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AND THEIR REFUTATION. 379
death. Let him keep these opinions to himself, however, for
with Saint Paul : "I live in the
every faithful Catholic will say,
faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered himself
for me" (Gal. ii, 20). And we will praise and love with all our
hearts that God who, being God, made himself man, to suffer
and die for every one of us.
36. It is painful to witness the distortion of Scripture which
Berruyer has recourse to in every part of his work, but more
especially in his Dissertations, to accommodate it to his false
system, that Jesus Christ was the Son of one God, subsisting in
three Persons. We have already (N. 7) quoted that text of St.
Paul (Phil, ii, 5, &c.) :
" Let
this mind be in you which was also
in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, thought
it not
robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the
form of a servant," &c. Here is conclusive evidence to prove
that the Word, equal to the Father, emptied himself, by taking
the form of a servant, in becoming man. Berruyer says, on the
contrary, that it was not the Word, not the Divine Nature,
which humbled itself, but the human, conjoined with the Divine
Nature :
"
Humiliat sese natura humana naturae Divina3 physicc
To consider the Word humbled to become incar
conjuncta."
nate, and die on the cross, would, he says, be degrading the
Divinity ; it should, therefore, he says, be only understood
according to the communication of the idioms, and, consequently,
as referring to the actions of Christ after the hypostatic union,
and, therefore, he says it was his Humanity that was humbled.
But in that case we may well remark, what is there wonderful
in the humiliation of humanity before God ? That prodigy of
love and mercy which God exhibited in his Incarnation, and
which astonished both heaven and earth, was when the Word,
the only-begotten Son of God, equal to the Father, emptied
himself (exinanivit), in becoming man, and, from God, became
the servant of God, according
to the flesh. It is thus all
Fathers and Catholic Doctors understand it, with the exception
of Berruyer and Hardouin ; and it is thus the Council of
Chalcedon, also (Act. Y.), declared that the Son of God, born of
the Father, before all
ages, became incarnate in these latter days
(novissimis diebus), and suffered for our salvation.
37. We will take a review of some other texts. St. Paul