ÉÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ»
                      º  ST. GREGORY OF NYSSA  º
                      º                        º
                      º  THE GREAT CATECHISM   º
                      ÈÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ¼

[Translated by the Rev. William Moore, M.A., Rector of Appleton, Late Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford.]

PROLOGUE.

    The presiding ministers of the "mystery of godliness" (2) have need of 
a system in their instructions, in order that the Church may be replenished 
by the accession of such as should be saved (3), through the teaching of 
the word of Faith being brought home to the hearing of unbelievers. Not 
that the same method of instruction will be suitable in the case of all who 
approach the word. The catechism must be adapted to the diversities of 
their religious worship; with an eye, indeed, to the one aim and end of the 
system, but not using the same method of preparation in each individual 
case. The Judaizer has been preoccupied with one set of notions, one 
conversant with Hellenism, with others; while the Anomoean, and the 
Manichee, with the followers of Marcion (4), Valentinus, and Basilides (5), 
and the rest on the list of those who have wandered into heresy, each of 
them being prepossessed with their peculiar notions, necessitate a special 
controversy with their several. opinions. The method of recovery must be 
adapted to the  form of the disease. You will not by the same means cure 
the polytheism of the Greek, and the unbelief of the Jew as to the Only-
begotten God: nor as regards those who have wandered into heresy will you, 
by the same arguments in each case, upset their misleading romances as to 
the tenets of the Faith. No one could set Sabellius (6) right by the same 
instruction as would benefit the Anomoean (7). The controversy with the 
Manichee is profitless against the Jew (8). It is necessary, therefore, as 
I have said, to regard the opinions which the persons have taken up, and to 
frame your argument in accordance with the error into which each has 
fallen, by advancing in each discussion certain principles and reasonable 
propositions, that thus, through what is agreed upon on both sides, the 
truth may conclusively be brought to light. When, then, a discussion is 
held with one of those who favour Greek ideas, it would be well to make the 
ascertaining of this the commencement of the reasoning, i.e. whether he 
presupposes the existence of a God, or concurs with the atheistic view. 
Should he say there is no God, then, from the consideration of the skilful 
and wise economy of the Universe he will be brought to acknowledge that 
there is a certain overmastering power manifested through these channels. 
If, on the other hand, he should have no doubt as to the existence of 
Deity, but should be inclined to entertain the presumption of a plurality 
of Gods, then we will adopt against him some such train of reasoning as 
this: "does he think Deity is perfect or defective?" and if, as is likely, 
he bears testimony to the perfection in the Divine nature, then we will 
demand of him to grant a perfection throughout in everything that is 
observable in that divinity, in order that Deity may not be regarded as a 
mixture of opposites, defect and perfection. But whether as respects power, 
or the conception of goodness, or wisdom and imperishability and eternal 
existence, or any other notion besides suitable to the nature of Deity, 
that is found to lie close to the subject of our contemplation, in all he 
will agree that perfection is the idea to be entertained of the Divine 
nature, as being a just inference from these premises. If this, then, be 
granted us, it would not be difficult to bring round these scattered 
notions of a plurality of Gods to the acknowledgment of a unity of Deity. 
For if he admits that perfection is in every respect to be ascribed to the 
subject before us, though there is a plurality of these perfect things 
which are marked with the same character, he must be required by a logical 
necessity, either to point out the particularity in each of these things 
which present no distinctive variation, but are found always with the same 
marks, or, if (he cannot do that, and) the mind can grasp nothing in them 
in the way of particular, to give up the idea of any distinction. For if 
neither as regards "more and less" a person can detect a difference (in as 
much as the idea of perfection does not admit of it), nor as regards 
"worse" and "better" (for he cannot entertain a notion of Deity at all 
where the term "worse" is not got rid of), nor as regards "ancient" and 
"modern" (for what exists not for ever is foreign to the notion of Deity), 
but on the contrary the idea of Godhead is one and the same, no peculiarity 
being on any ground of reason to be discovered in any one point, it is an 
absolute necessity that the mistaken fancy of a plurality of Gods would be 
forced to the acknowledgment of a unity of Deity. For if goodness, and 
justice, and wisdom, and power may be equally predicated of it, then also 
imperishability and eternal existence, and every orthodox idea would be in 
the same way admitted. As then all distinctive difference in any aspect 
whatever has been gradually removed, it necessarily follows that together 
with it a plurality of Gods has been removed from his belief, the general 
identity bringing round conviction to the Unity.

CHAPTER I.

    BUT since our system of religion is wont to observe a distinction of 
persons in the unity of the Nature, to prevent our argument in our 
contention with Greeks sinking to the level of Judaism there is need again 
of a distinct technical statement in order to correct all error on this 
point.

    For not even by those who are external to our doctrine is the Deity 
held to be without Logos (9). Now this admission of theirs will quite 
enable our argument to be unfolded. For he who admits that God is not 
without Logos, will agree that a being who is not without Logos (or word) 
certainly possesses Logos. Now it is to be observed that the utterance of 
man is expressed by the same term. If, then, he should say that he 
understands what the Logos of God is according to the analogy of things 
with us, he will thus be led on to a loftier idea, it being an absolute 
necessity for him to believe that the utterance, just as everything else, 
corresponds with the nature. Though, that is, there is a certain sort of 
force, and life, and wisdom, observed in the human subject, yet no one from 
the similarity of the terms would suppose that the life, or power, or 
wisdom, were in the case of God of such a sort as that, but the 
significations of all such terms are lowered to accord with the standard of 
our nature. For since our nature is liable to corruption and weak, 
therefore is our life short, our strength unsubstantial, our word unstable 
(1). But in that transcendent nature, through the greatness of the subject 
contemplated, every thing that is said about it is elevated with it. 
Therefore though mention be made of God's Word it will not be thought of as 
having its realization in the utterance of what is spoken, and as then 
vanishing away, like our speech, into the nonexistent. On the contrary, as 
our nature, liable as it is to come to an end, is endued with speech which 
likewise comes to an end, so that, imperishable and ever-existing nature 
has eternal, and substantial speech. If, then, logic requires him to admit 
this eternal subsistence of God's Word, it is altogether necessary to admit 
also that the subsistence (2) of that word consists in a living state; for 
it is an impiety to suppose that the Word has a soulless subsistence after 
the manner of stones. But if it subsists, being as it is something with 
intellect and without body, then certainly it lives, whereas if it be 
divorced from life, then as certainly it does not subsist; but this idea 
that the Word of God does not subsist, has been shown to be blasphemy. By 
consequence, therefore, it has also been shown that the Word is to be 
considered as in a living condition. And since the nature of the Logos is 
reasonably believed to be simple, and exhibits in itself no duplicity or 
combination, no one would contemplate the existence of the living Logos as 
dependent on a mere participation of life, for such a supposition, which is 
to say that one thing is within another, would not exclude the idea of 
compositeness; but, since the simplicity has been admitted, we are 
compelled to think that the Logos has an independent life, and not a mere 
participation of life. If, then, the Logos, as being life, lives (3), it 
certainly has the faculty of will, for no one of living creatures is 
without such a faculty. Moreover that such a will has also capacity to act 
must be the conclusion of a devout mind. For if you admit not this potency, 
you prove the reverse to exist. But no; impotence is quite removed from our 
conception of Deity. Nothing of incongruity is to be observed in connection 
with the Divine nature, but it is absolutely necessary to admit that the 
power of that word is as great as the purpose, lest mixture, or 
concurrence, of contradictions be found in an existence that is 
incomposite, as would be the case if, in the same purpose, we were to 
detect both impotence and power, if, that is, there were power to do one 
thing, but no power to do something else. Also we must suppose that this 
will in its power to do all things will have no tendency to anything that 
is evil (for impulse towards evil is foreign to the Divine nature), but 
that whatever is good, this it also wishes, and, wishing, is able to 
perform, and, being able, will not fail to perform (4); but that it will 
bring all its proposals for good to effectual accomplishment. Now the world 
is good, and all its contents are seen to be wisely and skilfully ordered. 
All of them, therefore, are the works of the Word, of one who, while He 
lives and subsists, in that He is God's Word, has a will too, in that He 
lives; of one too who has power to effect what He wills, and who wills what 
is absolutely good and wise and all else that connotes superiority. 
Whereas, then, the world is admitted to be something good, and from what 
has been said the world has been shown to be the work of the Word, who both 
wills and is able to effect the good, this Word is other than He of whom He 
is the Word. For this, too, to a certain extent is a term of "relation," 
inasmuch as the Father of the Word must needs be thought of with the Word, 
for it would not be word were it not a word of some one. If, then, the mind 
of the hearers,  from the relative meaning of the term, makes a distinction 
between the Word and Him from whom He proceeds, we should find that the 
Gospel mystery, in its contention with the Greek conceptions, would not be 
in danger of coinciding with those who prefer the beliefs of the Jews. But 
it will equally escape the absurdity of either party, by acknowledging both 
that the living Word of God is an effective and creative being, which is 
what the Jew refuses to receive, and also that the Word itself,  and He 
from whom He is, do not differ in their nature. As in our own case we say 
that the word is from the mind, and no more entirely the same as the mind, 
than altogether other than it (for, by its being from it, it is something 
else, and not it; still by its bringing the mind in evidence it can no 
longer be considered as something other than it; and so it is in its 
essence one with mind, while as a subject it is different), in like manner, 
too, the Word of God by its self-subsistence is distinct from Him from whom 
it has its subsistence; and yet by exhibiting in itself those qualities 
which are recognized in God it is the same in nature with Him who is 
recognizable by the same distinctive marks. For whether one adopts goodness 
(5), or power, or wisdom, or eternal existence, or the incapability of 
vice, death, and decay, or an entire perfection, or anything whatever of 
the kind, to mark one's conception of the Father, by means of the same 
marks he will find the Word that subsists from Him.

