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352 THE HISTORY OF HERESIES,
the humanity of Christ, and thus Jesus Christ is the natural Son
of God, not because he is the Word, born of the Father, but
because he was made the Son of God in time, by God subsisting
in three Persons,
"
uniente humanitatem Christi cum Persona
Divina." Again, he repeats the same thing, in another place :
"
Kigorose loquendo per ipsam
formaliter actionem unientem
Jesus Christus constituitur tanturn Filius Dei naturalis." The
natural Son, according to Hardouin s and Berruyer s idea ;
because the real natural Son of God, was the only begotten Son,
and hence, the Son
begotten from the substance of the Father ;
that Berruyer speaks of, produced from the three Persons, is
Son in name only. It is not repugnant, he says, to God to
become a Father in time, and to be the Father of a true and
natural Son, and he always explains this of God, subsisting in
three Divine Persons.
6. Berruyer adopted this error from his master, John
Ilardouin, whose Commentary on the New Testament was
condemned by Benedict XIV., on the 28th of July, 1743. He
it was who first promulgated the proposition, that Jesus Christ
was not the Son of God as the Word, but only as man, united to
the Person of the Word. Commenting on that passage of St.
John,
"
In the beginning was the Word, *
he : says
"
Aliud esse
Verbum, aliud esse Filium Dei, intelligi
voluit Evangelista
Joannes. Verbum est secunda Ss. Trinitatis Persona ; Filius
Dei, ipsa per so quidem, sed tamen ut eidem Verbo hypostatice
unita Christi humanitas." Ilardouin, therefore, says that the
Person of the Word was united to the humanity of Christ, but
that Jesus Christ then became the Son of God, when the
humanity was hypostatically united to the Word ; and, on this
account, he says, he is called the Word, in the Gospel of St.
John, up to the time of the Incarnation, but, after that, he is no
longer called the Word, only the Only-begotten, and the Son of
God :
"
Quamobrem in hoc Joannis Evangelic Verbum appcllatur
usque ad Incarnationem. Postquam autem caro factum est, non
tarn Verbum, sed Unigenitus, et Filius Dei est."
7. Nothing can be more false than this, however, since all
the Fathers, Councils, and even the Scriptures, as we shall pre
sently see, clearly declare that the Word himself was the only-
begotten Son of God, who became incarnate. Hear what St.