On the Reasons of the Holy Spirit, Book II

By this most manifest reason, it is clear that for the completion of the universe, it was necessary for God to come among men and be clothed in human flesh, in which He might feel, embrace from the heart, and suffer whatever can exist in the world of afflictions. See many other reasons why it was necessary for Him to be so humiliated in the second book of the sacred apodixeon demonstrations. Therefore, against Cerinthus, the Ebionites, Nestorius, and Muhammad, who deny the divinity of Jesus Christ, these things fight amply and provide satisfaction. For it was impossible for man to pay to the infinite God on behalf of man. God-man, homoousion consubstantial with the Father, received our miseries into Himself so that He might nail them to the cross, and by paying through the punishment of death, He might restore to the Father, by rising again, the liberty and homeland which the first parent had lost in His blood, for those stained through baptism. Another error of Muhammad is excluded, by which he asserts that He is a spirit of God. For a spirit differs from Him as a word does from a mind. It appears that the church of the Indians, Asians, and Africans is deceived, which calls Him by the same name in its symbol of faith: Iesus Christus mansus codus Jesus Christ the Holy Spirit. For they are necessarily distinct persons. The Patripassians are argued against as heretical, because it could not be satisfied to the Father's power if that very same power had suffered or been incarnated to take on miseries (for the divinity could not suffer anything in the Father, nor in the Son, nor in the Holy Spirit). This mystery can scarcely be conceived by the human mind, which is itself immersed in such great and many shadows that it cannot grasp its own mode, let alone conceive that supreme divine nature. I will strengthen such an arduous conception with a comparison.