of Christ belonged to the same genus as all other human natures; nothing appeared on him except what had appeared on others as well, and in fact even greater breaches of the natural order were manifested in people other than him.

In brief, whatever analogy they devise to explain this “union” turns into an argument against them and exposes the unsoundness of their doctrine.

If they then say, “This is something the mind cannot comprehend; it is above human reason,” the reply comes from two angles.

First, one must distinguish between (a) that which the intellect knows to be false and impossible, and (b) that which the intellect is merely incapable of conceiving or grasping.
(a) falls under what reason judges impossible; (b) belongs to what reason finds bewildering, and it is the second category about which the messengers inform us.
As for the first, only a liar would affirm it, and were such a claim admissible one might as well say that a single body could be both white and black at the same time, could occupy two places simultaneously, or that one and the same thing could exist and not exist in a single moment—claims the intellect knows to be impossible.

The Christians’ assertion is of the sort that plain reason recognizes as false; it is not something the mind is merely unable to conceive.

To illustrate: were someone to say about Mary, the mother of Christ, that she is “the wife of God,” that He took her in an “intellectual marriage,” just as they say that Christ is His Son by an “intellectual birth,” such a statement would be no more absurd in reason than their own claim concerning Christ, just as