Sermons & Letters 90

CHAPTER I. Presumption and ignorance drove Eutyches into error. — Having read the letter of your Charity, at whose lateness we marvel, and having reviewed the sequence of the episcopal proceedings, we have at last learned what scandal against the integrity of the faith had arisen among you; and what before seemed hidden has now been laid open and made plain to us. By these proceedings Eutyches, who seemed honourable under the name of presbyter, is shown to be exceedingly imprudent and utterly ignorant, so that of him too may be said what the prophet spoke: He refused to understand that he might do well; he devised iniquity upon his bed (Ps. XXXV. 4). But what is more iniquitous than to think impiously, and to refuse to yield to those wiser and more learned?

But into this folly fall those who, when they are hindered by some obscurity from knowing the truth, have recourse neither to the prophetic voices, nor to the apostolic writings, nor to the authorities of the Gospels, but to themselves; and thus they become masters of error because they were not disciples of the truth. For what learning did he acquire from the sacred pages of the New and Old Testament, who did not grasp even the very beginnings of the Creed itself? And that which is uttered throughout the whole world by the voice of all who are to be regenerated is not yet grasped by the heart of this old man. CHAPTER II. On the twofold nativity and nature of Christ.

— Not knowing therefore what he ought to think concerning the incarnation of the Word of God, and unwilling to labour in the vast breadth of the holy Scriptures in order to merit the light of understanding, he ought at least to have received with attentive hearing that common and undivided confession by which the whole body of the faithful professes: that they believe in God the Father almighty, and in Jesus Christ His only

Son, our Lord, who was born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary. By these three clauses the machinations of well-nigh all heretics are destroyed. For when God is believed to be both almighty and Father, the Son is shown to be co-eternal with Him, in nothing differing from the Father, since He was born God of God, almighty of the almighty, co-eternal of the eternal; not later in time, not inferior in power, not unlike in glory, not divided in essence. And the same only-begotten and everlasting Son of the everlasting Father was born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary. This temporal nativity took nothing from and added nothing to that divine and everlasting nativity, but expended itself wholly upon restoring man, who had been deceived;

that He might both conquer death, and by His own power destroy the devil, who held the dominion of death. For we could not overcome the author of sin and death, unless He took upon Himself our nature and made it His own — He whom neither could sin defile, nor death hold fast. For He was conceived of the Holy Spirit within the womb of His Virgin Mother, who brought Him forth with virginity preserved, even as with virginity preserved she conceived Him. But if he could not draw a pure understanding from this most spotless fountain of the Christian faith, because by his own blindness he had darkened the splendour of the manifest truth, he should have submitted himself to the teaching of the Gospel. And when Matthew says: The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham (Matt.

1:1), he would have sought also to be instructed by the apostolic preaching. And reading in the Epistle to the Romans: Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart unto the Gospel of God, which He had promised before by His prophets in the holy Scriptures concerning His Son, who was made to Him of the seed of David according to the flesh (Rom. 1:1), he would have brought pious diligence to the prophetic pages. And finding the promise of God made to Abraham, saying: In thy seed shall all nations be blessed (Gen. 12:3 and 22:18), lest he should doubt concerning the proper nature of this seed, he would have followed the Apostle, who says: To Abraham were the promises made, and to his seed.

He does not say, And to seeds, as of many, but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ (Gal. 3:16). He would also have grasped with inward hearing the preaching of Isaiah, who says: Behold, a virgin shall conceive in her womb and shall bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which is interpreted, God with us (Isa. 7:14; Matt. 1:23). And he would have faithfully read the words of the same prophet: A child is born to us, a son is given to us, whose government is upon his shoulder, and they shall call his name the Angel of great counsel, Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the Prince of peace, the Father of the world to come (Isa.

9:6). Nor would he, speaking deceitfully, so say that the Word was made flesh that Christ, brought forth from the Virgin's womb, should have the form of a man and not have the reality of a maternal body. Or perhaps he thought that our Lord Jesus Christ was not of our nature, because the angel sent to blessed Mary, ever-virgin, said: The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee; and therefore that which shall be born of thee holy shall be called the Son of God (Luke 1:35) — as if, because the Virgin's conception was of divine operation, the flesh of the conceived was not of the nature of her who conceived.

