saint athanasius' "on the incarnation of the word," part one

Read St. Athanasius' On the Incarnation of the Word recently and thought I'd post some quotes over the next few days. I'll start with a couple of early sentences that seem to set forth his aim for that work.

"You must understand why it is that the Word of the Father, so great and so high, has been manifest in bodily form... He has been manifested in a human body for this reason only, out of the love and goodness of His Father, for the salvation of us men. We will begin, then, with the creation of the world and with God its Maker, for the first fact that you must grasp is this: the renewal of creation has been wrought by the Self-same Word Who made it in the beginning." (Chapter One)