Forbes on Article II: Of the Word or Son of God, which was made very Man

It is not strictly correct to speak of men ” sending,” or “giving” the Holy Ghost by administering the Sacraments ; it is safer to say that they give the Holy Ghost ministerially, i.e. that God uses their ministry to give the Holy Ghost c.

Such is the great God as He is revealed to us in our most holy faith, ineffable, incomprehensible, known to us for certain only so far as He is revealed to us, above time and beyond space, His own law, His own suffi ciency, His own centre, His own end. ” Canst thou by searching find out God ?” Yet so soon as He is made known to us in His beauty, goodness, and power, our souls, made originally to contemplate and enjoy Him, rise to the conception of His eternal attributes, and in the image of Him thus formed in the still waters of the human heart we cannot fail to own Him, as the true Lord of heaven and earth, as the blessed and only Potentate, the eternal Father, Whom to know is to live, Whom to serve is to reign.

c Vide St. Thomas, pt. I. qu. xliii. Compare with this the words of the Ordinal at the Consecration of Archbishop Parker : ” Take the Holy Ghost.”

FILIUS, qui est rerbum Patris, ab ceterno a Patre genitus, verus et ceternus Dens, ac Patri consubstantialis, in utero beatce Viryinis, ex illius substantid, natiiram humanam assumpsit : ita ut duce naturce, dimna et humana, inte- gre atque perfecte in imitate personcv fuerint insepara- Uliter conjunct^ ex quibus est umis Christus, vcrus Deus et vcrus homo, qui vere passus est, crucifixus, martinis, et sepnltm, ut Patrem nobis rcconciliaret, es- setque hostia, non tantum pro culpa originis, vemm etiampro omnibus actiialibus hominum peccatis.

Of the Word, or Son of God, ichich was made very Man.

” THE Son, which is the Word of the Father, begotten from everlasting of the Father, the very and eternal God, of one substance with the Father, took man’s nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin, of her sub stance : so that two whole and perfect natures, that is to say, the Godhead and Manhood, were joined to gether in one Person, never to be divided, whereof is one Christ, very God and very Man, who truly suf fered, was crucified, dead, and buried, to reconcile His Father to us ; and to be a sacrifice, not only for original guilt, but also for all actual sins of men.”

1. ALTHOUGH some of the ancients, such as Lactantius and Tertullian, from want of precision called God the

OF THE WORD, OR SON OF GOD, &C. 23

Word or the Person of the Son, the Holy Spirit, and though some of the early heretics distinguished God the Word from the Son of God by nature, yet the Church hath ever held that the Son and the Word are two terms describing that divine Person Who, eternally begotten by the Father by way of thought, is the ulti mate term of the intellect of God.

There are many names in Holy Scripture which apply to the Son, some of which refer to His divine substance, others to the nature He assumed, and some to the Person, which embraces both. Thus St. Ambrose says, “There are some names which evidently shew forth the properties of deity ; others which express the similitude of the Father and the Son ; others the unity of the divine Majesty. Those which express proper ties are generation, God, Son, Word. Those which express similitude, are splendour, character, mirror, image. Those which signify the eternal unity are wisdom, power, breath, life, — twelve names correspond ing to the twelve gems which glittered on the breast plate of the High-Priest a.” The name Word was happily chosen as expressing the two characters of the eternal Son, being at once Iv Sew and e/c Qeov.

2. ” Begotten from everlasting of the Father.” If there be one part of religion which demands from us a simple faith on authority rather than a comprehen sion from reason, it is this truth, which is so recondite and abstract, that all we know from the Holy Scripture is, that there is a Father who begets, and a Son who is

a DC Fide, lib. ii. § 3, vol. ii. p. 471.

begotten. God is not the object of investigation, but He is the object of knowledge. Perfect knowledge is so to know Him as to say that none can declare Him, yet all must know Him. He is to be believed, He is to be known, He is to be adored. St. Athanasius says, <{ It is unmeet to ask how the Word exists from God ; or how He is the brightness of God ; or how God begets ; or what is the mode of that generation. He were mad, who so dared to declare in speech that which is unexplorable, a property of the divine nature, known only to God and to His Son b.” And St. Basil, ff Dost thou believe that He is begotten, ask not how. If it be right to ask how the unbegotten is the un- begotten, then you may ask how the begotten is be gotten. But if the first is not subject of question, so neither is the second c.” All that we dare to say is, that it is — 1. Incomprehensible, being beyond our ken ; 2. Perfect, because no sterility can be predicated of God ; 3. Substantial, as proceeding from a cause or principle ; 4. Producing similarity, in that that which is begotten is like the begotten ; 5. That there be com munication of the substance of the Begotten. On this very profound subject we can do no better than quote the lines in which Prudentiusd sums up all that is known or revealed on the subject : —

“Hoc solum scimus, quod traditur esse Deum quern J^on genitus Genitor generaverit, unus et unum, Integer integrum, non cceptum, sed tamen ortum,

b Orat. Cont. Arian, ii. § 36. c Bas., Horn. 29.

d Apotheosis, 268.

