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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 8
But you will be caught idly babbling herein, and not understanding the Mystery to Him-ward, yea rather both thinking and saying clean contrary to yourself. For if thou hast believed that the Word being God has been made Flesh (for thou saidst that His was the human nature) why dost thou say that the Lord of glory, as though He had not glory of His own, needed it from the Spirit, and reckonest Him in the measures of the creature to which all things are from without and given? for what hast thou that thou receivedst not, will it befit the creature to hear.
Yea but (he says) I find Emmanuel saying. Father, glorify Thy Son: add therefore what remains; this is, That Thy Son too may glorify Thee. If thou assert that the Son, as lacking glory, desires that of the Father, what dost thou say, when the Father too is glorified of the Son? is it as not having glory or needing it of another? away with the mis-counsel! for verily is it trickery and unholy thought and nought else. For the Divine Nature and that passeth all natures dwelleth in the light unapproachable and hath authority over all things and to Him is ascribed the glory which most befits it alone: but when the Only-Begotten Word of God was made man and was about by the grace of God through His own flesh to taste death for every man, and undo its might hard-to-withstand, quickening as God His own Temple, He devises the prayer as Man, and wills the Father to consent with Him Who was transforming the nature of man to what it was at the beginning and renewing it unto incorruption, and displaying it superior to the meshes of death: that ancient curse and the sentence upon the First-formed being undone.
Hence since visible in flesh, He is preached Son of God by Nature and in truth, He says, Father glorify Thy Son, rendering Him as Man, superior to both death and decay, that He may be believed to be Thine, being as God Life by Nature, according to the count of His own Nature: for then will the Son too glorify Thee. Glory truly is it to God the Father that it be believed by us, that He, Very God and Life and Life-giving, begat equal and like to Himself in everything, ineffably and beyond understanding, the Son, Who was in no lesser state, even though He have been made in flesh, but preserved wholly unimpaired the Supernatural and Choice Beauty of His inherent Natural Nobility, being Himself too Life as out of Life, and all-availing and achieving without toil and bestowing in-corruption on those subject to death and decay.
Hence even though the Son be said to be glorified by the Father, consider the measure of the human nature, sever not into two [after the Union] the One Christ and Son and Lord, but confess One and the Same, God made Man [7], and the Same in like manner Lord of glory as God, and recipient of glory in His Human Nature. For consider that, albeit by Nature and in verity God and King of all and Lord, He is said to have been set King, when, made man as we, He hath humbled Himself and been made obedient to God the Father and with us under the Law. In no wise therefore will the things that pertain to the measures of the emptiness trouble the wise and understanding and settled in the faith; but from them alike and from the things that befit the Divine Nature, do they acknowledge the Son, the Same God and Man.
But he comes not forward with sound words, but having swerved exceedingly to what is unruly, he busies himself[ ]without understanding, and deems fit to hold what please himself alone and what he thinks well to deem are understood aright. And he destroys others too, in addition to to what he has said severing into two the One Lord Jesus Christ, calumniating also our Divine Mystery itself from not enduring to confess with us, that not like one of the holy Prophets, or again Apostles and Evangelists, was Christ a God-clad man, but God rather made Man, and hath partaken in verity of blood and flesh. He said in this wise again, putting forth his words as of the Person of Christ,
7. [l] I have construed this from a Syriac extract in one of Severus' Epistles, which supplies the words, confess and the Same, God made Man, and gives rightly as instead of the et of the present Greek text. Severus' ms. omits the words just above after the Union, and very likely rightly.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/cyril-alexandria/against-nestorius-2.asp?pg=8
