On the Communicatio Idiomatum; Assertion of Lambert Daneau

That the human nature of Christ, neither in the personal union nor through the personal union with the Deity of the Logos, becomes or has become God. Against The latest writing of Jacob Andreas.

Translator’s Preface

This writing was done against Jacob Andreas (referred to as Smidelin), a theological scholar who believed that the flesh of Christ became deified and ceased to remain in its original nature. The author Lambert Daneau seeks to correct this heretical position. Moreover, Daneau sees the error or eutychianism riddled in Smidelin’s theology, and wants to properly return Smidelin to orthodoxy. This a treatment on the reformed understanding of the communicatio idiomatic (communication of attributes). This debate was common in Reformed and Lutheran polemics in the 16th century. Eucharistic and Christological debates would split the Lutheran and Reformed churches over time, causing these debates to grow evermore present.

Again Jacob Smidelin, Concerning the Worship of the Flesh of Christ

It is true, and the unconquerable truth (ἀνίκητος ἀλήθεια, veritas inexpugnabilis), especially the heavenly truth confirmed by the testimonies of divine Scriptures. Therefore, it neither needs my support nor that of anyone else, nor has it ever needed it, as if it were weak. But since this very truth, which ultimately overcomes all obstacles and breaks forth through the midst of darkness, is often either cunningly veiled by many clouds of errors or ignorantly tainted, it is certainly our duty, as far as we are able, to defend it from such injury, if we are Christians, lest we seem to have impiously betrayed the cause of Christ, or lest what is truth be deemed a lie by the ignorant. Moreover, there is the saying of Cassian, in Book 1 of On the Incarnation of the Only-Begotten, that truth, when aired, always shines more brightly. If there has been any serious controversy in these latter times, when the Gospel has been restored to the world (by the great grace of God), in which that heavenly doctrine has been most grievously received and obscured by various clouds, this is certainly one of them: the controversy concerning the adoration of the most holy flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, which has recently begun to be debated. I had previously discussed this matter to the best of my ability and according to the measure of the gifts God, the Best and Greatest, has deigned to bestow upon me in His immense kindness, so that the true doctrine on this subject might already be clearly revealed and shine brightly in the light. But those who reap great profit from opposing this truth, seeing that their profit from the doctrine of the real infusion of the Deity and the essential properties of Christ’s divine nature into the human nature assumed by Him is overturned once that doctrine is refuted, have not allowed our opinion—both true and confirmed by the Word of God, and agreeing with the writings of the orthodox Fathers—to shine purely for long or to be clearly perceived (for all would easily agree with it). Instead, they have endeavored to obscure it once again. Chief among them is Jacob Smidelin, son of Andreas, who, in a certain recent writing against it, has shown what kind of man he is and how far removed his disposition is from true light and Christian gentleness. I will not speak more harshly against him. As the old proverb says, a man’s tongue reveals his character. Therefore, to this book of his (which he says will be his final contest against me), I respond, promising also that, whatever he may write, I will not write a single letter in the future to call back a man who is clearly hopeless. For not only is truth lost through excessive disputing, but I have always kept before my eyes the words of Paul: “Reject a heretical person after one or two admonitions” (Titus 3:10). Let this, therefore, be my second and final admonition, and my labor, undertaken with a pious and certainly benevolent spirit, to bring Jacob, son of Andreas, and all his allies in this error back to sound doctrine and to heal them. I will respond to him in such a way that, as I hope, I will satisfy all pious and moderate minds, speaking only about the matter itself as briefly as possible, yet most truly and clearly. For I pass over the insults that Jacob, son of Andreas, has spewed against me (because I attacked the very stronghold of his doctrine) with a certain excessive bile rather than speaking them. Indeed, I forgive him everything, as a man and a brother. For I am, Jacob, a Christian, as you should know, and one who (if you would only abandon that error of yours concerning the real infusion of the Deity into a created thing) would love you, believe me, and easily be reconciled with you. For even at the beginning of your book, you ask forgiveness for such great insults, clearly conscious of your unjust anger against me. Finally, I consider the advice of Ambrose in his Epistle to the Colossians, Chapter 1, to be entirely Christian and to be followed by me and all Christian people: “To those who are noisy and prone to insults, one must always yield. For you conquer when you yield.” Therefore, because you call me a devil so many times, indeed even more than a devil, vain, deceitful, blasphemous, a calumniator, a Eutychian, an Arian (for what page of yours lacks these flowers of your eloquence?), and other such names, may the Lord God forgive you and not impute it to you on that day. For it was not madness (διαβολία) but folly (ἀνοία) and anger (ὀργή) that spoke. Moreover, as Xenophon excellently writes, “Anger, acting thoughtlessly, often brings about things that must be regretted.” I wonder why you insultingly call me a rabulumfrom the dregs of jurists, because in my youth I devoted myself to the most noble art of jurisprudence, unless perhaps that jurisprudence, easily the chief of sciences and all things after sacred theology, and the architectonic art, is offensive and displeasing to you (a man entirely ignorant of it), because it wishes controversies to be settled only after hearing both sides. And because it is true, as Ulpian rightly writes, it is a philosophy that you hate. But was Zenas, that jurist so highly commended by Saint Paul and joined, as it were, as an equal to Apollos (Titus 3:13), less a Christian than you, or less a theologian, because he was a jurist? Or Tertullian, Minucius, Arnobius, and other such great men, whom Jerome praises in his Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers, whom I pass over? Nor am I ashamed of that most beautiful art, which is greatly honored throughout Germany, and without whose knowledge no part of the republic can be touched, much less can the offices of prefects and chancellors (such as you and yours claim to be) be rightly administered by them. Therefore, do not hereafter declare war on the good arts. But, as I said, these things are not my concern. For whether I am less versed in theological matters because of this, and whether I err in the Christian faith, this disputation and writing of ours will demonstrate. Therefore, I come to the matter. First, you have tried to explain the term flesh in this disputation about the adoration of Christ’s flesh, writing that by it the whole man in Christ is understood, consisting of body and soul. But to what end? Was it to fill your hundred pages against my sixty? For who among us has ever thought otherwise? For we are not Apollinarians, who say that Christ the man lacked a rational soul and substitute the Deity in place of the soul. Nor are we Docetists or Manichaeans (into whose manifold errors you gradually slip), who attribute a phantastical and not a true body to Christ. But you have foreseen what the truth is: that from your doctrine of the real infusion of the Deity into Christ’s flesh, both of those errors are truly and necessarily inferred. For since there is only one that you now attribute a divine operation and energy (ἐνέργεια) to Christ, of which Christ’s flesh and Deity are jointly partakers, it necessarily follows that you also attribute to Christ one nature and one will, namely the divine, and thus you deny Him a rational soul (λογική), as Damascene argues against the Acephali, concluding that this was the blasphemy of the Apollinarians. Moreover, it is easy for anyone to see how, from this same error of yours concerning the real infusion of the Deity into Christ’s flesh from the moment of conception, the delirium of the Manichaeans and Docetists about the impossible nature of Christ’s flesh also springs forth. But these errors, by God’s grace, do not touch us, who defend against you that Christ has a true, truly human flesh and the entire human nature. Therefore, the meaning of “flesh” in this context is that it teaches both a true human body (note, Smidelin, what you now concede) and a true human soul in Christ. From this, it follows that if Christ’s flesh is the proper object of religious adoration, as Smidelin contends against me, this must also be understood of Christ’s body—namely, that holy mass and substance of the body which Christ assumed from the sanctified seed of the Blessed Virgin Mary, just as it is clearly understood of Christ’s human soul or spirit. Thus, elsewhere you yourself say that this same praise of adoration resides even in that gross body—gross, I say—as you add, not residing solely in the soul and mind, but also in the gross body. In this, all pious and learned people see how gross you yourself are. Therefore, Christian readers should understand that you are inconsistent, how varied, confused, and contradictory you are in explaining and defending that prominent opinion of yours from the very beginning. Yet, Smidelin, the discourse of truth is both simple and straightforward. For in various places in your book, you restrict that adoration which you attribute to Christ’s flesh as the true object of adoration to His human spirit, and thus you exclude Christ’s body from that adoration, even though the term “flesh” includes and signifies it, as you yourself admit. Therefore, first explain clearly to us what you mean in this matter and what you think. Nor is the state of this controversy any more clearly explained by you. For you everywhere write that I refuse and deny that Christ’s flesh is in any way to be adored by pious people in and because of the personal union. Have I ever denied this, Smidelin? On the contrary, I say, have said, have written, and as long as I live, with the Lord God favoring me, I will say and write that it is to be adored, but as all the orthodox Fathers explain and have said: through the communication of attributes (κοινωνίαν ἰδιωμάτων), by the grace of the union alone, through dialectical predication, as they say in the schools, not through a physical predication, but not because of a real infusion of the essential properties of the Deity into Christ’s human nature, as you claim. Therefore, never (and let all pious and wise men, my most beloved brothers in Christ, note this, so they may see how great an injury you do me), never, I say, Smidelin, have I denied that Christ’s flesh, assumed by the Logos and Son of God into the unity of His person, is in any way to be adored, or is in any way adorable, or is in any way adored (for who would deny this, unless a Nestorian?). But I have denied that it is to be adored per se, even when considered in that very union with the Deity of the Son of God; I have denied that it is the proper, true, and ultimate object of our religious adoration. For who would think thus, unless a Eutychian? Therefore, on page 115, line 11 of your book, you yourself clear me of all this charge you had affixed, and at last you convict yourself of manifest calumny against me. For you admit that I concede that the Deity of the Son is adored with the flesh, and that I say and defend that Christ’s flesh is adorable in this way. And in this very point, hear how close you come to agreeing with me, even from your own words, for I will faithfully transcribe your words, noting not only the pages (to repay your diligence more fully) but even the lines. You say, therefore: “We confess that all this was rightly and piously written by Saint Augustine, namely, that