Your Nobility sent me a copy of the little book concerning the exposition of the new faith of Eutyches, which he set forth by writing to the most blessed Pope of the Apostolic See, Leo. And you deigned to write, that if I felt anything about it, I should indicate it by the letters of my humility. This indeed you deigned to enjoin affectionately, out of zeal for the holy; but to me, having a trembling mind and a heart filled with fear, it seems dangerous to undertake in this question—the Apostle Paul, the teacher and enlightener of the nations, commanding, and generally admonishing and saying: 'But avoid foolish and unlearned questions and contentions and strivings about the law. They are unprofitable and vain.'
Nevertheless, by the prayers of that same most blessed apostle Paul, with the help of the Lord and God Jesus Christ, what my rustic speech and my slender understanding can, I shall undertake—not as the magnitude and majesty of the faith demands, but as the slender powers of my humility allow. When, therefore, I was running through the aforesaid copy of the letter, or little book of the faith of Eutyches, among the other matters of the text of his words I found where he complains that two natures in Christ were required of him by the holy council of Bishops to be confessed. But if, taking counsel for his own continence and for the labours of his ancient chastity in himself, he had been willing to confess them, never would he have suffered peril to the faith of his own opinion.
But because, according to the tradition of the apostles or prophets or Gospels, he was unwilling to confess two natures in the one person of Christ, in the very harbour of his departure he not only suffered shipwreck of the labours of his own continence, but also disturbed the faith of the Churches throughout the world, already well founded; and, to the heaping-up of his perfidy, he slew the blessed bishop Flavian, a worshipper of Christ and a faithful preacher of the good faith. And he indeed, in times of peace, no public persecution existing, receiving the crown of martyrdom, now glories with his blessed master the apostle Paul and says: 'I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith.'
'For the rest, there is laid up for me the crown of justice, which the Lord, the just judge, will render to me in that day; and not only to me, but also to all who love His manifestation.' And while he glories with all the saints in the Lord, it is necessary for us, if we deserve to follow his footsteps and the tradition of the faith through which he merited a glorious departure, to hold it with all the powers of faith even unto death, and to confess in the one person of Christ two natures—of divinity and of humanity, of the creating and the created, of the assuming and the assumed—natures which nevertheless, as substances, are not confused but united, and in one and the same person inseparably, and remaining always in their own property.
Wherefore to each substance the properties of its own nature are assuredly to be fitted—that is, the things of infirmity worthy of the humanity, which was created; but not the things mutable to the Divinity, which created. For to such a degree are these two natures in the one person of Christ at once united and joined together, that the same Jesus Christ, Son of God, God and man, at one time does or speaks human things, at another time divine. For, in short, that He might show in Himself the substances of two natures, that is, of Divinity and of humanity, sailing He sleeps in the ship as man, and to the storm, the wind rising high, or to the sea, He gives command as God, saying: 'Be still, be silent.'
And after a fast of forty days and forty nights He hungers as man, and in the wilderness He fed five thousand men, besides children and women, from five loaves and two fishes, as God. And what more? Crucified by the Jews, and pierced by the lance in His side, He dies as man; and Lazarus, four days dead, He raised from the tomb as God, saying by divine authority: 'Lazarus, come forth.' Of these two natures, therefore, my lord, in Christ, the tradition is to be strongly guarded, lest with Eutyches or the rest of his consorts, confounding them into one, we should hold a new path of uncertain faith. For rightly do you disdain them, because everything that is confounded is known to be obscure and uncertain:
since, as is given to understand, they seem, with an imprudent sense, to confound into one those same proper natures of Divinity and of humanity, so that, not separating the substance of the humanity from the nature of Christ's Divinity, they pronounce with the very voice that God is passible. For, in short, the letter which Eutyches says to be of a certain Julius, bishop of the city of Rome—which he brought forth, I know not for what, as a solace of his perfidy, perhaps as a forgery—and by whose depraved sense he is known to be led, in its very last text thus professes, saying:
'Those, therefore, who thus think, do not depart from those who hold contrary and dissonant things, so as, while in mind they agree with the divine precepts, to differ in words. For it is necessary that they, when they understand two natures, should worship one and not adore the other, and be baptized indeed into the divine, but not be baptized into the human.' You see, therefore, how those who attack and confound the substance of the two natures endeavour, with a perfidious sense, to pronounce God passible.
