and changed into a son of man; but rather we must believe that while remaining
28 SAINT AUGUSTINE - SERMONS the stomach; but you all hear it all, each of you hears it all. Nor am I afraid, while I'm talking, that one of you by hearing it may swallow it all, so that another would be left with nothing to eat; but I wish you all to be so attentive, cheating nobody's ears and mind, that each of you may hear it all, and leave all of it for the others to hear too. Nor does this happen at successive times, in such a way that the sermon being delivered first comes into you, then has to go out from you if it is to enter someone else; but it comes simultaneously to all of you, and the whole of it to each of you. And if the whole of it could be retained in the memory, just as all of you have come to hear the whole of it, so you could each go away with the whole of it.
How much more, then, could the Word of God, through which all things were made (Jn 1:3), and which while abiding in itself renews all things (Wis 7:27); which is neither confined in places, nor stretched out through times, nor varied by short and long quantities,8 nor woven together out of different sounds, nor ended by silence; how much more could this Word, of such a kind as that, make a mother's womb fruitful by assuming a body, while still not departing from the bosom of the Father; come forth from there to be seen by human eyes, from here continue to enlighten angelic minds; go forth from there to all the earth, from here to stretch out the heavens;9 from there become man, from here make man?
Thought and Word
3. None of you therefore should believe that the Son of God was converted and changed into a son of man; but rather we must believe that while remaining the Son of God he became the son of man, and that the divine substance was not consumed, while the human substance was perfectly assumed. Just because it says, you see, the Word was God, and the Word became flesh (Jn 1:1.14), it doesn't mean that the Word became flesh in such a way that it ceased to be God; considering that in that very flesh which the Word became Emmanuel was bom, God with us (Mt 1:23).
Just as the word which we carry in the mipd becomes voice when we utter it from the mouth; and yet it isn't changed into this voice, but remains whole in itself, while the voice is assumed to carry it out to others; and in this way what is to be understood can remain inside, and what is to be heard can sound outside. Yet for all that it's the same thing that is uttered in a sound as had previously sounded in silence; and thus when word becomes voice, it isn't changed into voice, but remaining in the light of the mind, it both goes forth to the listener in the voice of flesh it has assumed, and still does not abandon the one who thought it.
I don't mean the voice which is thought about in silence, and which is either Greek or Latin or any other language; but I mean when the matter itself, before any variety of expression in any language, is so to say naked to the intelligence in the bed-chamber of the mind, and which in order to come out from there is clothed in the voice of the speaker. Each of these, however, both what is being thought of by intelligence and what is sounding out loud in speech, is changeable