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| To the Monk Urbicius.
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Letter CCLXII.3183
To the Monk Urbicius.3184
| 3184 cf.
Letters cxxiii. and ccclxvi. |
1. You have done
well to write to me. You have shewn how great is the fruit of
charity. Continue so to do. Do not think that, when you
write to me, you need offer excuses. I recognise my own position,
and I know that by nature every man is of equal honour with the
rest. Whatever excellence there is in me is not of family, nor of
superfluous wealth, nor of physical condition; it comes only of
superiority in the fear of God. What, then, hinders you from
fearing the Lord yet more, and so, in this respect, being greater than
I am? Write often to me, and acquaint me with the condition of
the brotherhood with you. Tell me what members of the Church in
your parts are sound, that I may know to whom I ought to write, and in
whom I may confide. I am told that there are some who are
endeavouring to deprave the right doctrine of the Lord’s
incarnation by perverse opinions, and I therefore call upon them
through you to hold off from those unreasonable views, which some are
reported to me to hold. I mean that God Himself was turned into
flesh; that He did not assume, through the Holy Mary, the
nature3185
of Adam, but,
in His own proper Godhead, was changed into a material
nature.3186
2. This absurd position can be easily
confuted. The blasphemy is its own conviction, and I therefore
think that, for one who fears the Lord, the mere reminder is
enough. If He was turned, then He was changed. But far be
it from me to say or think such a thing, when God has declared,
“I am the Lord, I change not.”3187
Moreover, how could the benefit of the
incarnation be conveyed to us, unless our body, joined to the Godhead,
was made superior to the dominion of death? If He was changed, He
no longer constituted a proper body, such as subsisted after the
combination with it of the divine body.3188
| 3188 The
sentence in all the mss. (except the
Codex Coislin. II., which has ὁ τραπεὶς) begins
οὐ
τραπείς. The Ben.
Ed. propose simply to substitute εἰ for οὐ, and render “Si enim conversus
est, proprium constituit corpus, quod videlicet densata in ipsa
deitate, substitit.” I have endeavoured to force a
possible meaning on the Greek as it stands, though παχυνθείσης
more naturally refers to the unorthodox change than to
the orthodox conjunction. The original is
οὐ γὰρ
τραπεὶς
οἰκεῖον
ὑπεστήσατο
σῶμα, ὅπερ,
παχυνθείσης
αὐτῷ τῆς
θεϊκῆς
φύσεως,
ὑπέστη. | But how, if all the nature of the
Only-begotten was changed, could the incomprehensible Godhead be
circumscribed within the limit of the mass of a little body? I am
sure that no one who is in his senses, and has the fear of God, is
suffering from this unsoundness. But the report has reached me
that some of your company are afflicted with this mental infirmity, and
I have therefore thought it necessary, not to send you a mere formal
greeting, but to include in my letter something which may even build up
the souls of them that fear the Lord. I therefore urge that these
errors receive ecclesiastical correction, and that you abstain from
communion with the heretics. I know that we are deprived of our
liberty in Christ by indifference on these
points.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