But that generation, singularly wonderful and wonderfully singular, is not to be so understood as though through the novelty of the creation the property of the kind was taken away. For the Holy Spirit gave fecundity to the Virgin, but the reality of the body was taken from her body; and when Wisdom built herself a house (Prov. 9:1), the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14): that is, in that flesh which He assumed from man, and which He animated with the spirit of a rational life. CHAPTER III. The faith and counsel of God concerning the incarnation of the Word are set forth. — The property therefore of each nature and substance being preserved, and coming together into one Person, lowliness was assumed by majesty, weakness by strength, mortality by eternity:

and in order to pay the debt of our condition, the inviolable nature was united to the passible nature: so that, as befitted our remedies, one and the same mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus, might be able to die from the one, and not be able to die from the other. In the entire and perfect nature therefore of true man was true God born, whole in what is His own, whole in what is ours. And by 'ours' we mean what the Creator founded in us from the beginning, and what He took upon Himself to restore. For of that which the deceiver brought in, and which deceived man admitted, there was no trace in the Saviour. Nor, because He entered into fellowship with human infirmities, was He therefore a partaker of our sins.

He took the form of a servant without the defilement of sin, augmenting the human, not diminishing the divine: because that self-emptying, by which the invisible rendered Himself visible, and by which the Creator and Lord of all things willed to be one among mortals, was a condescension of compassion, not a failing of power. Therefore He who, remaining in the form of God, made man, the same was made man in the form of a servant. For each nature keeps its own property without defect: and as the form of God does not take away the form of a servant, so the form of a servant does not diminish the form of God.

For because the devil boasted that man, deceived by his fraud, had been stripped of the divine gifts, and, despoiled of the endowment of immortality, had incurred the harsh sentence of death, and that he himself had found in his own evils some consolation from the fellowship of the transgressor; and that God too, as the rule of justice required, had changed His own purpose towards man, whom He had established in such great honour — there was need of the dispensation of a secret counsel, that the unchangeable God, whose will cannot be deprived of its own benignity, should fulfil by a more hidden mystery His first design of loving-kindness towards us; and that man, driven into guilt by the cunning of diabolical iniquity, should not perish contrary to the purpose of God. CHAPTER IV. The properties of each nativity and nature of Christ are weighed.

— The Son of God therefore enters into these lowly things of the world, descending from the heavenly throne and yet not departing from the Father's glory, begotten by a new order, by a new nativity. By a new order, because He who is invisible in what is His own became visible in what is ours; the incomprehensible willed to be comprehended; remaining before the times, He began to be in time; the Lord of the universe took on the form of a servant, the immensity of His majesty being overshadowed; the impassible God did not disdain to be passible man, and the immortal to be subject to the laws of death. And begotten by a new nativity: because inviolate virginity knew no concupiscence, yet supplied the matter of the flesh.

From the Mother of the Lord was assumed nature, not guilt; nor, because the nativity is wonderful in the Lord Jesus Christ, begotten of the Virgin's womb, is His nature therefore unlike ours. For He who is true God is the same true man; and there is no falsehood in this unity, while the lowliness of man and the loftiness of the Godhead are mutually present. For as God is not changed by compassion, so man is not consumed by dignity. For each form performs, in communion with the other, that which is proper to it; the Word, that is, working what belongs to the Word, and the flesh carrying out what belongs to the flesh.

The one of these shines forth in miracles, the other succumbs to injuries. And as the Word does not withdraw from equality with the Father's glory, so the flesh does not abandon the nature of our kind. For He is one and the same — this must often be said — truly the Son of God, and truly the son of man. God, by that which In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (John 1:1); man, by that which The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (ibid. 14). God, by that which All things were made by Him, and without Him was nothing made (ibid. 3); man, by that which He was made of a woman, made under the law (Gal. 4:4). The nativity of the flesh is the manifestation of human nature; the childbearing of the Virgin is a token of divine power.

