St Athanasius the Great LETTERS, Part II, Complete

Translated by Cardinal Newman.

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This Part: 84 Pages

Page 71

3. We do not worship a creature. Far be the thought. For such an error belongs to heathens and Arians. But we worship the Lord of Creation, Incarnate, the Word of God. For if the flesh also is in itself a part of the created world, yet it has become God's body. And we neither divide the body, being such, from the Word, and worship it by itself [4747] , nor when we wish to worship the Word do we set Him far apart from the Flesh, but knowing, as we said above, that 'the Word was made flesh,' we recognise Him as God also, after having come in the flesh. Who, accordingly, is so senseless as to say to the Lord: 'Leave the Body that I may worship Thee;' or so impious as to join the senseless Jews in saying, on account of the Body, 'Why dost Thou, being a man, make Thyself God [4748] ?' But the leper was not one of this sort, for he worshipped God in the Body, and recognised that He was God, saying, 'Lord, if Thou wilt Thou canst make me clean [4749] .' Neither by reason of the Flesh did he think the Word of God a creature: nor because the Word was the maker of all creation did he despise the Flesh which He had put on. But he worshipped the Creator of the universe as dwelling in a created temple, and was cleansed. So also the woman with an issue of blood, who believed, and only touched the hem of His garment, was healed [4750] , and the sea with its foaming waves heard the incarnate Word, and ceased its storm [4751] , while the man blind from birth was healed by the fleshly spitting of the Word [4752] . And, what is greater and more startling (for perhaps this even offended those most impious men), even when the Lord was hanging upon the actual cross (for it was His Body and the Word was in it), the sun was darkened and the earth shook, the rocks were rent, and the vail of the temple rent, and many bodies of the saints which slept arose.

[4747] As some modern devotions at least tend to do.

[4748] John x. 33.

[4749] Matt. viii. 2.

[4750] Matt. ix. 20.

[4751] Ib. viii. 26.

[4752] John ix. 6.

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