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 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 Incorporated in the Human Stock of David, and Abraham, and Adam.

They may, then, obliterate the testimony of the devils which proclaimed Jesus the son of David; but whatever unworthiness there be in this testimony, that of the apostles they will never be able to efface. There is, first of all, Matthew, that most faithful chronicler305    Commentator. of the Gospel, because the companion of the Lord; for no other reason in the world than to show us clearly the fleshly original306    Originis carnalis: i.e. “origin of the flesh of.” of Christ, he thus begins his Gospel: “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.”307    Matt. i. 1. With a nature issuing from such fountal sources, and an order gradually descending to the birth of Christ, what else have we here described than the very flesh of Abraham and of David conveying itself down, step after step, to the very virgin, and at last introducing Christ,—nay, producing Christ Himself of the virgin? Then, again, there is Paul, who was at once both a disciple, and a master, and a witness of the selfsame Gospel; as an apostle of the same Christ, also, he affirms that Christ “was made of the seed of David, according to the flesh,”308    Rom. i. 3; 2 Tim. ii. 8.—which, therefore, was His own likewise.  Christ’s flesh, then, is of David’s seed. Since He is of the seed of David in consequence of Mary’s flesh, He is therefore of Mary’s flesh because of the seed of David. In what way so ever you torture the statement, He is either of the flesh of Mary because of the seed of David, or He is of the seed of David because of the flesh of Mary. The whole discussion is terminated by the same apostle, when he declares Christ to be “the seed of Abraham.” And if of Abraham, how much more, to be sure, of David, as a more recent progenitor! For, unfolding the promised blessing upon all nations in the person309    In nomine: or, “for the sake of.” of Abraham, “And in thy seed shall all nations of the earth be blessed,” he adds, “He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.”310    Gal. iii. 8, 16. When we read and believe these things, what sort of flesh ought we, and can we, acknowledge in Christ? Surely none other than Abraham’s, since Christ is “the seed of Abraham;” none other than Jesse’s, since Christ is the blossom of “the stem of Jesse;” none other than David’s, since Christ is “the fruit of David’s loins;” none other than Mary’s, since Christ came from Mary’s womb; and, higher still, none other than Adam’s, since Christ is “the second Adam.” The consequence, therefore, is that they must either maintain, that those (ancestors) had a spiritual flesh, that so there might be derived to Christ the same condition of substance, or else allow that the flesh of Christ was not a spiritual one, since it is not traced from the origin311    Censetur. of a spiritual stock.

CAPUT XXII.

Deleant igitur et testimonia daemonum filium David proclamantia Jesum: sed testimonia Apostolorum delere non poterunt , si daemonum indigna 0789A sunt. Ipse imprimis Matthaeus, fidelissimus Evangelii commentator, ut comes Domini, non aliam ob caussam, quam ut nos originis Christi carnalis compotes faceret, ita exorsus est: Liber geniturae Jesu Christi, filii David, filii Abraham. His originis fontibus genere manante, cum gradatim ordo deducitur ad Christi nativitatem , quid aliud quam caro ipsa Abrahae et David, per singulos traducem sui faciens, in virginem usque describitur inferens Christum, imo ipse Christus proditur de virgine? Sed et Paulus, utpote ejusdem Evangelii et discipulus et magister, et testis, qua ejusdem ipsius Christi apostolus, confirmat Christum ex semine David secundum carnem, utique ipsius. Ergo ex semine David caro Christi. Sed secundum Mariae carnem, exsemine 0789B David: ergo ex Mariae carne est, dum ex semine est David. Quocumque detorseris dictum, aut ex carne est Mariae, quod ex semine est David; aut ex David semine est, quod ex carne est Mariae. Totam hanc controversiam dirimit idem Apostolus, ipsum definiens esse Abrahae semen. Cum Abraham, utique multo magis David, quasi recentioris. Retexens enim promissionem benedictionis nationum in nomine Abraham: Et in semine tuo benedicentur omnes nationes: non, inquit, dixit, Seminibus, tanquam de pluribus; sed Semine , tanquam de uno, quod est Christus. Qui haec legimus et credimus, quam debemus et possumus agnoscere in Christo carnis qualitatem? Utique non aliam, quam Abraham; siquidem semen Abraham Christus: nec aliam, quam 0789C Jesse, siquidem ex radice Jesse flos Christus: nec aliam, quam David, siquidem fructus ex lumbis David, Christus: nec aliam quam ex Maria, siquidem ex Mariae utero, Christus. Et adhuc superius: nec aliam quam Adam, siquidem secundus Adam, Christus. Consequens ergo est, ut aut illos spiritalem carnem habuisse contendant, quo eadem conditio substantiae deducatur in Christo: aut concedant carnem Christi spiritalem non fuisse, quae non de spiritali stirpe censetur.