Christ, according to the flesh, is less than the Holy Spirit and Himself, insofar as He is God. Then also that Christ, as man, is not honored as the Father is. For the honor of natural adoration is properly and per se attributed to the Father. But to Christ’s flesh, it is not natural, nor is it properly and per se attributed to it, but because of the union with the Word, as the same Augustine says” (Page 109, line 6). And again: “For we constantly teach that the divine nature is the Creator, but the human nature is a creature” (Page 107, line 26). And elsewhere: “And the adoration naturally proper to the glory of the divinity alone remains, which is communicated personally to the assumed nature.” And elsewhere: “For religious worship is properly attributed to Christ as God, that is, by nature, because He is God, whose proper attribute is to be adored. But to Christ’s human nature or flesh, it is not properly attributed by nature, that is, because it is flesh, but because the flesh is personally united to the Word” (Page 97, line 22). I could cite six other such statements of yours, as when you concede that Durand’s opinion (which I cited) is true, who writes that Christ’s flesh is adored per accidens, by adoring the subsisting person. Likewise, you approve the opinion of the Scholastics, who say that Christ’s flesh is adored because of the union, that is, by the grace of the union alone, not by habitual grace, even though Christ’s flesh is considered in that very union of the divine person (Page 12, line 25). Finally, it is manifestly clear from your own writing that when Christ’s flesh is adored, even as we regard it in that union, it is adored through something else, not per se (Page 100, line 3). Therefore, if someone who writes and says this is a heretic, a devil, a blasphemer (as you depict me), you see what must be thought of you from your own mouth. But you say that, although Christ’s flesh is neither adored per se nor properly, it is nevertheless, in that union of the person with the divine nature, the object of our religious adoration. But this very thing is nothing other than to refute yourself and to claim that Christ’s flesh (which you denied is the Deity or God) is now God. Therefore, what you add—that it is the object of adoration—is what I myself deny by reason, and this is precisely the true state of our controversy, which you should have explained thus: Whether, when Christ’s flesh is adored in the union, but not outside the union, nor per se, nor properly (as you say), it is nevertheless the proper object of our adoration, or the subject (ὑποκείμενον), as you wish, think, and try to persuade others, but I dissuade. But all see how absurd this is, how contrary to the Word of God, and how self-contradictory (αὐτίλεγαν). Likewise, all intelligent men who have even glanced at the writings of the orthodox Fathers and Scholastics perceive how far removed it is from their true opinion and alien to the Scholastics’ view, even though you want your phrases to be understood through their words, as I will also show later. Moreover, you indicate that your opinion has this one chief support, which you constantly repeat to us, as if serving up cabbage cooked a hundred times: namely, that through and because of the union of the two natures in one person of the Son of God, the essential properties of the Deity have been really infused into the nature assumed by it. Thus, the human nature, that is, Christ’s flesh, is really and in reality assumed in equality of glory by the Logos. For these are your words: “The honor that is really and in reality owed to the Logos, the Son of God, is also really and in reality owed to the flesh assumed by the Logos” (Page 108, line 5). And elsewhere in this same book, you write that there is no diversity of honor between the veneration shown to the Deity and that shown to Christ’s flesh, nor is Christ adored and honored in one way as man and in another as God (Page 110, line 5). What could be said more openly, but worse and more blasphemously, by you? May Eutyches, returning from the underworld, kiss you, Smidelin, for so renewing his most detestable error and offering it to the people. For what else is this, I ask, but to elevate the human flesh assumed by Christ, the Son of God, after the union and in that union, either into the Deity or to transform it really into God Himself, that is, to say it is no longer flesh or humanity? This is not a hair’s breadth different from the blasphemy of the Eutychians. For through you, Christ is no longer merely God in the concrete term “man,” which I grant; but the humanity itself becomes Deity, which I deny. But hear what Damascene, whom all pious people greatly delight in on this subject, writes in his Book on Dialectics, Chapter 66. I will now omit the others (since I cited them clearly in my earlier work), lest by repeating them I cause nausea to readers, as you do in your writings. Damascene says: “It must be known that the personal union produces one composite person from those things that are united, yet preserves in itself the natures that come together in that union, and their difference, and their natural properties unconfused and unchangeable.” And a little later (for I aim at brevity): “As in the soul and body. For from both is formed one composite person, such as Peter or Paul. Yet it preserves in itself both natures perfectly, that of the soul and that of the body, and their difference unmingled, and their properties unconfused. For it has in itself the characteristic properties of both, namely those of the soul and those of the body.” From this, it is clear that in the one person of Christ, the divine nature of the Son of God and the human mass or part of the nature assumed by Him have come together personally, yet each preserves in that union both its nature and its difference, by which the human is distinguished from the divine, and each retains its natural or essential properties. Therefore, Christ’s human nature, even in that union, remains a human nature, because this is its nature; and a creature, which is its difference from the divine; and it is finite and circumscribed, because this is the natural or essential property of human nature. Therefore, the human nature assumed by the Son of God cannot, even when considered in that very union, be God or be said to be elevated to equal honor, throne, or majesty as Christ’s Deity itself. For then, Christ’s flesh would lose both the difference of its nature and its properties in that union and because of that hypostatic union. For, as the same Damascene says, how can one and the same nature be really capable of contrary qualities? For example, how can Christ’s flesh both have the condition of a creature and a Creator in reality, be eternal and temporal, be God and not God? This is impossible (ἀδύνατον). Furthermore, Christ, as man, would no longer sit at the right hand of God the Father (which you would never concede), but would occupy the very seat and throne of God the Father by robbery, since that very flesh of Christ would now be God. But it is as God, not as man, that Christ makes Himself equal to the Father. Therefore, what you write can be proven false from the articles of the Apostles’ Creed and from that passage of Paul, 1 Corinthians 15:27, namely, that when all things are said to be subjected to Christ as man, He who subjected them, that is, God, is always excepted. But if there were that real infusion of the essential properties of the Deity of the Son of God into the flesh assumed by Him because of the union, it would no longer be a personal union of them but a mixture, as Damascene excellently teaches in the same place. For the chief difference between a personal union and a mixture of things lies in this: that in the union, the united things preserve their nature and properties unmingled and unconfused; but in a mixture, they are confused, and in reality, they permeate and pass into one another or are communicated. It must be known, says Damascene, that when something is composed by mixture (for this composition is explained by example and from Chapter 64 of the same work) …that the parts of that composite, at that same time, become something different from what they were. For a composite or mixture does not preserve but changes and alters those things from which it is composed, just as a body made from the four elements does not remain pure fire or any one of those four elements. Likewise, in Book 3 of On the Orthodox Faith, Chapter 3. Therefore, in a personal union, both the united things and their properties remain preserved and incommunicable. But if one nature communicates its properties to the other really, as you write, through and because of that conjunction, that conjunction of different natures and things is a mixture and confusion, not a personal union. This is what Damascene copiously teaches in Book 3 of On the Orthodox Faith, Chapter 3. Therefore, through you, Christ is neither truly man nor truly God, but some third thing composed from the coalescence of God and man. But you everywhere assert, Smidelin, that Christ’s flesh is called deificata (deified) by the Fathers, from which you make it equal and equivalent to Christ’s Deity, elevating it in reality to the same degree of honor that the Deity has. But what else is this than to communicate what is proper to the Deity, and indeed in the fourth mode, to other things? To attribute what is essential to God to a creature? For what can or should have and enjoy that degree of honor and majesty equal to God in reality, unless it is God? Therefore, you add Christ’s flesh as a fourth to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the Deity. Wondrously, you are an infuser and transfuser of the Deity (for it is not new for heretics to be transfusers and metangonists of the Deity in the Church). Wondrously, I say, an infuser of the Deity, hear that the term deified flesh means nothing else to the Fathers than flesh united to the Deity, not, as you claim, adorned with the same privileges, the same and equal honor, and the same majesty as the Deity, or capable of and possessing them. Damascene, against the Acephali, citing Nazianzen near the beginning of his book, says: “We acknowledge one nature of the flesh of the Logos, deified (μίαν φύσιν τῆς σαρκός λόγο τεθεωμένην), that is, united to the Deity (ἡνωμένην θεότητι), because there are two natures united to each other (ὡς δυο εἰσί φύσεις ἡνωμέναι ἀλλήλαις).” Therefore, it is not that Christ’s flesh (even that called deified) really and in reality receives or has in itself the properties proper to the Deity, but only because it has its subsistence (hypostasis) in the person of the Logos and is united to it, it is called deified, assumed by the Deity of the Logos. All see how little this pertains to your real transfusion of the Deity into the flesh. You add, however, that the human nature assumed by the Logos is said everywhere to be really adored together with the Deity of the Son that assumed it. I respond, as I responded and proved before, and as the Fathers teach, that Christ’s flesh is adored in that union with the divine nature only through the communication of attributes (idiomatum communicatio), because it adheres to and is united to that which is adored with religious worship, namely the Deity, not because that dignity, nobility, property, and (if it is permissible to speak thus of God) quality is really inherent in Christ’s flesh itself, either emanating from it or really infused into it from the Deity (to which it remains united), as you claim, for which a thing is to be adored with religious worship. For thus says Augustine, whom I cited earlier: “I look at the garment, I adore the one clothed.” And as I also cited (for you have nothing in your writing from yourself, but all from me), Thomas says: “To adore Christ’s flesh is nothing other than to adore the incarnate Word of God. Thus, to adore the garment of the King is nothing other than to adore the King himself clothed.” For when the Fathers say that both Christ’s flesh and Deity are adored with one adoration, this term one in no way signifies the same kind or equal degree of honor (since the veneration due to the Deity, that is, the