Wherefore, as we said before, he united man unto God. For if man had not overcome the adversary of men, the enemy had not been justly conquered; and, on the other hand, if God had not given and granted salvation, we could never have a firm indefeasible possession of it; and if man had not be united unto God, he could not have been a partaker of immortality. It behoved, therefore, the Mediator between God and man, by his own participation of the nature of each of them, to bring them both into friendship and agreement with each other.
—Irenaeus as quoted by John Owen in The Person of Christ - God and Man
