Temptation of St. Anthony

Athanasius: Life of Antony

Fixity of Purpose Progress in virtue, and retirement from the world for the sake of it, ought not to be measured by time, but by desire and fixity of purpose. He was also mindful of the words spoken by the prophet Elias, ‘the Lord liveth before whose presence I stand to-day.’ For he observed that in saying ‘to-day’ the prophet did not compute the time that had gone by: but […]

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Athanasius: Defence of the Nicene Definition

On Eternal Generation of the Son God is self-existent, enclosing all things, and enclosed by none; within all according to His own goodness and power, yet without all in His proper nature. As then men create not as God creates, as their being is not such as God’s being, so men’s generation is in one way, and the Son is from the Father in another. For the offspring of men […]

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Athanasius: On the Incarnation of the Word

The Necessity of the God-Man[1] It was in the power of none other to turn the corruptible to incorruption, except the Saviour Himself, that had at the beginning also made all things out of nought; and that none other could create anew the likeness of God’s image for men, save the Image of the Father; and that none other could render the mortal immortal, save our Lord Jesus Christ, Who […]

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Rufinus On the Mystery of the Incarnation

The Fisher of Men The object of [the] mystery of the Incarnation … was that the divine virtue of the Son of God, as though it were a hook concealed beneath the form and fashion of human flesh (He being, as the Apostle Paul says, “found in fashion as a man”), might lure on the Prince of this world to a conflict, to whom offering His flesh as a bait, […]

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St. Jerome Writing

Jerome on the Septuagint and the Vulgate

The work is certainly hazardous and it is exposed to the attacks of my calumniators, who maintain that it is through contempt of the Seventy that I have set to work to forge a new version to take the place of the old. They thus test ability as they do wine; whereas I have again and again declared that I dutifully offer in the Tabernacle of God what I can, […]

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Theodoret on Dual Natures of Christ

Wherefore all the human qualities of the Lord Christ, hunger,… and thirst and weariness, sleep, fear, sweat, prayer, and ignorance, and the like, we affirm to belong to our nature which God the Word assumed and united to Himself in effecting our salvation. But the restitution of motion to the maimed, the resurrection of the dead, the supply of loaves, and all the other miracles we believe to be works […]

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Theodoret: Dialogues or Eranistes

Mediator between God and Man “There is one God, and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all.” … in this passage that very name ‘mediator’ stands indicative both of Godhead and of manhood. He is called a mediator because He does not exist as God alone; for how, if He had had nothing of our nature could He have mediated […]

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