Let it suffice to have said these things against the perfidy of the Nestorians, which, as I think, defend us amply and more than enough against the calumnies of the Eutychians—who, when they are refuted by Catholics, fasten upon them the charge of Nestorianism. And therefore let us now show that the third point, contrary to the aforesaid Eutychians, is correct: namely, that we confess our Lord Jesus Christ to be perfect in two natures, that is, in divinity and in humanity. By this we shall also overthrow the calumnies of the Nestorians, who think that we say, to the confusion of the two natures of Christ, that one of the Trinity is the Lord Jesus Christ, and that Mary is truly and properly the Mother of God. Christ therefore, the Son of God, as has been said, we preach to be in two natures.
Nor do we allow it to be said that one nature of His is composed of divinity and humanity, lest He should not be consubstantial with the Father, whose nature is simple; and lest, just as He is of another person than the Father, so He should also be said to be of another, that is, a different, nature. But neither will He be consubstantial with us unless His natures be two: namely, so that there be one in which He is consubstantial with the Father, and another in which He is consubstantial with us. Yet against this most evident reasoning the brutish contentiousness of the Eutychians struggles, affirming that the unity of God the Word, immutably simple, could be composed together with the assumed humanity into one nature. Of these Eutychians there are two parts:
one which throughout follows the opinion of Eutyches its chief; the other which, dissenting from him in certain points, nevertheless out of pride disdains to return to the Church by repenting, so that what is said in the Psalms might seem to be said of them: They were divided, yet were not compunct (Ps. 34:16). For because in contentious vanity they presumed to confound things widely diverse—that is, the creating nature and the created—being delivered over to the figments and errors of their own heart, although flowing from the same miry fountain, they were justly and deservedly divided. But those who, though, as we said, departing in certain points from the opinion of Eutyches their author and head, nevertheless disdain to follow the Catholic
—doctrine, whose head is Christ, perfect in two natures, that is, in divinity and humanity—are, as remaining as it were without a head, called Acephali by the Greeks, whom we can more significantly call Semi-Eutychians. These therefore, schismatics of the divided Eutychians, say that if one nature of the Son of God be preached, that same one nature can be taken to be in some respect consubstantial with the nature of the Father, and likewise in some respect with ours: but this is the same as to say that it is consubstantial neither with the nature of the Father nor with ours.
For when this one nature of the Son of God is said to have something which the nature of the Father does not have, and again something which ours does not have, it is nothing other than to deny it consubstantial both with the nature of the Father and with ours. For just as we rightly say that the Son is consubstantial both with the Father and with us, precisely because, although we say there is one person, we nevertheless do not deny that He subsists in a certain duality of natures, so that according to one He is said to be consubstantial with the Father, and according to the other with us: but the one nature which they themselves say is Christ's, they deny to be contained at all in any duality;
so that, when asked of what that duality consists—since they cannot now say of natures—they should be compelled to say of persons, which, together with us against Nestorius, they deny. And because, when nature is compared with nature, consubstantiality cannot be pronounced there unless the whole be made equal to the whole, so that no diversity of definition come between, but there cannot be one definition of a nature composed of divinity and humanity (if the Son be so believed) and of the simple nature of the Father, which is only divine, or of ours, which is only human—therefore the Son will not be consubstantial both with the Father and with us.
And if the Son be so believed, they ought to confess two natures of the one Son of God—which, by countless testimonies of the ancient Fathers, in defense of the great Synod of Chalcedon and in the refutation of the Eutychian madness, you have proved, both with very many others and yourselves as well. From these we too bring forward some still, though not many in number, yet weighty in import, inasmuch as they have been confirmed by the authority of the Synod of Ephesus. For there they were brought forth against Nestorius, and by them he was there convicted and condemned.
Since therefore both parts of the Eutychians say that they follow the authority of that same Synod, I think it suffices for their confutation if, omitting other things, this alone be made clear: that the Synod itself also affirmed that there are two natures of Christ, when it brought forth against Nestorius, from the second book of blessed Ambrose to the Emperor Gratian (chapter 4), saying: «Let the empty wranglings about words, therefore, be silent: for the kingdom of God, as it is written, is not in the persuasion of word, but in the demonstration of power. Let us preserve the distinction of divinity and flesh: one Son of God speaks in both, because in the same one both natures are. And though the same one speaks, He does not always speak in one mode.» Mark in Him now the glory of God, now the sufferings of man.
