VARIOUS FRAGMENTS
And since we have made mention of this codex, I shall also transcribe another passage from the same. Thus, therefore, 15, fol. 20, A, to ch. 1 of Luke.
A Athanasius. In which He who is before the ages from the Father, in the last times is born of the Virgin, and He who before was invisible even to the holy powers in heaven, becomes visible on account of his union with the visible human being. I say visible, not according to the invisible divinity, but according to the energy of the divinity through the human body and the whole man, whom he renewed by his appropriation to himself. For the Word, being Creator, himself at the consummation of the ages put on the created thing, so that he might restore it again; for there was need for the recall of that which the God-Word had made from the beginning out of non-existence. For this reason, the incorporeal one arrives in our realm, and takes to himself a body not foreign to our own, from the immaculate Virgin, formed by the Holy Spirit; and it became an adorable garment of the Word, so that in it the law against the corruption of humans might be abolished, and he who from the beginning had created man in his own likeness, by being made like his own creation, might lead man back again into the likeness of himself. B
THESE ALSO FOLLOW FROM FELCKMANN.
And indeed there are some passages similar to this, as in tom. I, pages 45, 48, 127, 128, 347, 348; but one that is identical in as many words with this, I have not been able to observe thus far. And for this reason I chose to have this distinguished passage twice (if indeed it be so) rather than omit it entirely.
Jerome, in his *Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers*, reports that two books of Athanasius *Against the Gentiles* existed in his time: but today we have only one. Unless perhaps Jerome meant the second to be that which is *On the Incarnation* (45), which the beginning of this work itself seems to imply, where he repeats a brief summary of the preceding work.
The same Jerome in the same place commemorates a certain book of his *Against Ursacius and Valens*. And indeed Athanasius mentions them very often, and attacks them in his *Apologies*, as in the work *On the Synods of Ariminum and Seleucia*, and in the *Epistle to the Africans*, and elsewhere: but a book written by him against them specifically, no such work exists today.
Regarding the book *On the Titles of the Psalms*, which Jerome claims was written by the same (46), and which Photius names *Notes on the Psalms*, if it is not the one which is held in tom. I, under the title *On the Interpretation of the Psalms to Marcellinus*, it would be probable that it is the one which, in the fourth act of the seventh ecumenical synod, Nicaea II, Germanus, Patriarch of Constantinople, in his epistle to Thomas, Bishop of Claudiopolis, cites—while expounding these words of Psalm LXXIX, according to the Greek, or LXXX according to the Hebrew codices: "You who sit upon the Cherubim, appear"—in these words: "For the cherubim, their exemplary forms, existing unknown to all men according to their nature, are spirit and fire; and, being alien to any corporeal figuration and nature, those things which are spoken of them by the prophet more corporally, hold a symbolic and deeper meaning. For one ought not to understand them according to the literal and—for incorporeal beings—unbecoming manner." Thus far there. Fronto Ducæus of Bordeaux, a man of note, marks in certain of his collections on Athanasius, which we have from the library of Commelinus, that there is a work of Athanasius *On the Psalms* in the possession of Politian. Similarly, M. Crasius, in a certain index of manuscript books that still exist at Constantinople, reports that in the possession of the most illustrious prince Jacobus Marmoreta there is an *Explication of the Davidic Psalter* by the holy Athanasius, Archbishop of Alexandria: whether however this is the one we are discussing, I would not rashly say.
The same synod, act 6, cites this fragment from the *Epistle of Athanasius to Eupsychius*, the beginning of which is: "Insofar as you thought of us..."
Athanasius indeed, in the aforementioned epistle, the beginning of which is: "Insofar as you thought of us, most reverent one," says among other things: "The common fruit of the sheep is this, I say, the summer fleece, the wool for..."