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4. But "the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness
comprehended it not." Now the "darkness" is the foolish minds of
men, made blind by vicious desires and unbelief. And that the Word,
by whom all things were made, might care for these and heal them,
"The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us." For our
enlightening is the partaking of the Word, namely, of that life which
is the tight of men. But for this partaking we were utterly unfit,
and fell short of it, on account of the uncleanness of sins.
Therefore we were to be cleansed. And further, the one cleansing of
the unrighteous and of the proud is the blood of the Righteous One,
and the humbling of God Himself; that we might be cleansed through
Him, made as He was what we are by nature, and what we are not by
sin, that we might contemplate God, which by nature we are not. For
by nature we are not God: by nature we are men, by sin we are not
righteous. Wherefore God, made a righteous man, interceded with
God for man the sinner. For the sinner is not congruous to the
righteous, but man is congruous to man. By joining therefore to us
the likeness of His humanity, He took away the unlikeness of our
unrighteousness; and by being made partaker of our mortality, He made
us partakers of His divinity. For the death of the sinner springing
from the necessity of comdemnation is deservedly abolished by the death
of the Righteous One springing from the free choice of His
compassion, while His single [death and resurrection] answers to our
double [death and resurrection]. For this congruity, or
suitableness, or concord, or consonance, or whatever more appropriate
word there may be, whereby one is [united] to two, is of great
weight in all compacting, or better, perhaps, co-adaptation, of the
creature. For (as it just occurs to me) what I mean is precisely
that co-adaptation which the Greeks call armonia.
However this is not the place to set forth the power of that consonance
of single to double which is found especially in us, and which is
naturally so implanted in us (and by whom, except by Him who created
us?), that not even the ignorant can fail to perceive it, whether
when singing themselves or hearing others. For by this it is that
treble and bass voices are in harmony, so that any one who in his note
departs from it, offends extremely, not only trained skill, of which
the most part of men are devoid, but the very sense of hearing. To
demonstrate this, needs no doubt a long discourse; but any one who
knows it, may make it plain to the very ear in a rightly ordered
monochord.
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