CHAPTER II.

    AS, then, by the higher mystical ascent (6) from matters that concern 
ourselves to that transcendent nature we gain a knowledge of the Word, by 
the same method we shall be led on to a conception of the Spirit, by 
observing in our own nature certain shadows and resemblances of His 
ineffable power. Now in us the spirit (or breath) is the drawing of the 
air, a matter other than ourselves, inhaled and breathed out for the 
necessary sustainment of the body. This, on the occasion of uttering the 
word, becomes an utterance which expresses in itself the meaning of the 
word. And in the case of the Divine nature it has been deemed a point of 
our religion that there is a Spirit of God, just as it has been allowed 
that there is a Word of God, because of the inconsistency of the Word of 
God being deficient as compared with our word, if, while this word of ours 
is contemplated in connection with spirit, that other Word were to be 
believed to be quite unconnected with spirit. Not indeed that it is a 
thought proper to entertain of Deity, that after the manner of our breath 
something foreign from without flows into God, and in Him becomes the 
Spirit; but when we think of God's Word we do not deem the Word to be 
something unsubstantial, nor the result of instruction, nor an utterance of 
the voice, nor what after being uttered passes away, nor what is subject to 
any other condition such as those which are observed in our word, but to be 
essentially self-subsisting, with a faculty of will ever- working, all-
powerful. The like doctrine have we received as to God's Spirit; we regard 
it as that which goes with the Word and manifests its energy, and not as a 
mere effluence of the breath; for by such a conception the grandeur of the 
Divine power would be reduced and humiliated, that is, if the Spirit that 
is in it were supposed to resemble ours. But we conceive of it as an 
essential power, regarded as self- centred in its own proper person, yet 
equally incapable of being separated from God in Whom it is, or from the 
Word of God whom  it accompanies, as from melting into nothingness; but as 
being, after the likeness of God's Word, existing as a person (7), able to 
will, self-moved, efficient, ever choosing the good, and for its every 
purpose having its power concurrent with its will.

CHAPTER III.

    AND so one who severely studies the depths of the mystery, receives 
secretly in his spirit, indeed, a moderate amount of apprehension of the 
doctrine of God's nature, yet he is unable to explain clearly in words the 
ineffable depth of this mystery. As, for instance, how the same thing is 
capable of being numbered and yet rejects numeration, how it is observed 
with distinctions yet is apprehended as a monad, how it is separate as to 
personality yet is not divided as to subject matter (8). For, in 
personality, the Spirit is one thing and the Word another, and yet again 
that from which the Word and Spirit is, another. But when you have gained 
the conception of what the distinction is in these, the oneness, again, of 
the nature admits not division, so that the supremacy of the one First 
Cause is not split and cut up into differing Godships, neither does the 
statement harmonize with the Jewish dogma, but the truth passes in the mean 
between these two conceptions, destroying each heresy, and yet accepting 
what is useful to it from each. The Jewish dogma is destroyed by the 
acceptance of the Word, and by the belief in the Spirit; while the 
polytheistic error of the Greek school is made to vanish by the unity of 
the Nature abrogating this imagination of plurality. While yet again, of 
the Jewish conception, let the unity of the Nature stand; and of the 
Hellenistic, only the distinction as to persons; the remedy against a 
profane view being thus applied, as required, on either side. For it is as 
if the number of the triad were a remedy in the case of those who are in 
error as to the One, and the assertion of the unity for those whose beliefs 
are dispersed among a number of divinities.

CHAPTER IV.

    BUT should it be the Jew who gainsays these arguments, our discussion 
with him will no longer present equal difficulty (9), since the truth will 
be made manifest out of those doctrines on which he has been brought up. 
For that there is a Word of God, and a Spirit of God, powers essentially 
subsisting, both creative of whatever has come into being, and 
comprehensive of things that exist, is shown in the clearest light out of 
the Divinely-inspired Scriptures. It is enough if we call to mind one 
testimony, and leave the discovery of more to those who are inclined to 
take the trouble. "By the Word of the Lord," it is said, "the heavens were 
established, and all the power of them by the breath of His mouth (1)." 
What word and what breath? For the Word is not mere speech, nor that breath 
mere breathing. Would not the Deity be brought down to the level of the 
likeness of our human nature, were it held as a doctrine that the Maker of 
the universe used such word and such breath as this? What power arising 
from speech or breathing could there be of such a kind as would suffice for 
the establishment of the heavens and the powers that are therein? For if 
the Word of God is like our speech, and His Breath is like our breath, then 
from these like things there must certainly come a likeness of power; and 
the Word of God has just so much force as our word, and no more. But the 
words that come from us and the breath that accompanies their utterance are 
ineffective and unsubstantial. Thus, they who would bring down the Deity to 
a similarity with the word as with us render also the Divine word and 
spirit altogether ineffective and unsubstantial. But if, as David says, "By 
the Word of the Lord were the heavens established, and their powers had 
their framing by His breath," then has the mystery of the truth been 
confirmed, which instructs us to speak of a word as in essential being, and 
a breath as in personality.

CHAPTER V.

