was taken from Mary and the human and divine natures did not continue,
each in its perfection, this may have happened in one of three ways.
Either Godhead was translated into manhood, or manhood into Godhead, or
both were so modified and mingled that neither substance kept its proper
form. But if Godhead was translated into manhood, that has happened
which piety forbids us to believe, viz. while the manhood continued in
unchangeable substance Godhead was changed, and that which was by nature
passible and mutable remained immutable, while that which we believe to
be by nature immutable and impassible was changed into a mutable thing.
This cannot happen on any show of reasoning. But perchance the human
nature may seem to be changed into Godhead. Yet how can this be if
Godhead in the conception of Christ received both human soul and body?
Things cannot be promiscuously changed and interchanged. For since some
substances are corporeal and others incorporeal, neither can a corporeal
substance be changed into an incorporeal, nor can an incorporeal be
changed into that which is body, nor yet incorporeals interchange their
proper forms; for only those things can be interchanged and transformed
which possess the common substrate of the same matter, nor can all of
these so behave, but only those which can act upon and be acted on by
each other. Now this is proved as follows: bronze can no more be
converted into stone than it can be into grass, and generally no body
can be transformed into any other body unless the things which pass into
each other have a common matter and can act upon and be acted on by each
other, as when wine and water are mingled both are of such a nature as
to allow reciprocal action and influence. For the quality of water can
be influenced in some degree by that of wine, similarly the quality of
wine can be influenced by that of water. And therefore if there be a
great deal of water but very little wine, they are not said to be
mingled, but the one is ruined by the quality of the other. For if you
pour wine into the sea the wine is not mingled with the sea but is lost
in the sea, simply because the quality of the water owing to its bulk
has been in no way affected by the quality of the wine, but rather by
its own bulk has changed the quality of the wine into water. But if the
natures which are capable of reciprocal action and influence are in