distinguished in the holy Church of God, and those gathered in the four holy councils—the three hundred and eighteen in Nicaea, the one hundred and fifty in Constantinople, the two A hundred gathered at the first session in Ephesus, and the six hundred and thirty in Chalcedon—who, being the norm of the Church of God, with the help of the Holy Spirit, cast out from the Church at various times the heretics appearing and their impious dogmas. But the enemies of piety, possessing the devil’s seed of tares, and not wishing to follow the good seeds, but always feigning excuses and despising all arguments, take refuge in saying that they have a doctrine handed down by the Fathers and that they cannot abandon it, while they have as fathers, some from Nestorius, Paul, Photinus, Marcellus, and those who held the same opinions as them; the Acephali, however, [have as fathers] Eutyches, Dioscorus, Timotheus Aelurus, and those who held the same opinions as B them; while others are known to be followers of the madness of Apollinaris, Manichæus, and Valentinus. Those, therefore, who say these things—how will they lead Jews and Greeks to Christianity, when they bring forward things similar to these and assert that they hold wickedness not only handed down by the Fathers, but even much older than them? Whence we exhort your God-loved self to adjure everyone who fears the Lord and awaits the judgment of God, not to be led astray by various and strange doctrines, but, being taught the true and immaculate faith, to hasten to the holy, catholic, and apostolic Church of God, in which the same apostolic doctrine is preached by the priests of God throughout the C whole world.
OF JUSTINIAN THE MOST PIOUS EMPEROR, FROM THE DOGMATIC EPISTLE TO ZOILUS, THE MOST HOLY PATRIARCH OF ALEXANDRIA
There is, therefore, one Christ, the difference of the natures not being removed by the ineffable union, the Word believed and the man seen; for the union neither brought about confusion, nor does the difference of the substances in Him admit of fission or division. The miracles D
A seeing, we proclaim His divinity; observing His sufferings, we do not deny His humanity, nor the miracles without the flesh, nor the sufferings without the divinity. And it is a paradox that He was the same Being who suffered and did not suffer: suffering, indeed, because His own body was suffering; and in that same body was He who does not suffer, being God by nature, the Word who is impassible. He, the incorporeal, was in the passible body, and the body had within itself the impassible Word, shielding the infirmities of the body itself; for each form operates with the accompaniment of the other, according to that which it had as its own; the Word performing that which is of the Word, and the body accomplishing that which is of the body. B For even holy Cyril teaches this in the thirty-second discourse of the *Thesaurus*, interpreting the Epistle to the Romans: "By no means shall we say that the natural operation of God and the creature is one, so that we should neither refer what is created to the divine substance, nor bring down to the place proper to created things that which is peculiar to the divine nature." The same holy Father also teaches us the same things in his writings to Theodosius, saying: "We say that the Word from God has been united, whole to whole, to our humanity; for perhaps He would not have deemed the better part in us, that is, the soul, worthy of no word, granting the words only to the flesh which He inhabited." By both of these He well fulfilled the mystery of the economy: He used the flesh as an instrument for the works of the flesh, namely, the infirmities and whatever is far from sin; but the soul He used for human and innocent passions; C for He is said to have hungered, to have endured fatigue from long journeys, fear, terror, sadness, agony, and death on the cross. For, with no one compelling Him, He laid down His own soul for us by His own power, that He might rule over both the living and the dead, giving His own flesh as an equivalent gift for the flesh of all, and making His soul a ransom for the soul of all. But if He were recalled again to life, it was because He was God that He rose again; for it would certainly not be correct to say that the flesh, once united to the Word, could be held captive by corruption, or that His divine soul could become a captive of the gates of hell: "He was not left in hell," as the holy Peter says. But it must not be said that His nature, which is incomprehensible and indissoluble, was entirely subject to death, but that the divinity of the Only-Begotten was also transferred into the bosom of the earth; D for it is not amazing if the Word of God dwelt in hell, since by the power and nature of His divinity, He amazingly and beyond what can be said, fills all things and dwells in us all. Then continuing, he says again: "To have killed the human infirmity, but the divine power to have brought to life," showing that by both of these He is recognized, namely, that He is among us and at the same time above us as God. Do you see how this venerable Father demonstrates the powers of the two natures in one hypostasis or one person of Christ our God?
the actions of the two natures in the one hypostasis, or one person, of Christ our God, does it transmit? And after a little: Then, for our sake, having become man, He became visible and tangible; and having been manifested through divine and human actions as subsisting in deity and humanity, He has given us to know that in those things in which He was known, He consists of them. Thus, therefore, the holy Fathers, confessing both expressions—that is, both that which is from the deity and that from the humanity—transmit through each of them the unconfused and undivided economy A of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.
GOLDEN BULL OF THE RENOWNED EMPEROR JUSTINIAN, WHICH HE GRANTED TO THE ABBOT OF MOUNT SINAI
DECREE OF THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS JUSTINIAN, GIVEN TO THE ABBOT OF MOUNT SINAI
If those who are skilled in assisting kings, and who know how to lead armies, administer cities, govern nations, and perform whatever brings utility to the Roman empire, are pursued with due honor by all citizens who are well-disposed; how much more does it befit princes, who are able to weigh in a just balance the purpose of counsels proceeding from men who are venerable and in life and character similar to God—counsels which do not look to external matters but are more excellent and beneficial to the soul itself, and indeed provide both one and the other, B by the favor of divine power—how, I say, does it not befit kings to lend a ready ear and bring to completion that which is requested? But if a good matter increases in value when it comes with prayers, not because they have asked, but because the thing itself, considered on its own merits, deserves to be brought to effect; it is much more the duty of princes to accede to their prayers and grant what they have requested, so that they may satisfy not only them, but also justice. This now happens to me to see done, C as I bestow an eminent honor upon the inhabitants of Mount Sinai, moved by the prayers of the most holy and most venerable metropolitan of Ptolemais. For I considered it altogether unjust not to lend a ready ear to one petitioning for what is just, or to deny things which seemed to pose no harm to what is just. Furthermore, that mountain, from my own