Page:The Nestorians and their rituals, volume 2.djvu/79

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THE INCARNATION.
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Word and the Man taken from Mary, two Natures, one eternal and the other temporal, and two Persons, one Divine and the other Human, became One Son, One Christ, in will, honour, design, affection, reverence, and parsopeita.

"In answer to the Jacobites who hold that the Lord Christ is one Nature and one Person, we say that this One must either be God, [and if so] there is no humanity with Him, and thus the declarations of Scripture which refer to Him are impugned; or This [one must be] Man, and thus the Divinity is destroyed, and the sentences of the Gospel which declare His existence in Christ are contradicted. But and if He is made up of both. His two-fold nature [literally, His two-foldedness] is destroyed, and He must be a third thing which is neither God nor Man. All which three conclusions are impious; and the preamble also, from which they are deduced, viz., their saying of Christ that He subsists in one Nature and one Person, is an impiety and gross error.

"In like manner the way of the Melchites, who say that in Christ there are two Natures and one Person, is erroneous; because this statement of one Person is like the previous statement of one Nature, since if this one Person is the Divine Person the humanity is abolished and destroyed, and if it be the human Person, the Divinity is abolished, because the Person is the first essence [or principle] which betokens the reality of the existence of the general essence, as Aristotle has proved; and if this is compounded of two the two-foldedness is destroyed, and the two essences are destroyed [or corrupted], and a third thing results which is neither humanity nor Divinity, all which three conclusions are impious. Now if the error of these two ways is proved, the truth of the third, i.e. of the Nestorian, appears. God confirm us therein, and aid us in that work which may bring us nigh unto Himself.

"Here endeth the creed; written by the hand of the author in the early part of the month Rebiäa el Awwel, a.h. 698." [a.d. 1298.]

§ 8. "Who can mentally conceive, or speak and declare with his mouth, of that chaste, pure, holy, sanctified, unknown [by man,] and unmarried one, ever Virgin, who was sanctified from the womb, and chosen from the belly, to be an abode, dwelling-

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