Creator, is entirely different from that due to the flesh, that is, the creature, even though it remains in union with the Deity), but the term one signifies number, that is, a single act of adoration, because what is adored is a single subsisting person (suppositum) and only one person in which both Christ’s Deity and flesh subsist, not a double person, as Nestorius (whatever you ignorantly think to the contrary) contended. Isidore, in Book 1 of On the Highest Good, Chapter 16, says: “The mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus, is by no means one in humanity and another in Deity, but in both natures, He is the same One.” Thus (to speak with you about an obscure matter clearly and familiarly), if, I say, there is one blow, one wound, one stroke by which someone, such as Peter or Paul, is struck and killed, as James was by the impious Herod, yet his soul is by no means touched by that same blow and wound, but only the body of Peter or Paul. So there was one honor by which Paul (who consisted of body and soul) was honored and revered by the churches because of the supreme wisdom of divine things he had received from God, but would anyone say that honor was in his body and resided there? You, indeed, think it resided even in that gross body. But what learned person would agree with you? For that praise of wisdom belongs to the soul and mind, not the body. Therefore, there is one act, one honor, one praise of Christ, Paul, or John because of the single person in which each consists, not because in each of their persons, the individual parts united within them are honored or praised with the same kind of honor and equal degree. (For who would esteem a man’s body as equally as his soul?) Or because the body and soul are extinguished by the same wound, unless you think a man’s soul can be extinguished. For the term one refers to the category of quantity, that is, to number and a single act, and properly and only to that, not to quality. For then there is one or single act and praise when the person, which is only one or single, is praised or wounded. But that term by no means signifies the same quality, or the same kind of veneration, or an equal degree and honor that is equally and similarly attributed to things so diverse. Behold, therefore, what adoration signifies in this matter, and how it was used to exclude the error of the Nestorians, not to introduce the madness of the Eutychians (which undoubtedly arose from equating the two natures in one person of Christ and from an equal degree of veneration). Finally (for I do not wish to leave any room for doubt), you may object: Since I say that the most holy flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ is adorable in that personal union with the Deity, how can it be denied that it is also the object of that religious adoration, and the very thing that the mind of the adorer properly, per se, and really beholds and regards in Christ? For it may seem absurd that something is adorable and even adored by me, yet is not the proper and per se object of adoration. This is what I am now gravely but falsely accused of by Jacob Smidelin as a blasphemer and heretic worse than Satan himself: that while I confess that Christ’s flesh is adored in that personal union with the Logos (as I said and explained), I nevertheless deny that Christ’s flesh is the proper object of that religious adoration and per se, even though that flesh is considered in that personal union. And first, Smidelin, if to think and write this is blasphemy, you are undoubtedly the blasphemer and heretic, who openly write and say you think this, as I showed above. For you everywhere deny that Christ’s flesh, even in the union Deity, it remains adorable per se and properly. For this belongs to God alone, that He is adored properly and per se. But you nevertheless wish that the same flesh, although it is neither adored properly nor per se in the personal union, is still the object of religious adoration, but you never add “proper,” which is a robust deception in your argument that needs to be explained. But you separate yourself from Daneau’s heresy (as you call it) only in this respect, and you are not its ally, as was that most wise and learned man of Strasbourg, the unique light of your Germany now, Johannes Sturm, because you make Christ’s flesh the object of adoration. Therefore, all see that Jacob, son of Andreas’ opinion, differs little or not at all, if the words are considered, from Daneau’s words (which he considers blasphemous). But what if I were to say to you, Jacob, that Christ’s flesh is the object of adoration in that union in the same way it is adored in that personal union, that is, not per se, as you also confess, but through something else; not properly, as you also write, but improperly; not for its own sake, but per accidens; not really, but through the communication of attributes (κοινωνίαν ἰδιωμάτων) alone; by dialectical, not physical predication (for you also deny that Christ’s flesh is naturally adored)? Surely then, there would seem to be no discord between Smidelin and Daneau, and Daneau would be as much a heretic and blasphemer as Smidelin. But how could anyone grant you this, who wishes Christ’s flesh to be really the object of that religious adoration, and not merely called so through a verbal attribution (αὐτίδοσιν)? For whoever granted you this would, by this concession, abolish the distinction between Deity and humanity in Christ, as you do. And you have also afterward perverted these distinctions, just as you have utterly corrupted the words in, sub, cum in the sacred Lord’s Supper, and in this very disputation, you now transform the communication of properties and perichoresis into a blasphemous sense, contrary to the entire mind of orthodox antiquity. Therefore, to strip away all your deceptions for you and all others, and to say what the matter truly is, and to cut off all controversy that could arise from words, I say and respond: Not everything that is religiously adored is the proper and per se object of religious adoration. Therefore, there is nothing absurd or inconvenient in my position when I concede that Christ’s flesh is indeed adored in the personal union with the Logos, but I deny that the same flesh, even when considered in that union, is the proper and per se object of that adoration. To make it clear that what I assert here is true, I say that the terms adoration and adorable must be distinguished. For they are ambiguous not only because of homonymy, since the adoration that is civil, attributed to men in Holy Scripture (e.g., Genesis 23:7, 33:7), is entirely different in kind from the adoration that is religious and due to God alone (Deuteronomy 6:13, Matthew 4:10). But these terms are also obscure because something is said to be adored (whether we speak of religious or civil worship) in two ways: either properly or improperly, that is, either in word only or also really. Therefore, to remove this ambiguity of the term, something must be added to clarify whether that to which the term adoration is attributed is adored improperly or properly; in word and dialectical predication alone, or in reality and physical enunciation; through the communication of attributes (communicatio idiomatum) alone or through antidosis (as Damascene says), or because it is the thing itself toward which the mind of the adorer tends, is directed, and looks. Therefore, the terms per se, properly, and object of adoration were devised, which, when added or removed, clarify how that which is worshiped by us, whether with religious or, as I said, civil worship alone, is adored. For whatever we venerate per se, properly, as the proper object of adoration, certainly the adoration is directed to it in reality, and it is said to be adored properly or by physical predication, not through the communication of attributes. Why? Because those things have in themselves in reality that dignity, either innate and from themselves or communicated and added to them from elsewhere, that is, infused and handed down from another, for which they are thus worshiped and adored. But those things that are neither worshiped per se nor properly are also by no means, and cannot be called, the proper object of adoration; thus, they are said to be adored by a certain homonymy of terms and (as I might say) by a figure of speech (τρόπῳ λέξεως); or, as the Fathers say, through the attribution (antidosis) of terms alone, not through a real communication. Therefore, no learned person would deny that this is a form of figurative speech; in short, it is honored and adored only by dialectical, not physical, predication. And this twofold signification of these terms must be carefully observed in theological matters and disputes, as well as in other discussions, lest, if neglected, everything is turned upside down, heaven is mixed with earth, and all is confounded, as Augustine teaches throughout Book 3 of On Christian Doctrine. Examples of these expressions, though they are everywhere evident, are taken for the sake of teaching, and indeed from theological matters, as Damascene himself asserts, such as when God is said to be crucified in glory (1 Corinthians 2) or the Son of Man is said to have been in heaven when He was speaking with Nicodemus on earth (John 3). Unless one interprets these, where the natures (signified by the terms God and man) are concerned, through antidosis, he will surely either say that the Deity itself really suffered, whence he would be an atheist, or think that Christ’s human nature was elsewhere than on earth, whence he would rightly be deemed mad and a Manichaean. So the Deity in Christ is said to be humbled; the humanity of the same is said to be adorable. So we, engrafted into Christ through faith, are called just before God, though that justice (by which we are just before God) is not really in us but in Christ alone, to whom we are united and incorporated. So too, the Ark, the Altar, the Cherubim, and the Temple itself were said to be religiously worshiped when God Himself was religiously worshiped or adored. For who would have said that the Temple, the Ark, the Altar, and the Cherubim were the object of that religious adoration, unless he called those Fathers and all pious people idolaters? From other matters, let these examples be taken, and indeed from natural or physical things, such as when Socrates’ body is sleeping or buried, Socrates is said to sleep or be buried; or when Plato’s mind is meditating something, Plato is said to meditate. For who would think that Socrates’ soul was buried, unless an Epicurean? Or contend that Plato’s bodily mass was engaged in that thought? He would have to be a fool. From political matters, let this example be taken: a senator’s wife is called a senatorial woman. The house itself and the fields are called noble because of the nobility of the head of the household. But who would say that the wife is the object of that senatorial eminence, or that those fields are the object of that nobility, and not rather the man himself, the senator, or the virtue and mind of that noble head of the household? From ethical matters, there are also these examples: when a king, adorned with a diadem or clothed or sitting on a throne, is greeted by us, his diadem, clothing, and throne are also said to be greeted. But who is so senseless as to say that the mind of the one greeting is directed toward the king’s diadem, clothing, or throne itself—lifeless, inanimate, blind, deaf, mute things—and that these are the object of that royal greeting? These are the judgments of delirious men, not those of the sane, and I do not think even you would agree with them. From this, it is clear, as I now summarize briefly, that some things are said to be humbled, justified, buried, meditating, praised, honored, greeted, or adored, yet they are by no means the end, aim, or object of that action (whose name is attributed to them), since the cause for which such actions are performed, or to which they are directed and referred, is by no means in them. But they receive such appellations and these names are applied to them by word or term alone. From this, it follows that they are rightly denied to be the proper objects of those