The infancy of a babe is shown by the lowliness of the cradle (Luke 2:7); the greatness of the Most High is declared by the voices of angels (Luke 2:13). He whom Herod impiously plots to slay is like the beginnings of men (Matt. 2:16); but He is the Lord of all, whom they more gladly rejoice to worship in supplication. Now when He came to the baptism of John His forerunner (Matt. 3:13), lest it should be hidden that the Divinity was covered by the veil of flesh, the voice of the Father thundering from heaven said: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased (ibid. 17). Him therefore whom diabolical craft tempts as man, angelic offices minister to as God (Matt. 4:1, 11). To hunger, to thirst, to be weary, and to sleep, is evidently human.

But to satisfy five thousand men with five loaves (John 6:9-12), and to bestow upon the Samaritan woman living water, a draught of which grants to the drinker that he thirst no more (John 4:10); to walk upon the surface of the sea with feet that do not sink (Matt. 14:25), and to lay low the risings of the waves by rebuking the storm (Luke 8:24), is without doubt divine. As therefore — to pass over many things — it is not of the same nature to weep, in the affection of compassion, for a dead friend (John 11:35), and, when the mound of the four-days' burial had been removed, to raise the same friend back to life by the command of His voice (ibid. 43); or to hang upon the wood, and, when day was turned to night, to make all the elements tremble;

or to be pierced with nails, and to open the gates of paradise to the faith of the thief (Luke 23:43); so it is not of the same nature to say: I and the Father are one (John 10:30), and to say: The Father is greater than I (John 14:28). For although in the Lord Jesus Christ there is one Person of God and of man, yet that from which contumely is common to both is one thing, and that from which glory is common is another. For from what is ours He has humanity less than the Father; from the Father He has Divinity equal with the Father. CHAPTER V. The reality of Christ's flesh is proved from Scripture. — On account, therefore, of this unity of Person to be understood in each nature, both the Son of man is read to have descended from heaven, since the Son of God took flesh from that Virgin of whom He was born,

and again the Son of God is said to have been crucified and buried, since He suffered these things not in the Divinity itself, in which the Only-begotten is co-eternal and consubstantial with the Father, but in the infirmity of human nature. Whence we all confess also in the Creed the Only-begotten Son of God crucified and buried, according to that saying of the Apostle: For if they had known, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory (1 Cor. 2:8). And when our Lord and Saviour Himself was instructing the faith of His disciples by His questions, He said: Whom do men say that I, the Son of man, am? And when they had recounted the various opinions of others, He said: But whom do you say that I am?

That is: I who am the Son of man, and whom you behold in the form of a servant and in the reality of flesh — whom do you say that I am? Whereupon blessed Peter, divinely inspired, and about to profit all nations by his confession, said: Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God (Matt. 16:16). Not without reason was he pronounced blessed by the Lord, and drew the solidity both of virtue and of name from the principal Rock, who through the revelation of the Father confessed the same to be both the Son of God and the Christ: because the one of these received without the other did not profit unto salvation, and it was of equal peril to have believed the Lord Jesus Christ to be either God only without man, or man alone without God.

But after the resurrection of the Lord — which was assuredly of a true body, since none other was raised up than He who had been crucified and had died — what else was accomplished during the delay of forty days than that the integrity of our faith should be cleansed from all darkness? For conversing with His disciples, and dwelling with them and eating with them (Acts 1:4), and allowing Himself to be handled by them (whom doubt was constraining) with diligent and inquiring touch, He therefore also entered in to the disciples through closed doors, and by His breath gave the Holy Spirit (John 20:22), and, having bestowed the light of understanding, laid open the hidden things of the holy Scriptures; and again the same showed them the wound of His side (ibid.

27), the marks of the nails, and all the signs of His most recent passion, saying: See my hands and my feet, that it is I. Handle me and see, for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have (Luke 24:39): so that it might be acknowledged that in Him the property of the divine and human nature remained undivided; and thus that we might know that the Word is not the same thing as the flesh, yet might confess the one Son of God to be both Word and flesh. Of this mystery of the faith this Eutyches is to be reckoned exceedingly empty, who acknowledged our nature in the Only-begotten of God neither through the lowliness of mortality, nor through the glory of the resurrection. Nor did he dread the sentence of the blessed apostle and evangelist John, who says:

Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: and every spirit that dissolveth Jesus is not of God, and this is Antichrist (1 John 4:2-3). But what is it to dissolve Jesus, but to separate the human nature from Him, and to empty out by most shameless fabrications the mystery through which alone we have been saved? Being blind, moreover, concerning the nature of Christ's body, he must needs also rave with the same blindness concerning His passion. For if he does not think the Lord's cross to be false, and does not doubt that the punishment undergone for the salvation of the world was true, let him acknowledge also the flesh of Him whose death he believes; and let him not deny that He was a man of our body, whom he knows to have been passible;

since the denial of true flesh is also the denial of bodily passion. If therefore he accepts the Christian faith, and does not turn away his ear from the preaching of the Gospel, let him see what nature, pierced with nails, hung upon the wood of the cross, and, the side of the Crucified being opened by the soldier's lance, let him understand whence flowed the blood and the water, that the Church of God might be watered both by the laver and by the cup. Let him hear also the blessed apostle Peter preaching that the sanctification of the Spirit takes place through the sprinkling of the blood of Christ. And let him not read cursorily the words of the same apostle, saying:

Knowing that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation of the tradition of your fathers, but with the precious blood, as of a lamb unspotted and undefiled, of Jesus Christ (1 Pet. 1:18-19). Let him not resist the testimony of the blessed apostle John, who says: And the blood of Jesus, the Son of God, cleanseth us from all sin (1 John 1:7). And again: This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith (1 John 5:4). And: Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God? This is he that came by water and blood, Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth.

For there are three that bear witness: the Spirit, the water, and the blood; and these three are one (1 John 5:8). The Spirit, that is, of sanctification, and the blood of redemption, and the water of baptism: because these three are one, and remain undivided, and none of them is severed from its connection; because the catholic Church lives by this faith, and by this advances, so that in Christ Jesus neither is humanity believed without true Divinity, nor Divinity without true humanity. CHAPTER VI. The depraved and crafty confession of Eutyches. On what ground, if he repents, he is to be restored to communion. Legates are sent to the East. — But when Eutyches, in answer to the questioning of your examination, replied, saying:

I confess that our Lord was of two natures before the union; but after the union I confess one nature — I marvel that so absurd and so perverse a profession of his was reprehended by no rebuke of the judges, and that a discourse so exceedingly foolish and so exceedingly blasphemous was passed over, as though nothing had been heard that could give offence; since it is as impious to say that the Only-begotten Son of God was of two natures before the incarnation, as it is wicked to assert that after the Word was made flesh there was a single nature in Him.

And lest Eutyches should therefore esteem this to have been rightly or tolerably said, because it was refuted by no sentence of yours, we admonish the diligence of your care, most dear brother, that if by the inspiration of the mercy of God the cause be brought to satisfaction, the imprudence of the ignorant man be purged also of this pestilence of his own thinking.

He indeed, as the order of the proceedings has made clear, had well begun to withdraw from his own persuasion, when, constrained by your sentence, he professed to say what he had not said before, and to acquiesce in that faith of which he had previously been a stranger. But when he was unwilling to give his assent to the anathematizing of the impious dogma, your fraternity understood that he remained in his own perfidy, and was worthy to receive the judgment of condemnation. Concerning whom, if he grieves faithfully and profitably, and recognizes, even if late, how rightly the episcopal authority was moved; or if, unto the fullness of satisfaction, he condemns with living voice and present subscription all that he has wrongly held, no measure of compassion towards one corrected will be blameworthy:

because our Lord, the true and good shepherd, who laid down His life for His sheep (John 10:11), and who came to save the souls of men, not to destroy them (Luke 9:56), wills us to be imitators of His mercy: that justice may restrain those who sin, but mercy may not repel those who are converted. For then indeed is the true faith most fruitfully defended, when a false opinion is condemned even by its own followers. Now for the pious and faithful carrying out of the whole cause, we have directed in our stead our brothers, Julius the bishop and Renatus the presbyter of the title of Saint Clement, and also my son Hilarus the deacon. To whom we have joined Dulcitius our notary, whose faith has been proven to us;

trusting that the help of the Divinity will be present, so that he who had erred, having condemned the depravity of his own thinking, may be saved. May God keep you safe, most dear brother. Given on the Ides of June, in the consulship of Asturius and Protogenes, most illustrious men.