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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 26
Why then dost thou, essaying to bring in privily the name of mixture, wrong in the ears of the more simple the marvel of the economy with flesh? for it does not befit thee bitterly and harshly to come forward saying, "Was God the Word holden? did the nature of the Godhead undergo slaughter?" That of no accurate . . . . thou art saying such things, thou wilt know hence and that easily. We say that the holy Martyrs have been perfected, choosing to suffer all things in order that having striven the good strife, finished their course, kept the faith, they might bind on them the crown of true relationship to Christ. If then any were to come forward and ask, When the bodies of the saints were torn by the steel or wasted by fire or again when they first became prisoners, were their souls holden along with their bodies? did they too become the work of fire and sword? albeit we say that they [the souls] were apart from their bodies, enduring nought of such contumelies in their own nature. Will they therefore (tell me) be for this reason imparticipate of the crowns, because they have not suffered the things of the body? But verily the word of truth does not put them apart from suffering, for they suffered the things of their own, not those of others' bodies.
Unlearned then is it to want to ask whether the nature of the Godhead have been betrayed along with the flesh, or whether It were holden in the meshes of the Jews or endured the slaughter also: but it is pious to conceive rather that the Word will surely and entirely make His own the sufferings that have befallen His own Flesh, but abode Impassible as God yet not external to His suffering Body [7]. But he involving in charges of absurdity the things so economically wrought, and again and again saying that the Nature of the Godhead ought not to be said by any to have undergone slaughter, unholily arrays the force of the Mystery about a man by himself, and says that he it is who was crucified and endured death for the life of the world. For I hear him saying in another exposition of his,
"This is he who was encircled in the thorny Crown, this he who saith, My God, My God why forsookest Thou Me? this he who endured a three days' death." [8]
7. " [q] How therefore is Life said to die ? by suffering death in Its own flesh, in order that It may be shewn to be life by quickening it again. For come if in regard even to our own selves the mode of death be searched into, no one who deems aright would say that souls perish along with the bodies that are of earth. I suppose that no living person would hesitate as to this. Yet is what happens called the death of man. Thus you will conceive of as to Emmanuel too. For the Word was in him that is of a woman as in His own Body, and He gave it to death in due time, Himself suffering nought in His proper Nature." Letter 1 to the Monks, Epp. p. 17 d e.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/cyril-alexandria/against-nestorius-2.asp?pg=26