actions, that is, the things to which such actions are directed per se and properly, and thus to which those actions and the proper significations of those terms belong per se. Aristotle, in Book 1 of the Posterior Analytics, Chapter 4, brilliantly lists four modes by which something is said to be kath’ auto (per se), none of which pertain to the predication I have exemplified, that is, to that by which Christ’s flesh is said to be adored even when remaining in the personal union with the Deity. For neither is adoration, nor that quality by which something can really be religiously adored (namely, being God and Creator), part of the definition of the flesh assumed by Christ, which is the first mode of kath’ auto. Nor is that religious adoration a property emanating and resulting from the nature or essence of that assumed flesh, as risibility is in man, which is the second mode of kath’ auto. Nor, finally, is the flesh or nature of that assumed mass, united to the Deity and remaining in that union, the formal cause of that religious adoration attributed to the Son of God, which is the third mode of kath’ auto. For you everywhere deny that Christ’s flesh, even inherent in the union, is naturally adored. Therefore, in no way is Christ’s flesh adored per se, even when remaining and considered in the personal union with the Deity, and thus it is neither the proper nor the ultimate object of religious adoration. (I have omitted the fourth mode of kath’ auto because it is irrelevant.) This is what needed to be shown. Since these points have been abundantly confirmed by me, both here and in my earlier work, and the distinction between being adored and being the object of adoration has been demonstrated, I now proceed to examine your book. I will, however, omit what you respond concerning your own defense. Nor will I now touch on what you assert in many pages for the defense of Dr. Kemnitz. For you do so in vain, since Kemnitz has written countless times that the properties of one nature are essentially and formally proper to the other as well. Moreover, your writings are mixed with those of Dr. Kemnitz, like the skin of a jaundiced man, as the proverb goes. Nor can you certainly agree with him, since you confess on page 10 that he never agreed with you in that real infusion of the Deity into Christ’s flesh, nor even in writing that book at Bergen, as his own writings also testify. Therefore, I leave my book to him to refute at last. Finally, as for your appealing to the tribes of fishermen and gardeners as judges of your arguments (through which you have overturned Johannes Sturm, that excellent old man and the light of his country), I certainly will not allow them to be judges in this most serious controversy any more than I would allow the blind in Germany to judge colors. But it is like the seditious tribunes in Rome, who, when they could not obtain what they wanted from the Senate by right and reason, extorted it by stirring up the plebs or calling slaves to freedom. Thus, you beautifully demonstrate your method of acting and confirming your ubiquity in Germany. For yours is the saying: If I cannot sway the heavens, I will move the underworld. But I bring and desire the Holy Scriptures, the orthodox Fathers, and all pious men to be the arbiters in this cause against you. Although you flee and condemn all legitimate synods, to which Martin Luther always appealed. Therefore, I finally proceed to refute your arguments, beginning on page 19 of your book. From there, I will also start examining your arguments. I said that the whole Christ is to be adored, but not everything of Christ. You refute this with mere exclamation. For you ask which of the pious doctors ever spoke thus? Read Augustine in his Epistle to Dardanus, Damascene in Book 3 of On the Orthodox Faith, Lombard in Book 3 of the Sentences, Distinction 22, and the consensus of the orthodox whom you so greatly wished to refute, if only you could, on folio 6, page B, and folio 122, page A. What? Even your colleague Selnecker, your ally in stirring up the discord at Bergen, speaks thus: The whole Christ is everywhere, but not everything of Christ. Do you, therefore, wish that the whole Christ and everything of Christ be the same, that is, that it is the same to say holon holos (wholly whole) and holon ana meros (whole in parts)? Therefore, whatever is rightly and truly said of the whole Christ will also, through you, be piously and truly said of everything of Christ. But I demonstrate from your own writings that, if this is true, you are now the greatest heretic. For you say it is rightly said that Christ is a creature (Page 107). Therefore, through you, the same will rightly be said of everything of Christ, that is, of each of Christ’s natures, namely the divine as well as the human. Thus, it will be true through you that Christ’s Deity is a creature (Page 73, line 1). But who in Germany would tolerate you writing this? Nor can you escape, since through you the Deity of the Logos must be considered a creature, because whatever is truly said of the whole Christ will also, if we follow your doctrine, be piously said of everything of Christ. But here, as you err everywhere, you perpetually commit, whether knowingly or ignorantly, the fallacy called from division to composition and vice versa, since you confuse the whole Christ and everything of Christ. For the words whole Christ refer to holon holos, that is, to the person; but everything of Christ refers to the individual natures of that person, that is, to holon ana meros. Thus, it is not the same to say that the whole Paul was slaughtered by Nero at Rome as to say that everything of Paul, that is, his soul and body, was slaughtered. For Paul’s soul could not be slaughtered or killed by Nero. Therefore, not everything that is said conjointly of something can also be attributed to its individual parts. It is said of the whole Socrates that he is a philosopher, but the same cannot be attributed to everything of Socrates, namely his body, nor can it be said of his body. In this, Smidelin, I refer you to Dr. Schegk’s school (though you hate him for the truth), or to Philip Melanchthon’s Dialectic or my Refutations of Heretics. I proceed, therefore, to examine the remaining parts of your writing, that is, of your error. You say: When Christ’s flesh is considered per se and in itself, it must always be thought of outside the union with the divine person (in which alone it subsists), and thus our words per se and in itself must be understood. For you write: “When it is added ‘considered in the union,’ the prior phrase per se and in itself cannot have place.” Therefore, after the personal union with the Deity of the Logos, Christ’s flesh cannot be considered per se or in itself. And so you call us Nestorians, who think of it per se even in that union. But where did you learn this, Jacob, that when something hypostatically united or otherwise joined to another is considered per se and in itself, it is torn from that to which it is joined? For example, if Paul’s soul, joined to his body, is considered per se by us, is it constituted or placed apart from its union with his body, and is Paul’s person torn asunder? What could be said by any theologian that is worse or more false? Hear, therefore, what it means to consider something per se, lest you err hereafter in this or similar disputes. Something is considered per se (as the Greeks say, kath’ auto), as Basil explains in Book 1 against Eunomius, whenever it is explained according to its nature and form, or from a property essentially and perpetually inherent to it, what it is, whether it subsists by itself and per se, or has its subsistence (hypostasis) in or with another. Thus, in the Holy Trinity, the Father is considered per se, the Son per se, the Holy Spirit per se. So in God Himself, mercy is considered per se, and justice per se, yet one person is not torn or separated from another in the Holy Trinity, but distinguished; nor is mercy separated from justice in God, but only distinguished. For to be torn apart is one thing, to be distinguished another. Therefore, as I have shown from Damascene in Book 3 of On the Orthodox Faith, Chapter 3, and from his Book on Dialectics, and from Basil in Book 1 against Eunomius, in a personal union, the natures that come together retain both their nature and their essential properties intact, unmingled, and incommunicable. Thus, in such a personal union, each can truly be considered and explained per se, that is, from its own nature, as to what they are, and indeed must be, whenever it is asked what is properly to be attributed to each nature united and remaining in that personal union. But you confuse the distinction of things made in the mind with the separation that involves the tearing apart and disjunction of joined things, you ignorantly and perpetually confuse. For either, after the union of the flesh and the Deity in the person of Christ, Christ’s flesh remains truly flesh, and thus retains the form and nature of human flesh (whence it is called human flesh) and likewise preserves the essential properties of human nature—unchanged (ἀτρέπτος), unconfused (ἀσύγχυτος), unmingled (ἀσύμφυρτος), intact, and whole—or it does not preserve them. If Christ’s flesh preserves both its nature and the properties of human flesh intact after the union, then Christ’s flesh, both through the union and in that personal union with the assuming Deity, can be considered per se and in itself. From this, it follows that even in that personal union with the Deity of the Logos, it is both a creature and human flesh. But no creature can be adored with religious worship, nor can that which is truly human flesh—whether subsisting in itself or in another—be the proper object of religious adoration. Therefore, neither is Christ’s flesh, considered by us in that personal union and remaining in it, properly adored with religious worship, nor is it the proper object of that adoration to which the mind of the adorer is properly directed. And so you yourself write: “And for this reason, it is beyond all controversy that the flesh, insofar as it is flesh, considered in itself and per se, without regard to the union with the Logos, is never to be adored with religious worship” (Page 21, twice). This confirms my opinion in your own words. But if, after the union with the Deity, Christ’s flesh ceases to be flesh and loses its condition and nature as human flesh and a creature, along with its essential properties, then it is certainly no longer flesh, nor is that Christ whom you adore a man. And thus, even you who urge this adoration of the flesh do not adore Christ’s flesh after this union, since through you it no longer remains flesh, its essential properties having been taken away by you. For, as the Fathers say, and Luther also agrees, to take away the properties is to take away the natures. Therefore, through you, the Son of God, after assuming flesh, is no longer Christ, no longer man, no longer that Emmanuel announced by the angel, no longer our brother, no longer the mediator, because through you He does not retain true flesh after its union with His Deity, and through you, He has abolished the flesh He assumed. Thus, through you, the Son of God, who wished to become our Mediator, ceases to be a Mediator, overturns Himself, and destroys what He intended to do, according to your opinion. Hence, you remove the entire foundation of our salvation, completely deny God’s benefit of the redemption of the human race, and with this one doctrine of yours, utterly destroy the entire consolation of pious minds (which you claim so greatly to desire and seek). And what, finally, will be the end of your blasphemies? For this, Smidelin, necessarily follows from your error: namely, that after and because of the personal union of the flesh and Deity in one person of the Logos, the assumed flesh united to the Deity is no longer true flesh, no longer a creature, and no longer retains its essential properties. What else is this, I ask, as we have often shown, but to revive from the underworld the most detestable heresy of the Eutychians and blasphemy against God and His Christ? Here, here, all pious readers, I beseech you, listen carefully