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| Chapter II.—When Christ visited us in His grace, He did not come to what did not belong to Him: also, by shedding His true blood for us, and exhibiting to us His true flesh in the Eucharist, He conferred upon our flesh the capacity of salvation.
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Chapter II.—When Christ visited us in
His grace, He did not come to what did not belong to Him: also, by shedding His
true blood for us, and exhibiting to us His true flesh in the Eucharist, He
conferred upon our flesh the capacity of salvation.
1. And vain likewise are those who say that
God came to those things which did not belong to Him, as if
covetous of another’s property; in order that He might deliver up
that man who had been created by another, to that God who had neither
made nor formed anything, but who also was deprived from the beginning of
His own proper formation of men. The advent, therefore, of Him
whom these men represent as coming to the things of others, was not
righteous; nor did He truly redeem us by His own blood, if He did not
really become man, restoring to His own handiwork what was said [of it]
in the beginning, that man was made after the image and likeness of God;
not snatching away by stratagem the property of another, but taking
possession of His own in a righteous and gracious manner. As far as
concerned the apostasy, indeed, He redeems us righteously from it by His
own blood; but as regards us who have been redeemed, [He does this]
graciously. For we have given nothing to Him previously, nor does He
desire anything from us, as if He stood in need of it; but we do stand in
need of fellowship with Him. And for this reason it was that He
graciously poured Himself out, that He might gather us into the bosom of
the Father.
2. But vain in
every respect are they who despise the entire dispensation of God, and
disallow the salvation of the flesh, and treat with contempt its
regeneration, maintaining that it is not capable of incorruption. But if
this indeed do not attain salvation, then neither did the Lord redeem us
with His blood, nor is the cup of the Eucharist the communion of His
blood, nor the bread which we break the communion of His body.4458
For blood can only come from veins and flesh,
and whatsoever else makes up the substance of man, such as the Word of
God was actually made. By His own blood he redeemed us, as also His
apostle declares, “In whom we have redemption through His blood,
even the remission of sins.”4459
And as we
are His members, we are also nourished by means of the creation (and He
Himself grants the creation to us, for He causes His sun to rise, and
sends rain when He wills4460
). He has acknowledged the
cup (which is a part of the creation) as His own blood, from which He
bedews our blood; and the bread (also a part of the creation) He has
established as His own body, from which He gives increase to our
bodies.4461
| 4461 [Again, the
carefully asserts that the bread is the body, and the
wine (cup) is the blood. The elements are sanctified, not
changed materially.] |
3. When, therefore, the mingled cup
and the manufactured bread receives the Word of God, and the Eucharist of
the blood and the body of Christ is made,4462
| 4462 The Greek text, of which a considerable portion remains
here, would give, “and the Eucharist becomes the body of
Christ.” | from which things the substance of our flesh
is increased and supported, how can they affirm that the flesh is
incapable of receiving the gift of God, which is life eternal, which
[flesh] is nourished from the body and blood of the Lord, and is a member
of Him?—even as the blessed Paul declares in his Epistle to the
Ephesians, that “we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of
His bones.”4463
He does not speak these
words of some spiritual and invisible man, for a spirit has not bones nor
flesh;4464
but [he refers to] that dispensation [by
which the Lord became] an actual man, consisting of flesh, and nerves,
and bones,—that [flesh] which is nourished by the cup which is
His blood, and receives increase from the bread which is His body. And
just as a cutting from the vine planted in the ground fructifies in its
season, or as a corn of wheat falling into the earth and becoming
decomposed, rises with manifold increase by the Spirit of God, who
contains all things, and then, through the wisdom of God, serves for the
use of men, and having received the Word of God, becomes the Eucharist,
which is the body and blood of Christ; so also our bodies, being
nourished by it, and deposited in the earth, and suffering decomposition
there, shall rise at their appointed time, the Word of God granting them
resurrection to the glory of God, even the Father, who freely gives to
this mortal immortality, and to this corruptible incorruption,4465
because the strength of God is made perfect in
weakness,4466
in order that we may never become
puffed up, as if we had life from ourselves, and exalted against God, our
minds becoming ungrateful; but learning by experience that we possess
eternal duration from the excelling power of this Being, not from our own
nature, we may neither undervalue that glory which surrounds God as He
is, nor be ignorant of our own nature, but that we may know what God can
effect, and what benefits man receives, and thus never wander from the
true comprehension of things as they are, that is, both with regard to
God and with regard to man. And might it not be the case, perhaps, as I
have already observed, that for this purpose God permitted our resolution
into the common dust of mortality,4467
| 4467 This is Harvey’s free rendering of the passage,
which is in the Greek (as preserved in the Catena of John of Damascus):
καὶ διὰ τοῦτο ἠνέσχετο ὁ Θεὸς τὴν εἰς τὴν γῆν ἡμῶν ἀνάλυσιν. In
the Latin: Propter hoc passus est Deus fieri in nobis resolutionem. See
Book iii. cap. xx. 2. | that we, being instructed by every
mode, may be accurate in all things for the future, being ignorant
neither of God nor of ourselves?E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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