To Florus 4.50

Finally, what prize was there for endurance if the pain of wounds and blows could not reach the soul because the path of sensation was blocked? What, then, did Apollinaris’s flattery achieve? All the beauty of the virtues Christ had embodied was emptied out and withered by undeserved praises of his nature. Stripped of all the splendor of its truth, it exposed the Mediator’s sacred teaching to ridicule. Moreover, he would not merely lose the distinction of his works, being fortunate by birth rather than by virtue: he would also face charges of fraud if he told mortals, “Strive toward the patience of a man who feels nothing, and come through real torments to the virtues of an unreal body that suffers no pain”; or, “Conquer the definite impulses of your own nature and imitate the chastity of someone whom weakness made appear pure.” Certainly nothing more profane or wicked can be imagined than such inventions.

Apollinaris had not actually said all these things. But by making that one pronouncement—that the man Christ lacked the sensations implanted by nature, which fall into vice through excess rather than through use—he received all these replies from the catholics in silence, condemned by his own opinion. For the catholic faith is built by affirming all the things whose denial, or the consequences of whose denial, formed and condemned Apollinaris’s heresy. Judge, then, what verdict should be passed on you. You condemn the union of the sexes like Manichaeus. You separate the nature of Christ’s flesh from the common condition of humanity, according to the Manichaeans. You accuse the desire of the flesh, following the statements of your teacher Manichaeus. You say that sensory desire was not present in Christ’s body, whether according to the Manichaeans or according to the Apollinarists. Yet you want us to call you neither an Apollinarist nor a Manichaean! Still, I yield and grant you a favor; I do not regret being generous. As far as I am concerned, you may avoid appearing a follower of Apollinaris, for he devised the lesser impiety. But you yourself make it impossible for you to be called anything other than a Manichaean.