    THAT there is, then, a Word of God, and a Breath of God, the Greek, 
with his "innate ideas" (2), and the Jew, with his Scriptures, will perhaps 
not deny. But the dispensation as regards the Word of God, whereby He 
became man, both parties would perhaps equally reject, as being incredible 
and unfitting to be told of God. By starting, therefore, from another point 
we will bring these gainsayers to a belief in this fact. They believe that 
all things came into being by thought and skill on the part of Him Who 
framed the system of the universe; or else they hold views that do not 
conform to this opinion. But should they not grant that reason  and wisdom 
guided the framing of the world, they will install unreason and 
unskilfulness on the throne of the universe. But if this is an absurdity 
and impiety, it is abundantly plain that they must allow that thought and 
skill rule the world. Now in what has been previously said, the Word of God 
has been shown not to be this actual utterance of speech, or the possession 
of some science or art, but to be a power essentially and substantially 
existing, willing all good, and being possessed of strength to execute all 
its  will; and, of a world that is good, this power appetitive and creative 
of good is the cause. If, then, the subsistence of the whole world has been 
made to depend on the power of the Word, as the train of the argument has 
shown, an absolute necessity prevents us entertaining the thought of there 
being any other cause of the organization of the several parts of the world 
than the Word Himself, through whom all things in it passed into being. If 
any one wants to call Him Word, or Skill, or Power, or God, or anything 
else that is high and prized, we will not quarrel with him. For whatever 
word or name be invented as descriptive of the subject, one thing is 
intended by the expressions, namely the eternal power of God which is 
creative of things that are, the discoverer of things that are not, the 
sustaining cause of things that are brought into being, the foreseeing 
cause of things yet to be. This, then, whether it be God, or Word, or 
Skill, or Power, has been shown by inference to be the Maker of the nature 
of man, not urged to framing him by any necessity, but in the 
superabundance of love operating the production of such a creature. For 
needful it was that neither His light should be unseen, nor His glory 
without witness, nor His goodness unenjoyed, nor that any other quality 
observed in the Divine nature should in any case lie idle, with none to 
share it or enjoy it. If, therefore, man comes to his birth upon these 
conditions, namely to be a partaker of the good things in God, necessarily 
he is framed of such a kind as to be adapted to the participation of such 
good. For as the eye, by virtue of the bright ray which is by nature 
wrapped up in it, is in fellowship with the light, and by its innate 
capacity draws to itself that which is akin to it, so was it needful that a 
certain affinity with the Divine should be mingled with the nature of man, 
in order that by means of this correspondence it might aim at that which 
was native to it. It is thus even with the nature of the unreasoning 
creatures, whose lot is cast in water or  in air; each of them has an 
organization adapted to its kind of life, so that by a peculiar formation 
of the body, to the one of them the air, to the other the water, is its 
proper and congenial element. Thus, then, it was needful for man, born for 
the enjoyment of Divine good, to have something in his nature akin to that 
in which he is to participate. For this end he has been furnished with 
life, with thought, with skill, and with all the excellences that we 
attribute to God, in order that by each of them he might have his desire 
set upon that which is not strange to him. Since, then, one of the 
excellences connected with the Divine nature is also eternal existence, it 
was altogether needful that the equipment of our nature should not be 
without the further gift of this attribute, but should have in itself the 
immortal, that by its inherent faculty it might both recognize what is 
above it, and be possessed with a desire for the divine and eternal life 
(3). In truth this has been shown in the comprehensive utterance of one 
expression, in the description of the cosmogony, where it is said that man 
was made "in the image of God" (4). For in this likeness, implied in the 
word image, there is a summary of all things that characterize Deity; and 
whatever else Moses relates, in a style more in the way of history, of 
these matters, placing doctrines before us in the form of a story, is 
connected with the same instruction. For that Paradise of his, with its 
peculiar fruits, the eating of which did not afford to them who tasted 
thereof satisfaction of the appetite, but knowledge and eternity of life, 
is in entire agreement with what has been previously considered with regard 
to man, in the view that our nature at its beginnings was good, and in the 
midst of good. But, perhaps, what has been said will be contradicted by one 
who looks only to the present condition of things, and thinks to convict 
our statement of untruthfulness, inasmuch as man is seen no longer under 
those primeval circumstances, but under almost entirely opposite ones. 
"Where is the divine resemblance in the soul? Where the body's freedom from 
suffering? Where the eternity of life? Man is of brief existence, subject 
to passions, liable to decay, and ready both in body and mind for every 
form of suffering." By these and the like assertions, and by directing the 
attack against human nature, the opponent will think that he upsets the 
account that has been offered respecting man. But to secure that our 
argument may not have to be diverted from its course at any future stage, 
we will briefly discuss these points. That the life of man is at present 
subject to abnormal conditions is no proof that man was not created in the 
midst of good. For since man is the work of God, Who through His goodness 
brought this creature into being, no one could reasonably suspect that he, 
of whose constitution goodness is the cause, was created by his Maker in 
the midst of evil. But there is another reason for our present 
circumstances being what they are, and for our being destitute of the 
primitive surroundings: and yet again the starting-point of our answer to 
this argument against us is not beyond and outside the assent of our 
opponents. For He who made man for the participation of His own peculiar 
good, and incorporated in him the instincts for all that was excellent, in 
order that his desire might be carried forward by a corresponding movement 
in each case to its like, would never have deprived him of that most 
excellent and precious of all goods; I mean the gift implied in being his 
own master, and having a free will. For if necessity in any way was the 
master of the life of man, the "image" would have been falsified in that 
particular part, by being estranged owing to this unlikeness to its 
archetype. How can that nature which is under a yoke and bondage to any 
kind of necessity be called an image of a Master Being? Was it not, then, 
most right that that which is in every detail made like the Divine should 
possess in its nature a self-ruling and independent principle, such as to 
enable the participation of good to be the reward of its virtue? Whence, 
then, comes it, you will ask, that he who had been distinguished throughout 
with most excellent endowments exchanged these good things for the worse? 
The reason of this also is plain. No growth of evil had its beginning in 
the Divine will. Vice would have been blameless were it inscribed with the 
name of God as its maker and father. But the evil is, in some way or other, 
engendered (5) from within, springing up in the will at that moment when 
there is a retrocession of the soul from the beautiful (6), For as sight is 
an activity of nature, and blindness a deprivation of that natural 
operation, such is the kind of opposition between virtue and vice. It is, 
in fact, not possible to form any other notion of the origin of vice than 
as the absence of virtue. For as when the light has been removed the 
darkness supervenes, but as long as it is present there is no darkness, so, 
as long as the good is present in the nature, vice is a thing that has no 
inherent existence; while the departure of the better state becomes the 
origin of its opposite. Since then, this is the peculiarity of the 
possession of a free will, that it chooses as it likes the thing that 
pleases it, you will find that it is not God Who is the author of the 
present evils, seeing that He has ordered your nature so as to be its own 
master and free; but rather the recklessness that makes choice of the worse 
in preference to the better.

CHAPTER VI.

