As for the Nestorians, they maintained that the Messiah consists of two persons and two natures that share a single will. When, in their view, the nature of the divinity came to be joined with the humanity, the two possessed one volition. The divinity, they say, is immune to increase and decrease and cannot blend with anything, whereas the humanity is liable to both. On that basis Christ is simultaneously God and man: He is God by the essence of the divinity, which admits neither increase nor decrease, and He is man by the essence(1) of the humanity, which does admit increase and decrease. They further asserted that Mary bore the Messiah in respect of his humanity, and that the divinity never left him at any time.

All of these sects shrink from declaring that the Messiah is a servant of God, although he himself did not shrink from that designation. They turned him away from servitude to God, though he never wished to be turned away from it; indeed, the loftiest rank(2) of servitude is to be a servant of God. Muhammad and Abraham are better than he, and their highest station lies in perfecting every degree of servitude. God was pleased to have him as His servant, yet the Trinitarians were not pleased with that.

The Arians—the followers of Arius—held that Christ is a servant of God like the other prophets and messengers; he is subject to His lordship, created, and fashioned. The Negus (al-Najāshī) followed this doctrine. Whenever the Trinitarians managed to seize one of these believers, they would execute him in the worst possible way and treat him as they would someone who had reviled the Messiah with the gravest insult.

As for the common folk of those three sects, they do not understand what their theologians actually teach. Instead, they simply say that God approached Mary as a man approaches a woman, made her pregnant, and she then bore Him a son; they know nothing of the ravings their leaders have invented.