The Three Epistles of Saint Cyril Archbishop of Alexandria - Paperback

by P. E. Pusey M. a. (Editor), St Athanasius Press (Editor), Saint Cyril (Author)

Excerpt: S. Cyril begins by alluding to evil reports of him at Constantinople (see also the close of his Apology to the Emperor). He then says what the Incarnation does not mean, viz., any connection of God the Son with a separately existing man; that God the Son needed not His Birth in the Body but that it was all for us; in what sense God the Son suffered and died and rose, viz., by making the Human Body so absolutely His, that its suffering is His. What is, The Word was made Flesh. To the Most Pious and Devout fellow minister NESTORIUS, Cyril greeting in the Lord. CERTAIN, as I learn, are babbling to your Piety against my reputation and this incessantly, watching above all the time of the gathering of those in authority, and thinking (I suppose) to please thine hearing they put forth unadvised words, in no wise wronged but convicted and that aright, the one as a wronger of the blind and poor, another as having drawn his sword upon his mother, another as having stolen money in complicity with a maidservant and having always that kind of reputation which one might pray should not befall even one's chiefest foes. But the speech of such is of no great weight with me, that I stretch not out the measure of my littleness above my Lord and Master nor yet above the Fathers. For it is not possible however one may choose to live, to escape the crookedness of the bad. But those men having their mouth full of cursing and bitterness shall give account to the Judge of all: I will turn to what belongs more specially to myself, and will put thee in mind now too, as a Brother in Christ, to make the word of teaching and the conception of the Faith with all guardedness to the people, and to consider that the offending even one alone of the little ones which believe in Christ, is the cause of indignation not to be endured. But if the multitude of those grieved be so great, how stand we not in need of all skill, with all solicitude to cut away offences and to extend the sound word of the Faith unto those that seek the Truth? And this will be rightly achieved if reading the words of the holy Fathers, we be zealous to hold them dear, and proving ourselves whether we be in the Faith, as it is written, conform with care our conceptions to their right and blameless opinions. The holy and mighty Synod therefore said that the Only-Begotten Son Himself, Begotten by Nature of God the Father, Very God of Very God, Light of Light, Him through Whom the Father hath made all things, came down and was made Flesh and made Man, suffered, rose the third day, and ascended into the Heavens. And these both words and doctrines we too must follow, considering what the Word of God being made Flesh and Man means: (For we do not say that the Nature of the Word was changed and made flesh, nor yet that it was changed into whole man, of soul and body: but this rather, that the Word having Personally united to Himself flesh ensouled with reasonable soul unspeakably and incomprehensibly was made Man and was called son of man not in respect of favour only or good pleasure, nor yet by appendage of person only: ) and that the natures which were gathered together unto Very Union are diverse, yet One Christ and Son of Both, not as though the diversity of natures were taken away because of the Union, but rather that the Godhead and Manhood make up One Lord and Christ and Son through their unspeakable and ineffable coming together into Unity.