OF THE WORD, OR SON OF GOD, &C. 25

Et coniperpetuum retro Patris, et Patre natum. Sed nee decisus Pater est, ut pars Patris esset Films : extendens nee se substantia tractim Produxit, minuitve aliquid de numine plcno ; Dum mutata novum procudit portio Natum. jN”on convertibilis, nee demutabilis unquam Est Deus, aut gignendo aliquid sibi detrahit : atqui Totus et ex toto Deus est, de lumine lumen. Quando autem lumen sine lumine ? quando refulgens Lux fulgore caret ? quando est ut proditus ignis Ignem deminuat ? Quando Pater et Deus et lux lucis Deus et Pater est ? qui, si Pater olim fuit, et serum genuit post tempore Natum Fit novus, inque novum jus proficit. Absit ut unquam Plenus proficiat, qui non eget incremento. Et Deus et genitor, lumenque et gloria semper Ille fuit: nee post sibi contulit, ut Pater esset. Sic fit ut aaternum credamus cum Patre Christum Illo auctore satum, cui nullus prajfuit auctor.”

3. ” The very and eternal God.” This is an assertion that in theological language the Son is avroQeos. In St. Athanasius e we find avroaocfrla, avroXoyos, avro- Svvaiiis, avrocfrcos, and such like, just as the Holy Ghost, in Gregory Nazianzen, is termed avTOKivyTov and avro- SvvajAov; and yet in another sense Athanasius denies that He is avTocroQia or avro\6yos. These contra dictions are easily reconciled if we consider the force of CIVTO in composition. If it mean that He proceedeth from no principle, but is an unbegotten substance, then He is not avToaotyta, for that were Sabellianism, which e Contra Gentes, § 46.

is to admit neither difference nor origin of Persons; but if the avro be taken to mean that He hath not the divinity or the wisdom by participation or relatively, in this sense the expression is correct. He is wisdom itself, inasmuch as He possesseth all these things not by participation, nor by external gift, as those who are partakers of it, and become wise and powerful and rea sonable by Him ; but He is the very Wisdom, the very Reason or Word, the very power of the Father, the very truth, the very light, the very righteousness, the very virtue : “As the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself f.”

4. The term ’ consubstantiaP was objected to by the Arians as unscriptural, and was accused both of mate rialism and Sabellianism. The word ovo-la, in the lan guage of Aristotle, stood for an individual substance numerically one, which is producible of nothing but itself. Improperly it stood for a species or genus. Based on this, Christianity took it in a sense of its own, such as we have no example of in things created, viz., that of a Being numerically one existing in three Persons ; so that the word is producible, or in one sense universal, without ceasing to be individual. Heretics objected to the term in the philosophical sense, and then, as applied to Father and Son, it either implied parts of a material subject, or involved no real distinc tion of persons. Hence the Homoousion. It was denied by Arians before the Mcene Synod, and was rejected at the Council of Antioch, when it was taken in a wrong

f St. John v. 26; cf. 1 St. John v. 11.

OF THE WORD, OR SON OF GOD, &C. 2T

sense by Paul of Samosata. ” They who deposed Samo- satene took ’ one in substance’ in a bodily sense, because Paul had attempted sophistry, and said, ’ unless Christ has of man become God it follows that He is in one substance with the Father ; and if so, of necessity there are three substances, one the previous substance, and the other two from it,’ and therefore guarding against this, they said with good reason that Christ was not one in substance. For the Son is not related to the Father as he imagined. But the bishops who anathe matized the Arian heresy, understanding Paul’s craft, and reflecting that the word ’ one in substance’ has not this meaning when used of things immaterial, and especially of God, and acknowledging that the Word is not a creature, but an offspring from the substance, and that the Father’s substance was the origin, and root, and fountain of the Son, and that He was of very truth the Father’s likeness, and not of another nature, as we are, and separate from the Father, but that as being from Him, He exists as Son indivisible, as radi ance is with respect to light, — and knowing too the illustrations used in Dionysius’ case, (the fountain) and the defence of ’ one in substance,’ and before that the Saviour’s saying, symbolical of oneness, fl and My Father are one, and he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father,’ — on these grounds, reasonably asserted on their part, that the Son was one in substance g.” Yet though the word thus admirably describes the truth, though it was all-important that the word should be

‘28 ARTICLE IT.

used in the Council, yet the Church was very tender in enforcing it. The next generation of bishops were more sparing in using it: even St. Athanasius himself did not insist upon it unreasonably : — ” It should be observed how careful the Fathers of the day were not to mix up the question of doctrine which rested on Catholic tradition with that of the adoption of a term which rested on a Catholic injunction. Not that the term was not in duty to be received, but it was to be received on account of its Catholic sense, and where the Catholic sense was held, the word might even by a sort of dispensation be waived11.”

