d been
formed new and real and not taken from man, to what purpose was the
tremendous tragedy of the conception? Where the value of His long
Passion? I cannot but consider foolish even a human action that is
useless. And to what useful end shall we say this great humiliation of
Divinity was wrought if ruined man has not been saved by the conception
and the Passion of Christ--for they denied that he was taken into
Godhead? Once more then, just as the error of Eutyches took its rise
from the same source as that of Nestorius, so it hastens to the same
goal inasmuch as according to Eutyches also the human race has not been
saved,[72] since man who was sick and needed health and salvation was
not taken into Godhead. Yet this is the conclusion he seems to have
drawn, if he erred so deeply as to believe that Christ's body was not
taken really from man but from a source outside him and prepared for the
purpose in heaven, for He is believed to have ascended with it up into
heaven. Which is the meaning of the text: none hath ascended into heaven
save Him who came down from heaven.

[70] The ecclesiastical _uia media_, with the relegation of opposing
theories to the extremes, which meet in a common fount of falsity, owes
something to Aristotle and to our author. _Vide infra_, p. 118.

[71] The use of this kind of argument by Boethius allays any suspicion
as to the genuineness of _Tr_. iv. which might be caused by the use of
allegorical interpretation therein. Note also that in the _Consolatio_
the framework is allegory, which is also freely applied in the details.

[72] Another _reductio ad absurdum_ or _ad impietatem_, cf. _supra_, p.
98, note b.

VI.

Sed satis de ea parte dictum uidetur, si corpus quod Christus excepit ex
Maria non credatur adsumptum. Si uero adsumptum est ex Maria neque
permansit perfecta humana diuinaque natura, id tribus effici potuit modis:
aut enim diuinitas in humanitatem translata est aut humanitas in
diuinitatem aut utraeque in se ita temperatae sunt atque commixtae, ut
neutra substantia propriam formam teneret. Sed si diuinitas in humanitatem
translata est, factum est, quod credi nefas est, ut humanitate inmutabili
substantia permanente diuinitas uerteretur et quod passibile atque mutabile
naturaliter exsisteret, id inmutabile permaneret, quod uero inmutabile
atque inpassibile naturaliter creditur, id in rem mutabilem uerteretur. Hoc
igitur