The library · Edition and sources
Athanasius: On the Incarnation
Archibald Robertson; NPNF2-04 (1892) · Translated text
Quiet reading. References stay within reach.
Reading appearance
Accessibility options
Saved in this browser and shared between texts. Labels and line patterns remain in every theme.
About this reading layout
Source wording, punctuation, paragraph boundaries and supplied line breaks are retained. Long prose also has editorial reading breaks at sentence boundaries. Substantial passages already enclosed in double quotation marks are set apart; this does not identify their source or establish a connection.
These added breaks are reading aids, not claims about the original manuscript’s layout. Poetry is lineated only where the downloaded text supplies line breaks. References and edition notes remain with their text.
Section 46 Edition note 1
When did men begin to desert the worshipping of idols, save since God, the true Word of God, has come among men? Or when have the oracles among the Greeks, and everywhere, ceased and become empty, save when the Saviour has manifested Himself upon earth? 2. Or when did those who are called gods and heroes in the poets begin to be convicted of being merely mortal menEdition note 2, save since the Lord erected His conquest of death, and preserved incorruptible the body he had taken, raising it from the dead?
3. Or when did the deceitfulness and madness of demons fall into contempt, save when the power of God, the Word, the Master of all these as well, condescending because of man’s weakness, appeared on earth? Or whenEdition note 3 did the art and the schools of magic begin to be trodden down, save when the divine manifestation of the Word took place among men? 4. And, in a word, at what time has the wisdom of the Greeks become foolish, save when the true Wisdom of God manifested itself on earth? For formerly the whole world and every place was led astray by the worshipping of idols, and men regarded nothing else but the idols as gods.
But now, all the world over, men are deserting the superstition of the idols, and taking refuge with Christ; and, worshipping Him as God, are by His means coming to know that Father also Whom they knew not. 5. And, marvellous fact, whereas the objects of worship were various and of vast number, and each place had its own idol, and he who was accounted a god among them had no power to pass over to the neighbouring place, so as to persuade those of neighbouring peoples to worship him, but was barely served even among his own people; for no one else worshipped his neighbour’s god—on the contrary, each man kept to his own idolEdition note 4, thinking it to be lord of all;—Christ alone is worshipped as one and the same among all peoples; and what the weakness of the idols could not do—to persuade, namely, even those dwelling close at hand,—this Christ has done, persuading not only those close at hand, but simply the entire world, to worship one and the same Lord, and through Him God, even His Father.