5. The astonishing truth that the Word had as sumed human nature was stoutly denied by many of the early heretics. Hence we find how necessary it was for the Evangelists to lay such store by the human actions of our Lord. The Docetse denied that our Lord was man, and maintained that He was but a phantasm. In appearance only was He born and crucified. So also held the disciples of Simon Magus, adding that Simon the Cyrenian had suffered in His stead. Valentinus divided Christ from Jesus, holding that the first was born of Unigena, the latter of all the ^Eons at once. He called Him Christ and Sa viour, said that He passed through Mary, but had received nothing of her. The Ophites said that Christ was the serpent that had deceived Eve, and worshipped it. They hated Jesus the Son of the Virgin Mary, into whom they said that Christ descended : so taught b Athan., ib., p. 157, n.

OF THE WORD, OR SON OF GOD, &C. 29

some of the Manichees, and that to delude men’s senses, He appeared and simulated a death and resurrection. The Priscillianists denied that Christ had a pure exist ence, and asserted that He had not the true nature of man. Neither Arius nor Apollinaris admitted that our Lord was true man. Eutyches did not believe that our Lord was true and perfect man after His Ascension, and his followers believed that the human nature was absorbed into the divine, some before, some after the Resurrection ; others, again, held a composite nature.

Against these manifold errors, the Church of God, — resting on the sure word of Holy Scripture, which as serts that ” the Word was made flesh i ;” that Christ ” was made according to the flesh of the seed of David J;” that “Every spirit that confesseth that Christ is come in the flesh, is of Godk/; and that, ” Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also took part in the same1;” — has ever maintained that our Lord Christ was a true and perfect man, composed of a reasonable soul and human body. That human body was assumed as the instrument whereby the actions through which the world is saved have been wrought. The Word is said to have donned human nature, never more to doff it, to shew that without any change in itself, there is made the accession of another nature to itself, and in being so assumed, human nature has been deified, and

1 St. John i. 14. •> Rom. i. 3. k 1 St. John iv. 3.

1 Hcb. ii. 14.

has become life-giving, because it belongs to the Word. Nor is this deification merely relative; nor on the other hand is the humanity turned into divinity, but it is as subsisting in the Word.

Yet we must not hold with the Lutherans that the humanity of our Lord is ubiquitous, for the humanity of our Lord is in heaven, in a certain local circum scribed place.

6. ” In the womb of the Blessed Virgin, of her sub stance.” As the unenlightened and carnal nature of man shrank from recognising in the meek and lowly Jesus of Nazareth the Word made flesh, and so twisted and contorted itself on every side if so be that it might rid itself of this astounding conception, so it was a sore trial to it to believe that any daughter of man, however holy, should be brought into that awful proximity with the nature of God, which the true doctrine of the In carnation implies. Yet no earthly son was ever so completely the son of his mother, as God the Son is the Son of His. For in earthly generations there are two human parents who jointly give life and being to their offspring : whereas in Christ, the entire pure man hood came from the substance of His mother only.

The exaggerated and daily intensifying language of Roman divines on the subject of the present office of the Blessed Virgin, — (language peculiarly significant when we are assured on very high authority that we may be sure that ” whatsoever is prevalent in the Church under the eye of its public authority, prac tised by the people, and not censured by its pastors,

OF THE WORD, OR SON OF GOD, &C. 31

is at least conformable to faith, and innocent as to morals m,”) — such as that all graces come through her as the neck which unites Christ the Head with the Church the Body, or that she is our ’ Co-redemptrix/ the ’ Authoress of our everlasting salvation/ have pre vented Anglicans doing justice to the position of the Holy Virgin in the order of grace. They have shrunk from looking the doctrine concerning her fairly in the face. They have not allowed their minds to dwell on the incomparable singularity, on the incommunicable prerogative of Divine Maternity. While they freely dwell on the gifts of God in other saints, in the patri archs under the old law for instance, they shrink from resting on the sweet and holy images which surround the name of Mary. This is in every way wrong. A the ology that is afraid of possible consequences is sure to err. We must state the absolute truth, and leave con sequences to God. To eliminate from our moral the ology the idea of the Blessed Virgin, is to strip it of some of its most delicate bloom. What does not civili zation, what does not woman owe to the sublime and tender conception of Mary, which has done more to tame the rude social life of Europe in the middle ages than any other one idea ! And what more constraining motive to purity of soul, next of course to the thought of Him Who is the great Exemplar of all virtues, can there exist than the idea of such perfect spotless womanhood as a grateful Christendom recognises in our Lady ! But there is a still more serious thought.

m Pastoral, on Reunion of Christendom, by Manning, p. 65.

