But since he has charged us, I know not how often already, "with regarding this Jesus, who was but a mortal body, as a God, and with supposing that we act piously in so doing," it is superfluous to say any more in answer to this, as a great deal has been said in the preceding pages. And yet let those who make this charge understand that He whom we regard and believe to have been from the beginning God, and the Son of God, is the very Logos, and the very Wisdom, and the very Truth; and with respect to His mortal body, and the human soul which it contained, we assert that not by their communion merely with Him, but by their unity and intermixture, [3563] they received the highest powers, and after participating in His divinity, were changed into God. And if any one should feel a difficulty at our saying this regarding His body, let him attend to what is said by the Greeks regarding matter, which, properly speaking, being without qualities, receives such as the Creator desires to invest it with, and which frequently divests itself of those which it formerly possessed, and assumes others of a different and higher kind. And if these opinions be correct, what is there wonderful in this, that the mortal quality of the body of Jesus, if the providence of God has so willed it, should have been changed into one that was ethereal and divine? [3564]

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Footnotes:

[3563] alla kai henosei kai anakrasei.

[3564] ["By means of Origen the idea of a proper reasonable soul in Christ received a new dogmatical importance. This point, which up to this time had been altogether untouched with controversy with the Patripassians, was now for the first time expressly brought forward in a synod held against Beryllus of Bostra, a.d. 244, and the doctrine of a reasonable human soul in Christ settled as a doctrine of the Church."--Neander's History (ut supra), vol. ii. p. 309, with the references there. See also Waterland's Works, vol. i. pp. 330, 331. S.]