On the Flesh of Christ.

 V.

 Chapter II.—Marcion, Who Would Blot Out the Record of Christ’s Nativity, is Rebuked for So Startling a Heresy.

 Chapter III.—Christ’s Nativity Both Possible and Becoming. The Heretical Opinion of Christ’s Apparent Flesh Deceptive and Dishonourable to God, Even o

 Chapter IV.—God’s Honour in the Incarnation of His Son Vindicated.  Marcion’s Disparagement of Human Flesh Inconsistent as Well as Impious. Christ Has

 Chapter V.—Christ Truly Lived and Died in Human Flesh. Incidents of His Human Life on Earth, and Refutation of Marcion’s Docetic Parody of the Same.

 Chapter VI.—The Doctrine of Apelles Refuted, that Christ’s Body Was of Sidereal Substance, Not Born. Nativity and Mortality are Correlative Circumstan

 Chapter VII.—Explanation of the Lord’s Question About His Mother and His Brethren. Answer to the Cavils of Apelles and Marcion, Who Support Their Deni

 Chapter VIII.—Apelles and His Followers, Displeased with Our Earthly Bodies, Attributed to Christ a Body of a Purer Sort. How Christ Was Heavenly Even

 Chapter IX.—Christ’s Flesh Perfectly Natural, Like Our Own. None of the Supernatural Features Which the Heretics Ascribed to It Discoverable, on a Car

 Chapter X.—Another Class of Heretics Refuted. They Alleged that Christ’s Flesh Was of a Finer Texture, Animalis, Composed of Soul.

 Chapter XI.—The Opposite Extravagance Exposed.  That is Christ with a Soul Composed of Flesh—Corporeal, Though Invisible. Christ’s Soul, Like Ours, Di

 Chapter XII.—The True Functions of the Soul. Christ Assumed It in His Perfect Human Nature, Not to Reveal and Explain It, But to Save It. Its Resurrec

 Chapter XIII.—Christ’s Human Nature.  The Flesh and the Soul Both Fully and Unconfusedly Contained in It.

 Chapter XIV.—Christ Took Not on Him an Angelic Nature, But the Human. It Was Men, Not Angels, Whom He Came to Save.

 Chapter XV.—The Valentinian Figment of Christ’s Flesh Being of a Spiritual Nature, Examined and Refuted Out of Scripture.

 Chapter XVI.—Christ’s Flesh in Nature, the Same as Ours, Only Sinless. The Difference Between Carnem Peccati and Peccatum Carnis: It is the Latter Whi

 Chapter XVII.—The Similarity of Circumstances Between the First and the Second Adam, as to the Derivation of Their Flesh. An Analogy Also Pleasantly T

 Chapter XVIII.—The Mystery of the Assumption of Our Perfect Human Nature by the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. He is Here Called, as Often Else

 Chapter XIX.—Christ, as to His Divine Nature, as the Word of God, Became Flesh, Not by Carnal Conception, Nor by the Will of the Flesh and of Man, But

 Chapter XX.—Christ Born of a Virgin, of Her Substance. The Physiological Facts of His Real and Exact Birth of a Human Mother, as Suggested by Certain

 Chapter XXI.—The Word of God Did Not Become Flesh Except in the Virgin’s Womb and of Her Substance. Through His Mother He is Descended from Her Great

 Chapter XXII.—Holy Scripture in the New Testament, Even in Its Very First Verse, Testifies to Christ’s True Flesh.  In Virtue of Which He is Incorpora

 Chapter XXIII.—Simeon’s “Sign that Should Be Contradicted,” Applied to the Heretical Gainsaying of the True Birth of Christ. One of the Heretics’ Para

 Chapter XXIV.—Divine Strictures on Various Heretics Descried in Various Passages of Prophetical Scripture. Those Who Assail the True Doctrine of the O

 Chapter XXV.—Conclusion. This Treatise Forms a Preface to the Other Work, “On the Resurrection of the Flesh,” Proving the Reality of the Flesh Which W

Chapter XV.—The Valentinian Figment of Christ’s Flesh Being of a Spiritual Nature, Examined and Refuted Out of Scripture.