    BUT you will perhaps seek to know the cause of this error of judgment; 
for it is to this point that the train of our discussion tends. Again, 
then, we shall be justified in expecting to find some starting-point which 
will throw light on this inquiry also. An argument such as the following we 
have received by tradition from the Fathers; and this argument is no mere 
mythical narrative, but one that naturally invites our credence. Of all 
existing things there is a twofold manner of apprehension, the 
consideration of them being divided between what appertains to intellect 
and what appertains to the senses; and besides these there is nothing to be 
detected in the nature of existing things, as extending beyond this 
division. Now these two worlds have been separated from each other by a 
wide interval, so that the sensible is not included in those qualities 
which mark the intellectual, nor this last in those qualities which 
distinguish the sensible, but each receives its formal character from 
qualities opposite to those of the other. The world of thought is bodiless, 
impalpable, and figureless; but the sensible is, by its very name, bounded 
by those perceptions which come through the organs of sense. But as in the 
sensible world itself, though there is a considerable mutual opposition of 
its various elements, yet a certain harmony maintained in those opposites 
has been devised by the wisdom that rules the Universe, and thus there is 
produced a concord of the whole creation with itself, and the natural 
contrariety does not break the chain of agreement;  in like manner, owing 
to the Divine wisdom, there is an admixture and interpenetration of the 
sensible with the intellectual department, in order that all things may 
equally have a share in the beautiful, and no single one of existing  
things be without its share in that superior world.  For this reason the 
corresponding locality of  the intellectual world is a subtitle and mobile 
essence, which, in accordance with its supramundane habitation, has in its 
peculiar nature large affinity with the intellectual part. Now, by a 
provision of the supreme Mind there is an intermixture of the intellectual 
with the sensible world, in order that nothing in creation may be thrown 
aside (7) as worthless, as says the Apostle, or be left without its portion 
of the Divine fellowship. On this account it is that the corn mixture of 
the intellectual and sensible in man is effected by the Divine Being, as 
the description of the cosmogony instructs us. It tells us that God, taking 
dust of the ground, formed the man, and by an inspiration from Himself He 
planted life in the work of His hand, that thus the earthy might be raised 
up to the Divine, and so one certain grace of equal value might pervade the 
whole creation, the lower nature being mingled with the supramundane. 
Since, then, the intellectual nature had a previous existence, and to each 
of the angelic powers a certain operation was assigned, for the 
organization of the whole, by the authority that presides over all things, 
there was a certain power ordained to hold together and sway the earthly 
region (8), constituted for this purpose by the power that administers the 
Universe. Upon that there was fashioned that thing moulded of earth, an 
"image" copied from the superior Power. Now this living being was man. In 
him, by an ineffable influence, the godlike beauty of the intellectual 
nature was mingled. He to whom the administration of the earth has been 
consigned takes it ill and thinks it not to be borne, if, of that nature 
which has been subjected to him, any being shall be exhibited bearing 
likeness to his transcendent dignity. But the question, how one who had 
been created for no evil purpose by Him who framed the system of the 
Universe in goodness fell away, nevertheless, into this passion of envy, it 
is not a part of my present business minutely to discuss; though it would 
not be difficult, and it would not take long, to offer an account to those 
who are amenable to persuasion. For the distinctive difference between 
virtue and vice is not to be contemplated as that between two actually 
subsisting phenomena; but as there is a logical opposition between that 
which is and that which is not, and it is not possible to say that, as 
regards subsistency, that which is not is distinguished from that which is, 
but we say that nonentity is only logically opposed to entity, in the same 
way also the word vice is opposed to the word virtue, not as being any 
existence in itself, but only as becoming thinkable by the absence of the 
better. As we say that blindness is logically opposed to sight, not that 
blindness has of itself a natural existence, being only a deprivation of a 
preceding faculty, so also we say that vice is to be regarded as the 
deprivation of goodness, just as a shadow which supervenes at the passage 
of the solar ray. Since, then, the uncreated nature is incapable of 
admitting of such movement as is implied in turning or change or 
alteration, while everything that subsists through creation has connection 
with change, inasmuch as the subsistence itself of the creation had its 
rise in change, that which was not passing by the Divine power into that 
which is; and since the above-mentioned power was created too, and could 
choose by a spontaneous movement whatever he liked, when he had closed his 
eyes to the good and the un-grudging like one who in the sunshine lets his 
eyelids down upon his eyes and sees only darkness, in this way that being 
also, by his very unwillingness to perceive the good, became cognisant of 
the contrary to goodness. Now this is Envy. Well, it is undeniable that the 
beginning of any matter is the cause of everything else that by consequence 
follows upon it, as, for instance, upon health there follows a good habit 
of body, activity, and a pleasurable life, but upon sickness, weakness, 
want of energy, and life passed in distaste of everything; and so, in all 
other instances, things follow by consequence their proper beginnings. As, 
then, freedom from the agitation of the passions is the beginning and 
groundwork of a life in accordance with virtue, so the bias to vice 
generated by that Envy is the constituted road to all these evils which 
have been since displayed. For when once he, who by his apostacy from 
goodness had begotten in himself this Envy, had received this bias to evil 
(9), like a rock, torn asunder from a mountain ridge, which is driven down 
headlong by its own weight, in like manner he, dragged away from his 
original natural propension to goodness and gravitating with all his weight 
in the direction of vice, was deliberately forced and borne away as by a 
kind of gravitation to the utmost limit of iniquity; and as for that 
intellectual power which he had received from his Creator to co-operate 
with the better endowments, this he made his assisting instrument in the 
discovery of contrivances for the purposes of vice, while by his crafty 
skill he deceives and circumvents man, persuading him to become his own 
murderer with his own hands. For seeing that man by the commission of the 
Divine blessing had been elevated to a lofty pre-eminence (for he was 
appointed king over the earth and all things on it; he was beautiful in his 
form, being created an image of the archetypal beauty; he was without 
passion in his nature, for he was an imitation of the unimpassioned; he was 
full of frankness, delighting in a face-to-face manifestation of the 
personal Deity),--all this was to the adversary the fuel to his passion of 
envy. Yet could he not by any exercise of strength or dint of force 
accomplish his purpose, for the strength of God's blessing over-mastered 
his own force. His plan, therefore, is to withdraw man from this enabling 
strength, that thus he may be easily captured by him and open to his 
treachery. As in a lamp when the flame has caught the wick and a person is 
unable to blow it out, he mixes water with the oil and by this devices will 
dull the flame, in the same way the enemy, by craftily mixing up badness in 
man's will, has produced a kind of extinguishment and dulness in the 
blessing, on the failure of which that which is opposed necessarily enters. 
For to life is opposed death, to strength weakness, to blessing curse, to 
frankness shame, and to all that is good whatever can be conceived as 
opposite. Thus it is that humanity is in its present evil condition, since 
that beginning introduced the occasions for such an ending.

CHAPTER VII.

    YET let no one ask, "How was it that, if God foresaw the misfortune 
that would happen to man from want of thought, He came to create him, since 
it was, perhaps, more to his advantage not to have been born than to be in 
the midst of such evils?" This is what they who have been carried away by 
the false teaching of the Manichees put forward for the establishment of 
their error, as thus able to show that the Creator of human nature is evil. 
For if God is not ignorant of anything that is, and yet man is in the midst 
of evil, the argument for the goodness of God could not be upheld; that is, 
if He brought forth into life the man who was to be in this evil. For if 
the operating force which is in accordance with the good is entirely that 
of a nature which is good, then this painful and perishing life, they say, 
can never be referred to the workmanship of the good, but it is necessary 
to suppose for such a life as this another author, from whom our nature 
derives its tendency to misery. Now all these and the like assertions seem 
to those who are thoroughly imbued with the heretical fraud, as with some 
deeply ingrained stain, to have a certain force from their superficial 
plausibility. But they who have a more thorough insight into the truth 
clearly perceive that what they say is unsound, and admits of speedy 
demonstration of its fallacy. In my opinion, too, it is well to put forward 
the Apostle as pleading with us on these points for their condemnation. In 
his address to the Corinthians he makes a distinction between the carnal 
and spiritual dispositions of souls; showing, I think, by what he says that 
it is wrong to judge of what is morally excellent, or, on the other hand, 
of what is evil, by the standard of the senses; but that, by withdrawing 
the mind from bodily phenomena, we must decide by itself and from itself 
the true nature of moral excellence and of its opposite. "The spiritual 
man," he says, "judgeth all things (1)." This, I think, must have been the 
reason of the invention of these deceptive doctrines on the part of those 
who propound them, viz. that when they define the good they have an eye 
only to the sweetness of the body's enjoyment, and so, because from its 
composite nature and constant tendency to dissolution that body is 
unavoidably subject to suffering and sicknesses, and because upon such 
conditions of suffering there follows a sort of sense of pain, they decree 
that the formation of man is the work of an evil deity. Since, if their 
thoughts had taken a loftier view, and, withdrawing their minds from this 
disposition to regard the gratifications of the senses, they had looked at 
the nature of existing things dispassionately, they would have understood 
that there is no evil other than wickedness. Now all wickedness has its 
form and character in the deprivation of the good; it exists not by itself, 
and cannot be contemplated as a subsistence. For no evil of any kind lies 
outside and independent of the will; but it is the non-existence of the 
good that is so denominated. Now that which is not has no substantial 
existence, and the Maker of that which has no substantial existence is not 
the Maker of things that have substantial existence. Therefore the God of 
things that are is external to the causation of things that are evil, since 
He is not the Maker of things that are non- existent. He Who formed the 
sight did not make blindness. He Who manifested virtue manifested not the 
deprivation thereof. He Who has proposed as the prize in the contest of a 
free will the guerdon of all good to those who are living virtuously, 
never, to please Himself, subjected mankind to the yoke of a strong 
compulsion, as if he would drag it unwilling, as it were his lifeless tool, 
towards the right. But if, when the light shines very brightly in a clear 
sky, a man of his own accord shuts his eyelids to shade his sight, the sun 
is clear of blame on the part of him who sees not.

CHAPTER VIII.