But we, who hold the right path of the catholic faith, having set aside this confounding of the two natures, being baptized into the Lord's flesh, therefore adore it, because it was assumed by the Divinity and so united to it, that we confess not one and another, but one and the same God and man, the Son of God. For if Eutyches or the rest of his consorts separate the man from Christ the God, we never adore or serve Him. Or if anyone should find our purple or royal diadem lying idle, would he attempt to adore it? But as soon as the king has been clothed with them, he incurs peril of death, if anyone should scorn to adore them together with the king.
So too, if anyone should scorn to adore the perfect humanity of Christ our Lord—not alone and naked, but united to His Divinity, one and the same Son of God, true God and true man—he shall obtain eternal death. There follows also Julius, by whose sense Eutyches is led, and he says: 'But if they are baptized into the death of the Lord, we profess one nature both of the impassible Deity and of the passible flesh.' I should wish to know more fully how they say 'of the flesh'? If this flesh is without a soul, what is that flesh but earth without sense, which was neither able to give thanks, nor able to feel the pains of the cross? But that flesh without a soul cannot feel is manifest to all.
But if, as they think, in that flesh of the Lord the Divinity was in place of a soul, then they subject the Divinity to sufferings. But if, as the most faithful reasoning of the Scriptures truly holds, together with the flesh He also assumed a human soul, then perfect God assumed the perfect nature of a man, that He might show that together with human flesh He had also assumed a human soul, that is, a perfect man. For He says: 'The good shepherd lays down his soul for his sheep.' And: 'I have power to lay down my soul, and again I have power to take it up.' And in the very moment of His passion He says: 'My soul is sorrowful even unto death'; and:
'Now is my soul troubled.' For God is never troubled, but assuredly that man who hungered, who thirsted, who slept, who was wearied and wept: all which things the flesh alone, without the affections of a soul, could not feel, unless that perfect man whom the perfect God assumed—as the prophet Jeremiah says: 'This is our God, and no other shall be esteemed in comparison with Him; who found out all the way of knowledge, and gave it to Jacob His servant, and to Israel His beloved.' And he added: 'After this He was seen upon earth, and conversed with men.' Now in what form He was seen upon earth and conversed, the most holy of the prophets, Isaiah, most fully and more openly sets forth:
Lord, who has believed our report, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? We proclaimed before him as little children, as a root in a thirsty ground. He has no comeliness nor glory. We saw him, and he had neither form nor beauty; but his form was without honour, and abased below all men. A man set in affliction, knowing how to bear infirmities, he was esteemed as nothing. This one bears our sins, and grieves for us. We esteemed him to be in sorrow and in affliction and in torment. But he was wounded on account of our sins, and made weak on account of our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him; by his bruise we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray, and all men have wandered from their own way.
And the Lord delivered him up for our sins. But he, though sorely afflicted, kept his lips closed; he was led as a sheep to the slaughter. And as a lamb before its shearer is dumb, so he opened not his mouth. In his humiliation his judgement was taken away. But who shall declare his generation? For his life shall be taken from the earth, and for the iniquities of my people he was led to death. And I will give the worthless in return for his burial, and the rich in return for his death. For he did no iniquity, neither was deceit found in his mouth. And the Lord wills to cleanse him of his stroke.
If you offer your souls for sin, you shall see a seed of long life; and the Lord wills to nourish his soul, to show him light, to shape prudence, to justify the just one who serves many well. And he himself bore their sins. Therefore he shall possess many as his inheritance, and he shall divide the spoils of the strong. Because his soul was delivered up to death, and he was reckoned among the wicked. And he himself takes away the sins of many, and was delivered up on account of our iniquities.
