to be the Spirit, saying by the prophet, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord hath anointed me”; as also the Apostle has said, “How God anointed him with the Holy Ghost.”  When, then, were these things spoken of him, but when he came in the flesh, and was baptized in Jordan, and the spirit descended on him?  And, indeed, the Lord himself said, “The Spirit shall take of mine,” and “I will send him”; and to his Disciples, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost.”  And, notwithstanding, he who, as the word and radiance of the Father, gives to others, now is said to be sanctified, because now he has become Man, and the Body that is sanctified is his.  From him, then, we have begun to receive the unction and the seal, John saying, “And ye have an unction from the Holy One”; and the Apostle, “And ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise.”  Therefore, because of us, and for us, are these words.  What advance, then, of promotion, and reward of virtue, or generally of conduct, is proved from this in our Lord’s instance?  For if he was not God, and then had become God—­if, not being king, he was preferred to the kingdom, your reasoning would have had some faint plausibility.  But if he is God, and the throne of his kingdom is everlasting, in what way could God advance?  Or what was there wanting to him who was sitting on his Father’s throne?  And if, as the Lord himself has said, the Spirit is his, and takes of his, and he sends it, it is not the Word, considered as the Word and Wisdom, who is anointed with the Spirit, which he himself gives, but the flesh assumed by him, which is anointed in him and by him; that the sanctification coming to the Lord as man, may come to all men from him.  For, not of itself, saith he, doth the Spirit speak, but the word is he who gives it to the worthy.  For this is like the passage considered above; for, as the Apostle hath written, “Who, existing in form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but humbled himself, and took a servant’s form,” so David celebrates the Lord, as the everlasting God and king, but sent to us, and assuming our body, which is mortal.  For this is his meaning in the Psalm, “All thy garments smell of myrrh, aloes, and cassia”; and it is represented by Nicodemus’s and by Mary’s company, when he came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pounds weight; and they took the spices which they had prepared for the burial of the Lord’s body.

What advancement, then, was it to the Immortal to have assumed the mortal?  Or what promotion is it to the Everlasting to have put on the temporal?  What reward can be great to the Everlasting God and King, in the bosom of the Father?  See ye not, that this, too, was done and written because of us and for us, that us who are mortal and temporal, the Lord, become man, might mate immortal, and bring into the everlasting kingdom of heaven?  Blush ye not, speaking lies against the divine oracles?  For when our Lord Jesus Christ had been among us, we,