    NEVERTHELESS one who regards only the dissolution of the body is 
greatly disturbed, and makes it a hardship that this life of ours should be 
dissolved by death; it is, he says, the extremity of evil that our being 
should be quenched by this condition of mortality. Let him, then, observe 
through this gloomy prospect the excess of the Divine benevolence. He may 
by this, perhaps, be the more induced to admire the graciousness of God's 
care for the affairs of man. To live is desirable to those who partake of 
life, on account of the enjoyment of things to their mind; since, if any 
one lives in bodily pain, not to be is deemed by such an one much more 
desirable than to exist in pain. Let us inquire, then, whether He Who gives 
us our outfit for living has any other object in view than how we may pass 
our life under the fairest circumstances. Now since by a motion of our 
self- will we contracted a fellowship with evil, and, owing to some sensual 
gratification, mixed up this evil with our nature like some deleterious 
ingredient spoiling the taste of honey, and so, falling away from that 
blessedness which is involved in the thought of passionlessness, we have 
been viciously transformed--for this reason, Man, like some earthen 
potsherd, is resolved again into the dust of the ground, in order to secure 
that he may part with the soil which he has now contracted, and that he 
may, through the resurrection, be reformed anew after the original pattern; 
at least if in this life that now is he has preserved what belongs to that 
image. A doctrine such as this is set before us by Moses under the disguise 
of an historical manner (2). And yet this disguise of history contains a 
teaching which is most plain. For after, as he tells us, the earliest of 
mankind were brought into contact with what was forbidden, and thereby were 
stripped naked of that primal blessed condition, the Lord clothed these, 
His first-formed creatures, with coats of skins. In my opinion we are not 
bound to take these skins in their literal meaning. For to what sort of 
slain and flayed animals did this clothing devised for these humanities 
belong? But since all skin, after it is separated from the animal, is dead, 
I am certainly of opinion that He Who is the healer of our sinfulness, of 
His foresight invested man subsequently with that capacity of dying which 
had been the special attribute of the brute creation. Not that it was to 
last for ever; for a coat is something external put on us, lending itself 
to the body for a time, but not indigenous to its nature. This liability to 
death, then, taken from the brute creation, was, provisionally, made to 
envelope the nature created for immortality. It enwrapped it externally, 
but not internally. It grasped the sentient part of man; but laid no hold 
upon the Divine image. This sentient part, however, does not disappear, but 
is dissolved. Disappearance is the passing away into non-existence, but 
dissolution is the dispersion again into those constituent elements of the 
world of which it was composed. But that which is contained in them 
perishes not, though it escapes the cognisance of our senses.

    Now the cause of this dissolution is evident from the illustration we 
have given of it. For since the senses have a close connection with what is 
gross and earthy, while the intellect is in its nature of a nobler and more 
exalted character than the movements involved in sensation, it follows that 
as, through the estimate which is made by the senses, there is an erroneous 
judgment as to what is morally good, and this error has wrought the effect 
of substantiating a contrary condition, that part of us which has thus been 
made useless is dissolved by its reception of this contrary. Now the 
bearing of our illustration is as follows. We supposed that some vessel has 
been composed of clay, and then, for some mischief or other, filled with 
melted lead, which lead hardens and remains in a non-liquid state; then 
that the owner of the vessel recovers it, and, as he possesses the potter's 
art, pounds to bits the ware which held the lead, and then remoulds the 
vessel after its former pattern for his own special use, emptied now of the 
material which had been mixed with it: by a like process the maker of our 
vessel, now that wickedness has intermingled with our sentient part, I mean 
that connected with the body, will dissolve the material which has received 
the evil, and, re-moulding it again by the Resurrection without any 
admixture of the contrary matter, will recombine the elements into the 
vessel in its original beauty. Now since both soul and body have a common 
bond of fellowship in their participation of the sinful affections, there 
is also an analogy between the soul's and body's death. For as in regard to 
the flesh we pronounce the separation of the sentient life to be death, so 
in respect of the soul we call the departure of the real life death. While, 
then, as we have said before, the participation in evil observable both in 
soul and body is of one and the same character, for it is through both that 
the evil principle advances into actual working, the death of dissolution 
which came from that clothing of dead skins does not affect the soul. For 
how can that which is uncompounded be subject to dissolution? But since 
there is a necessity that the defilements which sin has engendered in the 
soul as well should be removed thence by some remedial process, the 
medicine which virtue supplies has, in the life that now is, been applied 
to the healing of such mutilations as these. If, however, the soul remains 
unhealed (3), the remedy is dispensed in the life that follows this. Now in 
the ailments of the body there are sundry differences, some admitting of an 
easier, others requiring a more difficult treatment. In these last the use 
of the knife, or cauteries, or draughts of bitter medicines are adopted to 
remove the disease that has attacked the body. For the healing of the 
soul's sicknesses the future judgment announces something of the same kind, 
and this to the thoughtless sort is held out as the threat of a terrible 
correction (4), in order that through fear of this painful retribution they 
may gain the wisdom of fleeing from wickedness: while by those of more 
intelligence it is believed to be a remedial process ordered by God to 
bring back man, His peculiar creature, to the grace of his primal 
condition. They who use the knife or cautery to remove certain unnatural 
excrescences in the body, such as wens or warts, do not bring to the person 
they are serving a method of healing that is painless, though certainly 
they apply the knife without any intention of injuring the patient. In like 
manner whatever material excrescences are hardening on our souls, that have 
been sensualized by fellowship with the body's affections, are, in the day 
of the judgment (5), as it were cut and scraped away by the ineffable 
wisdom and power of Him Who, as the Gospel says, "healeth those that are 
sick (6)." For, as He says again, "they that are whole have no need of the 
physician, but they that are sick (7)." Since, then, there has been inbred 
in the soul a strong natural tendency to evil, it must suffer, just as the 
excision of a warts gives a sharp pain to the skin of the body; for 
whatever contrary to the nature has been inbred in the nature attaches 
itself to the subject in a certain union of feeling, and hence there is 
produced an abnormal intermixture of our own with an alien quality, so that 
the feelings, when the separation from this abnormal growth comes, are hurt 
and lacerated. Thus when the soul pines and melts away under the correction 
of its sins, as prophecy somewhere tells us (9), there necessarily follow, 
from its deep and intimate connection with evil, certain unspeakable and 
inexpressible pangs, the description of which is as difficult to render as 
is that of the nature of those good things which are the subjects of our 
hope. For neither the one nor the other is capable of being expressed in 
words, or brought within reach of the understanding. If, then, any one 
looks to the ultimate aim of the Wisdom of Him Who directs the economy of 
the universe, he would be very unreasonable and narrow-minded to call the 
Maker of man the Author of evil; or to say that He is ignorant of the 
future, or that, if He knows it and has made him, He is not uninfluenced by 
the impulse to what is bad. He knew what was going to be, yet did not 
prevent the tendency towards that which actually happened. That humanity, 
indeed, would be diverted from the good, could not be unknown to Him Who 
grasps all things by His power of foresight, and Whose eyes behold the 
coming equally with the past events. As, then, He had in sight the 
perversion, so He devised man's recall to good. Accordingly, which was the 
better way? --never to have brought our nature into existence at all, since 
He foresaw that the being about to be created would fall away from that 
which is morally beautiful; or to bring him back by repentance, and restore 
his diseased nature to its original beauty? But, because of the pains and 
sufferings of the body which are the necessary accidents of its unstable 
nature, to call God on that account the Maker of evil, or to think that He 
is not the Creator of man at all, in hopes thereby to prevent the 
supposition of His being the Author of what gives us pain,--all this is an 
instance of that extreme narrow-mindedness which is the mark of those who 
judge of moral good and moral evil by mere sensation. Such persons do not 
understand that that only is intrinsically good which sensation does not 
reach, and that the only evil is estrangement from the good. But to make 
pains and pleasures the criterion of what is morally good and the contrary, 
is a characteristic of the unreasoning nature of creatures in whom, from 
their want of mind and understanding, the apprehension of real goodness has 
no place. That man is the work of God, created morally noble and for the 
noblest destiny, is evident not only from what  has been said, but from a 
vast number of other proofs; which, because they are so many, we shall here 
omit. But when we call God the Maker of man we do not forget how carefully 
at the outset (1) we defined our position against the Greeks. It was there 
shown that the Word of God is a substantial and personified being, Himself 
both God and the Word; Who has embraced in Himself all creative power, or 
rather Who is very power with an impulse to all good; Who works out 
effectually whatever He wills by having a power concurrent with His will; 
Whose will and work is the life of all things that exist; by Whom, too, man 
was brought into being and adorned with the highest excellences after the 
fashion of Deity. But since that alone is unchangeable in its nature which 
does not derive its origin through creation, while whatever by the 
uncreated being is brought into existence out of what was nonexistent, from 
the very first moment that it begins to be, is ever passing through change, 
and if it acts according to its nature the change is ever to the better, 
but if it be diverted from the straight path, then a movement to the 
contrary succeeds,--since, I say, man was thus conditioned, and in him the 
changeable element in his nature had slipped aside to the exact contrary, 
so that this departure from the good introduced in its train every form of 
evil to match the good (as, for instance, on the defection of life there 
was brought in the antagonism of death; on the deprivation of light 
darkness supervened; in the absence of virtue vice arose in its place, and 
against every form of good might be reckoned a like number of opposite 
evils), by whom, I ask, was man, fallen by his recklessness into this and 
the like evil state (for it was not possible for him to retain even his 
prudence when he had estranged himself from prudence, or to take any wise 
counsel when he had severed himself from wisdom),--by whom was man to be 
recalled to the grace of his original state? To whom belonged the 
restoration of the fallen one, the recovery of the lost, the leading back 
the wanderer by the hand? To whom else than entirely to Him Who is the the 
Lord of his nature? For Him only Who at the first had given the life was it 
possible, or fitting, to recover it when lost. This is what we are taught 
and learn from the Revelation of the truth, that God in the beginning made 
man and saved him when he had fallen.

