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| How the Word and Power of God works in His human actions: by casting out devils, by Miracles, by His Birth of the Virgin.
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§18. How the Word and
Power of God works in His human actions: by casting out devils, by
Miracles, by His Birth of the Virgin.
Accordingly, when inspired writers on this matter
speak of Him as eating and being born, understand250
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Orat. iii. 31, note 11. |
that the body, as body, was born, and sustained with food corresponding
to its nature, while God, the Word Himself, Who was united with the body, while ordering all
things, also by the works He did in the body shewed Himself to be not
man, but God the Word. But these things are said of Him, because the
actual body which ate, was born, and suffered, belonged to none other
but to the Lord: and because, having become man, it was proper for
these things to be predicated of Him as man, to shew Him to have a body
in truth, and not in seeming. 2. But just as from these things He was
known to be bodily present, so from the works He did in the body He
made Himself known to be Son of God. Whence also He cried to the
unbelieving Jews; “If251
I do not the works of
My Father, believe Me not. But if I do them, though ye believe not Me,
believe My works; that ye may know and understand that the Father is in
Me, and I in the Father.” 3. For just as, though invisible, He is
known through the works of creation; so, having become man, and being
in the body unseen, it may be known from His works that He Who can do
these is not man, but the Power and Word of God. 4. For His charging
evil spirits, and their being driven forth, this deed is not of man,
but of God. Or who that saw Him healing the diseases to which the human
race is subject, can still think Him man and not God? For He cleansed
lepers, made lame men to walk, opened the hearing of deaf men, made
blind men to see again, and in a word drove away from men all diseases
and infirmities: from which acts it was possible even for the most
ordinary observer to see His Godhead. For who that saw Him give back252
what was deficient to men born lacking, and
open the eyes of the man blind from his birth, would have failed to
perceive that the nature of men was subject to Him, and that He was its
Artificer and Maker? For He that gave back that which the man from his
birth had not, must be, it is surely evident, the Lord also of
men’s natural birth. 5. Therefore, even to begin with, when He
was descending to us, He fashioned His body for Himself from a Virgin,
thus to afford to all no small proof of His Godhead, in that He Who
formed this is also Maker of everything else as well. For who, seeing a
body proceeding forth from a Virgin alone without man, can fail to
infer that He Who appears in it is Maker and Lord of other bodies also?
6. Or who, seeing the substance of water changed and transformed into
wine, fails to perceive that He Who did this is Lord and Creator of the
substance of all waters? For to this end He went upon the sea also as
its Master, and walked as on dry land, to afford evidence to them that
saw it of His lordship over all things. And in feeding so vast a
multitude on little, and of His own self yielding abundance where none
was, so that from five loaves five thousand had enough, and left so
much again over, did He shew Himself to be any other than the very Lord
Whose Providence is over all things?E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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