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Translated by P. E. Pusey
St Cyril of Alexandria Resources Online and in Print
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This Part: 115 Pages
Page 105
But this man doth not understand this (whence should he?) but adulterating (so to speak) the plan of the mystery which is right and unalloyed, he introduces to us one and another christ, and caught in Jewish accusals, perceives not where he is nor in what reach of ills he hath come. For they of the blood of Israel heard God crying aloud through one of the holy Prophets respecting Emmanuel, And THOU Bethlehem house of Ephratha, little art thou to be among the thousands of Judah; out of thee shall He come to Me to be ruler in Israel, and His goings forth from the beginning from the days of eternity: and again, His generation who shall tell? because His life is raised from the earth. And they, no wise understanding the mystery nor yet knowing that albeit God by Nature and having the origin of His Being Invisible and Incomprehensible, He was called Bethlehemite as being there born after the flesh out of the root of Jesse and David, said one to another, Is not this He Whom they seek to hill? lo, He speaketh boldly and they say nothing unto Him; do the rulers know that This Man is the Christ? Yet we know this Man whence He is, but Christ when He cometh, no man knoweth whence He is. For they heard (as I said) the Prophet saying plainly, His generation who shall tell? and that He hath His goings forth or His Being before every age. View again (I pray) the vastness of Jewish stupor: for on saying The Christ when He cometh, no one knoweth whence He is, they said again one to another, Of a truth this is the Prophet: others (it says) said, Shall Christ come out of Galilee? said not the Scripture that out of the seed of David and from Bethlehem the village where was David, the Christ cometh? Seest thou how they stagger, confessing both His being apart from beginning, Divinely, and His fleshly Generation in time? But they would not have been carried away into mis-counsel thus extravagant, if they had known truly that the Word being God, proceeded Man out of the root of Jesse and David and of the holy Virgin, and that the Lord of earth and Heaven and of all was called a Bethlehemite too, for He shared poverty with us being Rich, as it is written.
Why therefore plunging thee in the sleights of the Jews dost thou both deem and say what it is neither lawful to say nor yet harmless to conceive of? confess with us One Christ, and do not severing into two again say this, "He was sent that is consubstantial with us and has been anointed to preach remission to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind." Whither then will go the word of the divines, who have been initiators of all under Heaven? for they have cried aloud that the very Word out of God the Father, was made Saviour and Redeemer of all, not as though a man other than He were mediating, like as Moses, but rather as come down to us in bodily likeness and form, for thus has He been anointed as High Priest and Apostle. And indeed He rebuked the Jews saying, Is it not written in your Law, I said, Ye are gods? if he called them gods to whom the word of God came and the scripture cannot be broken: Him Whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, do YE say [to Him], thou blasphemest, because I said, I am the Son of God? why (I pray) shall we put Him Who abased Himself unto emptiness that He might save all under Heaven, forth of the most God-befitting and truly admirable achievements that have been wrought unto us-ward, by saying that there has been sent some other than He consubstantial with ourselves? albeit how were it not better to say and thus to chuse to think, that He has been both sent and hath been made consubstantial with us, i. e., man: yet abiding Consubstantial with God the Father Himself too, as He is both conceived of and was and is God? for He is, He is what He was, even when He assumed the humanity, and having sameness of Essence with God the Father Which is in Heaven, He grasped in wisdom the likeness with us too; as Mediator too has He been set forth, combining through Himself unto an union of relation things completely dissevered one from another as to the plan of their nature. For He being God by Nature has been made man in truth, that we too might be called offspring, no more of the first, that is, of the earthy, to whom it was said by God, Earth thou art and unto earth shalt thou return, who conducteth even unto death, but of the second, from above and out of Heaven, Christ I mean Who bringeth us again unto purest life, and rendereth incorrupt that which is holden of death and freeth from sins that which was enfolden by the toils of sin. Thus saith somewhere the Father Himself to the Son, Behold I have given Thee for a Covenant of the race for a Light of the[ ]Gentiles, to open the eyes of the blind, to bring forth of chains the bound and of the prison-house them that sat in darkness; and again by the voice of Isaiah, The beasts of the field shall honour Me, the Sirens and the daughters of the ostriches, because I gave water in the wilderness and rivers in the thirsty land to give drink to Mine offspring, chosen, My people whom I won for Myself, to declare My Virtues. The which understanding very well of those of the Gentiles called through faith unto true knowledge of God, the Divine-uttering Peter writeth and saith, But YE are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people, that ye should tell out the Virtues of Him Who calleth you out of darkness into His wondrous light, of old not a people, but now a people.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/cyril-alexandria/against-nestorius.asp?pg=105
