A and arming themselves against the faith, they pervert what was rightly said by them, teaching according to their own reprobate and muddied mind. "All these things are plain to those who understand, and right to those who find knowledge," as it is written. For those who approach the words of the divinely inspired Scripture with glory and a pure eye of the mind, store up divine benefit in their souls as a kind of heavenly treasure; but those who have a mind inclined toward falsehood, and overcome by the idle talk of certain people, and who are lovers of profane knowledge, will be partakers of those of whom the blessed Paul writes: "In whom the god of this age has blinded the thoughts of the unbelievers, so that the light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, may not dawn for them." For they are blind, and are blind leaders; therefore, these men also fall into the pits of perdition. As the Savior Himself says: "If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit." Therefore, some mock the Fathers and teachers of the truth; nay, rather, filling their own mind with diabolical perversity, they hasten to corrupt the mystery of truth, making no small denunciation of the dispensation of the Only-Begotten according to the flesh, not understanding either what they say or about what they assert, according to what Scripture says.
B 2. But there have been many others who were inventors of such impiety in times past, but now these men are the ones feigning new causes for their wickedness, like new Pharisees. For just as those truly denied that the Son of God had come in the flesh, so too now these new preachers, while they do not wish to adore and venerate the advent of Christ in the flesh, and the icons of His immaculate and truly Theotokos and ever-virgin Mother Mary according to the flesh, and of all His saints—holy and venerable as they are—they have devised a new faith, contrary to what we received from the beginning from our holy Fathers and the disciples and successors of the holy apostles. For as it seemed good to them now to say, they profess to keep the faith better than the holy Fathers, whose words and virtues are the support and pillar of the catholic and apostolic Church. For the voices of the Fathers themselves, which they clearly proclaimed concerning the venerable and adorable icons, these new wise men, having taken the voices that were well spoken by the prophets, pervert them according to their own desires to their own mind. C For whatever those men said when speaking about idolatrous statues and demonic monuments, these men distort against the holy icons, [doing violence to] the holy Fathers and teachers of the holy and immaculate
A faith of the Christians, rejecting their voices and testimonies concerning the holy icons depicted in the form of his incarnate and human state, which they clearly taught us to honor and venerate. Wherefore, being about to compose a disputation against these new preachers—God granting us the spirit—we shall set forth a few things out of many, even though these men reject these things also as though they were man-made idols.
3. Tell us, you turbulent and complaining wise men, and lovers of malice, profanity, and the synod hostile to God B (which, by God’s permission, was held at Constantinople in the place called Oneria), by what manner and purpose do you reject the ancestral voices, being led astray and enticed by your own desires, having been snatched away from the straight path and deceived by whatever bait, so that you are corrupted? Tell us, you who now innovate a new exposition of faith, what is there on earth that is venerable, religious, and adorable that is not man-made? The Cross? The altar? The oblation? The Gospel? All these are man-made; yet for us they are venerable and symbols of salvation, just as are the images of the saints and of the true and human flesh of the incarnate dispensation of Christ, which for our salvation he took from the all-pure and God-bearing Mary, assuming all things of ours except sin alone. Therefore, we venerate and honor his image and that of his immaculate Mother. But you, however, make this mystery a fiction. We, indeed, who pursue the truth—which is the faith transmitted to us by the holy apostles C and their holy disciples and successors, who were our Fathers and doctors, concerning the holy, consubstantial, and venerable Trinity—profess it with unveiled face and in a clear voice, usurping that word of the prophet Isaiah: "Get you up, O you that bring good tidings, to the high mountain" (Isa. XL, 9). We too, ascend to the supreme glory of the three consubstantial persons, evangelizing the good things of the orthodox faith, saying:
4. We believe in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, which is the Holy Trinity, uncreated, eternal, inconfused, indivisible, consubstantial, in one divinity, kingdom, and dominion, D which is adored and glorified in three persons or hypostases and properties. For when I speak of "property," think of the Father as Father, and the Son as Son, and the Holy Spirit as Holy Spirit. For these properties do not change. For he who is the Father cannot be the Son, nor the Son the Father, nor can the Holy Spirit be the Father or the Son; but as I have said, the Father is the Father, and the Son is the Son, and the Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit. There was no time when the Father was not, and there was no time when the Son was not, just as there was no time when the Holy Spirit was not. Therefore, the birth of the Only-begotten is incomprehensible...