«As God He speaks the things which are divine, because He is the Word; as man He says the things which are human, because He was speaking in my substance, etc.» They hear these words of Ambrose recited in the Synod of Ephesus (Session 1); they recognize from them that Nestorius was condemned by the very words in which it is said: Let us preserve the distinction of divinity and flesh, and that, though one, yet the Son of God speaks in both, that is, in both the nature of divinity and of flesh: whence, following on, he added, because in the same one both natures are. And they will not blush to lie openly that they keep the decrees of that same Synod, while denying that Christ is in two natures, and fabricating that one nature has rather been made out of two.
But let them note what was also brought forth there from the words of blessed Gregory Nazianzen against the very dogma of Nestorius (Epistle 1 to Cledonius): «If anyone introduces two sons—one indeed from God the Father, the other from the mother, and not one and the same—he shall be defrauded of the adoption which is promised to those who believe rightly. For there are two natures, God and man, just as also soul and body, but not two sons; for neither here are there two men, although Paul (2 Cor. 4:16) called the inner part of man and the outer. And, to speak briefly, the Savior is of one thing and another; and though that which is invisible is not the same as that which is visible, and that which is without time the same as that which is under time, yet He is not one and another: far be it.
For both are one tempering, God indeed being incarnate, but man being deified, or however one might name it. I say 'one thing and another.' But it is otherwise in the Trinity. For there it is one and another, that we may not confound the subsistences; not one thing and another, for the three are one and the same in divinity.» Since therefore here too they hear that the natures are two, God and man, and that it is not, as these wish, called one composed of both; and since they at the same time observe that, just as in the Trinity the Father is one, and the Son is another, and the Holy Spirit another, and these three names are not of one person, although they are of one nature, so also in Christ there is not one nature, although there is one person:
how is it that the Eutychians, if they believe Gregory, or rather the Synod of Ephesus, do not see that it is of the same profanity to say that there is one nature of Christ, as it is of profanity to say that there is one person of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit? The aforesaid Synod, with Gregory as witness, demonstrated both to be alike. But what will be able to help them against these most evident testimonies of the Fathers—the fact that, in support of their most vain error, they say that Julius, bishop of Rome, wrote back somewhere (I know not where) that there is one nature of Christ? When in that same holy Synod of Ephesus only this of blessed Julius himself was recited against Nestorius, from his epistle to Prosdocius, in which he says (Session 1):
«There is preached indeed, for the fulfilling of the faith, the Son incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and dwelling among men, not operating in a man—for this had been in the prophets and apostles—but perfect God in flesh, and perfect man in spirit; not two sons, one indeed the proper Son assuming a man, the other a mortal assumed by God; but one only-begotten in heaven, the only-begotten God on earth.» Nothing other, besides this epistle to Prosdocius, from the words of blessed Julius was brought forth in that Synod—if perchance he wrote anything else—nor anything further from this epistle.
Why then was not rather that which these men circulate about the one nature of Christ—as though written by blessed Julius himself—or any such things which they allege that other venerable Fathers wrote, recited in the Synod against Nestorius? For those very things would have seemed more contrary to his dogma. For what controversy would have remained, that there is one subsistence, or person, of that God-man, if the Fathers were proved to have also preached that there is one nature of His? Therefore, that every question may be removed: if the Synod indicated that either that epistle was composed later, or that it is not of blessed Julius—as is rather to be believed;
or even if it believed it to be his (which I do not say), so that it might bring forth another rather than this same one of the holy Julius against Nestorius, it judged that the contrary error was not to be conquered out of that which was incautiously said. And let them recognize that we reply this also against the other things which, in the name of other ancient Fathers of the Synod of Ephesus, either false or ill-understood, they bandy about: for if they had been true, or to be understood as they themselves wish, the Synod of Ephesus would forthwith have refuted Nestorius by them. Therefore the Eutychians or Semi-Eutychians have nothing to complain of concerning the great Council of Chalcedon, since it confirmed that Christ is in two natures, according to the decrees of the prior Synod of Ephesus, which they receive along with us.
Nor can they rightly object, against the evidence of these things, certain other statements from the words of blessed Cyril which—as is to be believed—were brought forth with another intention, and which they misunderstand: for even if they are believed to be dissonant from those testimonies of the Fathers which were confirmed in the Synod of Ephesus, they cannot be preferred to, or set against, the synodal decrees which the universal Church has received. To this is added that the same blessed Cyril was himself the first of that Synod of Ephesus, who is not rashly to be believed to have been contrary to himself. And even if he had been, he was not to be followed in that which, as it seemed to him, he privately said to individuals, but rather in that which, with the discussion and deliberation of the Synod, he was commonly proved to have taught.
