the step, by which through Him we may be able to mount unto Him:" "the descent of the Creator to the creature is the advance of believers to things eternal:" and, "it is not doubtful that man's nature has been taken into such connection by the Son of God, that, not only in that Man who is the first-born of all creation, but even in all His saints, there is one and the same Christ: and as the Head cannot be divided from the limbs, so neither the limbs from the Head. For though it belong not to this life, but to that of eternity, that God be all in all, yet even now He is the undivided inhabitant of His temple, which is the Church." For all the above is contained in our Lord's own words, "that they all may be one, as Thou, Father, in Me, and I in Thee," on which S. Athanasius[13] says, "that all, being carried by Me, may be all one body and one spirit, and reach the perfect man:"--"for, as the Lord having clothed Himself in a body, became man, so we men are deified by the Word, being assumed through His flesh." S. Gregory,[14] of Nyssa, has unfolded this idea thus: "since from no other source but from our lump was the flesh which received God, which, by the resurrection, was together with the Godhead exalted; just as in our own body the action of one organ of sense communicates sympathy to all that which is united with the part, so, just as if the whole nature (of man) were one living creature, the resurrection of a part passes throughout the whole, being communicated from the part to the whole, according to the nature's continuity and union." And another,[15] interpreting the words, "that they all may be one," "thus I will, that they being drawn into unity, may be blended with each other, and becoming as one body, may all be in Me, who carry all in that one temple which I have assumed; the temple, namely, of His Body." And lastly, S. Hilary[16] deduces this not only from the Incarnation, but from the Blessed Eucharist. "For, if the Word be really made flesh, and we really receive the Word as flesh, in the food of the Lord, how is He not to be thought to remain in us naturally, since, both in being born a man, He assumed the nature of our flesh, never to be severed from Him, and has joined the nature of His flesh to the eternal nature under the sacrament of the flesh to be communicated to us."