Having some time ago completed the little books of my spiritual Conferences, notable more for their sense than for their language, since my unskilled speech was unequal to the lofty thought of those holy men, I had resolved, and had all but determined, after that shame at the ignorance I had laid bare, so to establish myself in the harbour of silence that, as far as in me lay, I might excuse the boldness of my speech by the modesty of keeping still.
But you have overcome my purpose and resolve by your praiseworthy zeal and your most imperious affection, my Leo — you who are my venerable and revered love, the glory of the Roman Church and of the divine ministry — drawing me forth from that retreat of premeditated silence into public and dread judgement, and compelling me, still blushing over things past, to undertake new labours; and though I have proved unequal even to lesser matters, by you I am forced to be equal to greater ones. For not even in those little works, in which by the humble offering of my slender talent I made sacrifice to God, would I have attempted to set anything in motion or to presume, had I not been drawn on by episcopal command. And so through you the dignity of my speech and pen has grown.
For we who before, at your bidding, spoke of the Lord's disciplines, are now required by you to speak of the very Incarnation of the Lord and of His majesty. Thus we who first were led into the holy places of the temple as though by a priestly hand, now under your guidance and with your support penetrate, as it were, into the Holy of Holies.
A great honour, but a perilous undertaking, for the palm of the sacred sanctuary and of the divine reward cannot be won unless the enemy be overcome. You bid me, then, and command me to join feeble hands against a recent heresy and a new foe of the faith, and to stand with open mouth, as they say, against the deadly jaws of the pestilent serpent — namely, that against this dragon rising up against the churches of God with his winding coils, the prophetic power and the divine strength of the Gospel word may, through me as though an enchanter, break him asunder. I obey your entreaty, I obey your command. For I would rather trust you than myself concerning myself, especially because the love of Jesus Christ my Lord enjoins this upon me together with you — He who commands this very thing even in you.
It remains that you ask the accomplishment of the task you have imposed from Him through whom you imposed it. For now more is at stake in your cause than in mine; it is your judgement rather than my duty that is put to the test. As for me, whether I am equal to your command or not, the very principle of obedience and humility to some degree excuses me — save that there is more merit in my compliance if there is less in my capacity. For we easily satisfy anyone's command out of abundance; but great and admirable is the duty of him who has even in his desire what he has not in his powers. This matter, therefore, is yours; the business is yours; it is the work of your honour.
Pray and beseech that my lack of skill may not endanger your choice; and that, if I fail to answer to so great an expectation, then — even though I obey rightly through the indulgence granted to obedience — you may not seem to have commanded ill through an unconsidered judgement. The fables of the poets relate that the Hydra, when once its heads were cut off, was reborn in yet greater number by its own losses.
They grew through its very losses, so that by a new and unheard-of marvel — the monster being multiplied by its own deaths — loss became a kind of gain: for whatever the cutting iron severed, its prodigious fecundity doubled entirely; until the diligent assailant of that severing, toiling and struggling, his strength baffled so many times by ineffectual labour, armed the fortitude of the war with the art of counsel, and applying fire, as they tell, cut through the manifold offspring of the monstrous body with a red-hot sword; and thus, its marrow scorched within, when he had burned away the rebellious veins of that wicked fecundity, at last the monstrous breeding ceased. So then even the heresies in the churches bear a likeness to the Hydra which the poets' inventions feigned.
For these too hiss against us with deadly tongues, and these too cast forth a lethal venom, and these too, their heads cut off, are reborn. But since medicine ought not to cease when the disease rises again, and the more grievous the sickness, the more urgent should be the cure, the Lord our God is able to bring to pass in the wars of the churches, as truth, that which the falsehood of the heathen feigned about the death of that Hydra: that the fiery sword of the Holy Spirit may so burn away utterly all the marrow of that pernicious brood in extinguishing the new heresy, that at last the prodigious fecundity, its veins dying, may cease to bring forth. For these are not new shoots of monstrous seed in the churches.
Always has the harvest of the Lord's field endured these burrs and thorns, and the persistent seed of the choking tares has sprung up within it. Hence came the Ebionites, hence the Sabellians, hence the Arians, hence too the Eunomians and Macedonians, hence the Photinians and the Apollinarians, and the rest of the brambles of the churches and the caltrops that choke the good crop have sprouted forth. Of these the first, Ebion, while he asserted the Lord's Incarnation too strongly, stripped it of its conjunction with divinity. And after him Sabellius, his schism bursting forth from the opposite error of the earlier heresy, while he contended that there is no distinction in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, so far as in him lay confounded the sacred and ineffable Trinity in blasphemous confusion.
