50. Further their heretical ingenuity presses on in the path prepared by their own godlessness, even to the entire absorption of God the Word into the human soul, and consequent denial that Jesus Christ, the Son of Man, was the same as the Son of God. So either God the Word ceased to be Himself while He performed the function of a soul in giving life to a body674    Apollinaris’ heresy that in Christ the place of the ordinary human soul was supplied by the Logos, the second Person in the Trinity., or the man who was born was not the Christ at all, but the Word dwelt in him, as the Spirit dwelt in the prophets675    This doctrine was held by Marcellus of Ancyra (Sozomen, H.E. II. 33), and Photinus: cp. also what Sozomen (VII. 7) says of Hebion.. These absurd and perverse errors have grown in boldness and godlessness till they assert that Jesus Christ was not Christ until He was born of Mary. He Who was born was not a pre-existent Being, but began at that moment to exist676    This doctrine was held by Marcellus of Ancyra (Sozomen, H.E. II. 33), and Photinus: cp. also what Sozomen (VII. 7) says of Hebion..

Hence follows also the error that God the Word, as it were some part of the Divine power extending itself in unbroken continuation, dwelt within that man who received from Mary the beginning of his being, and endowed him with the power of Divine working: though that man lived and moved by the nature of his own soul677    The preaching of Sabellius, cf. I. 16, protensio sit potius quam descensio, ‘an extension rather than a descent.’.

50. Commenta eorum varia de Verbi et hominis conjunctione.---Quin etiam ad irreligiositatis hujus tamquam 0383A ad praeparatam sibi viam, per id ingenia haeretica contendunt, quod aut defecisse omnino Deum Verbum in animam corporis volunt, ut non idem fuerit Jesus Christus hominis filius, qui et Dei filius; et aut de se defecerit Deus Verbum, dum corpus officio animae vivificat; aut omnino nec fuerit Christus homo natus, quia in eo Dei Verbum modo spiritus prophetalis habitaverit. Sed ridiculae hujus perversitatis error in majorem se impietatis extendit audaciam, ne Jesus Christus, ante quam ex Maria natus est, Christus sit: dum non qui erat natus est, sed ad id tum primum quod 357 natus est coeperit. Per quod etiam illud vitii adjungitur, ut Deus Verbum tamquam pars aliqua virtutum Dei quodam se tractu continuationis extendens, hominem illum 0383B qui a Maria esse coepit habitaverit, et virtutibus divinae operationis instruxerit; animae tamen suae motu naturaque viventem.