and likewise the procession of the Holy Spirit. A Do you adore the Father? In Him is adored the Son and the Holy Spirit. Do you adore the Son? In Him you adore the Father and the Holy Spirit. Do you adore the Holy Spirit? In Him you adore both the Father and the Son. You think thus not because the persons are confounded, but because of the identity and immutability of the essence. For since the nature, the essence, and the divinity are one, the adoration of the holy and consubstantial Trinity is also one. But since the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are named, and are in essence three persons equal in all things; yet the inspired Scripture attributes the principle B to the Father, and furthermore, by the Father’s good pleasure, the Son made all things, and the Holy Spirit brought all things to perfection: therefore, God is the Father, God is the Son, God is the Holy Spirit. But because there is God, and God, and God, you cannot say "three gods." But thinking of three persons, and confessing each person, one God is spoken of, on account of the unity and identity of the nature, the divinity, the essence, and the co-eternity. Wherefore we also glorify and adore the holy Trinity in the singular number.
5. We have learned and we believe that the Son of God was begotten of the Father ineffably, timelessly, incorporeally, before all ages. He himself, therefore, the Son of God, Light from Light, true God from true God and Father, by the good pleasure C of the Father, was made flesh in the all-pure Virgin holy Mary, who is sanctified by the Holy Spirit, who is truly and in reality Theotokos. And just as the generation of the Son Himself from the Father is incomprehensible and inexplicable, and for this reason we adore and glorify it in faith and silence; so too that generation of the same Son of God from his Mother and Virgin in the flesh is unspeakable and ineffable. And learn how.
6. The only-begotten Son of God, then, who was begotten of the Father before all ages, is uncircumscribed, and is above and below, and holds all things in His hand, and all things subsist in Him, and He fills all things, and He extends beyond all things, and is above all the heavens, and beholds the abysses. And there is no creature invisible in His sight. He is among the angels, D He is entirely above, He is entirely everywhere. The Son of God Himself, therefore, being such and so great, the One without age and without magnitude, since He can do all things, was also able to become man. And having been incarnate in truth, and having become man from the Holy Spirit and Mary the Virgin, He did not depart from above, and He is the same, being fully present below, having been made flesh. Who, then, can express or fully recount the mystery? Except that, because of the weakness of human nature, divine Scripture has provided a few words, through which the mind may be able to be in enjoyment, and ineffably
A to wonder at and worship the divine mystery.
7. The Son of God, therefore, the uncircumscribed, entered into the holy Virgin and took from the nature of her flesh, and united to His own hypostasis of divinity flesh consubstantial to us, endowed with a soul and mind, as He alone knows. For I have said before that neither can the mind comprehend, nor can speech express, nor ought a man to investigate scientifically that which is unsearchable and unexplorable. Having therefore united to Himself the nature taken from her, the uncircumscribed Son of God increased in His own flesh, which was endowed with a rational and intellectual soul. And without changing, the Son of God, remaining what He was, became an infant in the womb of His mother. And an indivisible and unconfused union of divinity and humanity was accomplished; and behold, He who is incorporeal and intangible has become corporeal and can be touched; and He who was born of the Father before all ages, behold, the same is born of the holy Virgin, incarnate; and He who never departed from the Father’s bosom, and who encompasses all things by the power of His divinity, and is held by the almighty power of all things, the same, having become man from the holy Virgin and being born, lies in a manger as a child wrapped in swaddling clothes, while the holy Virgin remains a virgin. For such are divine things. For just as the union of the flesh and the divinity is unsearchable, so also is the birth. For the divine Word, who is omnipotent, was able to be truly incarnate and to become man in the Lady, and to be born of her, and to preserve her virginity sealed, just as indeed He C stood in the midst of the disciples when the doors were shut.
8. For this reason, the holy and apostolic Church receives all divine things obediently, faithfully, and without over-curious questioning, and worships, adores, and reveres them. The Son of God Himself, therefore, the true God, born a child for our salvation, is said to increase in His own flesh, as He took upon Himself our blameless passions, and to progress in wisdom and stature for the sake of a gradual manifestation, that He might show that the incarnation was proper and true. And He is said to grow weary, to hunger, and to thirst, and to have consorted with men, having taught and illuminated every man coming into the world. For He is the true light.
9. Furthermore, because of His immeasurable philanthropy, He also suffered in His own flesh. For the Lord of glory Himself was crucified for us and suffered truly. For He suffers not in His divinity, but in His own flesh, inseparably joined to Him and endowed with a soul; and He dies, with the soul, as is evident, separated from the body. For the divinity is indivisible and unconfused, and was united both to the soul and to the body. The Son of God therefore descended with His own soul to the souls of the saints, and rose again, the soul D being united to the body.
