Page:The Nestorians and their rituals, volume 2.djvu/69

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
THE INCARNATION.
41

earthly, such as were alive and such as were in the grave, rejoiced, saying: 'He is One to all generations.'

(d) … "From these things, then, let us rest assured that the Messiah is One in two Natures, and two Persons subsisting in one Parsopa of Filiation, since the Natures did not commingle; and in like manner we believe of the Persons. The Son of the Father clothed Himself with Him of Mary, and was conceived in the womb. But let no man filch a word from this, and wilfully pervert it by specious philosophy, so as to conclude that there are two Sons. For there is one Son only, not a Son and a Son making two; but One Son, we repeat, as it is most proper to maintain, even as a man by clothing himself with a garment is not called two men.14 The Will of the Creator descended and united Itself to the will of the creature: the Divine Nature clothed itself with the human nature, which thus became co-equal in everything, in reverence, in worship, and in praise, for they have but one Parsopa; in essence, however, not so, for this were impossible. … Now, in what we have laid down, there is no doubt, double-meaning, or equivocation whatever; neither in what we have declared is there any folly or ignorance; but as it is written, all has been arranged in a 'goodly and pleasant way,' and after a suitable order;—all, we say, has been set forth worthily, rightly, truly, firmly, and on a solid foundation. …

(e) "Behold Him, Who is clothed with light, wrapped in swaddling bands; what a mystery is here! No less wonderful is it that He Who is seated on the throne of heaven should have been laid in a manger! The Ancient of times became a Son of Mary in the latter time, and appeared as the Father, Lord, and Master, of the sons of Adam, loosing from off their nature the bands of the curse and of sin, and causing a light to shine forth through the shadows of death. The sun of His love chose an orb from the firmament of humanity, and made the rays of His moon to be the rational confidence of man; so that henceforth the grossness of the dark earth cannot hide the one from the other, He having destroyed it by the splendour of His brightness. He brought down the Spiritual, and guided it to the nature of the dust, wherefrom He chose Him out an abode to manifest forth the mystery of perfect and great