the wine in it into water, nor the water in it into wine. In exactly the same way, then, with the matter under dispute: even if the fire has not become iron, and the iron has not become fire, that denial does you no good; it does not prevent both from being transformed into a third substance, with all the alteration and corruption that entails, just as I explained regarding the mingling of two dense bodies. Everyone knows that whatever fire penetrates and unites with, it changes, transforms, and ruins its original form, and the fire that fuses with it is no longer pure fire.

It is likewise common knowledge that the live coal you took as an analogy for the Messiah—saying, “God and Jesus united as fire unites with iron until they became a live coal”—is such that, when that coal is struck with a hammer, plunged into water, or stretched out, each of those actions affects the composite as a whole; they do not affect a piece of iron devoid of fire, nor fire devoid of iron.

From this it necessarily follows that everything that befell the Messiah—being struck and spat upon in the face, the crown of thorns placed on His head, His eating, drinking, and worship, His walking and riding, His being carried in the womb and born, and all the other things that befell Him, together with death—whether the earlier one, or the later one when he descends to earth—and, according to their claim, the crucifixion, must all have befallen the Messiah who, in their view, is both perfect God and perfect man, without any distinction between His divinity and His humanity. It is just like everything that befalls a live coal—lifting, setting down, hammering, stretching, shaping into a particular form, plunging it into water, and so forth—befalls the live coal in its entirety.

No rational person would say that such actions affect the iron independently of the fire; rather, they affect the live coal that has come into being from the fusion of iron and fire—or of wood and fire—and is no longer pure iron.