After making every allowance for the re-action against the distressing language of certain popular Roman devotions, there is a danger lest the shrinking from a due appreciation of the dignity of the Mother, may not generate an imperfect belief in the divine per sonality of the Son, and no error is so deadly as that which seeks to touch the person of Jesus. For just consider how much is bound up in the thought ex pressed in our Article, that “the Word took man’s nature in the womb of the Blessed Virgin, of her sub stance.” It implies all those tremendous consequences that are involved in the term OeoToicosj “Mother of God,” a term asserted to be of apostolical tradition, certainly employed at a very early period in the Church, and endorsed by the sanction of a General Council. That term, (the underlying truth of which was denied by the Ebionites, by Leporius and the Pelagians, and by the followers of Nestorius, and shared also by Euty- ches from a different point of view, by Felix and Eli- pandus, the Adoptionists, and, lastly, by some ill- instructed Protestants,) implies that Mary, not by the power of nature, but by the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost, brought forth in the flesh Christ, the true God, the Son of God by nature, so that she is just as truly and as properly Oeoro/cos, as Christ is truly and pro perly Qeos.

No wonder that the pious sentiment of Christendom in the contemplation of this stupendous dignity should have burst forth in finding paraphrases for this won drous term, that it should awake to the conception of an

OF THE WORD, OR SON OF GOD, &C. 33’

ideal of female holiness, such as no mere human reason could attain unto. No wonder that poetry has strained her utmost to find words to describe the celestial glories of her whom all generations call blessed, or that the art of the limner and sculptor should have been taxed to the full to embody in external expression those marvellous combinations of lowliness and glory, of gentleness and power, of grace and strength, which attend on the idea of the creature-mother of the Creator- Son.

” Thou maidc and mother, daughter of thy Son, Thou well of mercy, sinful soules cure, In whom that God of bounty chees to won ; Thou humble and high over every creature, Thou nobledst so far forth our nature, That no disdaine the Maker had of kinde, His Son in blood and flesh to clothe and winde.

Within the cloister blisful of thy sides, Toke mannes shape the eternal love and pees That of the trine compas Lord and gide is, Whom erthe, and see, and heven, out of relees Ay herien ; and thou virgine wemmiles, Bare of thy body (and dwcllest maides pure,) The creatore of evry creature”.” — Chaucer.

” ” It hath been said of me, O Latimer, Nay, as for him, I will never believe him while I live, nor never trust him, for he likened our Blessed Lady to a saffron-bag; when indeed I never used that simili tude. But in case I had used this similitude, it had not been to be re proved, but might have been without reproach. For I might have said thus : As the saffron-bag that hath been full of saffron, or hath had saffron in it, doth ever after savour and smell of the sweet saffron that it contained, so our Blessed Lady which conceived and bare Christ; in her

D

7. The mystery of the Incarnation is the vastest and most profound of all the ways of God. It reaches to the heavens above; it descends to the depths beneath. It solves a multitude of problems, which but for it were insoluble; it gives a master key to all history, and enters into the individual life of every human soul brought within reach of it. Yet how past finding out are God’s judgments ! God made man, the Eternal Word made flesh, the Creator and Governor of the universe born of a lowly woman, in a little town, in a little country of our little planet ; the Infinite re duced within the proportions of the finite, the Un- circumscript held in space. ” How can these things be ?” If the mystery explains all things, it is at the price of being inexplicable itself: it is no rest to the human mind that this last problem, like Moses’ rod, should swallow all the rest that vex and perplex the spirit of man.

The mind of the great poet-philosopher of Italy, in speaking of the mystery of the Trinity, says that he is mad who wishes to know how three Persons can be in one substance, and then he adds, ” 0 human race, stay contented at the quid — the fact. If we knew that, there were no need that Mary should have given birth to a Son.” In the same spirit, Theodotus speaking of the mystery of which we are treating, says, ” If thou

womb, did ever after resemble the manners and virtues of that precious babe that she bare. And what had our Blessed Lady been the worse for this ? or what dishonour was this to our Blessed Lady ?” — Latitner’s ” Sermon of the Plough.”