Next there followed him the impiety of Arian perversity, which, lest it should seem to confound the sacred Persons, declared that in the Trinity the substances are diverse and unlike. Eunomius, however, after him indeed, but of much the same depravity, though he asserted the divine Trinity to be like itself, nevertheless contended that it was diverse from itself, admitting likeness but excluding equality. Macedonius too, blaspheming with irremediable impiety against the Holy Spirit, though he called the Father and the Son of the same substance, yet by calling the Holy Spirit a creature was guilty of assailing the whole Godhead; for nothing can be injured in the Trinity without injury to the whole Trinity.
Photinus, again, although he called Jesus who was born of the Virgin God, yet wrongly feigned that the beginning of the Godhead coincided with the beginning of the man. And Apollinaris, understanding without due consideration that the man was united to God, wrongly believed that He did not possess a human soul — for it is no lesser error to ascribe to the Lord Jesus Christ things not His own than to take away things that are His own. For whatever is said of Him otherwise than as it is, even if it seem an honour, is an injury. Thus each of them, generating one heresy out of the diversity of another, held opinions all diverse from one another, yet all alike opposed to the faith.
Recently too, that is, in our own days, we have beheld a venomous heresy arise from the greatest city of the Belgae, of certain error but uncertain name; for since it rose up with a fresh head out of the ancient stock of the Ebionites, it is quite doubtful whether it ought to be called ancient or recent. For it was new in its champions, but old in its errors.
For blaspheming that our Lord Jesus Christ was born a mere man, it asserted that His subsequent attainment to the honour and power of God was of human merit, not of divine nature; and that thereby He did not possess Godhead itself always by the property of a divinity united to Him, but afterwards earned it as a reward for His labour and Passion — since indeed it blasphemously held that our Lord and Saviour was not born God, but assumed by God. This heresy is akin to that one which has now arisen, and is, as it were, its sister and blood-relation; and being agreeable both to the Ebionites and to these recent men, it was indeed midway in time between the two, yet joined to both in perversity.
Although there are some other points of it similar to those we have already mentioned, it would be tedious to recount them all. For we have now taken up our pen not to record things past, but to refute what is new.
This one thing indeed we judge must not be passed over, which was peculiar and proper to that aforesaid heresy that had descended from the Pelagian error: that certain men, saying that the mere man Jesus Christ had lived without any taint of sin, went so far as to assert that men, if they will, can be without sin. For they thought it followed that, if the mere man Jesus Christ had been without sin, all men too could be without the help of God — whatever that mere man had been able to be without the fellowship of God; and thus they made no distinction at all between every man and our Lord Jesus Christ, since indeed the same man might, by his own effort and diligence, merit that which Christ had merited by His zeal and toil.
Whereby it came about that, breaking forth into a still greater and more monstrous madness, they said that our Lord Jesus Christ came into this world not to bestow redemption upon the human race, but to furnish examples of good deeds — namely, that men, following His teaching, while they advanced along the same path of virtue, might attain to the same rewards of the virtues: thus emptying, so far as in them lay, all the gift of the sacred Advent, all the grace of the divine redemption, since they said that men could obtain by living what God had bestowed for man's salvation by dying.
They added too that our Lord and Saviour was made Christ after baptism, and God after the resurrection, assigning the one to the mystery of the anointing, the other to the merit of the Passion. Hence the author of this new — no, not new — heresy now perceives that he who contends that our Lord and Saviour was born a mere man is saying exactly what the Pelagianists said before, and that it is a consequence of his error that he who asserts that the mere man Jesus Christ lived without sin also blasphemously holds that all men can of themselves be without sin, and that he says the Lord's redemption was not even necessary as an example to him, since men can, by their own effort alone, as they say, arrive at the heavenly kingdom.
Nor is there any doubt of this, for the fact itself declares it plainly. For hence it is that by his intercessions he fosters the complaints of the Pelagianists, and by his writings upholds their cause; that he subtly — or, to speak more truly, craftily — patronizes them, and by a wicked affection lends his suffrage to a wickedness akin to his own, knowing full well that he is of the same mind, of the same spirit, and therefore grieving that a heresy kindred to himself has been cut off from the Church — a heresy that he knows to be joined to himself precisely in perversity.
