It follows entirely, then, that the One who was blended with our nature should accept this blending with us through all the characteristics of our nature.
For just as those who wash dirt from clothing do not leave some stains while washing out others, but cleanse the whole fabric from its spots from beginning to end, so that the garment becomes equally bright throughout from the washing, in the same way, since human life had been stained by sin at its beginning, its end, and everything in between, the cleansing power had to pass through the whole. It was not to heal one part by purification while leaving another untreated.
For this reason, since our life is bounded on either side by two limits—I mean its beginning and its end—the power that corrects nature is found at each boundary: it touches the beginning, extends itself as far as the end, and takes in everything between them. Since there is one entrance into life for all human beings, from where should the One entering among us have entered into our life? 'From heaven,' perhaps says the person who rejects the form of human generation as shameful and dishonorable.
But humanity was not in heaven, nor was any disease of evil at home in the life beyond the world. The One who was blended with humanity undertook this intermingling for the purpose of benefiting it.
Where, then, evil did not exist and human life was not lived, how can anyone demand that from there a human being should be joined to God—or rather, not a human being, but some image and likeness of a human being? What correction of our nature could have taken place if, while the earthly living being was diseased, some other heavenly being received the divine intermingling? For the sick person cannot be healed unless the suffering part itself receives the healing.
If, then, what was sick was on earth, but divine power, looking only to what befitted itself, did not touch the sick part, its concern with things that have nothing in common with us would have been useless to humanity. For what is unfitting in relation to divinity is equally so in every case—if indeed it is lawful at all to think anything unfitting of the divine except evil.
But for the person who judges divine greatness so narrowly as to suppose that it consists in refusing fellowship with the characteristics of our nature, the alleged indignity is no less if the divine takes the form of a heavenly body than if it takes an earthly one. For all creation stands equally below the Highest and Inaccessible One because of the height of His nature, and the whole is equally beneath Him. What is wholly inaccessible is not accessible to one thing while unapproachable by another; rather, it rises equally above all existing things.
Therefore the earth is not farther from that dignity, nor is heaven nearer, nor do the beings dwelling in either realm differ from one another in this respect, as though some could touch the inaccessible nature while others were kept away. Otherwise we would have to suppose that the power governing the whole does not extend equally through everything, but is more abundant in some things and deficient in others. And from this difference of less and more, greater and smaller, it would follow that the divine is composite and not consistent with itself, if by reason of its nature it were thought to be far from us but near to something else and therefore easily grasped because of that nearness.
But true reason, when considering that exalted dignity, looks neither downward nor upward by comparison. For all things stand equally beneath the power that presides over the whole. Therefore, if they think earthly nature unworthy of union with the divine, no other nature could be found that possesses such worthiness. But if all things fall equally short of the dignity, one thing is fitting for God: to benefit the one in need. Since, then, we confess that the healing power came where the disease was, what have we believed that lies outside a fitting conception of God?