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View Volume II - In Today's Catholic World

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206 THE HISTORY OF HERESIES,<br />

This objection was answered in the Sixth Council, for the Saint<br />

having said that the humanity of Christ suffered, admitted by<br />

that that Christ operated by the humanity. All that St. Gregory<br />

in fact wanted to prove against Eunomius was, that the sufferings<br />

and the operations of Christ received a supreme value from the<br />

Person of the Word who sustains his humanity, and therefore he<br />

attributed these operations to the Word. They object, fifthly,<br />

that St. Cyril of Alexandria (4) says that Christ showed some<br />

cognate operation, &quot;quandum cognatam operationem.&quot; We reply,<br />

that from the context it is manifest that the Saint speaks of the<br />

miracles of Christ in which his Divine Nature operated by his<br />

omnipotence, and his human nature by the contact, commanded<br />

by his human will ;<br />

and thus this operation is called by the Saint<br />

an associated one. Sixthly, they object that many of the Fathers<br />

called the human nature of Christ the instrument of the Divinity.<br />

We answer, that these Fathers never understood the humanity to<br />

have been an inanimate instrument, which operated nothing of<br />

itself, as the Monothelites say, but their meaning was that the<br />

Word being united with the humanity, governed it as its own,<br />

and operated through its powers and faculties.<br />

Finally, they<br />

oppose to us some passages of Pope Julius, of St. Gregory Thau-<br />

maturgus, and some writings of Menna to Vigilius, and of Vigilius<br />

to Menna ; but our reply to this is that these passages arc<br />

not authentic, but were foisted into the works of the Fathers by<br />

the Apollinarists and Eutychians. It was proved in the Sixth<br />

Council (Act. XIV.), that the writings attributed to Menna and<br />

Vigilius were forged by the Monothelites.<br />

10. The Monothelites endeavour to prop up their opinions by<br />

several other reasons. If you admit two wills in Christ, they<br />

say, you must also admit an opposition between them. But we,<br />

<strong>Catholic</strong>s, say that this supposition is totally false ;<br />

the human will<br />

of Christ never could oppose the Divine will, for he took our<br />

nature, and was made in all things like us^but with the exception<br />

of sin ; as St. Paul says (Heb. iv, 15), he was &quot;<br />

one tempted in all<br />

things like as we are, without sin.&quot; He never, therefore, had<br />

those movements we have to violate the Divine law, but his will<br />

was always conformable to the Divine will. The Fathers make<br />

(4) St. Cyril, Alex. /. 4, in Joan.

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