Fragment V.

Fragment V.

For lately a certain person, Beron, along with some others, forsook the delusion of Valentinus, only to involve themselves in deeper error, affirming that the flesh assumed to Himself by the Word became capable of working like works with the deity¹⁷⁴⁸ by virtue of its assumption, and that the deity became susceptible of suffering in the same way with the flesh¹⁷⁴⁹ by virtue of the exinanition;¹⁷⁵⁰ and thus they assert the doctrine that there was at the same time a conversion and a mixing and a fusing¹⁷⁵¹ of the two aspects one with the other. For if the flesh that was assumed became capable of working like works with the deity, it is evident that it also became God in essence in all wherein God is essentially known. And if the deity by the exinanition became susceptible of the same sufferings with the flesh, it is evident that it also became in essence flesh in all wherein flesh essentially can be known. For objects that act in like manner,¹⁷⁵² and work like works, and are altogether of like kind, and are susceptible of like suffering with each other, admit of no difference of nature; and if the natures are fused together,¹⁷⁵³ Christ will be a duality;¹⁷⁵⁴ and if the persons¹⁷⁵⁵ are separated, there will be a quaternity,¹⁷⁵⁶—a thing which is altogether to be avoided. And how will they conceive of the one and the same Christ, who is at once God and man by nature? And what manner of existence will He have according to them, if He has become man by a conversion of the deity, and if he has become God by a change of the flesh? For the mutation¹⁷⁵⁷ of these, the one into the other, is a complete subversion of both. Let the discussion, then, be considered by us again in a different way.