eternity, incomprehensibility, and whatever else in the way of the transcendent the theological mind discerns in deity; and thus they both underwent conversion, neither the one nor the other preserving any more the substantial relation of its own proper nature.[1760] For he who recognises an identical operation[1761] in things of unlike nature, introduces at the same time a fusion of natures and a separation of persons,[1762] their natural existence[1763] being made entirely undistinguishable by the transference of properties.[1764]
But if it (the flesh) did not become of like nature with that (the deity), neither shall it ever become of like natural energy with that; that He may not be shown to have His energy unequal with His nature, and heterogeneous, and, through all that pertains to Himself, to have entered on an existence outside of His natural equality and identity,[1765] which is an impious supposition.
Into this error, then, have they been carried, by believing, unhappily, that that divine energy was made the property of the flesh which was only manifested through the flesh in His miraculous actions; by which energy Christ, in so far as He is apprehended as God, gave existence to the universe, and now maintains and governs it. For they did not perceive that it is impossible for the energy of the divine nature to become the property[1766] of a being of a different nature[1767] apart from conversion; nor did they understand that that is not by any means the property of the flesh which is only manifested through it, and does not spring out of it according to nature; and yet the proof thereof was clear and evident to them. For I, by speaking with the tongue and writing with the hand, reveal through both these one and the same thought of my intelligent soul, its energy (or operation) being natural; in no way showing it as springing naturally out of tongue or hand; nor yet (showing) even the spoken thought as made to belong to them in virtue of its revelation by their means. For no intelligent person ever recognised tongue or hand as capable of thought, just as also no one ever recognised the perfectly holy flesh of God, in virtue of its assumption, and in virtue of the revelation of the divine energy through its medium, as becoming in nature creative.[1768] But the pious confession of the believer is that, with a view to our salvation, and in order to connect the universe with unchangeableness, the Creator of all things incorporated with Himself[1769] a rational soul and a sensible[1770] body from the all-holy Mary, ever-virgin, by an undefiled conception, without conversion, and was made man in nature, but separate from wickedness: the same was perfect God, and the same was perfect man; the same was in nature at once perfect God and man. In His deity He wrought divine things through His all-holy flesh,—such things, namely, as did not pertain to the flesh by nature; and in His humanity He suffered human things,—such things, namely, as did not pertain to deity by nature, by the upbearing of the deity.[1771] He wrought nothing divine without the body;[1772] nor did the same do anything human without the participation of deity.[1773] Thus He preserved for Himself a new and fitting method[1774] by which He wrought (according to the manner of) both, while that which was natural to both remained unchanged;[1775] to the accrediting[1776] of His perfect incarnation,[1777] which is really genuine, and has nothing lacking in it.[1778] Beron, therefore, since the case stands with him as I have already stated, confounding together in nature the deity and the humanity of Christ in a single energy,[1779] and again separating them in person, subverts the life, not knowing that identical operation[1780] is indicative of the connatural identity only of connatural persons.[1781]
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