Severus - Letter XIV

OF THE SAME FROM THE SOLUTION OR DEFENCE IN ANSWER TO THE 15^th QUESTION OF THOSE THAT WERE SENT TO HIM BY THOMAS HIS SYNCELLUS. [513-8.] 

We therefore judge that which was desired by those who assembled at Chalcedon against the truth, to banish the confession that Christ is to be recognised as from two natures, and to introduce instead the confession that he is to be recognised as in two natures, as the company of Nestorius desire, to be abominable and also impious, and we will never propound the same teaching (?) as those who, in order to open the gates to the doctrines of Nestorius, ..... so we also require the opposite, that the one be openly proclaimed, and the other completely suppressed and banished in accordance with the laws of the holy church.

For let the means of remedy be introduced by the same similar drugs as those by which it was desired to produce the sickness; and let us not neglect things that are so manifest, and go about and pick out, or search as among reeds, and seek if anywhere in the writings of the holy fathers of the orthodox we occasionally find 'difference' or 'in two' or 'from two' indiscriminately and incautiously stated. Indeed in the 11th book of the interpretative narrative of the Gospel of John the holy Cyril used the expression 'in two' of the separate hypostases as follows: «Everywhere and under all circumstances there will follow and coincide with the knowledge concerning the offspring the knowledge also concerning him who begot him; as indeed the converse also is true. But, if the statement is true and is unhesitatingly received, that the Father is understood together with and enters together with the Son, and the Son also with the Father, and the knowledge of each of them runs in the two, how can the Son be a creature, as. some impious men say?»; even as no one says that the name and fact of division and union are the same, as they themselves indeed suppressed the one and stated the other.