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378 THE HISTORY OF HERESIES,
Jesus Christ should be the true natural Son of God, it was
requisite that he should be born of the substance of the Father,
but the Christ, according to Berruyer, was made in time by the
whole Trinity. The whole idea, then, we had hitherto formed
of our Redeemer is
totally changed. We considered him to be
God, who, for our salvation, humbled himself to take human
flesh, in order to suffer and die for us whereas ;
Berruyer repre
sents him to us, not as a God made man, but as a man made the
Son of God, on account of the union established between the
Word and his Humanity. Jesus Christ crucified is the greatest
proof of God s love to us, and the strongest motive we have to
For the
induce, nay, as St. Paul says, to force us, to love him "
charity of Christ presseth us" (II. Cor. v, 14) is to know that
the Eternal Word, equal to the Father, and born of the Father,
emptied himself, and humbled himself to take human flesh, and
die on a cross for us ; but, according to Berruyer s system, this
proof of Divine love to us, and this most powerful motive for us
to love him, falls to the ground. And, in fine, to show how
different is Berruyer s errors from the truth taught by the
Church : The Church tells us to believe that Jesus Christ is
God, made man, who, for us, suffered and died, in the flesh he
assumed, and who assumed it solely to enable him to die for our
love. Berruyer tells us, on the contrary, that Jesus Christ is
only a man, who, because he was united by God to one of the
Divine Persons, was made by the Trinity the natural Son of
God, and died for the salvation of mankind ; but, according to
Berruyer, he did not die as God, but as man, and could not be
the Son of God at all, according to his ideas ; for, in order to be
the natural Son of God, he should have been born of the sub
stance of the Father, but, according to Berruyer, he was a being
ad extra, produced by the whole Trinity, and if he was thus an
external product, he could not have been anything but a mere
creature ; consequently,
he must admit two distinct Persons in
Christ one Divine, and one human. In fine,
man s doctrine, we could not say that God "
if we held this
loved us, and deli
vered himself up for us" (Ephcs. v, 2) ; for, according to him, it
"
was not the Word who delivered himself up for us," but the
Humanity of Christ, honored, indeed, by
the union with the
Word, that alone it was which suffered, and was subjected to