the Word through which the two natures became, as it were, one orientation and one will. The divine nature is not subject to increase or decrease, nor is it commingled with anything, whereas the human nature does accept increase and decrease. In consequence, the Messiah was thereby both God and man: God by the essence of the divinity, which neither grows nor diminishes, and man by the essence of the humanity, which is liable to growth and decline.

They further say: “Mary gave birth to the Messiah in respect of his humanity, and the divinity has never been separated from him since it united with that humanity.”

He said: I therefore discovered that the Jacobites state explicitly that Mary gave birth to God—exalted is Allah above what the fabricators describe and the deviators claim—and that He suffered, was crucified, died, and rose after three days from the dead. This is the unbelief for which all the other Christian sects, and even non-Christians, bear witness against them. As for the Melkites, we found that they have turned aside from such an explicit assertion to something outwardly less extreme.

They say: “The Messiah is one person with two natures, and each of the two natures possesses its own will: in his divinity he has a will like that of the Father and the Spirit, and in his humanity he has a will like that of Abraham and David.” By inventing this distinction they lead the casual listener to imagine that they have separated the divinity from the humanity, yet they then return to the very doctrine of the Jacobites, declaring: “Mary gave birth to a god, and ‘the Messiah’—a name which in their common view embraces both the divinity and the humanity—died in the body, while God did not die. The one whom Mary bore died in respect of the essence of his humanity.” How, then, can he be dead yet not have died? Is there, in fact, any difference between the two doctrines except the dispute over the natures?