Fragment VI.

Fragment VI.

Among Christians it is settled as the doctrine of piety, that, according to nature itself, and to the activity and to whatever else pertains thereunto, God is equal and the same with Himself,¹⁷⁵⁸ having nothing that is His unequal to Himself at all and heterogeneous.¹⁷⁵⁹ If, then, according to Beron, the flesh that He assumed to Himself became possessed of the like natural energy with them, it is evident that it also became possessed of the like nature with Him in all wherein that nature consists,—to wit, non-origination, non-generation, infinitude, eternity, incomprehensibility, and whatever else in the way of the transcendent the theological mind discerns in deity; and thus they both underwent conversion, neither the one nor the other preserving any more the substantial relation of its own proper nature.¹⁷⁶⁰ For he who recognises an identical operation¹⁷⁶¹ in things of unlike nature, introduces at the same time a fusion of natures and a separation of persons,¹⁷⁶² their natural existence¹⁷⁶³ being made entirely undistinguishable by the transference of properties.¹⁷⁶⁴