lamb unspotted and undefiled. Also he would not oppose the the testimony of St. John the apostle, saying: 1 John I, 7.— And the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanseth us from all sin. And again: This is the victory which overcame the world, your faith; 1 John V, 4. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?This is he that came by water and blood; not by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit which testifieth that Christ is the truth. And there are three who give testimony in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost. And these three are one. And there are three that give testimony on earth: the spirit, the water, and the blood. And these three are one. Certainly the Spirit of sanctification, and the blood of redemption, and the water of baptism: which three are one, and remain individuals; and neither of them is separated from its connection. The Catholic Church exists and progresses by the belief that in Christ Jesus, neither the humanity is apart from the true divinity, nor the divinity is without the true humanity."

FULGENTIUS, A. D. 500.

De Fide ad Petrum, Cap. 2. "God loved the world so much that he gave his only begotten Son. God sent his Son into the world, not to judge the world, but to save it. He that is called the Son, if the same be also the Father, would not be truly called the Son, because he would not be born of God, but of the Virgin only. In short, the Father would not declare from heaven by his own voice that he is his Son: This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. Nor would the Apostle have said of the Father: Who hath not spared his own Son, but delivered him up for all men. All these divine sayings, promulgated for our instruction, must be true. It is a truth which the holy Catholic Church proclaims, that the Son alone was born of the Father, according to the divinity, and that he

is, as well as the Father, immortal, impassible and immutable God; and that according to the flesh, not the Father, but his only begotten Son, was born in time, without damage to his eternity, suffered without damage to his impassibility, died without damage to his immortality; as being true God and eternal life, he rose without loss to his incommutability. The Son is one eternal God with the Father. I and the Father are one. John X. The same was made for us a true and perfect man. He is true man, in that he, being true God, has a true human nature; and he is a perfect man by having received human flesh and a rational soul. The only begotten God was once born of the Father, and once of the Mother.He was born of the Father, God the Word, and was born of the Mother, the Word made flesh. Therefore, the Son of God is one and the same God, born before all ages, and born in time; and each nativity is of the one God; divine, according to which the creator in the form of God is co-eternal God with the Father; divine, according to which emptying himself, and receiving the form of a servant, he has formed himself by the reception of the same servile form, not only in the conception of the maternal womb, when he became man, but also he, God made man, came forth from the said maternal womb, and the same God made man hung upon the cross, and the same God made man was deposited in the sepulchre, and the same God made man rose the third day from the dead: but the same God was laid in the tomb according to the flesh alone, and descended into hell according to the soul alone; which returning the third day to the flesh, the same God rose from the sepulchre according to the flesh which was laid in the sepulchre; on the fortieth day after the resurrection, the same God made man ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God, from thence he shall come, at the end of the world, to judge the living and the dead. Therefore, the Word made flesh is the only begotten Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ,

mediator of God and men. And he is for this reason mediator, because he, God and true man, having with the Father the one nature of the divinity, and with the mother the same substance of the humanity, having from us even unto death the penalty of our iniquity, having from God the Father incommutable justice. For our iniquity, he died temporally; through his self-justice he is eternally living and will bestow immortality upon mortals. He has certainly preserved his humanity perfect in the perfection of his divinity. He has, by the reality and incommutability of his immortality, absorbed the reality of our mortality by meeting death. This is what St. Peter attests: 1 Peter III. Christ has swallowed down death that we may be heirs of eternal life. St. Paul also teaches, 2 Tim. I, 10.— Christ hath destroyed death, and brought to light life and incorruption. Therefore, Christ has tasted death because he was a true man, and he also swallowed down death because he is true God. Certainly, he, as the Apostle saith, died from infirmity, but he lives by the power of God; he is one and the same, who, according to the prophecy of holy David, Ps. LXXXVI, 5, is made man in Sion, and the Highest himself hath founded her. Consequently, neither is the divinity of Christ alien from the nature of the Father, according to what is said: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; the same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was nothing made that was made; nor is his humanity alien from the nature of the mother, according to that the Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us for that nature which always remains begotten of the Father, has without sin assumed our nature by being born of the virgin. For neither could the eternal and divine nature be, by any means, temporally conceived and temporally born of our nature, had not the ineffable divinity, by the assumption of human reality, temporally received true conception and nativity. Thus the true and eternal God is

truly conceived in time, and born of the virgin for when the fullness of time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, made under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we may all receive the adoption of the sons of God. John, the Evangelist, confirming the same position, after having said: The Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us, declares : And we have seen his glory, the glory, as it were, of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. Thus he, the Creator and Lord of all spirits and all bodies, that is, of all natures, has created the virgin, to be created of the virgin, and her whose creator he was, he made his mother, when he was conceived and born of her flesh; the immense and eternal God received the true material fiesh; that according to the reality of the servile form, God would mercifully become man, and according to the form of God, the same God remaining man, would not lack the natural reality. Therefore, believe thus : that Christ the Son of God, that is, one person of the blessed Trinity, is true God, so that you doubt not that his divinity is born of the nature of the Father. And believe him thus to be true man, so that you imagine not that his flesh is of a celestial. or ærial, or of any other nature, but of the same nature with the flesh of all men; that is, the flesh which God himself created of the earth for the first man, and which he created for all other men, whom he creates from men by propagation. Although the flesh of Christ, and of all men, be of one and the same nature, this, however, which the Word condescended to unite to himself from the virgin mother, is conceived without sin, born without sin; as according to it the eternal and merciful just God is both conceived and born, and the Lord of glory is crucified."

Ad Donatum de Fide Orthodoxa. "Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one God. This testimony is so clear and strong, that there seems to be no possibility of evading it.Since the fatihful are forbidden by this precept, to worship by

any means two Gods, let them believe that the Father and the Son are naturally one God, so that they worship not the Father apart from the Son, nor the Son without the Father. If they deny that the Son is the Lord their God, they are at once refuted by the testimony of the heavenly Father, saying, through the mouth of the prophet, Osee I, 7. And I will have mercy on the house of Juda, and I will save them by the Lord their God. That he is the Lord our God, the truth itself teaches, where the confession of the holy apostle, Thomas, contradicts the heretical depravity, exclaiming: John XX. My Lord, and my God.— Hence it follows, that when they confess without a doubt, that the Father is Lord God, they are compelled by the prophetical and evangelical truth, to confess also that the Son is Lord God. Either let them confess that the Father and Son, the propriety of the persons being observed, are naturally one God; or, confessing the Father alone as their Lord God, then they must say that the Son is neither their Lord nor their God. When they say so, they shall never dare to call themselves Christians: whereas, the Christian takes that name from Christ. He cannot be at all a Christian, who denys that Christ is his Lord God. Therefore, let them confess that the Father and the Son are not two Lords, Gods, but one Lord their God, if they would hold the true faith and would not be recreant to the legal and evangelical precept. Thus can they observe the sense and obligation of that commandment: The Lord thy God thou shalt adore, and him alone shalt thou serve. It is not allowed by the commandment so to adore God the Father, as to neglect to adore God the Son. Whereas, it is certainly written of the Son, in Deuteronomy: Be glad, ye heavens, with him at once; adore him, all you his angels. Ps. XCVI. Of him holy David also says: Ps. LXXI: And all the kings of the earth shall him adore, and all nations shall him serve.

For if the Son were not according to the divinity, one God with the Father, certainly he would not be of the same nature