But nevertheless, since those who had descended from this stock of pestilent thorns have now by divine aid and mercy been healed, the Lord our God must even now be entreated that, since that former heresy and this new one are in certain respects agreeable to one another, He may grant to like beginnings of evils a like good outcome.
For Leporius, then a monk, now a presbyter, who, descending as we said above from the teaching, or rather the depravity, of Pelagius, was in Gaul among the first or among the chief champions of the aforesaid heresy, being admonished by us and amended by God, so nobly condemned the ill-conceived persuasion that his correction is well-nigh no less to be admired than the untouched faith of many; for it is the first thing not to fall into error at all, and the second to renounce it well.
He therefore, returning to himself, not only in Africa, where he then was and now is, confessed both his error with grief and without shame, but also sent to nearly all the cities of Gaul letters of his tearful confession and lamentation — namely, that where his deviation had formerly been known, there too his amendment might be recognized, and that those who had before been witnesses of his error might afterwards be the same of his correction.
From his confession, or rather his lamentation, we have thought fit to insert certain passages, for a twofold reason: that his correction might be both a testimony to us and an example to those who waver, so that they whose error they had not blushed to follow, they might not blush to follow in his amendment; and that as they were made sick with a like sickness, so they might be healed with a like remedy. He therefore, having recognized the perversity of his opinion and beheld the light of the faith, writing to the bishops of Gaul, thus began: 'What I should first accuse in myself, O my lords the venerable and most blessed priests, I know not, and what I should first excuse in myself I do not find.'
'So it is that unskilfulness and pride, so foolish simplicity together with a noxious persuasion, so fervour with intemperance, so — to speak more truly — a faith made feeble by its own diminution, all at once took hold in me and grew strong, so that both to have obeyed so many and such great errors is my confounding, and to have been able to cast these same things from my mind is my astonishing cause for thanksgiving.' And after a little he adds:
'If therefore, in no way perceiving this power of God, being wise in our own sense and by our own reasoning as though God were doing something beneath Himself, we should say that man was born together with God in such a way as to give separately the things that belong to God alone to God, and to assign separately the things that are man's to man alone, we most manifestly introduce a fourth person into the Trinity, and out of the one Son of God we begin to make not one but two Christs — which may the Lord and God Christ Himself now turn away from us. Therefore we confess our Lord and God Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, who before the ages was born of the Father for Himself, and in time, of the Holy Spirit and Mary ever-Virgin, was for us made man, born God; and confessing both substances, of flesh and
'the Word, one and the same God and man inseparable, we ever receive with the pious belief of faith; and from the time of the flesh assumed we so say that all the things that were God's passed over into the man, that all the things that were the man's came into God; and by this understanding the Word was made flesh — not that by any conversion or mutability it began to be what it was not, but that by the power of the divine dispensation the Word of the Father, never departing from the Father, deigned properly to become man, and the Only-begotten was made incarnate by that secret mystery which He Himself knows (for it is ours to believe, His to know):
'and thus God the Word Himself, taking on all that is man's, is man, and the assumed man, receiving all that is God's, cannot be other than God — yet not, because He is said to be incarnate and commingled, is any diminution of His substance to be supposed. God knows how to be mingled without corruption of Himself, and yet to be mingled in truth, and so to take on that nothing of increase accrues to Him, just as He knows how to pour Himself out wholly so that no loss befalls Him. Let us not, therefore, according to the understanding of our weakness, forming our conjecture after the visible evidences of experience concerning creatures that mutually interpenetrate one another as equals, suppose that God and man are commingled, and that by such confusion of flesh and Word some sort of body has been produced.
'Far be it so to believe, that we should think two natures reduced into one substance as though by some kind of fusion; for a commingling of this sort is the corruption of each part. For God, who is containing, not contained, penetrating, not penetrable, filling, not to be filled, who is everywhere wholly at once and everywhere diffused, has by the infusion of His power been mercifully mingled with human nature.' And after a little:
'God-man, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is therefore born to us, properly of the Holy Spirit and Mary ever-Virgin; and thus Word and flesh become one in each other, so that, each substance abiding naturally in its own perfection, without prejudice to itself, the divine things communicate to the humanity and the human things partake in the divinity, and He is called — and truly is — not one God, another man, but the same very God who is also man, and in turn the man who is also God, Jesus Christ, one Son of God.'