因為當聖安提阿的約翰（John of Antioch）與其他東方主教、以及別省的主教們，以為——正如優提克派如今所以為的——前述真福區利羅宣講基督只有一個本性，並因此雖出於對信仰可嘉的熱心，卻不公地判定他為異端時：全能的神，祂智慧而奇妙的良善能將人類無知之惡轉為教義之用，便使此事有如此的結局，以致東方與別省主教們對真福區利羅那虛假的猜疑，使我們沒有絲毫可猜疑之處。
For when the holy John of Antioch and the other eastern bishops, and those of other provinces, thought—as the Eutychians now think—that the aforesaid blessed Cyril preached Christ to be of one nature, and on this account, though with a laudable zeal for the faith, yet unjustly judged him a heretic: Almighty God, whose wise and wondrous goodness can turn the evil of human ignorance to the use of doctrine, gave such an outcome to the matter that that false suspicion of the eastern and other provincial bishops concerning blessed Cyril left us nothing to suspect.
因為後來既需操心恢復眾教會的和平——既然關於這猜疑曾激起不小的分裂——前述的東方眾主教便藉可敬的厄梅撒主教保羅（Paul of Emesa），向這位真福區利羅要求：他若願意一切絆腳石、一切冒犯從他們中間除去，就當極為明白地承認獨一的基督、神而人者，存在於兩個本性中。他也欣然接受並承認了這一點，因為他自知連從前也未曾另作他信。
For when afterward the care of restoring the peace of the Churches followed—since concerning this suspicion no slight schism had been stirred up—the said Easterners, through the venerable Paul, bishop of Emesa, demanded of the same blessed Cyril that, if he wished every scandal and every offense to be removed from their midst, he should most evidently confess one Christ, God and man, in two natures. And this he gladly embraced and confessed, inasmuch as he was conscious to himself that he had not believed otherwise even before.
And thus Almighty God not only made manifest to all the right faith of the Easterners and the other Fathers, and of blessed Cyril himself—since neither did they demand anything unworthy, nor did he deny what was demanded—but also, against the future Eutychians, rendered the truth of Catholic doctrine far more ready and far more evident.
And so greatly did the solicitude and diligence of those same eastern Fathers keep watch against this error by which Christ is said to be of one nature, that in the epistle which they sent to him, they wrote out the words of that very right confession which they expected from him, and entrusted them to the aforesaid bishop Paul, so that blessed Cyril, transferring them into his own epistle, might write them back to them, lest anything ambiguous should remain whence a question might at some time arise anew. And he too, as we have already said, accepting what was desired, and testifying that he had not believed otherwise even before, wrote back thus to the same holy John of Antioch:
«Since, however, a superfluous and untimely division of the Churches has been made, now most of all satisfaction has been given to us, my most reverend lord Paul producing a document containing an irreproachable confession of faith, and affirming that this was composed by your Holiness and by the most religious bishops who are there. And the writing reads thus, which has also been inserted in these words into this epistle.» And after some things: «We confess therefore our Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, perfect God and perfect man, of a rational soul and body, before the ages indeed begotten of the Father according to the deity;»
and in the last days, for our sake and for our salvation, the same One was born of the Virgin Mary according to His humanity; consubstantial with the Father according to His deity, and consubstantial with us according to His humanity. For a union of two natures has been wrought: on account of which we confess one Christ, one Son, one God. According to this account of an unconfused unity, we confess the holy Virgin Mary to be the Mother of God, because God the Word, having become incarnate and made man, from the very conception united to Himself that temple which was taken from her.
But the evangelical and apostolic utterances concerning the Lord we know that those men who were preachers of the divine word at times joined together, as though spoken of one person, and at other times divided, as though of two natures; and some they handed down as befitting God according to the deity of Christ, and others as lowly according to His humanity. Attending to these sacred utterances of yours, and finding that we ourselves also think thus (for there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism), we have glorified the Lord, the Saviour of all, rejoicing together with one another and with you: since the Churches that are among us and those that are among you hold a faith in agreement with the divinely inspired Scriptures and with the tradition of our holy Fathers.
