A Source Book for Ancient Church History - Mirrors

545or an ox, or some other creature without mind. This, then, wouldbe what is saved, and I have been deceived in the Truth, and havebeen boasting an honor when it was another who was honored.But if His manhood is intellectual and not without mind, let themcease to be thus really mindless.But, says some one, the godhead was sufficient in place of thehuman intellect. What, then, is this to me? For godhead with fleshalone is not man, nor with soul alone, nor with both apart frommind, which is the most essential part of man. Keep, then, thewhole man, and mingle godhead therewith, that you may benefitme in my completeness. But, as he asserts [i.e., Apollinaris], Hecould not contain two perfect natures. Not if you only regardHim in a bodily fashion. For a bushel measure will not hold twobushels, nor will the space of one body hold two or more bodies.But if you will look at what is mental and incorporeal, rememberthat I myself can contain soul and reason and mind and the HolySpirit; and before me this world, by which I mean the systemof things visible and invisible, contained Father, Son, and HolyGhost. For such is the nature of intellectual existences that theycan mingle with one another and with bodies, incorporeally andinvisibly.…Further, let us see what is their account of the assumption ofthe manhood, or the assumption of the flesh, as they call it. Ifit was in order that God, otherwise incomprehensible, might becomprehended, and might converse with men through His fleshas through a veil, their mask is a pretty one, a hypocritical fable;for it was open to Him to converse with us in many other ways,as in the burning bush [Ex. 3:2] and in the appearance of a man[Gen. 18:5]. But if it was that He might destroy the condemna- [498]tion of sin by sanctifying like by like, then as He needed fleshfor the sake of the condemned flesh and soul for the sake of thesoul, so also He needed mind for the sake of mind, which notonly fell in Adam but was first to be affected, as physicians say,of the illness. For that which received the commandment was