The same only-begotten Son of God rose again by His own power; for "I have power," He says, "to lay down my soul, and I have power to take it again" (John x, 18).
10. A Since the Son of God has risen from the dead, by His own becoming man He was taken up into the heavens. He who was before incorporeal is now the same, having become flesh; he who was before simple is now the same, composite, being at once God and man. For the nature of the divinity also remains in Him; and He who was before simple and one of the holy Trinity is now also the same, one of the holy Trinity, having become incarnate and having become man. And that which all the heavenly powers could not behold—for no one can see the divinity of the adorable Trinity—they now behold: the one of the holy Trinity, the only-begotten Son of God B according to the man who appears, while contemplating the uncircumscribed nature of His divinity. For this is what the blessed Paul says: "He was seen by angels" (1 Tim. iii, 16). He assumed, therefore, what He did not have, and now has—namely, our nature—unto the ages of ages. And again: "Coming with glory to judge the living and the dead," that is to say, the just and the sinners. To judge the former, standing for "to justify," on account of their good works; but to condemn the latter on account of their unbelief and the deeds of their wickedness.
11. C The Creed teaches us to believe in one holy, catholic, and apostolic Church of God. The catholic Church cannot merely be apostolic. For the almighty power of the Head, which is Christ, was able through the apostles to save the whole world. The holy, catholic Church of God is, therefore, the gathering of the holy Fathers from the beginning of time—patriarchs, prophets, apostles, evangelists, martyrs—to whom have been added all the nations who believed with one accord. For they saw that from every race of men under the heavens, they hold the same faith as the Christians. For without the Holy Spirit, it is impossible for a public and many-tongued assembly to come into one mind of the most true faith. D I say, then, again that it is called catholic for this reason: because peoples of the most disparate customs, of manifold modes, and wild, from the whole world and of countless tongues, coalesce into one peaceful and saving faith and knowledge of God.
12. We believe, therefore, in one holy, catholic, and apostolic Church of God, in which we are taught by instruction. And we know the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and we are baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and we partake of the saving body and blood of the Son of God, who for our sake, by the good pleasure of the Father, became man and died for us. We are taught, moreover, to perform His divine and evangelical commandments, and to accept most certainly
A the divinely inspired Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, through which he who diligently applies himself to them becomes worthy to grow perpetually in faith and good conscience, for his own benefit and that of others.
13. Moreover, those holy Fathers of ours and teachers of religion who have faithfully and rightly pondered these things, have taught us in what manner we ought to honor and venerate the saving symbols of the faith: the Cross of Christ, because the Savior was fixed upon it with nails, as One who through it graciously bestowed upon us redemption and delivered us from the curse that came through the tree; the altar, as the Lord’s immaculate monument; the oblation, as the Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, the true God and Savior of our souls; and the Gospels, as uttered and enacted by God the Word Himself. But as for the images: as often as I behold the one that is of our Lord Jesus Christ and of His undefiled and most immaculate Mother, the Theotokos Mary, B immediately and at once I raise my mind through them to His extreme poverty and condescension for our sake; for being God, He took the form of a servant and made His own handmaid His Mother, and was carried by her as a little child, and sucked milk from virginal breasts. Since, therefore, the sensible eye looks intently upon the image, I sharpen the intellectual eye of the heart together with the mind toward the mystery of the incarnate dispensation, and I beseech His goodness and compassion for my most grievous and many sins, saying: C "Glory to Thee, O God my Savior; have mercy on me, a sinner, and forgive my many sins, O Thou who for my sake didst bear my nature, sin alone excepted."
14. Whenever I contemplate the image of the Theotokos, the Virgin Mary, I immediately say: "Immaculate Theotokos, Mother of Christ God, intercede with thy Son and my God, that He may have mercy on me by His goodness and compassion. For the supplication of a Mother avails much toward obtaining the kindness of the Lord. Despise not the prayers of sinners, O most venerable one, for He is merciful and able to save, who even deigned to suffer for our sake."
15. When I see the icon of an apostle or martyr or of any other saint, the history of their sufferings which they D generously endured for Christ, I say: "Glory to Thee, O God of this apostle or of this saint." And saying these things in this manner, I offer glory to God. This is how we have received it from the holy Fathers, whose names and words we will record in the book if the will and providence of God allow it.
16. But you, O new preachers and empty theologians: you who have apprehended the preaching of the holy apostles