Accordingly, since Cyril in this confession—by which he removed from himself the odium of an unworthy suspicion, and was united with the Churches of the East and of the other provinces—thus declares that a union of two natures has been wrought in Christ, in that these same two natures are indeed of one person and substance, so that he confesses that the evangelical and apostolic utterances concerning the Lord are at times to be joined together as of one person, and at other times to be divided as of two natures: how can the Eutychians or Acephali, on the basis of the words of the same blessed Cyril, strive to establish not two natures of Christ, but one composed of two?
For if the evangelical and apostolic utterances concerning the Lord speak not of one composite, but as of two natures, they without doubt testify that Christ exists in two natures. Accordingly, which sayings of blessed Cyril are to be followed without any explanation or scrutiny, if, as we have said, certain other sayings of his seem to be at variance with these? Those for which, or for the like of which, he incurred a sinister suspicion; or those by which he was purged of that very suspicion? Surely those are without any doubt to be received without any interpretation whatever, just as he plainly set them forth—those which took away every suspicion from the doubting.
And therefore whatever and however many things falsely or wrongly interpreted, against the definition of the Synod of Chalcedon, are brought forward—even under the name of blessed Cyril—these cannot be preferred or compared to those by which, at the Synod of Ephesus, with Cyril himself first decreeing it, Nestorius was condemned, and to those by which Cyril afterward was cleared before his fellow priests. Let this too be added to the reader's consideration: that when the Nestorian heresy was scandalising the whole Church, and the Eutychian had not yet arisen, Cyril brought these things forth; and it will be no wonder if he was less on guard against the error of the Eutychians than against that of the Nestorians.
Truly I think this also ought not to be passed over, in which both the more abundant liberty of the aforesaid Eastern Fathers in preserving the integrity of the catholic faith, and blessed Cyril's own confession on this very point, were made manifest. For since it seemed to be less than sufficient for the Church's benefit that these same priests of the Lord should mutually communicate to one another their confession in this faith only by letters, which could come to the notice of but few, the aforementioned venerable Paul, bishop of Emesa, there in the Church of Alexandria, in the presence of blessed Cyril himself, discoursed upon the incarnation of the Lord: in which sermon, among other things, he says: "What is it, 'The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us' (John…)"
"(John 1:14), that is, in our nature? See John proclaiming two natures and one Son; one tabernacle, and another that which is in the tabernacle; one temple, and another, namely God who indwells it. Mark what is said. He did not say 'one (masculine) and another (masculine),' as though of two persons or two Christs, or of two sons; but 'one (neuter) and another (neuter),' as though of two natures. So when he said 'He dwelt among us,' and proclaimed two natures, then he added, 'and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the Only-begotten.' He did not say 'of two sons,' but 'as of the Only-begotten.'" Now after this sermon of the aforementioned venerable bishop Paul, the holy Cyril addresses the people, saying:
"The blessed prophet Isaiah, foretelling the sweet utterances of the teachers who were to come in Christ, says: 'Draw waters with joy out of the fountains of the Saviour' (Isa. 12:3). Behold, therefore, we have drawn water from the holy fountain; I mean from the teacher who preaches, who, illumined by the banquets of the Holy Spirit, has expounded to us the great and sacred mystery of the Saviour, through which we who believe in Him have been saved, and so forth.
Since, then, not the Synod of Ephesus alone declares that Christ is to be proclaimed in two natures, but blessed Cyril also, in his letter by which he entered into communion with the Easterns, confesses that all the priests of Egypt hold the same doctrine, saying, "In agreement with the divinely inspired Scriptures and with the tradition of our holy Fathers, the Churches that are among us and those that are among you hold one faith":
and moreover that he commends Paul, bishop of Emesa, disputing in his presence and in his own church concerning the two natures of Christ, and recommends this very thing by most frequent repetition, and extols it with great praises—while the people too who were present at the discourse acclaimed, as is recorded, and said, "You have spoken well, O orthodox bishop, instructor of the world: whoever believes thus is beloved"—and in all these things we hear nothing of a single nature of Christ which is called composite: how then do the Eutychians now, of whom there is a great part at Alexandria, not believe according to this orthodox and ancient instruction of the world, reckoning it as Nestorian heresy, which their own ancestors loved?
Let them therefore cease from this dreadful folly, by which, in saying that Christ is of one composite nature, they do not understand that they blaspheme God, whose nature they believe can be composed. Nor let them say that blessed Cyril taught things contrary to himself, since by this they bring no defence to their own error, while they fasten upon him a most grievous charge of prevarication.