74. So the nature of Christ needed no change, or question, or answer, that it should advance from ignorance to knowledge, or ask of One Who had continued in silence, and wait to receive His answer: but, abiding perfectly in mysterious unity with Him, it received of God its whole being as it derived from Him its origin. And, further, it received all that belonged to the whole being of God, namely, His knowledge and His will. What the Father knows, the Son does not learn by question and answer; what the Father wills, the Son does not will by command. Since all that the Father has, is His, it is the property of His nature to will and know, exactly as the Father wills and knows. But to prove His birth He often expounds the doctrine of His Person, as when He says, I came not to do Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me.583    St. John vi. 38. Hilary means that by the mention of two wills, our Lord teaches the personal distinction of the Father and the Son: cf. cc. 49, 50. He does the Father’s will, not His own, and by the will of Him that sent Me, He means His Father. But that He Himself wills the same, is unmistakeably declared in the words, Father, those whom Thou hast given Me, I will, that, where I am, they also may be with Me584    St. John xvii. 24.. The Father wills that we should be with Christ, in Whom, according to the Apostle, He chose us before the foundation of the world585    Eph. i. 4., and the Son wills the same, namely that we should be with Him. His will is, therefore, the same in nature as the Father’s will, though to make plain the fact of the birth it is distinguished from the Father’s.

74. Cui voluntas, adeoque scientia, cum Patre eadem.---Haec igitur natura non eguit vel demutatione, vel interrogatione, vel allocutione, ut post ignorantiam sciat, post silentium interroget, post interrogationem audiat: sed perfecta in sacramento unitatis suae manens, ut habuit de Deo nativitatem, ita habuit et universitatem. Universitatem autem habens, non etiam non quae universitatis sunt tenuit, scientiam scilicet, aut voluntatem: ne quod scit Pater, per interrogationem 316 Filius sciret; 0340C vel quod vult Pater, per significationem Filius vellet. Sed cum omnia, quae Patris sunt, sua essent; in ea fuit proprietate naturae, ne aliud aliquid, quam Pater, aut vellet, aut sciret. Ad demonstrationem 0341A vero nativitatis plerumque demonstratio est adhibita personae, cum dicitur: Non veni voluntatem meam facere, sed voluntatem ejus qui me misit (Joan. VI, 38). Patris voluntatem, non suam facit: dum per voluntatem ejus, qui se misit, significat et Patrem. Quod autem id ipsum velit, non ambigue ostendit dicens: Pater, quos mihi dedisti, volo ut ubi ego sum, et illi sint mecum (Joan. XVII, 24). Cum ergo Pater velit nos cum Christo esse, in quo secundum Apostolum elegit nos ante constitutionem mundi, et ipsum illud Filius velit, scilicet esse nos secum (Ephes. I, 4); voluntas ad naturam eadem est, quae ad nativitatis significationem distinguitur in voluntate.