with your ears and minds, and consider to what end this real infusion of the Deity into Christ’s flesh tends, where it ultimately leads and carries men, and what monstrous thing it conceals. Moreover, even if we confess that Christ’s flesh, both as to its essence (οὐσία) and its essential properties (ἐσιώδη ἰδιώματα), remains true flesh even in that union and after glorification, we do not deny that immense and incomprehensible gifts have been really conferred on Christ’s flesh by His Deity through and because of that personal union, especially after His state of humiliation and in His state of exaltation and session at the right hand of the Father (in which He now is). Because of these gifts, that human nature of Christ is admirable, venerable, and august even to the blessed angels, indeed surpassing them far in incomprehensible majesty. (For which of us has not always written this?) Yet these gifts conferred on Christ’s flesh do not destroy its nature or make it God, as would happen if it were placed in the same degree of honor as its Creator, adorned with equal majesty, omnipotence, and omnipresence, endowed with the essential properties of the Deity in reality, and established as deified through a robbery of the Deity (which Paul denies Christ ever did, Philippians 2:6), as you undoubtedly do, Smidelin. Furthermore, you say that Christ’s flesh cannot even in thought be separated from the Deity to which it is united. Therefore, you say, in the religious adoration of Christ, you cannot meditate on the Deity without the flesh. You are mistaken when you say it cannot be thought of. For he who considers and contemplates Christ’s flesh subsisting in that divine hypostasis per se and as it is in its own nature, and what should be attributed or denied to it, does not separate Christ’s flesh from its Deity into a different hypostasis. We indeed confess that neither the Deity in Christ’s person exists without the flesh, nor the flesh without the Deity to which it is united. Therefore, these two united things cannot and should not be torn apart in different subsistences or hypostases, which is to separate. But in the mind’s thought, they can be distinguished from each other by their own nature and condition, because even in this personal union, the Deity is one thing and the flesh of the same is another. But you perpetually confuse these words, which are so vastly different in meaning: distinguish and separate. For natures remaining and joined in that union can always be distinguished, which is to consider them kath’ auto (per se) and from their own nature (which they also retain). But they cannot be separated, which is choris or ana meros, that is, to disjoin and place them in separate or different subsistences or in a double person. The former is always done piously; the latter, after the union, is always impious. You further wish that this is the prerogative of that one human flesh assumed by Christ, that it alone is adored with religious worship, even when considered per se in the union. But you yourself write in that same place that religious worship is proper to the Deity alone and belongs to no creature. From this, it follows that, as you must be concluded, if that one part of human flesh in Christ is really adored religiously, that flesh of Christ after the union is no longer a creature. This is Eutychian. Moreover, I have never denied that Christ’s flesh is adored in the union; indeed, I concede it, but, as I said, through antidosis alone (as the Deity of Christ is said to have suffered). Therefore, I rightly deny that it is the object of our adoration. And certainly, all your speech and real infusion of the Deity into Christ’s flesh aim at either establishing a double Deity in Christ or a double religious adoration in us. Both of which are most blasphemous. And indeed, you establish a double Deity in Christ: one, which is the proper Deity of the Logos, uninfused, that is, which remains essential in the divine nature of the Logos; the other, which is a fabricated Deity, infused into Christ’s flesh, which, though dissimilar and unequal, you afterward equate in honor, as Nestorius did. But a double religious adoration: one, which is properly and per se offered by us to the Deity of Christ; the other, which is improperly, not by nature (as you yourself say), nor per se, yet is really directed to the flesh of the same Christ (Page 23). Whichever way you turn, Jacob, you fall into these great errors. But God is not a sophist, nor is He mocked (μήτε μυκτηρίζεται); and neither your tricks nor subtleties (as Plautus calls them) can free you from manifest blasphemy against God. You perpetually write that this honor of religious adoration, which is attributed to Christ’s flesh even in the union and because of the union, is neither proper to it, nor per se, nor owed or offered to it by nature (Page 23). Therefore, by your own judgment, I have spoken truly: and this religious adoration is to Christ’s flesh an accident (συμβεβηκός) and through something else, as is evident from your own writings, which I defend against you, that Christ’s flesh, even remaining in the personal union, is by no means the proper object of religious adoration. What I have said once and concluded from your words will suffice against the countless places in your book where you repeat the same thing through tautology (ταυτολογίαν). But your argument and reasoning are more plausible when you say that when we invoke Christ as Mediator, we properly regard both His human and divine nature. For who would deny this to be true, since the office of Mediator before God cannot exist or be understood by us without the concurrence and thought of both natures? Although you confirm this from no place in Holy Scripture, Paul shows this very thing in 1 Timothy 2:5. But I respond that this invocation and veneration of Christ as Mediator is by no means the same as that which we here call religious, nor is it to be confused with the religious adoration of the same Christ, that is, that which is due to God alone. For this invocation of Christ is as our advocate and intercessor before God. Therefore, it tends toward another, higher end, as it were. But the religious adoration of Christ is as of Him who is God per se, in which He is regarded by us as the ultimate end of our adoration. Thus, Paul, in Romans 8:34, Galatians 3:20, and John in 1 John 2:1–2, when speaking of our prayer or invocation to Christ the Mediator, distinguish Christ (insofar as He intercedes for us) by person, office, grace, and dignity from God, before whom the same Christ intercedes and pleads for us. But Christ intercedes and is our Mediator before God the Father insofar as He is the unique messenger and angel of great counsel before the Father. From this, it follows that the thought and regard of Christ’s human nature necessarily arise and appear to our minds when we approach Christ as our Mediator and invoke Him in this manner. But no thought of the flesh or human nature is necessary—indeed, it must be entirely removed—for the religious adoration of God and the divine nature, even in Christ Himself, since this honor is due to God alone (Deuteronomy 6:13, Matthew 4:10). From this, it follows that you confuse different kinds of adoration. Our opinion and distinction are clearly confirmed by the theologian, orthodox, and most learned Peter Martyr, in Genesis 18:2, where he says: “True adoration is the reverence shown to God, by which we pray to Him to grant us those things that only God can give. And the adoration of Christ is the reverence shown to Him by which we seek only those goods that Christ’s humanity can provide, namely intercession, so that He may be a salutary Mediator between us and God.” Understand these words as referring to Christ as man (1 Timothy 2:5). For as God, the honor equal to God is due to Him. Nor do we say that the office of Mediator could have been performed by one who was only man or an angel, but by Him who is both God and man. But although these are most absurd, what follows is even more absurd. For these are your very words: “The human nature is mutable, to which the highest majesty, which is proper to the Deity, can be added, which is communicated to it not in word only but really” (Page not specified). Did your soul not shudder, Smidelin, did your heart not tremble, did your hand not falter when you wrote these things so impiously? For what did the most detestable heretic Eutyches ever say that was worse? Indeed, these words of yours are self-contradictory. For if the highest majesty is proper to the Deity, it cannot really be inherent in or communicated to any other thing that is not the Deity. For this is the nature of the essential properties of the Deity and of any other thing, that they can only be really in that nature which is God or whose essential properties they are. For it is a common and most true saying that properties (ἰδιώματα) do not go beyond their subjects. Therefore, you either transform or make that human nature, to which you say the Deity and its proper attributes are really communicated, into God. Resolve this. Furthermore, you say that in Christ not only His flesh really suffered, but also His very Deity. These do not need refutation; for, as Jerome says, to point out such blasphemies is to refute them, though they are repeated in many pages and in your three hundred theses. But know this: the Deity cannot suffer. To make this easier to understand, I refer you to the dialogue of the ancient and orthodox writer Theodoret, clearly written on this matter. But you hate the antidosis and communication of attributes (κοινωνίαν ἰδιωμάτων), rightly and necessarily introduced by the orthodox Fathers (through which such phrases are explained in the concrete term, that is, signifying the person of Christ), worse than a dog or a snake, because they refute your delusions. Thus, you prefer to bring the Deity itself into real torments rather than admit that communication and dialectical predication into your house. See where your error leads you? But you bring forward this analogy: that as the body does not die without the soul, so the Deity, when the flesh suffered, really suffered. Smidelin, see what you say. Have you, I ask, said that the human soul dies when the body of the man to whom it was hypostatically united dies? I would not wish you to be or seem to be a participant in so many heresies that you even deny the immortality of the human soul. But you object that the human body would not die unless the soul were present. I concede. But the human soul itself does not therefore really die in any way; indeed, that death is proper to the body alone in man. For the body dies when the living soul departs from the body, not when that soul dies in or outside the body. So neither did Christ’s Deity really suffer when His flesh suffered, but only through the communication of attributes (κοινωνίαν ἰδιωμάτων), as it is said that Christ’s flesh is adored in the personal union. Thus, Paul (from whom this phrase is taken, 1 Corinthians 2) does not say that Christ’s Deity was crucified, as you wish, but says, “They crucified the God of glory.” These two phrases differ greatly: for the term God in that place signifies the person of Christ in the concrete, not His divine nature in the abstract. But you perpetually confuse these two, so that you cunningly cast darkness over men’s eyes to defend your errors. Therefore, the person called Christ and the God of glory suffered and was crucified, but in no way in His Deity, but only in the flesh assumed by Him. Thus, the Deity of the Son of God neither suffered nor can piously be said to have really co-suffered with the flesh. For Tertullian brilliantly says against Praxeas: “If the Father is impassible, then surely the Son is also impassible. For what is it to co-suffer but to suffer with another? But if He is co-passible, He is also passible. But as the Father is impassible, so the Son is also impassible in the condition in which He is God.” What I have said here against this will suffice against the countless other places, lest I repeat the same things. For he fills pages raving and declaiming, repeating the same thing a hundred times in this book. Moreover, you fault me for