Chapter 7.--In What Manner We are Gathered from Many into One Through One Mediator.
11. This mystery, this sacrifice, this priest, this God, before He was sent and came, being made of a woman--of Him, all those things which appeared to our fathers in a sacred and mystical way by angelical miracles, or which were done by the fathers themselves, were similitudes; in order that every creature by its acts might speak in some way of that One who was to be, in whom there was to be salvation in the recovery of all from death. For because by the wickedness of ungodliness we had recoiled and fallen away in discord from the one true and supreme God, and had in many things become vain, being distracted through many things and cleaving fast to many things; it was needful, by the decree and command of God in His mercy, that those same many things should join in proclaiming the One that should come, and that One should come so proclaimed by these many things, and that these many things should join in witnessing that this One had come; and that so, freed from the burden of these many things, we should come to that One, and dead as we were in our souls by many sins, and destined to die in the flesh on account of sin, that we should love that One who, without sin, died in the flesh for us; and by believing in Him now raised again, and by rising again with Him in the spirit through faith, that we should be justified by being made one in the one righteous One; and that we should not despair of our own resurrection in the flesh itself, when we consider that the one Head had gone before us the many members; in whom, being now cleansed through faith, and then renewed by sight, and through Him as mediator reconciled to God, we are to cleave to the One, to feast upon the One, to continue one.
Chapter 8.--In What Manner Christ Wills that All Shall Be One in Himself.
12. So the Son of God Himself, the Word of God, Himself also the Mediator between God and men, the Son of man, [493] equal to the Father through the unity of the Godhead, and partaker with us by the taking upon Him of humanity, interceding for us with the Father in that He was man, [494] yet not concealing that He was God, one with the Father, among other things speaks thus: "Neither pray I for these alone," He says, "but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all may be one; as Thou, Father, art in me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that Thou hast sent me. And the glory which Thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one." [495]
[493] 1 Tim. ii. 5
[494] Rom. viii. 34
[495] John xvii. 20-22
Chapter 9.--The Same Argument Continued.
He did not say, I and they are one thing; [496] although, in that He is the head of the church which is His body, [497] He might have said, and they are, not one thing, [498] but one person, [499] because the head and the body is one Christ; but in order to show His own Godhead consubstantial with the Father (for which reason He says in another place, "I and my Father are one" [500] ), in His own kind, that is, in the consubstantial parity of the same nature, He wills His own to be one, [501] but in Himself; since they could not be so in themselves, separated as they are one from another by divers pleasures and desires and uncleannesses of sin; whence they are cleansed through the Mediator, that they may be one [502] in Him, not only through the same nature in which all become from mortal men equal to the angels, but also through the same will most harmoniously conspiring to the same blessedness, and fused in some way by the fire of charity into one spirit. For to this His words come, "That they may be one, even as we are one;" namely, that as the Father and Son are one, not only in equality of substance, but also in will, so those also may be one, between whom and God the Son is mediator, not only in that they are of the same nature, but also through the same union of love. And then He goes on thus to intimate the truth itself, that He is the Mediator, through whom we are reconciled to God, by saying, "I in them, and Thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one." [503]
[496] Unum
[497] Eph. i. 22, 23
[498] Unum
[499] Unus
[500] John x. 30; unum.
[501] Unum
[502] Unum
[503] John xvii. 23