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But you add this also to those impieties of yours mentioned above;
viz., that the Spirit granted to the Lord His ascension into heaven:
showing by this blasphemous notion of yours that you believe that the Lord
Jesus Christ was so weak and powerless that had not the Spirit raised Him
up to heaven, you fancy that He would still at this day have been on earth.
But to prove this assertion you bring forward a passage of Scripture: for
you say "Giving commands to the apostles
whom He had chosen, by the Holy Ghost He was raised up." What am I to
call you? What am I to think of you who by corrupting the sacred writings
contrive that their evidences should not have the force of evidences? A new
kind of audacity, which strives by its impious arguments to manage that
truth may seem to confirm falsehood. For the Acts of the Apostles does not
say what you make out. For what says the Scripture? "What Jesus began to
do and to teach until the day in which giving charge to the apostles whom
He had chosen by the Holy Ghost, He was taken up." Which is an instance of
Hyperbaton, and must be understood in this way: what Jesus began to do and
to teach until the day in which he was taken up, giving charge to the
apostles whom He had chosen by the Holy Ghost; so that we ought not perhaps
to have to give you any further answer m this matter than that of the
passage itself, for the entire passage ought to be sufficient for the full
truth, if the mutilation of it was available for your falsehood. But still,
you, who think that our Lord Jesus Christ could not have ascended into
heaven, unless He had been raised up by the Spirit; tell me how is it that
He Himself says "No one hath ascended into heaven but He who came down from
heaven, even the Son of man who is in heaven"? Confess then how foolish
and absurd your notion is that He could not ascend into heaven, who is
said, although He had descended into earth, never to have been absent from
heaven: and say whether to leave the regions below and ascend into heaven
was possible for Him to whom it was easy when still on earth, ever to
continue in heaven. But what is that which He Himself says: "I ascend unto
my Father." Did He imply that in this ascension there would be the
intervention of Another's help, who by the very fact that He said He would
ascend, shows the efficacy of His own power? David also says of the
Ascension of the Lord: "God ascended with a merry noise, the Lord with the
sound of the trumpet:" He clearly explained the glory of Him who
ascends by the power of the ascension.
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