Consider therefore, my lord, according to the zeal of your holy mind, how the aforesaid prophets Jeremiah and Isaiah, agreeing with one another, assert how the perfect God, descending from heaven for the salvation of the human race, took upon himself a man; and how each of them assigns to the two natures the sufferings foretold above by Isaiah in Christ, in the man he had assumed. For could God, who is invisible, be comprehended in an incomprehensible manner, or be handed over to enemies, or be reckoned among the ungodly, or die, or have his life taken from the earth?
But rather it was assuredly he who, as we have already said above, hungered, thirsted, grew weary, slept and wept; who also, hanging on the cross of his passion, when he saw the God dwelling within him departing from his body, cried out after him with a tearful voice, saying in the Hebrew tongue: Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani, that is: My God, why have you forsaken me? — although on the third day he was to raise him up again. Nevertheless it was necessary that this be fulfilled which Jesus had already foretold in the Gospel, saying to his disciples: I came forth from God, I went out from the Father, and came into this world; and again I leave this world and go to the Father.
Indeed, even in the passion itself, although that perfect man, assumed by the perfect God, dying on the cross suffers an impious penalty, nevertheless the impassible God himself, in that same perfect man assumed by him, though he did not undergo suffering, yet suffered injury. For just as one who tears a garment does injury to the one clothed in it, so also those who crucified his flesh inflicted injury upon his Divinity. This injury to the Divinity, therefore, all the elements beholding trembled with dread.
For indeed the earth quaked, the rocks were split, the sun fled into night, the moon was darkened with a blood-red hue, and as though the world were now oppressed by perpetual damnation, the stars, torn from their heavenly places, rushed down, the law of the elements thrown into confusion; and when the tombs were opened, bodies long since buried received back their souls. Therefore the catholic doctors of the Churches, most faithful throughout the whole world, according to the authority of the Scriptures proclaim two natures in Christ, of Divinity and of humanity.
Would that Eutyches had considered these things, and had not, with eyes open, plunged himself into the labours of so many years of continence, nor brought upon the Churches of the East an impious disturbance through the confusing of the substances of the two natures, declaring God to be passible. But although the apostle Paul completes his own sentence upon this matter, saying: In the last times some shall depart from the faith, yet he anxiously forewarns us, saying: Give heed to seducing spirits, in the hypocrisy of speakers of lies, having their conscience seared.
For unless, according to the Apostle's word, he had a seared and uncertain conscience of his faith, he would never, stirring up so great a confusion in the Churches of God, have made the holy three hundred and eighteen Fathers of the Council of Nicaea, together with Cyril, holy bishops, partners of his perfidy — men who, not indeed by following his perfidy, but by teaching the faith set forth above by my humility, have been numbered among the saints and elect of God in the register and book of the living. But in order to deceive the simple and the unlearned, and drawing them to himself to unite their minds, he therefore feigns those aforesaid men, authors and preachers of the catholic faith, to be partners of his new and most recent perfidy. Truly upon this Eutyches is fulfilled the Apostle's sentence which says:
Such false apostles, deceitful workers, transform themselves into apostles of Christ. And no wonder; for Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light. It is no great thing, therefore, if his ministers be transformed as ministers of righteousness, whose end shall be according to their works. According, then, to this sentence of the Apostle, since he is a minister of perfidy, he pretends to be a partner of the ministers of righteousness, from whom he held not the aforesaid faith of ours, but set forth a doctrine taught by himself; among whose disciples and most beloved faithful sons of the faith I desire that your nobility be enrolled together with me;
so that, if we are worthy, following the footsteps of their faith, we may by their prayers deserve to obtain mercy in the judgement to come from the threefold, united majesty of piety, that is, of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, to whom be glory unto the ages of ages. Amen.