838. My next conversation with them was about the Lord the Saviour. I said that God in His essence was Divine love, and that Divine love is like the purest fire. Love regarded in itself has no other aim than to enter into union with the beloved, and Divine love aims to unite itself with mankind and mankind with it, even to the point of God being in a person and a person being in God. Since Divine love is like the purest fire, it is plain that God, being of such a nature, could by no means be in a person or make a person be in Him. For to do so would reduce the whole person to a wisp of smoke. But because God by His essence was consumed with a passionate love of uniting Himself with mankind, it was necessary for Him to veil Himself in a body suitable to permit reception and linking. He therefore came down and took upon Himself a human form in accordance with the order established by Him from the creation of the world. This entailed being conceived by the power generated by Himself, being carried in the womb, born, and then growing in wisdom and love, and so approaching union with His Divine origin. By this means God became man, and man became God. It is plainly taught and witnessed that this is so by the writings about Him possessed by Christians and known as the Word. And God Himself, who in His Human is called Jesus Christ, says that the Father is in Him and He is in the Father; that anyone who sees Him sees the Father, and many other statements to the same effect.
[2] Reason too can see that God, whose love is like the purest fire, could in no other way unite Himself with mankind and mankind with Himself. Neither can the fire of the sun, as it is in its essence, touch a person, much less enter into him, if its rays were not veiled in atmospheres, and rendered suitable by the tempering of its heat. Neither can pure ether surround a person, much less penetrate the bronchi of his lungs unless it is surrounded by a dense envelope of air, and thus made suitable. Neither can a fish live in air, but only in the element in which it is equipped to live. No more can a king on earth attend personally or directly to every single detail in the government of his kingdom, but does so by means of his officers of higher and lower rank; these taken together make up his royal body. Neither can a person's soul display itself to another's eyes, enter on an association with him, and convey proofs of his love, except by means of his body. How then could God do so, except through a Human, which is His? On hearing these arguments the Africans perceived more than the rest, because they are inwardly rational; and each of them favoured these arguments in proportion to his perception of them.
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