'And therefore this must always be done and believed by us: that we do not deny our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, true God — whom we confess to be ever with the Father and equal to the Father before the ages — to have been, from the time of the flesh assumed, made God-man; nor say that He, as it were by degrees and in time advancing into God, was of one state before the resurrection and of another after the resurrection, but that He was ever of the same fullness and power.' And again a little after: 'But because the Word of God descended graciously into man by assuming man, and through the assumption man ascended into God, the whole God became the whole man as Word. For it was not God the Father who was made man, nor the Holy Spirit, but the Only-begotten of the Father.'
'And therefore one person is to be understood, of flesh and Word, so that we may faithfully believe, without any doubt, that one and the same Son of God, ever inseparable, of twofold substance, even named a giant, in the days of His flesh both truly ever did all the things that are man's and truly ever possessed the things that are God's; since even though He was crucified out of weakness, yet He lives by the power of God.' This confession of his, then — that is, the faith of all the catholics — both all the African bishops, from whose region he was writing, and all the Gallican bishops, to whom he was writing, approved; nor has there yet arisen anyone at all to whom this faith could be displeasing without the charge of unbelief, for it belongs to professed impiety to deny an approved piety.
The consent of all, then, ought now to suffice by itself for the refutation of the heresy, since the authority of the whole body is a manifestation of undoubted truth, and reason has been made perfect where no one dissents; so that, if anyone should strive to think contrary to this, his assertion at the very first glance is not so much to be listened to as his perversity to be condemned, for he who assails the judgement of the whole exhibits with himself the prejudgement of his own condemnation, and he who overturns what has been established by all has no place for a hearing. For truth once confirmed by all, whatever comes against it, by that very fact is straightway to be recognized as falsehood.
For whatever dissents from the truth is falsehood; and by this it is fitting that even this alone should suffice for the sentence of condemnation against him — that he disagrees with the judgement of truth. But nevertheless, since the word of reason is no hindrance to reason, and truth ventilated ever shines the brighter, and it is better that those who err be corrected by the treatment of disputation than condemned by the severity of censure, we must, so far as in us lies, by divine aid cure the old heresy in these new heretics, so that health being received through sacred mercy, their healing may rather furnish a testimony to the holy faith than their condemnation an example of just severity. May the very Truth
be present at this disputation and discourse held concerning Himself, and by that mercy whereby God deigned to come to men, may He succour human errors; for to this end above all He willed to be born on earth and in a man, that there might no longer be any place for falsehood. Since in the first book we set forth certain premises whereby we might prove that the new heretic sprouts from the stems of an ancient heresy, the just condemnation of the earlier heretics ought indeed to suffice for him to receive the sentence of just condemnation; for, since he has the same roots and emerges from the same trenches, he is already sufficiently condemned in his own authors — especially since
even those who most recently before these men followed ill, rightly condemned that very thing which these men now assert; so that the examples of their own kind ought to suffice these men abundantly in either direction — namely, of those who were amended, or of those who were condemned. For if they can be corrected, they have in the corrections of their own kind a remedy; if they cannot be corrected, they have in the condemnation of their own kind their sentence.
Nevertheless, lest we should seem to wish to use prejudgement against them rather than judgement, let us bring forth into the open their very pestilent proposition, or rather their blaspheming madness, taking in all things the shield of faith and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God — namely, that the same sword of the divine word may even now cut off in the new serpents the resurgent head of the ancient dragon, which it formerly severed in the ancient serpents.
For since the error of these men is the same as that of those, the severing of these should be counted as the severing of those; and because the reborn serpents drive their pestilent blasts within the Lord's Church and cause some to waste away with their hissings, a fresh remedy must be joined to the ancient cures on account of the new infirmities, so that, even if what was formerly done avails not for the cure of the present languor, yet what we now do may avail for the health of those who languish. You say, then, whoever you are, O heretic, who deny that God was born of the Virgin, that Mary the Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ cannot be called Theotokos, that is, Mother of God, but Christotokos, that is, only Mother of Christ, not of God. 'For no one,' you say, 'gives birth to one older than herself.'