CHAPTER IX.

    Up to this point, perhaps, one who has followed the course of our 
argument will agree with it, inasmuch as it does not seem to him that 
anything has been said which is foreign to the proper conception of the 
Deity. But towards what follows and constitutes the strongest part of this 
Revelation of the truth, he will not be similarly disposed; the human 
birth, I mean, the growth of infancy to maturity, the eating and drinking, 
the fatigue and sleep, the sorrow and tears, the false accusation and 
judgment hall, the cross of death and consignment to the tomb. All these 
things, included as they are in this revelation, to a certain extent blunt 
the faith of the more narrow-minded, and so they reject the sequel itself 
in consequence of these antecedents. They will not allow that in the 
Resurrection from the dead there is anything consistent with the Deity, 
because of the unseemly circumstances of the Death. Well, I deem it 
necessary first of all to remove our thoughts for a moment from t he 
grossness of the carnal element, and to fix them on what is morally 
beautiful in itself, and on what is not, and on the distinguishing marks by 
which each of them is to be apprehended. No one, I think, who has reflected 
will challenge the assertion that, in the whole nature of things, one thing 
only is disgraceful, and that is vicious weakness; while whatever has no 
connection with vice is a stranger to all disgrace; and whatever has no 
mixture in it of disgrace is certainly to be found on the side of the 
beautiful; and what is really beautiful has in it no mixture of its 
opposite. Now whatever is to be regarded as coming within the sphere of the 
beautiful becomes the character of God. Either, then, let them show that 
there was viciousness in His birth, His bringing up, His growth, His 
progress to the perfection of His nature, His experience of death and 
return from death; or, if they allow that the aforesaid circumstances of 
His life remain outside the sphere of viciousness, they will perforce admit 
that there is nothing of disgrace in this that is foreign to viciousness. 
Since, then, what is thus removed from every disgraceful and vicious 
quality is abundantly shown to be morally beautiful, how can one fail to 
pity the folly of men who give it as their opinion that what is morally 
beautiful is not becoming in the case of God?

CHAPTER X.

    "But the nature of man," it is said, "is narrow and circumscribed, 
whereas the Deity is infinite. How could the infinite be included in the 
atom (2)?" But who is it that says the infinitude of the Deity is 
comprehended in the envelop-meat of the flesh as if it were in a vessel? 
Not even in the case of our own life is the intellectual nature shut up 
within the boundary of the flesh. On the contrary, while the body's bulk is 
limited to the proportions peculiar to it, the soul by the movements of its 
thinking faculty can coincide (3) at will with the whole of creation. It 
ascends to the heavens, and sets foot within the deep. It traverses the 
breadth of the world, and in the restlessness of its curiosity makes its 
way into the regions that are beneath the earth; and often it is occupied 
in the scrutiny of the wonders of heaven, and feels no weight from the 
appendage (4) of the body. If, then, the soul of man, although by the 
necessity of its nature it is transfused through the body, yet presents 
itself everywhere at will, what necessity is there for saying that the 
Deity is hampered by an environment of fleshly nature, and why may we not, 
by examples which we are capable of understanding, gain some reasonable 
idea of God's plan of salvation? There is an analogy, for instance, in the 
flame of a lamp, which is seen to embrace the material with which it is 
supplied (5). Reason makes a distinction between the flame upon the 
material, and the material that kindles the flame, though in fact it is not 
possible to cut off the one from the other so as to exhibit the flame 
separate from the material, but they both united form one single thing. But 
let no one, I beg, associate also with this illustration the idea of the 
perishableness of the flame; let him accept only what is apposite in the 
image; what is irrelevant and incongruous let him reject. What is there, 
then, to prevent our thinking (just as we see flame fastening on the 
material (6), and yet not inclosed in it) of a kind of union or 
approximation of the Divine nature with humanity, and yet in this very 
approximation guarding the proper notion of Deity, believing as we do that, 
though the Godhead be in man, it is beyond all circumscription?

CHAPTER XI.

    Should you, however, ask in what way Deity is mingled with humanity, 
you will have occasion for a preliminary inquiry as to what the coalescence 
is of soul with flesh. But supposing you are ignorant of the way in which 
the soul is in union with the body, do not suppose that that other question 
is bound to come within your comprehension; rather, as in this case of the 
union of soul and body, while we have reason to believe that the soul is 
something other than the body, because the flesh when isolated from the 
soul becomes dead and inactive, we have yet no exact knowledge of the 
method of the union, so in that other inquiry of the union of Deity with 
manhood, while we are quite aware that there is a distinction as regards 
degree of majesty between the Divine and the mortal perishable nature, we 
are not capable of detecting how the Divine and the human elements are 
mixed up together. The miracles recorded permit us not to entertain a doubt 
(7) that God was born in the nature of man. But how--this, as being a 
subject unapproachable by the processes of reasoning, we decline to 
investigate. For though we believe, as we do, that all the corporeal and 
intellectual creation derives its subsistence from the incorporeal and 
uncreated Being, yet the whence or the how, these we do not make a matter 
for examination along with our faith in the thing itself. While we accept 
the fact, we pass by the manner of the putting together of the Universe, as 
a subject which must not be curiously handled, but one altogether ineffable 
and inexplicable.

CHAPTER XII.

    If a person requires proofs of God's having been manifested to us in 
the flesh, let him look at the Divine activities. For of the existence of 
the Deity at all one can discover no other demonstration than that which 
the testimony of those activities supplies. When, that is, we take a wide 
survey of the universe, and consider the dispensations throughout the 
world, and the Divine benevolences that operate in our life, we grasp the 
conception of a power overlying all, that is creative of all things that 
come into being, and is conservative of them as they exist. On the same 
principle, as regards the manifestation of God in the flesh, we have 
established a satisfactory proof of that apparition of Deity, in those 
wonders of His operations; for in all his work as actually recorded we 
recognize the characteristics of the Divine nature. It belongs to God to 
give life to men, to uphold by His providence all things that exist. It 
belongs to God to bestow meat and drink on those who in the flesh have 
received from Him the boon of life, to benefit the needy, to bring back to 
itself, by means of renewed health, the nature that has been perverted by 
sickness. It belongs to God to rule with equal sway the whole of creation; 
earth, sea, air, and the realms above the air. It is His to have a power 
that is sufficient for all things, and above all to be stronger than death 
and corruption. Now if in any one of these or the like particulars the 
record of Him had been wanting, they who are external to the faith had 
reasonably taken exception (8) to the gospel revelation. But if every 
notion that is conceivable of God is to be traced in what is recorded of 
Him, what is there to hinder our faith?