OF THE WORD, OR SON OF GOD, &C. 35

wouldest know, learn the quiet, the fact that He was made ; the alone worker of miracles, God, knoweth the how, quomodo °.”

This runs through all God’s dealings with us. We may know His purpose ; we cannot know His method -of operation. These are the two sides of the cloud which led the children of Israel through the desert. It is a property, even in mathematics, that things \hich explain other things are themselves inexplica ble; nay, they explain in the measure that they cannot be explained ; therefore that which explains all things, God, must, of all things, be the most in explicable. Things cannot be explained but after the things which are anterior to them, and consequently That which is anterior to all, cannot be explained after anything. Moreover the Infinite is the archetype of the finite, which therein receives the rationale of its existence, as its actual existence. Thus we can ex plain the world and creation only by God, the Creator, but we cannot explain Him ; and we can explain the moral and social world, man and humanity, only by the solution afforded it by the Incarnation, but no one can explain that Incarnation. However, though nothing can explain the Infinite and His operation, all things bear witness to Him. God explains the world, and the world proves God : in biblical language, ” The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth His handywork.” Much more is this the case with reference to the Incarnation, where the Infinite is

0 Sec a grand passage on the quomodo, in St. Cyril, in Joan., 359, 360.

not only in operation, but in person ; both object and subject; both cause and effect : ” Abyssus inscrutabilis, Sacramentum Divinse Incarnationis P.”

But a person may say, I admit to the full the idea of mystery in religion, and the mystery of the Incar nation charms me by its beauty, and the rich morality of its economy, but it seems to me to involve contra diction ; How can the Infinite be at the same time finite ? how can the Omnipresent God quit one place for another ? how can the uncircumscript God become measured by space ? how can the Eternal God be born, the Impassible God die ? how can Greatness and Majesty become man ? Let us take these difficulties in their order.

I. How can the Infinite be at the same time finite ; Creator and Creature, God and Man in Jesus Christ ? In Jesus Christ are two natures, the infinite and the finite, but one single Person, the person of God the Son. If these two natures made one nature, there would be a contradiction, as one could not conceive the finite and the infinite as one thing; but the two natures remain two natures, as distinct after as before the union. There is no contradiction here. Neither is there any from the thought that one person cannot be composed of two natures so as to complete it, for the Personality of Jesus Christ is what it is, that of God the Son, without the help of the human nature. Con taining all perfection it can receive no increase ; it is

P St. Bernard, In Annunc. S. M. De Septiformi Spiritu in Christo. Serm. II. § 6.

OF THE WORD, OR SON OF GOD, &C. 37

joined to human nature not to perfect itself, but to perfect that human nature. It holds the place of all; gives all, receives nothing. The divinity does not enter into composition with the manhood in Jesus Christ. This is emphatically union ; an imperfect analogy may be derived from ourselves. Had such a thing never been formed, had there never been but pure spirits and animal bodies, it would have been difficult to have conceived a being which united the qualities of both, which could be at once flesh and spirit, which could live in the highest metaphysical abstraction, and yet be under the influence of the lowest and basest earthly sensations. Yet this is what man is, and so the Son of God is the object of a still more transcendent union : ” What is man ? a rational soul joined to a body; what is Christ? the Word of God joined to man.” Here is mystery, profound mys tery, but no contradiction.

II. But it may be said, How can one conceive that God, who is universal, should have quitted a place to come to another : have been ” sent/’ come upon earth, come down and re-ascended? But the Son of God has never quitted any place. This is but a way of speaking in accommodation to our frailty. The Son of Man was in heaven when He sat with Nicodemus^. The Incarnation is not a migration, it is an exhibition of the Godhead. As the Eternal Son proceeds eternally from the Father without leaving His bosom, so His appearance in the midst of us is a visible extension

•i St. John iii. 2, and 13.

of that invisible extension which hath made the Son the Sent of the Father, as the ray is sent forth from the sun.

III. Or it may be asked, How can God, who is uncircum script and invisible, localize Himself in His entirety in Jesus Christ, in the ineffable union of the holy Incarnation? To this we answer, that in Christ dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, and yet that Divinity filleth all things, and by its immensity passes beyond the whole universe of crea tures. It is all entire in one, without separation from any other. Just as in the case of a person speaking, he utters a word which goes in its entirety to one auditor, and also in its entirety to all the auditory. One possesses it in its generality and it overflows among the multitude, who all possess it complete : so it is not surprising that God, all complete in heaven and in the universe, should at the same time be all complete in the Humanity of the Word.

