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Since therefore, as we said above, so far as it pertains to the creature, we cannot find three persons in one mind, that is, in one flesh, we labour at least to find two natures in one person. For the person of each living man consists of a rational soul and a body: by which nevertheless many things are so done that, although they be done by soul and body together, they yet sometimes pertain to the soul alone or to the body alone. For who knows not that the body alone is refreshed and nourished by carnal food, in the eating of which the operation is common to flesh and soul? For the soul acts through the body, nay rather with the body, when the body eats;
and yet the body alone receives what, in order to be received, the soul does together with the body. In that eating, therefore, the operation of soul and flesh is one, but the reception is of the flesh alone. For the flesh alone is so fed by bodily food that it alone, if it receives it, grows fat. But the refreshment and fatness of the soul consists not in bodily bread, but in spiritual bread. 'For man liveth not by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth from the mouth of God' (Matt. IV, 4). Yet in the perceiving of that word, that the soul may be fed by its own food, the flesh is associated with it in the work. For this is done when the soul either applies the bodily ears to words, that it may hear, or applies the bodily eyes to the Scriptures, that it may read.
Behold, in this too there is at once the operation of flesh and soul, where there is the reception of the soul alone. Let the Arians see these things in creatures, and let them not doubt that there is one divine nature of the holy Trinity, and that it could have come to pass—nay rather, that it has come to pass—that that flesh was made by the one and inseparable work of the whole Trinity; yet in the mystery of the incarnation it pertained to the person of God the Only-begotten alone. Chapter XX. Not the whole Trinity, therefore, assumed flesh, nor did the whole Trinity feel the injuries of the passions, nor did the whole Trinity rise from the dead on the third day, nor did the whole Trinity ascend into heaven on the fortieth day; but, as I showed above, one Son alone assumed flesh:
And because in him the distinct property of each nature remains unconfounded, therefore he is one and the same who also remained wholly incapable of suffering according to his true divinity. For that divinity by nature suffers nothing, just as by nature it does not change. But it belongs to a mutable nature to be subject to sufferings. No suffering, then, could befall that nature to which no natural change could belong. The Son alone also lay in the tomb, but it was that nature of the Only-begotten of God which could be buried, the nature which could die. According to the nature of the flesh, therefore, God the Only-begotten lay buried in the stone, and according to that same nature he hung fixed with nails upon the cross. For how could his divinity be enclosed in a tomb, when it cannot be enclosed either by the earth or by heaven?
That suffering, therefore, and that burial the unity of person made to be, in Christ, the one suffering and burial of both divinity and flesh; but the property of each substance in Christ made the flesh of Christ alone to be naturally subject to suffering and death, while the impassibility and immortality of the divine and immutable substance remained. Christ therefore, who is not the Trinity but one person of the Trinity, thus according to the truth of the flesh truly hung upon the cross and lay dead in the tomb, as the Apostle says that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose again from the dead on the third day according to the Scriptures (1 Cor. 15:3-4).
All these things which, according to the unity of person, the whole Christ endured, pertain, according to the natural property, to the truth of the flesh alone. Likewise, according to the soul alone he descended into hell. For in one and the same span of time which is found to lie between the death and resurrection of Christ, one and the same Christ both, according to the truth of the flesh, truly lay in the tomb, and, according to the truth of the rational soul, truly descended into hell. And by this, according to the truth of the human nature, from the moment when Christ, hanging on the cross, bowed his head and gave up his spirit, until, receiving his spirit again, he rose from the dead, he was not, according to the soul, where he was according to the flesh. For according to the flesh he lay dead in the tomb;
but according to the rational soul he descended into hell, while according to his divinity, by which together with the Father and the Holy Spirit he is one God, being infinite he filled all creation. According to the flesh, therefore, he was in the tomb alone, so that according to the soul he might be in hell alone; but according to the divinity, which is enclosed by no place, but is found ineffably whole everywhere, he neither abandoned his flesh in the tomb nor deserted his soul in hell, just as he can never be absent from earth or from heaven. This same Son of God who according to the flesh lay in the tomb, and according to the soul alone descended into hell, since he himself had said concerning his own soul:
'I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again' (John 10:18); after he had laid down his soul and taken it up again, he ascended according to his whole humanity into heaven, and sits at the right hand of the throne of God, as the evangelist Mark testifies, saying: 'The Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God' (Mark 16:19). But all these things which were done temporally in the Only-begotten God, partly according to the soul alone, partly according to the flesh alone, and partly according to soul and flesh together, just as they are worthily referred to the one person of divinity and humanity that is in the Son of God, so they can in no way be referred to his divine substance.