writing, according to your opinion, that Christ’s flesh is adored habitually, that is, is really the object of religious adoration because of that dignity which, as you wish, it really has and possesses in itself, communicated to it by the Deity. If this is true, through you Christ’s flesh is adored habitually, from the thing and because of the thing and dignity that this flesh of Christ, united to the Deity, has and possesses in itself, not outside itself. For what else is habitual grace and adoration but that distinguished from the grace of union and from antidosis? Therefore, what have I misrepresented in explaining your opinion? Certainly nothing. But when you see these inept and false consequences of your error, you shrink from them (such is the power of heavenly truth) and think you have acted vigorously if you stubbornly deny what necessarily follows from your opinion. You wish to say that Christ’s flesh does not have that adoration habitually. Therefore, I will make it so that it does not have it really or in reality either. Do you see, wretched man, into what straits you cast yourself when you deny what necessarily follows from your opinion? For in this argument to possess or have something really and habitually are the same; and both are opposed to that grace which is called the grace of union alone and is only a dialectical predication or communication of terms. But you yourself bring forward what you think is a significant distinction in this matter, namely that the Deity of Christ is adored properly, naturally, habitually, per se, and in itself (Pages 30, 40, 41, and many other places), in which you are not far from being a blasphemer yourself, since you consider the Deity of Christ after the union per se and in itself, that is, outside the personal union with the flesh, as you everywhere interpret and contend that the terms per se and in itself must always be understood. Therefore, you say, the Deity of Christ has that dignity and supreme majesty of adoration from itself, as it is Deity. But, according to you, Christ’s flesh really has the same dignity and majesty, but from another, namely from the Deity of the Logos with which it is united, communicated to it. But I respond: This distinction or mode of having, whether from itself or from another, makes no difference in the supreme and divine majesty, dignity, or Deity that you attribute to both the Deity and the flesh of Christ. Otherwise, the Son of God would be lesser or a different God than the Father. For the Son has Deity from the Father, while the Father has it from Himself, certainly from no one. Adam received humanity from no human father; Abel received it communicated from Adam. Is Abel therefore to be called less human than Adam? By no means. For, as all know, it admits neither more nor less. Therefore, if both the flesh and the Deity of Christ, united, really have the supreme and divine majesty proper to the Deity, for which it is religiously adored, then certainly the flesh of Christ, after the personal union, is equally God as His Deity. What did the Arians think worse than this, tell me, Smidelin, without evasion (Page 28)? For you say that in the religious adoration of Christ, our regard and thought pertain and are directed no less to the flesh of Christ than to His Deity. You say that the flesh of Christ has been raised to an equal degree of honor with the Deity (Page 46). Therefore, you make that flesh of Christ God, which you religiously adore as an object, and you equate the natures in Christ. What did Eutyches say more unfortunately (Pages 46, 47, 48)? But you object: If Christ’s flesh is not the true object of our adoration, it is falsely adored. I respond: This flesh is adored in the union through the communication of attributes (communicatio idiomatum). But the predication of these natures in the one person of Christ, namely the divine and human, is such as their union is. Therefore, just as this union of natures in Christ is true, so this predication is true: Christ’s flesh is adored in the union. But just as through this union Christ’s flesh has not become God or Deity, nor lost the nature or condition of a creature, so neither is it the true, proper, and ultimate object of religious adoration to which the mind and thought of a pious and rightly adoring person looks, is directed, and tends. Therefore, it is truly adored because of the true union, but not truly because of habitual grace. Moreover, you say that the terms God and man are often taken for abstracts, that is, for the natures themselves (Pages 59, 83, 273). I indeed grant that they are usually taken this way, but these same terms are also often necessarily taken for the whole person in the concrete, so that it must be determined by the nature and reason of the argument and context in which we are engaged which signification fits those terms. But you do this least of all in various places, especially on pages 37 and 54, where at the end of the page you take man for the nature, which undoubtedly should have been taken for the person. Therefore, returning to your objection, if you oppose truly to a fictitious or imaginary union of natures or a hypocritical adoration, then I say that Christ’s flesh is truly adored by the pious in the union, because the Deity to which this flesh is united is adored. But if you take truly, as you do, for the true object and aim of religious adoration, so that the flesh has in reality that dignity to which the honor of religious adoration belongs, this I consistently deny. For Christ’s flesh is adored in that union through antidosis and the communication of attributes (κοινωνίαν ἰδιωμάτων), as all the orthodox Fathers say, not per se, nor in itself, nor by physical predication, but by dialectical predication. And certainly, as Tertullian says, most truly though briefly, in his Book on the Resurrection: “Faith, that is, the distinction of terms, is the salvation of properties.” Therefore, those true phrases of the Fathers must be retained, lest we confuse anything. Moreover, what you write verbosely and always insultingly against me in many pages, from page 34 to page 39, is all resolved by one solution, which we have already provided: namely, that it is one thing for something to be adored, praised, honored, or greeted, and another for it to be the proper and ultimate object of adoration and praise. For Christ’s flesh, as I have always written, is adored in the personal union, but it is not therefore the subject (ὑποκείμενον), aim, or object of that adoration. And what is it, then? Namely, the Deity, to which this flesh, once assumed, remains perpetually joined and united in hypostasis. Therefore, I refer you to that place already treated by me, lest I burden the memory of readers here. For with this one response of mine, many of your pages are erased, and your objections are clearly resolved, so that there is no need for this writing of mine to be as bloated as yours. Furthermore, to attack my truth, you wrote that Christ, after the resurrection, laid aside the form of a servant that He had assumed, and thus is no longer our fellow servant, since through His session at the right hand of the Father, His flesh has been raised to the throne of the supreme majesty and honor proper to the Deity (Page 39). Since this argument seemed to you unassailable, you repeated it often. But hear what I respond briefly and clearly. The form of a servant in Paul (Philippians 2) and likewise in the Fathers signifies two things: namely, both the essence or human nature and the miserable and contemptible condition of human nature that came to us because of sin. When the form of a servant is taken to mean the essence or human nature, who, except a Eutychian, would deny that the form of a servant remains in Christ even after the resurrection? For this very flesh of Christ, or the man Christ, even sitting (not to mention after the resurrection) at the right hand of God the Father, is truly human flesh, and He Himself is a true man. For Christ Himself says in Matthew 26:64: “You will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Father.” If this is true—and it is true—then Christ, sitting in heaven at the right hand of the Father, is truly man, both in essence and in the essential properties of human nature, which you transform into Deity. Nor for this reason did Christ lose or lay aside the form of a servant after the resurrection. This is also confirmed in Acts 7:56. But insofar as the form of a servant is taken to mean the miserable and contemptible condition of human nature introduced by sin, I confess that it ceased in Christ after the resurrection, that is, after the time of His humiliation. For Christ’s flesh sits at the right hand of the Father and is clothed with inexpressible glory, admirable even to the blessed angels. Moreover, it is entirely stripped of all infirmity (1 Corinthians 15, Philippians 2:21). Therefore, since Christ, even now today after His resurrection, has remained and remains a true man, though sitting and reigning at the right hand of God’s glory (for whatever part of the human nature’s mass Christ assumed, He will never lay aside, lest He cease to be our brother and Mediator), it necessarily and truly follows that Christ, as man, is still a servant of God and thus our fellow servant. He is indeed our head and the head of His Church, our Lord, indeed the Emperor of all things, even as man; yet for this reason, He does not cease to be a servant of God as man. Tertullian says: “A king is the greatest and highest in his throne up to God, yet he is beneath God.” So that you and all your followers may understand this most truly, because you perpetually err here, consider Paul’s words and gradation in 1 Corinthians 11:3: “I would have you know that Christ is the head of every man, the man is the head of the woman, and God is the head of Christ.” Likewise, Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:27: “For God has put all things under His [Jesus Christ’s] feet. But when it says all things are subjected to Him, it is clear that this does not include the One who subjected all things to Him, namely God.” Also, Christ Himself, after the resurrection, that is, after laying aside that state of humiliation, says in John 20:17: “I ascend to My Father and your Father, to My God and your God.” Therefore, Christ, as man, is subject to God, acknowledging God as His head and His God. If these things are true, since they come from the Word of God, how is Christ, as man, not a servant of God? Is He not subject to God the Father? Is He not our fellow servant as man, though in a far more excellent way than we are, or even the blessed angels, who are also His servants, as are we entirely? But the man Christ, though Lord of all, is still a servant of God and thus, in respect to God, our fellow servant. Damascene, speaking of Christ now exalted, says: “By nature, He is a servant and subject as man” (φύσει γὰρ δοῦλος καὶ ὑπήκοος ἄνθρωπος, On the Orthodox Faith, Book on the Two Wills in Christ). Gregory of Nazianzus says of Christ as man: “He is naturally subject to God” (ἐγένετο δ’ ὑπήκοος θεῷ φυσικῶς). Therefore, since Christ has neither laid aside nor lost the human nature He assumed, because He is man even after the resurrection and in His state of glory, He remains subject to God, a servant and minister of God, and thus, as I said, our fellow servant. Therefore, from the blessed and heavenly angel’s response, even after the resurrection, as man, He is not to be adored (Revelation 19:10). But what about you? Do you not also wish this, if you understood yourself, when you say: “The human nature of Christ, even in that union, is not the proper and per se object of adoration, but because of the union” (Pages 40, 41, 42)? These words of yours clearly refute your entire book and your dogma of the real adoration of Christ’s flesh and the real transfer or infusion of the Deity into the flesh assumed by Him. But your acumen is evident here, namely when you restrict God’s statement, “I will not give My glory to another” (Isaiah 42:8), to idols alone, as if God were unwilling to share His glory only with idols but willing to share it with other creatures, such as Christ’s flesh, which you therefore except