IY. Next, one may ask how can one say God is- born, or God died ? How can the Son, born from all eternity of the Father, be born a second time of Mary ? How can the Impassible One die ? All this is of faith, not a jot or tittle of its sharpness can be taken from it, but it is incomprehensible : Yes, but not irrational.

When one speaks of any one, He is born, he is dead, it is the individual, the person, of whom one speaks, as indicated by the personal pronoun he. The body and soul have reference to a personal subject, who is the-

OF THE WORD, OR SON OF GOD, &C. 39

Ego. But in Jesus Christ there is but one Person, one Ego, and that Ego is the Word, God of G od. It is, then, God who is born, and who has died in Jesus Christ.

But in the Word, the Son of God, there is the divine nature and the Person. The Person and the Nature are distinct. The divine nature is common to the Divine Persons in the Holy Trinity, and the Person is the means of being of that nature which differs in the Father, or the Son, or the Holy Ghost. When we say person, we do not mean Nature. The Person is God, the nature is Deity.

When speaking of the Word we say God is born we do not say the Deity is born, for then it would be the Divine Nature which was subject to birth and death, and both the Father and the Holy Ghost would be predicated of in the same way, which were heresy. But, it may be asked, what has this to do in helping the difficulty, since if the Person be God, it is the Deity personified ? It is the Divinity which is born and dies. This is not the case, for by the birth from Mary, that which is already God takes human nature, appropriates a humanity, and this appropriation of hu manity one calls birth, so that it is equally true, that He who is born is God, and yet He is not born as God. The divine existence hath not to do with that birth and death, being entirely distinct from the human na ture, only joined to it by personal communication.

Such is the mystery of the Incarnation; mystery, indeed, if ever there were mystery, but such as ought and must be, when God is its subject.

V. There remains the fifth difficulty. How could God, without derogating from the dignity of His nature, come to assume ours in the womb of one of His creatures ? How can we conceive that He for whom the heavens are not great enough, should be come man, should be made flesh ? While the heart accepts the thought of this divine charity in abase ment, the reason revolts against it, even as the greatest manifestation of love, and sees in it contradiction, and a sort of rational impossibility.

” Do not be ever quoting the members of a virgin as a dishonour to the Divinity. For by their nature they have nothing unworthy. Had they been unworthy, or a dishonour to God, He would not have made them with His divine hands ; for God maketh nothing but good, and there is no disgrace in God indwelling in His own handiwork.

” But you add that to you it seemeth inappropriate, that He who inhabiteth the heavens should take up His abode in man. Yet here thou judgest rather by passion and by prejudice, than by right reason. Tell me, except heaven, what is greater than man. Stop not to consider the splendour of the material world, — let not the grace of colour and form which thou seest in nature seduce thee, — be not dazzled by the magni ficence of the rays of the sun ; confuse not thyself at the thought that God is clothed in flesh and skin, as Job beareth witness. But consider the excellence of the reasonable soul, the moral constitution of man, and thou canst not fail to admire this divine beinff.

OF THE WORD, OR SON OF GOD, &C. 41

He hath received as gifts hands, the ministers of his thought, whereby he can do wonders. Alone, of all the animals, he has been constituted free, alone he hath been created in the power of will. The sun obeys its laws, and circulates in its orbit ; it is with out freedom or will ; but man doth what he willeth. The sun is a slave, thou art free. Is it, then, sur prising that God should come to dwell in man, whom He hath so graciously made in His own image, de daring thereby from the beginning His delight to be with him ?

” It is true He took dust to form thy body, while He made thy soul the image of His divinity. Wherefore willed He to form of so base a stuff that which He vouchsafed so to adorn ? Why took He not the glory of the sun when He willed to make man, and not the very dust of the earth ? He did it to keep man hum ble, that the baseness of his origin should be a counter poise to the might of his destination ; that he might recognise that it was from no merit of his OWE, but from the munificence of his Maker, that thus he came to be.

“So noble a creature is man, however fallen into ignominy by sin. Judge him not as fallen, but in his original righteousness, and thou wilt see no dishonour in the good God, for the good of such a creature, con descending to communicate with it, as He hath done r.”

Thus are resolved all the difficulties of apparent con-

r Serm. Theod. Anc. ap. Concil. Eph., torn. iii. 1016, 1017, ed. Labbe et Cessart.

tradiction in the mystery of the Incarnation, those only which one may venture to try to solve, and this by rigorous comparisons and reasons, rather than by explanations, shewing us that there are mysteries in the natural order, and analogies that can clear our thoughts.

