SUCH is the Catholic Faith touching the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus
Christ--a doctrine defined by the Holy Ghost, and declared by the
beloved disciple; such was the prophecy of Isaiah--"Behold, a virgin
shall conceive, and bear a Son, and shall call his name Immanuel;" [1]
such was the salutation of the angel Gabriel--"Hail, thou that art
highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.
. . . . . . The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the
Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which
shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God:" [2] such is the
witness of the apostles--"God was manifest in the flesh." [3]
Again--"In Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." [4] So
the Church confesses: "For the right faith is, that we believe and
confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and man;
God, of the substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds; and
man, of the substance of His mother, born in the world: perfect God and
perfect man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting: equal to
the Father as touching His Godhead; and inferior to the Father as
touching His manhood: who although He be God and man, yet He is not
two, but one Christ: one, not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh,
but by taking of the manhood into God: one altogether; not by confusion
of substance, but by unity of person; for as the reasonable soul and
flesh is one man, so God and man is one Christ."
