Note 83 — SECTION III.

Here again Gale, from not understanding, opposes Iamblichus. For he says, “sed nec hoc sequitur. S. Maximus, ubi hypostaticam unionem declarat; hæc inquit, cernuntur in corpore et anima. Una ex utroque confit hypostasis composita. Servat autem in se naturam perfectam utriusque sc. corporis et animæ, και την τουτων διαφοραν ασυμφυρτον και τα ιδιωματα ασυμφυρτα και ασυγχυτα.” i. e. “But neither does this follow. S. Maximus, where he unfolds hypostatic union, says these things are perceived in the soul and body. One composite hypostasis is produced from both. But this hypostasis preserves in itself the perfect nature of each, and likewise the difference of these unmingled, end the peculiarities unmingled and unconfused.” This hypostatic union, however; as we have before observed, cannot take place between divine inspiration and the soul, because the former is perfectly exempt from the latter.

Gale adds, “Quæro autem quid velit Iamblichus per αμφοιν? Opinor, ψυχην et την εξωθεν θειαν επιπνοιαν. Non facile evincet επιπνοιαν esse αιδιον τι, utpote quæ sit transiens dei actio.” i. e. “I ask what Iamblichus means by both. I think the soul and divine inspiration externally derived. But he will not easily prove that inspiration is something eternal, because it is a transient energy of God.” Gale is right in his conjecture, that Iamblichus by the word both in this place, means the soul and divine inspiration externally derived; for it can admit of no other meaning; but when he adds, that inspiration cannot be something eternal, because it is a transient energy of divinity, he shows himself to be as bad a theologist as he is a philosopher. For God being an eternal, or rather a supereternal nature, his energies have nothing to do with time and its transitive progressions, but are stably simultaneous; so that transition does not exist in his inspiring influence, but in the recipients of it, these being of a temporal and mutable nature. Hence it is just as absurd to call any energy of divinity transient, as it would be to say that the light of the sun is transient, because it shines through diaphanous, but not through opaque, substances.