Concerning this so foolish argument indeed — that you think the nativity of God is to be estimated by a carnal understanding, and believe that the mystery of majesty is to be judged by human reasonings — we shall dispute afterwards, if God grant it. For now, in the meantime, let us prove both that Christ is God and that Mary is the Mother of God, by divine witnesses. Hear, then, the angel of God speaking to the shepherds concerning the birth of God: 'There is born to you this day,' he says, 'a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord, in the city of David.'
Lest indeed you should understand only man in Christ, he added for you the names both of Lord and of Saviour — namely, that Him whom you knew to be Saviour you might in no wise doubt to be God; and since the power of saving belongs to none but the divine authority, you should not question that He is of divine power in whom you had learned the power of saving to be. But lest this should seem too little for your unbelief, because the angel named Him Lord and Saviour rather than God or Son of God — though you most impiously deny to be God Him whom you confess to be Saviour — hear also the archangel Gabriel proclaiming to Mary the Virgin: 'The Holy Spirit,' he says, 'shall come upon you, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow you:'
'therefore also that which shall be born of you, holy, shall be called the Son of God.' You see how, being about to declare the nativity of God, he prefaced it with the works of divinity. 'For the Holy Spirit,' he says, 'shall come upon you, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow you.' Most beautifully speaking, the angel by the divinity of his words unfolded the majesty of the divine work. For the Holy Spirit, sanctifying the inward parts of the Virgin and breathing therein the power of His divinity, inserted and mingled Himself with human nature, and made His own that which had been foreign to Him, taking it to Himself, that is, by His own power and majesty.
And lest perchance human weakness should not withstand the entrance of divinity, the power of the Most High strengthened the Virgin venerable to all, that it might firm up her bodily frailty by the protection of its overshadowing poured around her, and that, for the accomplishing of the ineffable sacrament of the sacred conception, human weakness might not fail, sustained as it was by the divine overshadowing. 'The Holy Spirit,' then, he says, 'shall come upon you, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow you.' If, therefore, He who was to be born of the holy Virgin was to be a mere man only, why was so great a message of a sacred Advent set in motion? Why so great an array of the Godhead itself? If indeed a man was being born only of a man, and flesh only of flesh, a mere command or the divine will could have sufficed for that.
For if, to fashion the heavens, to found the earth, to create the sea, and finally to make the seats and thrones and angels and archangels and principalities and powers—if, in short, to create the whole heavenly host and those countless thousands upon thousands of the divine armies, God's will and command alone sufficed for Him, since He Himself spoke, and they were made; He commanded, and they were created—why then, as you say, did that seem too little for the conception of one man which was enough for the bringing forth of all things divine? And why did the power and majesty of God trust too little in the birth of a single infant that which sufficed for the founding of all things earthly and heavenly?
But surely the point is this: that all those works were accomplished by the mere command of God, whereas the Nativity was not to be accomplished except by His coming; for God could neither be conceived by a human being except by giving Himself, nor be born except by entering in. And therefore the archangel announced to the Virgin the sacred majesty that would come upon her—namely, that since so great a thing could not be brought about by human agency, he declared that His own majesty would be present at the conception, He who was to be present at the birth. And therefore the Word the Son descends, the majesty of the Holy Spirit is present, the power of the Father overshadows—so that, indeed, in the mystery of the sacred conception the whole cooperation of the Trinity might be present. "Therefore," he says, "that which shall be born of you shall be called holy, the Son of God."
Well did he add "therefore," to show, namely, that these things would follow precisely because those had gone before; and because God had come upon her at the conception, therefore God would come forth at the birth. He thus gave the reason for so great a matter to the maiden who did not know it, saying in effect: because the Holy Spirit shall come upon you, and because the power of the Most High shall overshadow you, therefore also that which shall be born shall be called holy, the Son of God. This is to say: Do not be ignorant, he says, of this great preparation for so great a matter, this mystery of so great a sacrament; the whole majesty of God comes into you for this reason, because from you the Son of God shall be born. What further can here be doubted, or what more can be said? He said that God would come upon her, and that the Son of God would be born.
Ask now, if you please, how either the Son of God is not God, or how she who brought forth God cannot be Theotokos, that is, the Mother of God. These things alone, then, ought to suffice you—nay rather, these should suffice you supremely.