And for this reason none of these things can be attributed to the person of the Father or of the Holy Spirit, since there is not one person of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Nor can anyone ascribe the suffering or the assumption of flesh to the Father or to the Holy Spirit, since it is impious to preach that the divine nature is in any respect mutable or passible: the nature according to which Christ both remained ever born of the Father without beginning, when he received from his mother the beginning of conception and nativity; and remained incomprehensible, when he allowed himself to be comprehended; and impassible, when he felt the injuries of suffering; and immortal, when he submitted to death;
and remained invisible, when according to the flesh he lay in the tomb, and according to the soul descended into the lower parts of the earth; and remained boundless, when he ascended to the height of heaven from the lowliness of this earth. CHAPTER 21. If wretched Fastidiosus had not denied this faith, he would without doubt not have perished. But since he denied it both by his deeds and by his words, it is no wonder that, having become most wicked in his conduct and now perverse in his speech, walking in darkness, he stood forth an enemy of the light. For carnal fornication, which first took possession of his mind and his flesh, consequently drew him on to the precipice of spiritual fornication. For he took the members of Christ and made them the members of a harlot.
And therefore he did not hesitate to lose the chastity of faith, because he did not grieve to have lost the chastity of the body. Behold how great an evil is the lust of the flesh, which could lead that wretched man even to the denial of the truth! This was the tempest, this was the storm which snatched the chaff from the Lord's threshing-floor and fixed it upon the brambles of heretical impiety. This made him speak against his own conscience, and, with perverse speech, occupy himself in insult against the very Trinity. For he did not even believe to be true what he said, but now, with a double heart, he preferred to say something other than what he believed. Possessed by such despair that he took away from himself the hope of remission, he willed by licence to fulfil the delights of lust.
And so from his own mouth, by which he ought to have been justified, he received an increase of condemnation, when his tongue, which ought to have uttered words of penitence, brought forth words of blasphemy. To that place, therefore, wretched Fastidiosus preferred to pass over, where he might both bark against God with sacrilegious insolence, and, in his fornications, since he had not the fear of God, might not fear man either. Woe to that wretch, who for this purpose willed to be deprived of the fellowship of the Church, that he might never be able to be free of punishment; and who for this purpose willed to sin without any fear, that he might deserve to burn without end. CHAPTER 22. Where now are those two years which Fastidiosus reckoned as it were happy, because, as he wished, being lustful, he consumed them in fornication?
How swiftly they passed! Even if there had been not two hundred but two thousand of them, they would have passed with the same swiftness. What then will that wretch do, when he comes to the judgment of him whom he denied? What will he receive for such deeds and words? What will that man receive—that man lustful in body, blind in heart, blasphemous in error?—who first defiled within himself the temple of God by fornication, and then, being separated in body also from the Church, went out. What will he receive from that holy Trinity, he who preferred to be a slave of lust and of treachery? What indeed but eternal fire, which is established as prepared for such works? And in this present time, indeed, the fornication of Fastidiosus was quickly ended, whose
eternal burning, however, in that fire will not be ended. Let Christians therefore flee both kinds of fornication into which wretched Fastidiosus fell; so that, keeping their souls, they may preserve chastity both of heart and of body. Let them hold within the Catholic Church the faith. Let them believe and confess the inseparable and undivided Trinity, which in its divine nature has nothing made, nothing in any degree begun; by whose one and inseparable work all things were made in the heavens and on the earth, visible and invisible. Let them likewise believe and confess the Only-begotten God, alone according to true divinity born of the Father, alone according to true humanity created from the Virgin;
and thereby that flesh and rational soul were, by the work of the Trinity, taken up in the unity of person for the salvation of the world. Holding this most firmly, let them bring forth and persevere in good works. For in Christ Jesus only that faith avails which works through love (Gal. 5:6), and if anyone departs from it, he will be guilty of his own soul. But everyone who perseveres in it unto the end, this one shall be saved (Matt. 10:22).