CHAPTER XIII.

    But, it is said, to be born and to die are conditions peculiar to the 
fleshly nature. I admit it. But what went before that Birth and what came 
after that Death escapes the mark of our common humanity. If we look to 
either term of our human life, we understand both from what we take our 
beginning, and in what we end. Man commenced his existence in a weakness 
and in a weakness completes it. But in the instance of the Incarnation 
neither did the birth begin with a weakness, nor in a weakness did the 
death terminate; for neither did sensual pleasure go before the birth, nor 
did corruption follow upon the death. Do you disbelieve this marvel? I 
quite welcome your incredulity. You thus entirely admit that those 
marvellous facts are supernatural, in the very way that you think that what 
is related is above belief. Let this very fact, then, that the proclamation 
of the mystery did not proceed in terms that are natural, be a proof to you 
of the manifestation of the Deity. For if what is related of Christ were 
within the bounds of nature, where were the Godhead? But if the account 
surpasses nature, then the very facts which you disbelieve are a 
demonstration that He who was thus proclaimed was God. A man is begotten by 
the conjunction of two persons, and after death is left in corruption. Had 
the Gospel comprised no more than this, you certainly would not have deemed 
him to be God, the testimony to whom was conveyed in terms peculiar only to 
our nature. But when you are told that He was born, and yet transcended our 
common humanity both in the manner of His birth, and by His incapacity of a 
change to corruption, it would be well if, in consequence of this, you 
would direct your incredulity upon the other point, so as to refuse to 
suppose Him to be one of those who have manifestly existed as mere men: for 
it follows of necessity that a person who does not believe that such and 
such a being is mere man, must be led on to the belief that He is God. 
Well, he who has recorded that He was born has related also that He was 
born of a Virgin. If, therefore, on the evidence stated, the fact of His 
being born is established as a matter of faith, it is altogether 
incredible, on the same evidence, that He was not born in the manner 
stated. For the author who mentions His birth adds also, that it was of a 
Virgin; and in recording His death bears further testimony to His 
resurrection from the dead. If, therefore, from what you are told, you 
grant that He both was born and died, on the same grounds you must admit 
that both His birth and death were independent of the conditions of human 
weakness,--in fact, were above nature. The conclusion, therefore, is that 
He Who has thus been shown to have been born under supernatural 
circumstances was certainly Himself not limited by nature.

CHAPTER XIV.

    "Then why," it is asked, "did the Deity descend to such humiliation? 
Our faith is staggered to think that God, that incomprehensible, 
inconceivable, and ineffable reality, transcending all glory of greatness, 
wraps Himself up in 'the base covering of humanity, so that His sublime 
operations as well are debased by this admixture with the grovelling 
earth."

CHAPTER XV.

    Even to this objection we are not at a loss for an answer consistent 
with our idea of God. You ask the reason why God was born among men. If you 
take away from life the benefits that come to us from God, you would not be 
able to tell me what means you have of arriving at any knowledge of Deity. 
In the kindly treatment of us we recognize the benefactor; that is, from 
observation of that which happens to us, we conjecture the disposition of 
the person who operates it. If, then, love of man be a special 
characteristic of the Divine nature, here is the reason for which you are 
in search, here is the cause of the presence of God among men. Our diseased 
nature needed a healer. Man in his fall needed one to set him upright. He 
who had lost the gift of life stood in need of a life-giver, and he who had 
dropped away from his fellowship with good wanted one who would lead him 
back to good. He who was shut up in darkness longed for the presence of the 
light. The captive sought for a ransomer, the fettered prisoner for some 
one to take his part, and for a deliverer he who was held in the bondage of 
slavery. Were these, then, trifling or unworthy wants to importune the 
Deity to come down and take a survey of the nature of man, when mankind was 
so miserably and pitiably conditioned? "But," it is replied, "man might 
have been benefited, and yet God might have continued in a passionless 
state. Was it not possible for Him Who in His wisdom framed the universe, 
and by the simple impulse of His will brought into subsistence that which 
was not, had it so pleased Him, by means of some direct Divine command to 
withdraw man from the reach of the opposing power, and bring him back to 
his primal state? Whereas He waits for long periods of time to come round, 
He submits Himself to the condition of a human body, He enters upon the 
stage of life by being born, and after passing through each age of life in 
succession, and then tasting death, at last, only by the rising again of 
His own body, accomplishes His object,--as if it was not optional to Him to 
fulfil His purpose without leaving the height of His Divine glory, and to 
save man by a single command (9), letting those long periods of time alone. 
Needful, therefore, is it that in answer to objections such as these we 
should draw out the counter-statement of the truth, in order that no 
obstacle may be offered to the faith of those persons who will minutely 
examine the reasonableness of the gospel revelation. In the first place, 
then, as has been partially discussed before (1), let us consider what is 
that which, by the rule of contraries, is opposed to virtue. As darkness is 
the opposite of light, and death of life, so vice, and nothing else 
besides, is plainly the opposite of virtue. For as in the many objects in 
creation there is nothing which is distinguished by its opposition to light 
or life, but only the peculiar ideas which are their exact opposites, as 
darkness and death--not stone, or wood, or water, or man, or anything else 
in the world,-so, in the instance of virtue, it cannot be said that any 
created thing can be conceived of as contrary to it, but only the idea of 
vice. If, then, our Faith preached that the Deity had been begotten under 
vicious circumstances, an opportunity would have been afforded the objector 
of running down our belief, as that of persons who propounded incongruous 
and absurd opinions with regard to the Divine nature. For, indeed, it were 
blasphemous to assert that the Deity, Which is very wisdom, goodness, 
incorruptibility, and every other exalted thing in thought or word, had 
undergone change to the contrary. If, then, God is real and essential 
virtue, and no mere existence (2) of any kind is logically opposed to 
virtue, but only vice is so; and if the Divine birth was not into vice, but 
into human existence; and if only vicious weakness is unseemly and 
shameful--and with such weakness neither was God born, nor had it in His 
nature to be born, why are they scandalized at the confession that God came 
into touch with human nature, when in relation to virtue no contrariety 
whatever is observable in the organization of man? For neither Reason, nor 
Understanding (3), nor Receptivity for science, nor any other like quality 
proper to the essence of man, is opposed to the principle of virtue.

CHAPTER XVI.

