Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VIII/Remains of the Second and Third Centuries/Melito, the Philosopher/Chapter 14

by Various

VII.

On the Nature of Christ.^[1]

For there is no need, to persons of intelligence, to attempt to prove, from the deeds of Christ subsequent to His baptism, that His soul and His body, His human nature^[2] like ours, were real, and no phantom of the imagination.  For the deeds done by Christ after His baptism, and especially His miracles, gave indication and assurance to the world of the Deity hidden in His flesh.  For, being at once both God and perfect man likewise, He gave us sure indications of His two natures:^[3]  of His Deity, by His miracles during the three years that elapsed after His baptism; of His humanity, during the thirty similar periods which preceded His baptism, in which, by reason of His low estate^[4] as regards the flesh, He concealed the signs of His Deity, although He was the true God existing before all ages.

Footnotes

1. In Anastasius of Sinai, The Guide, ch. 13.
2. Or, according to Migne’s punctuation, “His soul, and the body of His human nature.”  The words are, τὸ ἀληθὲς καὶ ἀφάνταστον τῆς ψυχῆς αὐτοῦ καὶ τοῦ σώματος τῆς καθ᾽ ἡμᾶς ἀνθρωπινῆς φύσεως.
3. Οὐσίας.  [Comp. note 13, infra.]
4. Τὸ ἀτέλες.