l beings in such a way that the Son of God should be recognised
as the vehicle for all predicates, but not in so close a manner as to
amount to an absorption of the human personality into the Divine
Person."[3] The two natures of Christ had been asserted by the Church
against the Monophysites, and the two wills against the Monothelites,
but the Church never went on to admit the two Persons.[4] With regard to
the contention of Felix, we are consequently driven to the conclusion
that either the personality ascribed to Christ was "a mere abstraction,
a metaphysical link joining two essentially incompatible natures,"[5] or
that the dispute was only about names, and that by adopted son Felix and
the others meant nothing really different from the orthodox doctrine.[6]

[1] See John x. 35. Cp. Neander, v. p. 222.

[2] Neander (l.l.) Blunt, Art. on Adopt., puts this
differently: "There were (according to Felix) two births in our
Lord's life--(a) the assumption of man at the conception; (_b_)
the adoption of that man at baptism. Cp. Contra Felic., iii.
16: "Qui est Secundus Adam, accepit has geminas generationes;
primam quae secundum carnem est, secundum vero spiritatem, quae
per adoptionem fit, idem redemptor noster secundum hominem
complexus, in semet ipso continet, primam videlicet, quam
suscepit ex virgine nascendo, secundam vero quam initiavit in
lavacro [ ] a mortuis resurgendo."

[3] Blunt, article on Adopt.

[4] Cp. Paschasius: "In Christo gemina substantia, non gemina
persona est, quia persona personam consumere potest, substantia
vero substantiam non potest, siquidem persona res iuris est,
substantia res naturae."

[5] Blunt, _ibid._ Cp. also Alcuin contra Felic., iv. 5, where
he says that Felix, although he shrank from asserting the dual
personality of Christ, yet insisted on points which involved
it.

[6] So Walchius.

The first mention of the new theory appears in a letter of Elipandus to
the Abbot Fidelis, written in 783,[1] but it did not attract notice
till a little later. The pope Adrian, in his letter to the orthodox
bishops of Spain (785), speaks of the melancholy news of the heresy
having reached him--a heresy, he remarks, never before propounded,
unless by Nestorius. Together with Elipandus, he mentions Ascarius,[2]
Bishop of Braga, whom Elipandus had won over to his views. The new
doctrine seems to have made its way