    "But," it is said, "this change in our body by birth is a weakness, and 
one born under such condition is born in weakness. Now the Deity is free 
from weakness. It is, therefore, a strange idea in connection with God," 
they say, "when people declare that one who is essentially free from 
weakness thus comes into fellowship with weakness." Now in reply to this 
let us adopt the same argument as before, namely that the word "weakness" 
is used partly in a proper, partly in an adapted sense. Whatever, that is, 
affects the will and perverts it from virtue to vice is really and truly a 
weakness; but whatever in nature is to be seen proceeding by a chain 
peculiar to itself of successive stages would be more fitly called a work 
than a weakness. As, for instance, birth, growth, the continuance of the 
underlying substance through the influx and efflux of the aliments, the 
meeting together of the component elements of the body, and, on the other 
hand, the dissolution of its component parts and their passing back into 
the kindred elements. Which "weakness," then, does our Mystery assert that 
the Deity came in contact with? That which is properly called weakness, 
which is vice, or that which is the result of natural movements? Well, if 
our Faith affirmed that the Deity was born under forbidden circumstances, 
then it would be our duty to shun a statement which gave this profane and 
unsound description of the Divine Being. But if it asserts that God laid 
hold on this nature of ours, the production of which in the first instance 
and the subsistence afterwards had its origin in Him, in what way does this 
our preaching fail in the reverence that befits Him? Amongst our notions of 
God no disposition tending to weakness goes along with our belief in Him. 
We do not say that a physician is in weakness when he is employed in 
healing one who is so (4). For though he touches the infirmity he is 
himself unaffected by it. If birth is not regarded in itself as a weakness, 
no one can call life such. But the feeling of sensual pleasure does go 
before the human birth, and as to the impulse to vice in all living men, 
this is a disease of our nature. But then the Gospel mystery asserts that. 
He Who took our nature was pure from both these feelings. If, then, His 
birth had no connection with sensual pleasure, and His life none with vice, 
what "weakness" is there left which the mystery of our religion asserts 
that God participated in? But should any one call the separation of body 
and soul a weakness (5), far more justly might he term the meeting together 
of these two elements such. For if the severance of things that have been 
connected is a weakness, then is the union of things that are asunder a 
weakness also. For there is a feeling of movement in the uniting of things 
sundered as well as in the separation of what has been welded into one. The 
same term, then, by which the final movement is called, it is proper to 
apply to the one that initiated it. If the first movement, which we call 
birth, is not a weakness, it follows that neither the second, which we call 
death, and by which the severance of the union of the soul and body is 
effected, is a weakness. Our position is, that God was born subject to both 
movements of our nature; first, that by which the soul hastens to join the 
body, and then again that by which the body is separated from the soul; and 
that when the concrete humanity was formed by the mixture of these two, I 
mean the sentient and the intelligent element, through that ineffable and 
inexpressible conjunction, this result in the Incarnation followed, that 
after the soul and body had been once united the union continued for ever. 
For when our nature, following its own proper course, had even in Him been 
advanced to the separation of soul and body, He knitted together again the 
disunited elements, cementing them, as it were, together with the cement of 
His Divine power, and recombining what has been severed in a union never to 
be broken. And this is the Resurrection, namely the return, after they have 
been dissolved, of those elements that had been before linked together, 
into an indissoluble union through a mutual incorporation; in order that 
thus the primal grace which invested humanity might be recalled, and we 
restored to the everlasting life, when the vice that has been mixed up with 
our kind has evaporated through our dissolution, as happens to any liquid 
when the vessel that contained it is broken, and it is spilt and 
disappears, there being nothing to contain it. For as the principle of 
death took its rise in one person and passed on in succession through the 
whole of human kind, in like manner the principle of the Resurrection-life 
extends from one person to the whole of humanity. For He Who reunited to 
His own proper body the soul that had been assumed by Himself, by virtue of 
that power which had mingled with both of these component elements at their 
first framing, then, upon a more general scale as it were (6), conjoined 
the intellectual to the sentient nature, the new principle freely 
progressing to the extremities by natural consequence. For when, in that 
concrete humanity which He had taken to Himself, the soul after the 
dissolution returned to the body, then this uniting of the several portions 
passes, as by a new principle, in equal force upon the whole human race. 
This, then, is the mystery of God's plan with regard to His death and His 
resurrection from the dead; namely, instead of preventing the dissolution 
of His body by death and the necessary results of nature, to bring both 
back to each other in the resurrection; so that He might become in Himself 
the meeting-ground both of life and death, having re-established in Himself 
that nature which death had divided, and being Himself the originating 
principle of the uniting those separated portions.

CHAPTER XVII.

    BUT it will be said that the objection which has been brought against 
us has not yet been solved, and that what unbelievers have urged has been 
rather strengthened by all we have said. For if, as our argument has shown, 
there is such power in Him that both the destruction of death and the 
introduction of life resides in Him, why does He not effect His purpose by 
the mere exercise of His will, instead of working out our salvation in such 
a roundabout way, by being born and nurtured as a man, and even, while he 
was saving man, tasting death; when it was possible for Him to have saved 
man without subjecting Himself to such conditions? Now to this, with all 
candid persons, it were sufficient to reply, that the sick do not dictate 
to their physicians the measures for their recovery, nor cavil with those 
who do them good as to the method of their healing; why, for instance, the 
medical man felt the diseased part and devised this or that particular 
remedy for the removal of the complaint, when they expected another; but 
the patient looks to the end and aim of the good work, and receives the 
benefit with gratitude. Seeing, however, as says the Prophet (7), that 
God's abounding goodness keeps its utility concealed, and is not seen in 
complete clearness in this present life--otherwise, if the eyes could 
behold all that is hoped for, every objection of unbelievers would be 
removed,-but, as it is, abides the ages that are coming, when what is at 
present seen only by the eye of faith must be revealed, it is needful 
accordingly that, as far as we may, we should by the aid of arguments, the 
best within our reach, attempt to discover for these difficulties also a 
solution in harmony with what has gone before.

CHAPTER XVIII.

    And yet it is perhaps straining too far for those who do believe that 
God sojourned here in life to object to the manner of His appearance (8), 
as wanting wisdom or conspicuous reasonableness. For to those who are not 
vehemently antagonistic to the truth there exists no slight proof of the 
Deity having sojourned here; I mean that which is exhibited now in this 
present life before the life to come begins, the testimony which is borne 
by actual facts. For who is there that does not know that every part of the 
world was overspread with demoniacal delusion which mastered the life of 
man through the madness of idolatry; how this was the customary rule among 
all nations, to worship demons under the form of idols, with the sacrifice 
of living animals and the polluted offerings on their altars? But from the 
time when, as says the Apostle, "the grace of God that bringeth salvation 
to all men appeared (9)," and dwelt among us in His human nature, all these 
things passed away like smoke into nothingness, the madness of their 
oracles and prophesyings ceased, the annual pomps and pollutions of their 
bloody hecatombs came to an end, while among most nations altars entirely 
disappeared, together with porches, precincts, and shrines, and all the 
ritual besides which was followed out by the attendant priest of those 
demons, to the deception both of themselves and of all who came in their 
way. So that in many of these places no memorial exists of these things 
having ever been. But, instead, throughout the whole world there have 
arisen in the name of Jesus temples and altars and a holy and unbloody 
Priesthood (1), and a sublime philosophy, which teaches, by deed and 
example more than by word, a disregard of this bodily life and a contempt 
of death, a contempt which they whom tyrants have tried to force to 
apostatize from the faith have manifestly displayed, making no account of 
the cruelties done to their bodies or of their doom of death: and yet, 
plainly, it was not likely that they would have submitted to such treatment 
unless they had had a clear and indisputable proof of that Divine Sojourn 
among men. And the following fact is, further, a sufficient mark, as 
against the Jews, of the presence among them (2) of Him in Whom they 
disbelieve; up to the time of the manifestation of Christ the royal palaces 
in Jerusalem were in all their splendour: there was their far-famed Temple; 
there was the customary round of their sacrifices throughout the year: all 
the things, which had been expressed by the Law in symbols to those who 
knew how to read its secrets, were up to that point of time unbroken in 
their observance, in accordance with that form of worship which had been 
established from the beginning. But when at length they saw Him Whom they 
were looking for, and of Whom by their Prophets and the Law they had before 
been told, and when they held in more estimation than faith in Him Who had 
so manifested Himself that which for the future became but a degraded 
superstition, because they took it in a wrong sense (3), and clung to the 
mere phrases of the Law in obedience to the dictates of custom rather than 
of intelligence, and when they had thus refused the grace which had 
appeared,-then even (4) those holy monuments of their religion were left 
standing, as they do, in history alone; for no traces even of their Temple 
can be recognized, and their splendid city has been left in ruins, so that 
there remains to the Jews nothing of the ancient institutions; while by the 
command of those who rule over them the very ground of Jerusalem which they 
so venerated is forbidden to them.

CHAPTER XIX.

    Nevertheless, since neither those who take the Greek view, nor yet the 
leaders of Jewish opinions, are willing to make such things the proofs of 
that Divine manifestation, it may be as well, as regards these demurrers to 
our statement, to treat more particularly the reason by virtue of which the 
Divine nature is combined with ours, saving, as it does, humanity by means 
of itself, and not working out its proposed design by means of a mere 
command. With what, then, must we begin, so as to conduct our thinking by a 
logical sequence to the proposed conclusion? What but this, viz. with a 
succinct detail of the notions that can religiously be entertained of God 
(5)?