Valentinus, indeed, on the strength of his heretical system, might consistently devise a spiritual flesh for Christ. Any one who refused to believe that that flesh was human might pretend it to be anything he liked, forasmuch as (and this remark is applicable to all heretics), if it was not human, and was not born of man, I do not see of what substance Christ Himself spoke when He called Himself man and the Son of man, saying: “But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth;”211    John viii. 40. and “The Son of man is Lord of the Sabbath-day.”212    Matt. xii. 8. For it is of Him that Isaiah writes: “A man of suffering, and acquainted with the bearing of weakness;”213    Isa. liii. 3, Sept. and Jeremiah: “He is a man, and who hath known Him?”214    Jer. xvii. 9, Sept. and Daniel: “Upon the clouds (He came) as the Son of man.”215    Dan. vii. 13. The Apostle Paul likewise says: “The man Christ Jesus is the one Mediator between God and man.”216    1 Tim. ii. 5. Also Peter, in the Acts of the Apostles, speaks of Him as verily human (when he says), “Jesus Christ was a man approved of God among you.”217    Acts ii. 22. These passages alone ought to suffice as a prescriptive218    Vice præscriptionis. testimony in proof that Christ had human flesh derived from man, and not spiritual, and that His flesh was not composed of soul,219    Animalis. nor of stellar substance, and that it was not an imaginary flesh; (and no doubt they would be sufficient) if heretics could only divest themselves of all their contentious warmth and artifice. For, as I have read in some writer of Valentinus’ wretched faction,220    Factiuncula. they refuse at the outset to believe that a human and earthly substance was created221    Informatam. for Christ, lest the Lord should be regarded as inferior to the angels, who are not formed of earthly flesh; whence, too, it would be necessary that, if His flesh were like ours, it should be similarly born, not of the Spirit, nor of God, but of the will of man. Why, moreover, should it be born, not of corruptible [seed], but of incorruptible? Why, again, since His flesh has both risen and returned to heaven, is not ours, being like His, also taken up at once? Or else, why does not His flesh, since it is like ours, return in like manner to the ground, and suffer dissolution? Such objections even the heathen used constantly to bandy about.222    Volutabant: see Lactantius, iv. 22. Was the Son of God reduced to such a depth of degradation? Again, if He rose again as a precedent for our hope, how is it that nothing like it has been thought desirable (to happen) to ourselves?223    De nobis probatum est: or, perhaps, “has been proved to have happened in our own case.” Such views are not improper for heathens and they are fit and natural for the heretics too.  For, indeed, what difference is there between them, except it be that the heathen, in not believing, do believe; while the heretics, in believing, do not believe? Then, again, they read: “Thou madest Him a little less than angels;”224    Ps. viii. 6, Sept. and they deny the lower nature of that Christ who declares Himself to be, “not a man, but a worm;”225    Ps. xxii. 6. who also had “no form nor comeliness, but His form was ignoble, despised more than all men, a man in suffering, and acquainted with the bearing of weakness.”226    Isa. liii. 3, Sept. Here they discover a human being mingled with a divine one and so they deny the manhood.  They believe that He died, and maintain that a being which has died was born of an incorruptible substance;227    Ex incorruptela. as if, forsooth, corruptibility228    Corruptela. were something else than death! But our flesh, too, ought immediately to have risen again. Wait a while.  Christ has not yet subdued His enemies, so as to be able to triumph over them in company with His friends.

CAPUT XV.

Licuit et Valentino, ex privilegio haeretico, carnem Christi spiritalem comminisci. Quidvis eam fingere potuit, quisquis humanam credere noluit; quando (quod ad omnes dictum est) si humana non fuit, nec ex homine, non video ex qua substantia ipse se , Christus hominem et filium hominis pronuntiarit (Joan., VIII, 40): Nunc autem vultis occidere hominem veritatem ad vos locutum; et (Luc, VI, 5): Dominus est sabbati filius hominis. De ipso enim Esaias (Is. LIII, 3): Homo in plaga, et sciens ferre imbecillitatem; et Hieremias (Jerem., XVII): Et 0779Bhomo est, et quis cognoscetillum? et Daniel (Dan., VII): Et super nubes tanquam filius hominis. Etiam Paulus apostolus (I Tim., II): Mediator Dei et hominum, homo Christus Jesus. Item Petrus in Actis Apostolorum (Act., I): Jesum Nazarenum,virum vobis a Deo destinatum, utique hominem. Haec sola sufficere vice praescriptionis debuerunt ad testimonium carnis humanae, et ex homine sumptae, et non spiritalis; sicut nec animalis, nec sidereae, nec imaginariae; si sine studio et artificio contentionis haereses esse potuissent. Nam ut penes quemdam ex Valentini factione legi, primo non putant terrenam, et humanam Christo substantiam informatam, ne deterior angelis Dominus deprehendatur, qui non terrenae carnis extiterunt ; dehinc, quod oporteret 0779C similem nostri carnem similiter nasci, non de spiritu, nec de Deo, sed ex viri voluntate. Et cur non de corruptela, sed de incorruptela? Et quare non, sicut et illa resurrexit, et in coelo resumpta est, ita et nostra, par ejus, statim assumitur? aut cur illa, par nostrae, non aeque in terram dissoluta est? Talia et ethnici volutabunt : Ergo Dei Filius in tantum humilitatis exhaustus? Et, si resurrexit in exemplum spei nostrae, cur nihil tale de nobis probatum est? 0780A Merito ethnici talia, sed merito et haeretici. Numquid enim inter illos distat, nisi quod ethnici non credendo credunt, at haeretici credendo non credunt? Legunt denique (Ps. VIII): Minorasti eum modico citra angelos, et negant inferiorem substantiam Christi; nec hominem se, sed vermem pronuntiantis (Ps. XXI); qui (Is., LIII) nec formam habuit, nec speciem; sed forma ejus ignobilis, despecta citra omnes homines; homo in plaga, et sciens ferre imbecillitatem. Agnoscunt hominem Deo mixtum, et negant hominem. Mortuum credunt, et quod est mortuum, ex incorruptela natum esse contendunt: quasi corruptela aliud sit a morte. «Sed et nostra caro statim resurgere debebat.» Exspecta: nondum inimicos suos Christus oppressit, ut cum amicis de inimicis 0780B triumphet.