Page:The Nestorians and their rituals, volume 2.djvu/90

62 Mary is too plainly taught in the above extracts to need any comment. The author of the Khâmees, as quoted in § 6. b. goes so far as to say that "He was borne in the womb according to the laws and peculiarities of nature, and was brought forth by His mother through the … pangs of labour;" and the condemnation contained in § 5. is directed against the different heresies which, in their estimation, go to destroy the perfect humanity of the Saviour. He was everything, say they, that man is, sin only excepted, and therefore, they add, He must have a Person as man has, otherwise He would be man imperfectly. Every nature must have a person in order to subsist, and without which it cannot subsist; so argues Mar Abd Yeshua after Aristotle, "since the Person is the first essence or principle which betokens the reality of the existence of the general essence." And the same author in Appendix B. part iii. c. 5, reasons thus: "The Divine Nature and Person,21 before and after the union, is an eternal, uncompounded Spirit. But the human nature and person is a temporal and compound body. Now, if the union destroys the attributes which distinguish the Natures and Persons in, either the one or the other of these becomes a nonentity, or they become a thing which is neither nor man. But if the union does not destroy the attributes which distinguish the Natures and Persons in , then Christ must exist in two Natures, and two Persons, which are united in the Parsopa of Filiation." This human Person, however, was so intimately, and after a manner so incomprehen-