But this is all. The mystery is not less a mystery. The depth is still as unfathomed, in which all vain conceptions come to be cast into the Omnipotence of the Infinite, of which the incomprehensibility itself becomes the evidence. One may say, in this sense, that, freed from all false notions concerning it, and vindicated from the impossibilities of reason, which men fancy they see in it, the mystery of the Incar nation proves itself, by its depth, by its height, by its infinity s.

One end of the Incarnation is in this Article stated to be the reversal of the penalty of the Fall, and the annulling of the handwriting that was against man. The expression, “to reconcile the Father to us/’ which is not a Scriptural one, must be taken metom/mice, just as we find human emotions, e.g. repentance and change of purpose, frequently in the Old Testament attributed to God. The Scriptural expression is al ways the other way. The change is on the part of man. ” Who hath reconciled its to Himself by Jesus Christ*;” ” We pray you in Christ’s stead be ye

s Cf. the thoughtful Appendix on the Incarnation in M. Nicolas* work on the Blessed Virgin Mary. * 2 Cor. v. 18.

OF THE WORD, OR SON OF GOD, &C. 43

reconciled to Godu ;” ” By Him to reconcile all things unto Himself v;” “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself V Yet we may not blame the expression because God who is great without quantity, good without quality, allows us to employ words with regard to Him which though not absolutely true, re present the truth concerning Him, and His dealings with us, in the most real way that we are capable of receiving it. And this is one aspect of the fruits of the Incarnation, that in some mysterious way, for the merits of Jesus Christ, God is pleased to look upon us in mercy.

The extreme intellectual difficulties which attend on a belief in the vicarious satisfaction of Christ, whereby the just has died for the unjust, have been aggravated by the coarse and disproportionate manner in which that doctrine has been taught. The analogy of the faith has been violated by the suppression of other balancing truths. The truth itself has not been carried out into its logical consequences, and notions of d priori fitness have been imported into it in a way totally un necessary. Thus a sort of discordance of will between the First and Second Persons in the adorable Trinity has been assumed ; the Father fierce and longing to punish, the Son all mercy and indulgence, whereas they may not be separated in will, even in thought; and while the Father never ceases to be our Father, yearning over the wayward creation of His own hands, the Son is still the revelation of the righteousness of

• 2 Cor. v. 20. v Col. i. 21. w 2 Cor. v. 19.

God, and we believe that He shall come to be our judge.

Yet both Holy Scripture and the ancient doctors unanimously attribute to the life, and especially to the death, of our Lord, the character of an expiatory sacri fice. As one with the Holy Eucharist, our Lord says, “This is My Blood of the New Testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins x.” Predicting the same holy mystery, he elsewhere says, ” The Bread that I will give is My Flesh, which I will give for the life of the world ?.” So St. Paul : ” Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us z ;” ” Christ hath given Himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smell ing savour ” The main part of the argument of the Epistle to the Hebrews turns on the idea, and the notion of \vrpov and l\aa-/jLos runs through all the Gospel expositions of this mysterious but most blessed work.

” Non potea 1’uomo ne’ termini suoi Mai soddisfar, per non potere ir giuso Con umiltate, obediendo poi,

Quanto disubbidendo intese ir suso • E questa e la ragion perche 1’uom fue Da poter soddisfar per se dischiuso.

Dunque a Eio convenia con le vie sue Eiparar 1’uomo a sua intera vita, Dico con 1’una o ver con ambcdue.

x St. Matt. xxvi. 28. t St. John vi. 51. z 1 Cor. v. 7. a Eph. v. 2.

OF THE WORD, OR SON OF GOD, &C. 45

Ma perch e 1’opra tanto e piu gradita Dell’ operante quanto piu appresenta Delia bonta del cuor’ onde e uscita,

La divina bonta che ‘1 mondo imprenta Di proceder per tutte le sue vie A rilevarvi suso fu contenta :

K”e tra 1’ ultima notte e’l primo die Si alto e si magnifico proeesso 0 per 1’una o per 1’altro fue o fie ;

Che piu largo fu Dio a dar se stesso In far 1’uom sufficiente a rilevarsi Che s’egli avesse sol da se dimesso,

E tutti gli altri modi erano scarsi Alia giustizia, si’l Figliuol di Dio Non fosse umiliato ad incarnarsi V

Dante, Par. vii. 97.

b “Man in himself bad ever lacked the means Of satisfaction, for he could not stoop Obeying, in humility so low, As high, he, disobeying thought to soar : And for this reason he had vainly tried, Out of his own sufficiency, to payr The rigid satisfaction. Then behoved That God should by His own ways lead him back Unto the life from whence he fell, restored : By both His ways, I mean, or one alone. But here the deed is ever prized the more, The more the Doer’s good intent appears; Goodness celestial, whose broad signature Is on the universe, of all its ways To raise ye up, was fain to leave out none, Nor aught so vast, or so magnificent,

