I am not unaware that, to unskilled appraisers of matters, a discourse aimed at resolving questions seems slow and less effective. For because, looking carefully around at all things, it proceeds with a cautious and well-explored step rather than a hasty one, on this account it is blamed by them for slowness. Then, because by reason of the difficulty of its own condition—in order to exclude the calumny of one lying in wait, or the ignorance of one understanding too little, which dwell on the surface of things and words—it is obliged by a subtler treatment to lay open to all certain secret and inner recesses of the inmost truth (which does not come about quickly): this those who are both incapable and also impatient of reasoning bear most grievously.
For no one complains more of the delay of one who reasons than he for whose slowness provision is being made thereby. We, however, fear rather to offend the judgment of the wise, by whom we should assuredly be blamed on this account, if we should omit that which the usefulness of the cause most demands. And therefore it must be inquired of what kind are the other things on account of which the letter of the venerable Ibas is said not to have deserved to be judged orthodox. For since the same most reverend Ibas, confessing also his own faith, says: "For the Church says thus, as your Holiness too knows, and as it has learned from the beginning, and as the divine doctrine has been confirmed from the books of the blessed Fathers: two natures, one power, one person, which is one Son, the Lord Jesus Christ."
Hence, on the contrary, others again reprehend him, because he said there was one power of the Lord Jesus Christ. For they say: How can it be that of two natures far distant from each other—that is, of deity and of humanity—there should be one power? And by this, when one power is said, the diversity of the natures is taken away, so that, according to the madness of Eutyches, there should even seem to be one nature. Moreover, those who say these things assuredly confirm, together with us, that the aforementioned letter is not Nestorian—they who suppose that to say one power of the one Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, accords with the Eutychian error, that is, the error contrary to the Nestorians. Hence it is also believed that the letter was not reprehended by these favorers of the Eutychians.
But why, on account of this word, either the most reverend Ibas, or the synod which pronounced his very letter orthodox, should be blamed, I do not know. For he did not add this against the distinction of the natures, of which he had above rightly spoken, as though he supposed there to be one—that is, an equal—power of the creating and the created substance; but rather he had this in view, that of one person there is one and the same power. For if charity availed so much in many persons, poured out through the Spirit of our same Lord Jesus Christ, that it was rightly said in the Acts of the Apostles, "And the multitude of believers had but one heart and one soul" (Acts 4:32),
how could it not rightly be said that there is one power of that person, by whose gift it was brought about that that multitude was of one heart and one soul? But if it be answered that the multitude of those believers could be said to have had one heart and one soul on this account, that all were of one nature, that is, the human; whereas of the Lord Jesus Christ there are two and diverse natures: let them understand, first, that it was not on the ground that they were of one nature that those believers had one heart and one soul, but rather that the one Christ, the Spirit, bestowed this unity upon them. For it is not nature that makes us of one mind, but the fellowship of minds. Then let them consider what the Apostle says to the Corinthians:
"Know you not that he who cleaves to a harlot is made one body? For they shall be, he says, two in one flesh. But he who cleaves to God is one spirit" (1 Cor. 6:16-17). But if not only of natures, but even of the divine persons, it was rightly said, "But he who cleaves to the Lord is one spirit": how can it not be rightly understood—what the holy synod approved in the letter of the venerable Ibas—that there is one power of the one person of the Lord Jesus Christ? And if any believer, by a good will alone, cleaving to the Lord is one spirit with Him, although he is not one person, how much more rightly could it be said of Christ that there is one power, where by the conjunction of natures one person of God and man has been made?
But it is more, and a higher thing, if anyone diligently attend to it, that the Apostle says, "But he who cleaves to the Lord is one spirit," than if he had said, "there is one power": since that spirit is known to be the cause of the power, from which it proceeds, but the power is not the cause of that spirit from which it proceeds. Wherefore they cannot, in the letter of the venerable Ibas, or in the sentence of the synod which judged it orthodox, justly find fault with what is less, and said of one person; when they would not dare to find fault, in the apostolic writings, with that which is greater, and said of two persons. The will, therefore, of the one speaking ought in all things to be attended to:
which, in the case of the present Ibas, the great synod was able to regard more diligently—even apart from the acts—so as to judge his letter orthodox: and this, in all things whose reason is less apparent, not condemning piety, but humanity itself ought to consider.