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Translated by P. E. Pusey
St Cyril of Alexandria Resources Online and in Print
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This Part: 31 Pages
Page 24
Yet how, if the will of the Father be good, does the Son say that He has His own Will, a good one surely, and other than this? For if it be not good, how is He any longer believed to be His Image and Impress? how will He be true, saying, I and the Father are One, and, He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father? for not in the not good, would one behold the Good by Nature. But verily the Son being Good hath sprung from a Good Father and is His exact Image in everything. What Will therefore, which He says is His own, does He letting go, say that He hath done that of the Father? He was about by the death of His own Flesh to set free from death those who had become subject thereto, i. e., us. But to die in the Flesh was ignoble, and unwonted (as I said) and repugnant to Him: yet hath He endured this too for our sakes in the Good-pleasure of the Father. For He knew, He knew and that well that a little dishonoured by reason of the sufferings of the Flesh He should save all, transforming them unto what was incomparably better. For if any be in Christ, a new creature, old things are gone by, behold all things have become new, as it is written.
The God-inspired Scriptures therefore proclaim to the world One Christ and Son and Lord and say that He is the Lord of Glory and that He of His own Will bare for our sakes the contumelies of the Jews, and economically endured Death upon the wood, not in order with us to remain dead, but that having undone the might of death which none might withstand, He might bring again to immortality the nature of man: for He was God in Flesh.
But this man again essaying to gather to himself from all quarters occasions of severing into two the One, arrays himself to no purpose against those who exist not at all, and makes accusal of certain as though they spake against the truth and desired to adulterate the plan of the mystery, and says,
"Here [5] I would gladly enquire of the heretics who mix up into one essence the Nature of the Godhead and of the Manhood, who he is here who is by the traitor betrayed to the Jews: for if there have been a mixture of both, both were together holden of the Jews, both God the Word and the nature of the manhood: which is it that endured the slaughter? I am obliged to use meaner words that what I say may be plain to all. To whom (tell me) befell this deed? for if the Nature of the Godhead, how darest thou commingle both? God [6] hath both remained unholden of the Jews and hath not shared with the flesh in its slaughter: whence (tell me) dost thou get in the mixture?
5. [n] This is given also by Mercator, among his collection of extracts made by S.Cyril, with the title, Also in the sixth quire of the same, on Judas, against the heretics, p. 116 Bal. Mercator's extract is much ampler, comprising as well the heading of § 7 of book 4 (above p. 153) and a little more.
6. [o] The one Greek MS now extant has καὶ μεμένηκεν ὁ θεὸς, the Roman Editors conjecture εἰ μεμένηκε, but Mercator translates, Is therefore the Word of God, Who has no participation in the slaughter of His flesh, capable of being apprehended and led to slaughter by the Jews?
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/cyril-alexandria/against-nestorius-2.asp?pg=24
