1:9

THE LIBRARY

THE UNIVERSITY

OF CALIFORNIA

LOS ANGELES

DISSERTATIONS

Oxforb

HOKACB HAKT, t'KlNTlCk TO THK UNIVERSITY

DISSERTATIONS

SUBJECTS CONNECTED WITH

THE INCARNATION

CHARLES GORE, M.A.

CANON OF WESTMINSTER
OF THE COMMUNITY OF THE RESURRECTION, RADLEY

Neque sit milii inutilis pugna verborum
sed incunctantis fidei constans professio

LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET

1895

FRATR! ADMODUM DILECTO

RICARDO RACK HAM

HKXKVOI.KNTISSIMO I.ABORUM ADIUIdKr

IN VERITATK EXPLORANDA CLIRIOSISSIMO

2066614

PREFACE

These dissertations are the fulfilment, after a much
longer delay than I anticipated, of an intention
expressed in the preface to the Bampton Lectures of
1891 to prepare a supplementary volume addressed
to a more strictly theological public. Circumstances
however have now led to the selection of a set of
subjects not altogether identical with those then
indicated. The amount of discussion which arose
in connexion with my lectures as to our Lord's
human consciousness has rendered necessary a
prolonged treatment of the theology of the New
Testament and of the Church on this subject. A dis-
sertation on the rise of the transubstantiation dogma
followed naturally from this special treatment of the
theology of the Incarnation ; and recent controversy
has rendered desirable a more elaborate discussion

viii Preface.

of our Lord's birth of a virgin. Under these circum-
stances 'the early Greek theology of the supernatural
in its relation to nature' and 'the relation of Ebion-
ism and Gnosticism to the theology of the New
Testament and of the second century' only come in
for incidental treatment.

In the first dissertation — on our Lord's birth of
a virgin — I have tried to give the first place to the
presentation of the positive case for this article of
the Christian creed, and only the second to resolving
objections or considering possible rival theories.
Hence I have said nothing about such a theor}' as
that of Holtzmann \ of different documents used by
.St. Luke in his first two chapters and of interpo-
lations and alterations made in the use of them —
a theory which seems to rest on purely a pi-ioi'i
grounds. It seems to me that, to justify a distinction
(jf various ' sources ' used by a compiler, we need
either very distinct evidences of style (such as the
difference between St. Luke's own style, i. 1-4, and
that of his ' source ' beginning at i. 5), or very
violent inconsistencies, or phenomena apparent
over a large area, as in the case of the Ilexateuch.
If the area is small, the difference of st3'le not plain,
and the narrative fairly self-consistent, the proposed
distinction becomes at once arbitrary-. Critics of

' ilaiuUominentar zuin N. T. (^Freiburg, i.SSy; bd. i. pp. 13, 46.

Preface. ix

documents, especially biblical documents, appear to
me very seldom to know where to stop in their
analysis.

I owe to the Rev. G. A. Cooke, of Magdalen, the
substance of the note on pp. 39-40. His diligent
investigation of the sources of a statement current
in modern apologetic literature has, I fear, decisively
pricked a small but somewhat interesting bubble.

In the second dissertation — on our Lord's con-
sciousness as man — my excuse for so much quotation
lies in the necessit}'' for bringing under the eye of the
reader the inadequac}^ /// one respect of much of the
patristic and all the mediaeval theology. There has
not hitherto existed any adequate catena of theologians
on this subject. I hope I shall be pardoned if a lack
of complete consistenc}^ is noticed in regard to the
translation of patristic passages. In any case I have
produced all important passages or phrases in the
original language. I cannot but hope that in this
dissertation I shall have satisfied one or two of
those whose approval I am most anxious to keep
or to regain.

In regard to the third essay, I have thought that
the lack of sufficiently exact histories of eucharistic
doctrine justified a detailed statement of the rise of
the theory and dogma of transubstantiation. But
1 must ask that it should be remembered that, if
information outside the period professedly covered is

X Preface.

incidentally given, I do not profess to cover more in
detail than the period from a.d. 800 to 1215.

In the preparation of these dissertations for the
press I owe thanks for help to my brothers, the Rev.
Thomas Barnes and the Rev. Richard Rackham.
To the latter I owe more than I can well express,
and particularly the appended note on the Codex
Sinaiticus and the preparation of the Table of Con-
tents and of the indices of scriptural passages and of
names. He has added to the latter a few dates which
will, it is hoped, increase its usefulness.

