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But again, those who assert that He was simply a mere man, begotten by Joseph, remaining in the bondage of the old disobedience, are in a state of death having been not as yet joined to the Word of God the Father, nor receiving liberty through the Son, as He does Himself declare: "If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." 1 But, being ignorant of Him who from the Virgin is Emmanuel, they are deprived of His gift, which is eternal life; 2 and not receiving the incorruptible Word, they remain in mortal flesh, and are debtors to death, not obtaining the antidote of life. To whom the Word says, mentioning His own gift of grace: "I said, Ye are all the sons of the Highest, and gods; but ye shall die like men." 3 He speaks undoubtedly these words to those who have not received the gift of adoption, but who despise the incarnation of the pure generation of the Word of God, 4 defraud human nature of promotion into God, and prove themselves ungrateful to the Word of God, who became flesh for them. For it was for this end that the Word of God was made man, and He who was the Son of God became the Son of man, that man, having been taken into the Word, and receiving the adoption, might become the son of God. For by no other means could we have attained to incorruptibility and immortality, unless we had been united to incorruptibility and immortality. But how could we be joined to incorruptibility and immortality, unless, first, incorruptibility and immortality had become that which we also are, so that the corruptible might be swallowed up by incorruptibility, and the mortal by immortality, that we might receive the adoption of sons?
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John viii. 36. ↩
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Rom. vi. 23. ↩
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Ps. lxxxii. 6, 7. ↩
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The original Greek is preserved here by Theodoret, differing in some respects from the old Latin version: kai aposterountas ton anthropon tes eis Theon anodou kai acharistountas to huper auton sarkothenti logo tou Theou. Eis touto gar ho logos anthropos ... hina ho anthropos ton logon choresas, kai ten huiothesian labon, huios genetai Theou. The old Latin runs thus: "fraudantes hominem ab ea ascensione quae est ad Dominum, et ingrate exsistentes Verbo Dei, qui incarnatus est propter ipsos. Propter hoc enim Verbum Dei homo, et qui Filius Dei est, Filius Hominis factus est ... commixtus Verbo Dei, et adoptionem percipiens fiat filius Dei." [A specimen of the liberties taken by the Latin translators with the original of Irenaeus. Others are much less innocent.] ↩