from this general statement. You trifle, my man, and seek a principle (which in the schools is called a childish absurdity). For God’s statement is most general, by which He excludes all created things from really receiving and participating in His proper and essential glory. Moreover, you complain that I reprove you for recklessly confusing Deity and Divinity (Pages 44, 45). Certainly, if you have carefully read the Scriptures, especially Colossians 2:9 and 2 Peter 1:4, you will not deny that these terms and their significations differ. Yet, if there were no deceit in you or your followers, I would not object. I grant that the Fathers used these terms interchangeably, but simply and without deceit. But you, to establish that Christ’s flesh is really capable of all the essential properties of the Deity, speak thus: that it is really of the whole divinity and capable in reality of all its essential properties, which sounds milder than if you said Deity. Therefore, I also condemn your cunning, not the interchangeable use of the term. You further say that we attribute nothing to Christ’s flesh, indeed that we imagine it to be removed by us from the right hand of God the Father, because we do not admit your real immanation or infusion of the Deity’s properties. But this is a sophistical fallacy from a qualified statement to an absolute one. The pious do not attribute the essential properties of the Deity to Christ’s flesh. Therefore, they attribute nothing to it. For how much we attribute to that most blessed flesh, and how we place it above all holy angels at the very right hand of God, is evident even from you yourself (Page 50, line 15) and from our writings. But, as I said, you place it not at the right hand of God but in the very throne of God, contrary to Paul’s statement in 1 Corinthians 15:27, where it says all things are subjected to Him, excepting Him who subjected all things, namely God, who through you is overthrown in a gigantic manner. Thus, through your authority, it must now be said in the Creed: “He sits in the very throne of God.” For when you say that Christ is the right hand of God (Page 78), you play with the ambiguity of the term right hand. And if this were true in the sense you wish, it would be pure tautology in that place and in the article of the Creed: “Christ sits at the right hand of God,” that is, through you, “the right hand of God sits at the right hand of God,” which you see is utterly inept and futile (Pages 50, 51, 52, and following). Moreover, when you attribute to Christ’s flesh, in reality, the power of giving life, which is proper to God alone, you certainly confirm one error with another, as was necessary for you (for, as it says in the Psalms, “the abyss calls to the abyss”), and this has been most solidly refuted before by Dr. Theodore Beza in his response to G. Holder and explained in the Orthodox Consensus (Pages 11 and following), to which I refer all the pious, lest I do what is called acting in vain. For the memory of readers must be spared, nor must the leisure of Christian men be abused, as you do (Pages 71 and following). But when you add from Matthew 9 that the power of miracles was given to men, especially to Christ, and that the men of that age marveled at it, who denies this? But I deny that the power of performing miracles resided in Christ’s flesh itself as in a subject, or in the hands of the apostles, or in their human nature. For such power surpasses all the forces of created nature and does not properly belong to a creature. But those men were only ministers of that divine power, even Christ’s flesh itself united to His Deity, just as the apostles were only ministers and heralds of the remission of sins, not its authors or having that power in themselves. Where, then, was that power in Christ to work miracles? Undoubtedly in His divine nature, as Beza clearly showed from the Fathers. But you ask: What, then, will be the difference between the apostles and Christ, the Son of God, working miracles? This: that Christ had that power to work miracles in Himself and from Himself because He was God. Thus, as God, He was the author and cause of them; the apostles, as I said, were only ministers of those miracles they performed. For they performed them not in their own name but in Christ’s name. Cassian, in Book 5 On the Incarnation of the Only-Begotten, teaches this: “The difference between Him and all the saints is that between a dwelling and its inhabitant. For in Him dwells and will dwell the fullness of the Deity, which He Himself bestowed on the apostles; but Christ had it as God, not as man, nor was that power in the flesh, but in the Deity of Christ.” And these are nearly all your arguments twisted against me and brought forth to defend your error, which you now see were and are easily refuted. But you exult and exclaim here as if in triumph, saying that you finally have a clear and categorical response from me (Page 69). Hear, Smidelin: a categorical response, that is, a solid one that would deceive me and mine, you have not yet given, nor do I have, as all the pious now see and will judge. Whether it is in Latin, I do not care. For you write that you were poorly trained, and you fault me for having read Hesiod. Certainly, the preface of your Tübingen colleagues attached to commend your book (because it could not, like Stephen Gerlach’s or Nicholas Spungia’s before, be pleasing by itself against me) shows how little you are devoted to the study of the Latin language. Thus, your writings will not flourish to the ends of the earth, as those good Tübingen masters of ours, little concerned with the beauty of the language, say in their preface, as you yourself call it. One thing remains: to refute those responses you laboriously but uselessly bring against the Fathers I cited, while you distort their words and meaning, as all can plainly see, from their true sense, indeed openly corrupting them. But all your attempted solutions have three sources and modes in general, and when their weakness is exposed, all your responses to the Fathers will falter and lie feeble, like the defenses of Stephen Gerlach. For when you perpetually deny in this writing that Nestorius posited two persons in Christ, it is as absurd as if you denied that this sun is the sun. See, therefore, Cyril in the beginning of his Book on the True Faith to Theodosius, Isidore in Book 8 On Heresies, Cassian in Book 5 On the Incarnation of the Only-Begotten against him, and the decrees of the councils. But your writings most clearly prove you to be utterly ignorant of both ecclesiastical and all political history. The first basis of your solutions, therefore, is flawed: you say that when the Fathers deny that a creature can be adored, they argue against the Arians, and thus their statement does not pertain to our question. What do I hear? That the general rules and axioms of Holy Scripture should be restricted by the circumstances of one or another passage to which they are applied? But no examples restrict general rules, as it is said in the schools. You say the Arians considered Christ’s flesh outside the personal union with the Deity, since they denied that Christ was God. Where do you infer this? For they conceded that Christ was both God and man. And though their error ultimately led to denying Christ’s true Deity and that He was homoousios (of the same substance) with the Father, their blasphemy was always distinct from the madness of the Samosatenes, who contended that Christ was only a man (ψιλὸν ἄνθρωπον). Therefore, the Arians conceded that Christ was the Son of God and God, begotten from God the Father before He was born of the Virgin Mary, but they did not confess Him to be from eternity or equal to the Father. For they confessed that the Deity (which they granted to the Son of God) later assumed human flesh from the Virgin Mary. Thus, they did not deny that personal union of natures in Christ (from which hiding place you seek your solutions). Nor was there ever a dispute with the Arians, as with Nestorius and Eutyches, about this, as is clear from the entire history of that time and question; but only about whether the Son of God was equal to the Father in reason and substance, that is, homoousios, and not merely homoiousios (of similar substance). Therefore, you see that from a false presupposition you make, you seek a vain escape, and your solution also becomes false. For what is proven by false instruments (to bring something from my civil law) must necessarily be false. But lest there be a dispute between us about this, I say: whether the Fathers argued against the Arians or anyone else, this general statement of the Fathers is true: “No creature can or should be religiously adored, whether it subsists in itself, has its subsistence (hypostasis) in another, or is united or joined to any other nature or thing.” But Christ’s flesh, even united to the Deity of the Logos and remaining and considered in that union, is still always a creature, as shown by the same Fathers: Cyril, Augustine, and Damascene. Therefore, Christ’s flesh, even joined to the Deity of the Logos, subsisting in that union, remaining, and considered, neither should nor can be religiously adored, and thus is not the proper object of religious adoration. You see, therefore, how firm and unshaken the reasoning of the Fathers is, and how it prevails and fights for me against you even in this question and contest of ours. No matter what tricks you devise or where you turn, Proteus, you will never evade this conclusion. But, as Cyril says, you abhor and reprove the human nature in Christ as something profane and absurd, and you abolish those things that most adorn and support our union with Christ. Thus, all the solutions you bring from that first source and place against Ambrose, Augustine (whom, when they oppose you, you dare to smear with the foulest Arian stench), Athanasius, Cyril, Fulgentius, and others are false and seek only useless escapes (κρησφύγετα ἀνωφελῆ). The second basis of your solutions is taken from this phrase of the Fathers: that Christ’s flesh is sometimes said to be deified. I respond: This is indeed true, but, as I have already explained from Damascene, it is called deified not because the properties of the Deity are really infused into it, as you wish, but because it is hypostatically united to the Deity, that is, in the person of the Son of God, not having subsistence in itself, yet always remaining true flesh and a creature, and thus by the Fathers’ judgment not God, nor to be venerated or adorned with equal majesty or equal degree in reality as the Deity. What, then? Through the communication of attributes (κοινωνίαν ἰδιωμάτων), the properties of the Deity are attributed to the man Christ through a concrete term, as the properties of the flesh are attributed to God, but not to Christ’s natures themselves considered per se even in that union. Therefore, Christ’s flesh is called deified, not because it became God after that personal union or became capable of the majesty proper to God, but only because it is personally united to God, subsisting and continuing to subsist eternally in the person of the Deity of the Logos. Thus, you see how you most perversely interpret those orthodox words of the Fathers, which they themselves clearly explained (lest anyone err on account of these expressions, as you do). In sum, for Christ’s flesh to be deified (θεοποιηθῆναι) in Damascene and the other Fathers is to be personally united to the person of the Logos, or God, and to subsist in that person of the Logos, not in itself or its own person. This has not the slightest bearing on the deification of the flesh that you imagine. Finally, the third basis of all your solutions against the testimony of the Fathers I cited is taken, as you think, from their words: namely, that sometimes the Fathers say that Christ’s flesh is adored together with the Deity of the Logos (by which it was personally assumed) in and because of that union. This is indeed true, but they explain themselves clearly: namely, that Christ’s flesh is said to be adored through antidosis and through that manner of speaking which they call the communication of attributes (κοινωνίαν ἰδιωμάτων), through