". . . They say," expounds Justinian, "that there were originally an innumerable host of minds united in contemplation and love of God. But, being subdued by satiety, their devotion cooled, and hence they became associated with bodies and names of a higher or lower nature in proportion to the degree of their falling off. Those who were least deteriorated passed into the sun, moon, and stars; a lower class into gross bodies like our own; whilst those affected with the greatest perversity coalesced with the frigid and fuliginous matter of which demons are constituted. One only remained unchanged in love and contemplation of the Deity, and that one was Christ. But all bodies are liable to perish utterly; and he, becoming at once God and man, first threw off his body; and all bodies will ultimately do likewise, returning into unity and again becoming minds. Hence impious men and demons will at last attain to the same celestial state as the divine and saintly. Thus Christ differs in no manner from other living beings. But Pythagoras said that unity was the beginning of all things; and Plato taught similarly, and asserted that souls were sent into bodies as a punishment. Wherefore he called the body a sepulchre and a chain, as being that wherein the soul was buried and bound. And the soul of a philosopher which pollutes itself with paederasty and iniquity performs a triple circuit of chastisement in a millennium, and in the thousandth year becomes winged and takes its flight. . . . Therefore I exhort you, holy fathers, to examine and condemn in general synod all who think like Origen."
The next extract I draw from his lengthy exposition of
the principles of Catholicism with a view to the condemnation
of the Three Chapters. In this document he relies
mainly on the interpretation of Scripture by Athanasius,
Cyril of Alexandria, Basil the Great, Gregory Nazianzen,
and Gregory of Nyssa[1]:
". . . And when we say that Christ is God, we do not deny
him to be man; and when we say that he is man we do not deny
- ↑ Chron. Paschal., an. 552.