C. G.

Raim.ey Vicarage,

St. James Day, 1895.

CONTENTS

THE VIRGIN BIRTH OF OUR LORD

Subject and aim .......

§ I. The silence of St. Mark, St. John, and St. Paul

St. Mark

St. John

St. Paul

§ 2. The narrative of St. Luke

its origin and trustworthiness .
objections: (i) the census

(2) angelic appearances .

§ 3. The narrative of St. Matthew

its origin ......

objections : (i) massacre of the innocents
(2) influence of prophecy

§ 4. The relation of the two narratives
(i) the historical outline
(2) the genealogies ....

§ 5. The tradition of the churches
importance of tradition
consensus of tradition found in
Irenaeus Justin

Ignatius Aristides .

Alexandrians non-Catholic writings
discordant teaching found in
Cerinthus Ebionism .

§ 6. The theory of legend

the miraculous birth not

due to legendary tendency .
a repetition of O. T incident
derived from Philo's language .

7
10

19
21

28
29
31

n
41

43
46

47
49

55
60

xii Contents.

PACK

vj 7. The connexion of dnctrine and fact

is inevitable 63

((j) birth and personality .....> 64

(/3) the Second Adam and a new creation ... 65

Conclusion

and its relation to church authority 67

THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF OUR LORD IN HIS
MORTAL LIFE

The subject . . . . . . . . . • 7^

its relation to Christian faith ..... 72

spirit in which it should be studied (Hilary) . . 73

The view of our lord's consciousness during his
human and iniortal life which is presented in
the new testament.

§ I. The evidence of the (jospels

picture of a human growth .....']']

with assertion of divine sonship and infallibility . 78
but evidence of a limitation of knowledge

(1) human experiences— interrogation, prayer . 81

(2) St. jNIatt. xxiv. 36 iieiihcr the Son ... 83
{3) testimony of St. John's Gospel ... 84
(4) argument from silence 87

§ 2. The language of St. Paul

self-emptying (Phil ii. 5-11) 88

self-beggary (2 Cor. viii. 9) ..... 89

§ 3. An absolute Ktvuxris not affirmed in the N. T.

the eternal Word in St. John, St. Paul, the Hebrews 91
silence as to an arrest of the Word's divine functions 93

^ 4. Provisional conclusion

the Incarnation involves a real limitation ... 94

as opposed to

dogmatical repudiation of ignorance ... 95
humanitarian assertion of fallibility . -95

Contents.

Xlll

II.

The history of christian opinion outside the
canon on the subject of our lord's human
consciousness.

§2

§ I. Preliminary. On the permanence in the Incarnation of
the Godhead of Christ
as taught by Irenaeus
Origen .
Eusebius
Athanasius
Proclus .

Early tradition and speculation on the special subject of
the human consciousness of Christ

tradition not definite on the subject .
doctrine of Irenaeus .....
Clement of Alexandria .
Origen

The anti-Arian writers who admit a human ignorance
Trinitarian controversies .
doctrine of Athanasius

Gregory Nazianzen

Basil

Ambrose
Anti-Arian writers, especially of the west
tendency of anti-Arian theology
protest of Theodoret ....
doctrine of Hilary . . . ,

Jerome . . . ,

Augustine
The Apollinarian controversy

lack of interest among Catholics
doctrine of Gregory Nyssen

§ 6. The Nestorian controversy

Theodore of Mopsuestia .
zealous repudiation of Ncstorianism
doctrine of Hilary ....
Cyril ....

§4-

i^5

98
100
100
103
104

106
108

113
114

122
123
126
127
127

130

131
133
135
136

138
140

144

145
147
149

xiv Contents.

PAGE

§ 7. The Monophysite controversy

(l) vindication of the manhood not fruitful in result 154
the Agnoetae and Leontius
Eulogius
Gregory.
John Damascene .....
Agobard and the Adoptionists in the west
(2j the Definition of Chalcedon leaves the two

natures in simple juxtaposition . . .162

155
158

159
160

161

§ 8. Mediaeval and scholastic theology

determined against a real ignorance . . . .166
refinements of Thomas Aquinas .... 168

quaUfications

(i) hesitation as to what is de fide . . . 169
(2) decisions only as to matter of fact . . 169
scholastic theology

