receive it as the truly vivifying and own flesh of the Word made man. For as the Word, as God, is essentially life, the moment it became one with its flesh, it imparted to this flesh a vivifying virtue. Wherefore, although Christ said: Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you, (Jo. vi. 54.) we are not to imagine that it is the flesh of a man like to ourselves, but truly the flesh of him, who for us was made and was called the Son of man. For how could the flesh of man, according to its own nature, give life?” Ep. ad Nest. Conc. Gen. T. iii. p. 404.-In confirmation of this doctrine, they then add the following anathema : “He that does not confess the flesh of the Lord to be vivifying, and the proper flesh of the Word of God made man; but to be the flesh of some other, united in dignity to the Word, or that has obtained only a divine inhabitation; and shall not acknowledge that flesh to give life, as we have said, because it is the flesh of the Word, that gives life to all things, let him be anathema.” Ibid. p. 409.
THEODOTUS,[1] G. C.-In his sermon on the birth of Christ, which was read in the same Council of Ephesus, he says: “He, who at that time, by his ineffable power, drew the Magi to godliness, has also, this day, called us together ; not now lying in a manger, but placed before us on this saving table, for that manger was the parent of this table. For this reason was he laid there, that on this table, he might be eaten, and become to the faithful the food of salvation. And that manger indeed represented this glorious table.” Ibid. p. 1004.
- ↑ He was Bishop of Ancyra, in Galatia, and assisted at the Council of Ephesus, in 431.
