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362 THE HISTORY OF HERESIES,
for ever bo generated, hypostatically united to his humanity.
But it is necessary to understand that this man, the natural Son
of God created in time, is the very Person of the Son, generated
from all eternity, that is the Word, who assumed the humanity
of Jesus Christ, and united it to itself. It cannot be said, then,
that there are two natural Sons of God, one, man, made in time,
the other, God, produced from all eternity, for there is only one
natural Son of God, that is the Word, who, uniting human
nature to himself in time is both God and man, and is, as the
Athanasian Creed declares, one Christ :
" For
as the rational soul
and flesh is one man, so God and man is one Christ. And as
every man, though consisting of soul and body, is still only one
there is the Word
man, one person, so in Jesus Christ, though
and the humanity, there is but one Person and natural Son of
God."
18. Bcrruyer s opinion also is opposed to the First Chapter
"
of the Gospel of St. John, for there we read : In the beginning
was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was
God and ;"
made flesh :
then it is said that it was this same Word which was
" And the Word was made flesh." Being made flesh
does not mean that the Word was united to the human person of
Jesus Christ, already existing,
but it shows that the Word
assumed humanity in the very instant in which it was created, so
that from that very instant the soul of Jesus Christ and his
human flesh became his own proper soul and his own proper flesh,
sustained and governed by one sole Divine Person alone, which
is the Word, which terminates and sustains the two Natures,
Divine and human, and it is thus the Word was made man.
Just pause for a moment ! St. John affirms that the Word, the
Son, generated from the Father from all eternity, is made man,
and Bcrruyer says that this man is not the W^ord, the Son of
the eternal God, but another Son of God, made in time by all
the three Divine Persons. When, however, the Evangelist has
"
said : The Word was made flesh," if you say and understand
that the Word is not made flesh, are you not doing just what
the Sacramentarians did, explaining the Eucharistic words,
"This is my body," that the body
of Jesus Christ was not his
? This is
body, but only the figure, sign, or virtue of his body
what the Council of Trent reprobates so much in the heretics, dis-