which nothing proper to the Deity is poured out or really attributed to Christ’s flesh, even in the union, as you wish against their opinion and attribute to them. Therefore, this adoration is properly understood of the person of Christ, because it is one; but through dialectical predication, it is also said of Christ’s human nature, which, however, is neither properly adored in Christ nor is it the object of that adoration, which is the question at issue here. For, as Damascene says in On the Orthodox Faith, Book 3, Chapter 3: “One and the same nature, such as Christ’s flesh, cannot be capable and receptive of contrary and self-opposing qualities, such as being a creature and God, being the maker and the made, being eternal and temporal, being adored and being that which adores.” From this, it is clear that you both circumscribe the intention of the Fathers and, against them, fail to avoid or evade their most evident testimonies with your error. These testimonies, so numerous and weighty against you, not yet refuted by you, show that you gravely err, and they prove that I defend the true opinion and that the Fathers bear witness for me. Therefore, I may now exclaim, so that the truth triumphs over you, because Jacob Andreae has been refuted. Bring forth another to fight for his opinion, but, as that Tribune said, “Truth.” But it is not my intention to deal further with you in the future, nor do you seem curable, as you yourself testify. For you profess to be obstinate. However, for the sake of confirming the pious, whose consideration we have chiefly regarded here, and to bring forth the truth (which we defend in this writing), to purify it from all calumnies, I will add a few more authorities of the orthodox Fathers beyond those described in my earlier book against Jacob Smidelin. In citing them, I will not observe the order of the times in which they lived, for no age of the Church disagrees with me. Thus, Rusticus the Deacon, against the Acephali heretics: “What is it to adore the footstool of His feet? This is the earth. For the body, which is from the earth, is adored, not as adoring itself as God, but so that through the body and through the flesh, the humanity, the Word of God, who was incarnated, is adored.” Certainly, even through the hem of His garments, He worked in her who was healed of the flow of blood, and many said there was one nature (but not majesty, Smidelin) of the garments and the Word. These are instruments, that we may draw near to God. But in worshipping, venerating, and adoring God, they are not counted among those things that are hidden from the Creator. For it is one thing to worship through this, and another to be piously worshipped eternally and supremely according to nature. Augustine, in Sermon 36 on the Times: “Christ’s humanity is seen, and His divinity is adored.” Likewise, in Sermon 117: “He is God who is adored; He is man who was held by hands.” Likewise, in Tractate 18 on the Gospel of John: “Therefore, Jesus did not make His flesh equal to the Father; the form of a servant is not equal to the Lord, that is, to God.” Lactantius, who lived before the Arian heresy, as his writings show, in Book 5 of the Christian Institutions, Chapter 9, says: “It is incredible madness to think that that which you cannot deny was mortal is God (and thus the object of religious adoration).” But Christ’s flesh, even in the personal union with the Deity, was mortal, indeed died. Let Smidelin see, therefore, what and how he says that Christ’s flesh, even in the union, is that which is religiously adored. Amphilochius, Bishop of Iconium, at the Council of Chalcedon: “Christ did not become man through the loss of Deity, nor did He become God from men through advancement (that is, through elevation in dignity). For I say He is God and man. I attribute passions to the flesh; miracles to God.” Leo I, in Epistle 10, Chapter 3, praised by all in this question: “Each nature, speaking of the natures united in the one person of Christ, retains its property without defect.” Therefore, according to Leo’s opinion, the Deity of the Logos does not attribute religious adoration, which is proper to the Deity alone (even by Smidelin’s own testimony), to the flesh assumed by it. Fulgentius, against the Arians, who transfer and pour out what belongs to the Deity into His human nature (as Smidelin does): “He is not deceived in both births of Christ who confesses in Christ, the Son of God and man, both full divinity from the Father and full humanity from the mother. And thus, he recognizes both substances in Him as true, while distinguishing with faithful piety what pertains to eternity and what to temporality. For we must not be ignorant that He was created from man in time according to the flesh, who, according to divinity, is the eternal Creator begotten from the Father. In that birth which has no beginning, the eternal majesty of divinity is recognized. In this, the piety of eternal divinity is found.” Likewise, in Response 8: “The apostolic faith does not injure God but honors Him, asserting that the divine substance could neither be diminished nor changed. And therefore, it proclaims the Son equal to the Father, because the one substance of both preserves the fullness of its perfection in both. Thus, injury is done to God when, through a diversity of Deity, a creature is worshipped with the Creator.” This is what Smidelin teaches. Therefore, he injures God. For he establishes one Deity that is proper and naturally belongs to the Logos and is adored for it. But he attributes another Deity to Christ’s flesh because of the personal union, which does not belong to it naturally or per se, but which is precarious to Christ’s flesh and a benefit of the Deity of the Logos, namely through a real infusion and benefit of the Deity of the Logos, communicated to it, for which it is adored with equal honor as the Deity of the Logos itself in religious worship and is, as Smidelin wishes, the very object of our religious adoration. What, according to Fulgentius, could be said more absurdly? The same Fulgentius in the same work: “If, as is true, it is one thing to be created and another to be begotten, let it be distinguished in which substance Christ is said to be created by God and in which He is said to be begotten from the Father. For the Scripture itself easily shows those who seek in which nature Christ is to be called created, namely in that in which He is called Lord, so that He shows the truth of the form of a servant in Himself, as He says in the Psalm: ‘O Lord, I am Your servant, I am Your servant and the son of Your handmaid.’ Thus, He was born of a handmaid and made a servant.” These things show how ineptly Smidelin denies that Christ, even now, as He is truly man, is a servant of God, though He is the Lord of all. Isidore, in Book 1 of On the Highest Good, Chapter 16: “Christ, in the form of a servant, is a servant; and in the form of a servant, He is not a servant. For in the form of a servant, He is the servant of the Lord, and in the form of a servant, He is called Lord. Christ, in the form of a servant, is the Lord of men because of the excellence of His conception.” Moreover, concerning the adoration of Christ, hear Cyril, in On the True Faith to Theodosius: “Do we, therefore, adore Emmanuel as man? Far from it. For this would be madness, deception, and error. For in this, we differ not at all from those who worship a creature beyond the Creator and from those who, as it is written, have exchanged the truth for a lie (Romans 1).” If we agree with these brothers, we will likewise be reproved with them shortly after. Therefore, see, most Christian King, that we are compelled by necessary syllogisms to adore the Word, which was born from the Father and appeared in our form, as God by nature; and that the concurrence of the two into unity, that is, one person, has nothing sufficient to obscure it. For the true nature by which He assumed humanity is not humanity but rather surpasses the assumed servant in its glory, preserving it in the incorrupt permanence of divine majesty. Knowing this, the disciples, adoring, said: “Truly, You are the Son of God,” though they saw Him walking and in our flesh. Cyril, in the same place, explains what Athanasius’ words mean: “The nature of the Word of God incarnate is adorable with its flesh in one adoration,” namely, lest we establish two sons in Christ, that is, two persons (as Nestorius did), one the Son of God who is adored, and another subsisting per se from Mary who is not adored. Maximus, in his Book on the Two Natures of Christ: “He who, because the natures in Christ are distinct, denies the unity of the person is a Nestorian. And he who denies the distinction of natures in the unity of the person follows the sect of Eutyches. But he who speaks of both distinction and unity in Christ neither divides the difference nor confuses the unity.” Damascene writes similarly in his Book on the Form of Man. Therefore, the Fathers did not say that Christ’s Deity is adored with His flesh in one adoration to attribute either an equal degree of religious adoration or religious adoration in reality to both natures of Christ, as Smidelin contends; but so that they would not, like the Nestorians, tear apart the one person of our Lord Jesus Christ. Cassian, in Book 5 On the Incarnation of the Only-Begotten, explains this, teaching that through mere nomination, it is said of Christ’s flesh, even remaining and considered in the personal union, what is proper to the Deity alone, such as (even by Smidelin’s own testimony) being religiously adored. These, therefore, are Cassian’s words: “Thus, before the birth from the Virgin, the eternity of the man Christ is not the same as that of God; but because God was united to man in the Virgin’s womb, it has come about that in Christ one cannot be named without the other. Therefore, whatever you say of the Lord Jesus Christ, you say of the whole: in the Son of God, you name the Son of Man; and in the Son of Man, you name the Son of God, by the trope of synecdoche, whereby both the part is understood from the whole and the portion is named from the whole, as the sacred Scriptures indeed teach, in which the Lord, often using this trope when speaking of others, wished it to be understood of Himself as well.” These few things from many suffice to show that our opinion is confirmed by all the Fathers, but Smidelin’s has long been condemned by all ages and all Fathers. For, as I have already said, and with great sorrow repeat, there is no shorter or more prone path and fall to Arianism than when equal honor is really attributed to Christ’s flesh and Deity, that is, when the honor due to Christ’s flesh and His Deity, even remaining in the personal union, is not distinguished. This they do not do; indeed, they are gravely offended with us when we try to teach them that all Christians should have and acknowledge our Lord Jesus Christ as both true God and true man (with no confusion of the natures or their essential properties) in the one person of the Mediator. Farewell, Smidelin. May the Lord God, the Father of mercies, through His only-begotten Son, our Lord Christ, have mercy on His Church and grant you a better mind, so that you may finally cease to disturb it. Finally, may He will that, with heresies driven out, true peace and concord may at last unite us all for the assault on the common enemy, the Antichrist. Farewell, from Orthez, the first of September, in the year of the last time, 1584.

Errata Corrections Applied:

• Page 4, line 30: lingua corrected.

• Page 7, line 1: Arnobium corrected.

• Page 7, line 23: Apollinistae corrected.

• Page 8, line 25: I corrected.

• Page 12, line 9: proprium corrected.

• Page 14, line 17: distinguitur, & suas corrected.

• Page 16, last line: Mirifice corrected.

• Page 17, line 19: I corrected.

• Page 19, line 29: eandem corrected.

• Page 24, line 21: te deleted.

• Page 31, line 8 and margin line 9: Eunomium corrected.

• Page 34, line 12: hinc corrected to hinc.

• Page 35, last line: possunt corrected.

• Page 52, line 22: quod corrected.

• Page 58, line 10: quinerit corrected.

• Page 59, line 18: propinquemus corrected.

• Page 60, line 5: carne corrected.

Finis