51. Through this subtle and mischievous doctrine they are drawn into the error that God the Word became soul to the body, His nature by self-humiliation working the change upon itself, and thus the Word ceased to be God; or else, that the Man Jesus, in the poverty and remoteness from God of His nature, was animated only by the life and motion of His own human soul, wherein the Word of God, that is, as it were, the might of His uttered voice, resided. Thus the way is opened for all manner of irreverent theorising: the sum of which is, either that God the Word was merged in the soul and ceased to be God: or that Christ had no existence before His birth from Mary, since Jesus Christ, a mere man of ordinary body and soul, began to exist only at His human birth and was raised to the level of the Power, which worked within Him, by the extraneous force of the Divine Word extending itself into Him. Then when God the Word, after this extension, was withdrawn, He cried, My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? or at least when the divine nature of the Word once more gave place within Him to a human soul, He Who had hitherto relied on His Father’s help, now separated from it, and abandoned to death, bemoaned His solitude and chid His deserter. Thus in every way arises a deadly danger of error in belief, whether it be thought that the cry of complaint denotes a weakness of nature in God the Word, or that God the Word was not pre-existent because the birth of Jesus Christ from Mary was the beginning of His being.

51. Errores inde consectarii.---Per hanc ergo subtilem pestiferamque doctrinam deducuntur in vitium, ut aut Deus Verbum anima corporis per demutationem naturae se infirmantis exstiterit, et Verbum Deus esse defecerit: aut rursum per exteriorem nudamque naturam hominem illum sola vita animae moventis animatum, in quo Verbum Dei, id est, quaedam quasi potestas extensae vocis habitaverit, atque ita omni modo impiissimae intelligentiae aditus pandatur, ut aut Deus Verbum in animam defecerit, nec permanserit Deus Verbum; aut omnino Christus ante partum Mariae non fuerit; quia 0383C Jesus Christus, animae solum communis et corporis 0384A homo, hoc habeat sui, quo esse homo coepit exordium, quem extrinsecus protensi sermonis potestas ad virtutem operationum confirmaverit; qui nunc a Dei Verbo contracta rursum protentione desertus, clamet: Deus, Deus meus, quare me dereliquisti? vel certe tum, cum in animam corporis a Dei Verbi natura demutatus est, paterno in omnibus usus auxilio, nunc inops ejus mortique permissus, solitudinem suam conqueratur, relinquentemque se arguat: omnique modo exitiabile deceptae fidei periculum comparetur, si aut in Deo Verbo significari existimetur naturae infirmitas per querelam; aut omnino nec fuerit Deus Verbum, dum Christo Jesu Mariae solum partus exordium est.