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Accordingly, when we speak of God, we do not affirm two or three
principles, no more than we are at liberty to affirm two or three
gods; although, speaking of each, of the Father, or of the Son,
or of the Holy Ghost, we confess that each is God: and yet we do
not say, as the Sabellian heretics say, that the Father is the same
as the Son, and the Holy Spirit the same as the Father and the
Son; but we say that the Father is the Father of the Son, and the
Son the Son of the Father, and that the Holy Spirit of the Father
and the Son is neither the Father nor the Son. It was therefore
truly said that man is cleansed only by a Principle, although the
Platonists erred in speaking in the plural of principles. But
Porphyry, being under the dominion of these envious powers, whose
influence he was at once ashamed of and afraid to throw off, refused to
recognize that Christ is the Principle by whose incarnation we are
purified. Indeed he despised Him, because of the flesh itself which
He assumed, that He might offer a sacrifice for our purification, a
great mystery, unintelligible to Porphyry's pride, which that true
and benignant Redeemer brought low by His humility, manifesting
Himself to mortals by the mortality which He assumed, and which the
malignant and deceitful mediators are proud of wanting, promising, as
the boon of immortals, a deceptive assistance to wretched men. Thus
the good and true Mediator showed that it is sin which is evil, and
not the substance or nature of flesh; for this, together with the
human soul, could without sin be both assumed and retained, and laid
down in death, and changed to something better by resurrection. He
showed also that death itself, although the punishment of sin, was
submitted to by Him for our sakes without sin, and must not be evaded
by sin on our part, but rather, if opportunity serves, be borne for
righteousness' sake. For he was able to expiate sins by dying,
because He both died, and not for sin of His own. But He has not
been recognized by Porphyry as the Principle, otherwise he would have
recognized Him as the Purifier. The Principle is neither the flesh
nor the human soul in Christ but the Word by which all things were
made. The flesh, therefore, does not by its own virtue purify, but
by virtue of the Word by which it was assumed, when "the Word became
flesh and dwelt among us." For speaking mystically of eating His
flesh, when those who did not understand Him were offended and went
away, saying, "This is an hard saying, who can hear it?" He
answered to the rest who remained, "It is the Spirit that
quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing." The Principle,
therefore, having assumed a human soul and flesh, cleanses the soul
and flesh of believers. Therefore, when the Jews asked Him who He
was, He answered that He was the Principle. And this we carnal and
feeble men, liable to sin, and involved in the darkness of ignorance,
could not possibly understand, unless we were cleansed and healed by
Him, both by means of what we were, and of what we were not. For we
were men, but we were not righteous; whereas in His incarnation there
was a human nature, but it was righteous, and not sinful. This is
the mediation whereby a hand is stretched to the lapsed and fallen;
this is the seed "ordained by angels," by whose ministry the law also
was given enjoining the worship of one God, and promising that this
Mediator should come.
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