THEODORE BEZA

the power by which corruption and its fruit, and the second death, are gradually abolished in those who have apprehended Christ either in the word or in the Sacraments, does not flow from the substance of Christ's flesh itself, as if it resided in it subjectively—which would be a purely Eutychian dogma—but proceeds from the Word or from the divinity of that same Christ: and therefore, that essential and oral manducation of Christ's flesh, which you bring into the Supper, would thus also be useless. Nor is there a reason why we should say that we are dividing the person of Christ with Nestorius. For he does not separate the natures who, just as he preserves them and their essential properties, which do not exceed their subjects, in the hypostatic union itself, so he distinguishes their energies in the office of mediator, with the divinity, namely, performing what is of the one divine nature, and the humanity performing what is human, just as Leo, Bishop of Rome, writing to Flavian of Antioch, explains most copiously and, indeed, most Christianly. But this vivification is no less proper to the Divinity than the creation of the world. Therefore, you will say, the perception of the flesh of Christ itself is excluded as useless and vain: certainly that oral one, and the one that is a real συνάφειαν conjunction of His flesh with ours, and conversely our union with His flesh, which would be a monster