The idea of Sacrifice is a necessary result of the rela tion between the Creator and His creature. The crea ture owes everything to his Maker, and therefore the self-devotion of his whole being is that Maker’s due. This is the primary idea of Sacrifice. It is the incom municable privilege of God alone, and therefore is the highest form of worship. Yet this sacrifice is imperfect, if only because the creature hath nothing purely his own wherewith to propitiate his God. But beyond this there is a new idea introduced when we come to deal with sin. The relations of the Creator with the crea ture are not only those of the disproportion that must always exist between the Infinite and the finite ; they are now complicated by the absence of these qualities which, stated positively, are explained by the term ” sin.” A debt has been incurred which must be paid to the Honour of God; a stain has been imprinted which must be cleansed ; an offence has been given that must be removed; a guilt incurred which must be atoned. Therefore into man’s creaturely relations with his Maker there comes in the element of repa ration.

” Either for Him who gave or who received, Between the last night and the primal day, Was or can be. For God more bounty shewed, Giving Himself to make man capable Of his return to life, than had the terms Been mere and unconditional release. And for His justice, every method else Were all too scant, had not the Son of God Humbled Himself to put on mortal flesh.”

Gary’s Dante.

OF THE WORD, OR SON OF GOD, &C. 47

Man’s sacrifice is, therefore, now doubly imperfect, and therefore a full and perfect sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction can only be found in one who is more than mere man. The life and death of one not only in nocent, but the fountain and source of innocency, is required to the realization of this idea. Such a condi tion is only to be found in the God-man, and therefore, from the beginning, He was the Lamb slain, in purpose, from the foundation of the world, and all the patri archal and Jewish rites received what grace they had from Him whom they foreshowed. And still more is this the case now that the Word has actually taken flesh, now that the human nature has been assumed into the unity of the Person of the divine Word, and consequently the actions of our Lord are the actions of His divine Person. The elements, therefore, of eternity and omnipotence now accrue to the acts of Christ; His very human acts, because done by a divine Person, savour of the attributes of Divinity, and thus there is no limit to the efficacy of His eternal Sacrifice, which, being thus superabundant and fulfilling all the ends of such sacrifice0, is in itself: — 1. the highest possible worship, praise, and adoration to God the Holy Trinity; 2. the only, the fullest, and most complete Propitia tion for sin ; 3. the most grateful and acceptable Eucharistia or thank-offering which humanity in its head and members can render to its God ; and 4, lastly,

e ” Et in quel die, forato da la lancia Efc poscia et prima tanto soddisfece Che d’ogni culpa vince ta bilancia.” — Par. xiii. 40.

the most efficacious impetration of all blessings, mercies, and graces which humanity can require.

Thus it will be seen that our Lord’s Sacrifice reaches to every sin. It was discussed in the Middle Ages, whether the Passion was chiefly for the destruction of original or of actual sin, and the conclusion was, that

” Although Christ came into this world to destroy all sins, yet He came more especially to take away original than actual sin ; for that sin by which the whole human race is infected, is greater than that which is peculiar to individual man.” And this conclusion was mainly based upon the consideration that

” It is certain that Christ came into this world not only to destroy that sin which originally passed upon Adam’s posterity, but also to destroy all sins which in a manner are superadded to it; not that all are de stroyed, (which arises from defect in men who are not in Christ, according to the words of St. John iii. 19, ’ Light is come mto the world, and men loved darkness rather than light/) but because He shewed that He was able to destroy all sins. Wherefore it is said in Rom. v. 15, ‘Not as the offence, so also is the free gift : for the judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offences unto justification.’ But the greater any sin is, the more especially did Christ come into the world for the destruction of that sin. Now a thing may be said to be ’ greater’ in two ways ; in one way, intensively^ as where we say greater, that is, more intense, whiteness. And in this way actual is greater than original sin, because it has more

OF THE WORD, OR SON OF GOD, &C. 49

of the nature of voluntary agency. In another way a thing is said to be greater extensively; as where we say greater whiteness, meaning a larger superficies. And in this way original sin, by which the whole race of man is infected, is greater than any actual sin which is peculiar to individuals.”

Another question in the Middle Ages was, whether the Incarnation would have taken place irrespective of sin and of the fall, but the Article does not enter upon this tempting field of speculation. It views the matter from the practical light of accomplished facts. It as fumes the sad truths of sin having entered into the world and death by sin, and here announces the all- powerful Remedy.

Notes

• Athan., Cone. Arim. et Sel, Oxf. Tr. p. 144.