As he is going to produce the testimony of Greek or Eastern Bishops, he brings forward in the first place S. Gregory Nazianzen.

But perhaps because those whom we have enumerated came from different parts of the world, their authority may seem to you less valuable. An absurd thing, indeed, because faith is not interfered with by place, and we have to consider what a man is, not where: especially since religion unites all together, and those who are in the one faith may be also known to be in the one body. But still we will bring forward for you some, whom you cannot despise, even from the East. Gregory, that most grand light of knowledge and doctrine, who though he has been for some time dead, yet still lives in authority and faith, and though he has been for some time removed in the body from the Churches, yet has not forsaken them in word and authority. “When then,” he says, “God had come forth from the Virgin, in that human nature which He had taken, as He existed in one out of two which are the opposite of each other; viz., flesh and spirit, the one is taken into God, the other exalts into the grace of Deity.²⁶⁷⁶

2676 Aliud in Deum adsumiter, aliud in Deitatis gratiam præstat. So Petschenig edits. The text of Gazæus has aliud Deitatis gratia præstat.

2677 Greg. Nazianz. Oratio xxxviii. The Greek of the passage which Cassian translates is as follows: προελθὼν δὲ Θεὸς μετὰ τῆς προσλήψεως ἓν ἐκ δύο τῶν ἐναντίων, σαρκὸς καὶ πνεύματος· ὧν τὸ μὲν ἐθέωσε τὸ δὲ ἐθεώθη, ὦ τῆς καινῆς μίξεως, ὦ τῆς παραδόξου κράσεως, ὁ ὢν γίνεται καὶ ὁ ἄκτιστος κτίζεται καὶ ὁ ἀχώρητος χωρεῖται διά μέσης ψυχῆς νοερᾶς μεσιτευούσης θεότητι καὶ σαρκὸς παχύτητι, καὶ ὁ πλουτίζων πτωχεύει. Oratio xxxix. Τί γίνεται καὶ τί τὸ μέγα· περὶ ἡμᾶς μυστήριον ; καινοτομοῦνται φύσεις καὶ Θεὸς ἄνθρωπος γίνεται…καὶ ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ Θεοῦ δέχεται καὶ υἱὸς ἀνθρώπου γενὲσθαι τε καὶ κληθῆναι, οὐχ ὃ ἠν μεταβαλὼν, ἄτρεπτονυ γὰρ, ἄλλ ὀ οὐκ ἦν προσλαβὼν, φιλάνθρωπος γάρ, ἵνα χωρηθᾑ ὁ ἀχώρητος.

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