(ij mistaken in its use of church dogmas . .170
(2) based on one-sided metaphysical idea of God 171
derived from Greek philosophy . . -173
through Dionysius Areop. and Erigena . 173

resulting in nihilianism .... 175

as expressed in Peter Lombard . . -175

§ 9. The theology of the Reformation

a return to Scripture 179

theories of Luther . . . . . . .181

the Reformed 182

modern views

(i) absolute kenotic — Godct . . . .184

(2) partial kenotic— Fairbairn . . . 1S9

(3) double life— Martensen . . . 192

(4) gradual incarnation— Dorner . . . 193

§ 10. Anglican theology

its characteristics . 196

utterances of

Hooker Andrcucs Jeremy Taylor . . 196

Bull 15everidgc Waterland . . .198

modern authorities

Church Westcott Bright . . -199

Contents.

III.

The conclusion of this inquiry: the relation
OF this conclusion to church authority : its

RATIONALITY.

PAGE

§ I. Conclusion from our inquiry

a real self-limitation in the Incarnation . . . 202
without abandonment of the divine functions in
another sphere ....... 206

fourfold appeal to opponents ..... 205

§ 2. The relation of our conclusion to ecclesiastical authority

its consistence with ecumenical decrees . . . 207
in particular those of Nicaea ..... 208

Chalcedon and CP iii . . 210
reasons for defectiveness in patristic and scholastic
theology .213

§ 3. The rationality of our conclusion

(i) the inconceivable not necessarily the irrational . 216

(2) the power of sympathy . . . . . .218

(3) difference between divine and human knowledge 220

(4) modern view of God's relation to His creation . 222

TRANSUBSTANTIATION AND NIHILIANISM

Subject and aim .......

I. The growth of the doctrine of transubstantiation

s. viii in the east, John of Damascus
in the west

retarding influence of Augustine
reflected in Caroline theologians

s. ix Paschasius Radbert's teaching

Rabanus Maurus opposes it
Ratramn „

Hincmar, Haimo support it

s. xi the Berengarian controversy .
Berengar's position
Humbert's decree (a. d, 1059)

229

230

232
234
236

239

240

246
247
248
257

XVI

Contents.

S. XII

PAG I.

Lanfranc and Hugh c

)f Langres . . . .

258

Witmund

258

Durandus of Troarn

263

Alger .

264

Gregory of Bergamo

265

Hildebcrt

266

Peter Lombard

. 267

the Lateran decree

. 268

A.D. 121 5

II. The metaphysical theory and philosophical principle inv

three objections

(i) no scriptural or primitive authority

(2) metaphysical difficulty ......

not the same with the hovioousion doctrine
doctrinal outcome of materialistic conception .

(3) it violates the principle of the Incarnation .

as stated by Irenaeus

Leontius . . . . .

oh'ed

269
270
272
271

272

273

277

III. Nihilianism the background of the theory of transubstantiation

nihilianism prevalent in early middle ages . . . 279

= transubstantiation in relation to the Incarnation . 281
the dogmatic barriers of the Incarnation doctrine

were wanting in the case of the eucharist . • . 2S3
reasons for not accepting transubstantiation

even in a refined sense ...... 284

APPENDED NOTES

A. Supposed Jewish expectation of the virgin birth

B. The readings of Codex Sinaiticus

C. On the patristic interpretation of St. John vi. 63

D. TertuUian's doctrine of the eucharist

2S9
292

303
308

DISSERTATION I

THE VIRGIN BIRTH OF OUR

LORD

Among subjects of present controversy not the least
important is the Virgin Birth of Jesus Christ. It is not
only that naturalistic writers frequently speak as if it
were unmistakeably a fable ; but writers who do in some
sense believe in the Incarnation are found at times to
imply that, while the Resurrection must be held to, the
Virgin Birth had better be discarded from the position of
an historical fact. And even writers of a more orthodox
character are occasionally found to speak of it with some
considerable degree of doubt or disparagement ^. Such
rejection or doubt is in part based upon the silence, or
presumed silence, on the subject of two of the evangelists,
St. Mark and St. John, also of the apostolic epistles,
especially those of St. Paul. In part it is held to be
justified by discrepancies between the accounts of the birth

^ See, as examples of these classes, Renan, Les £,vangiles (Paris, 1877)
pp. 188 ff., 278 ff . ; Meyer, Commentary on St. Matthew, i. 18 (Clark's
trans.); The Kernel and the Husk (Macmillan, 1886) pp. 267 ff. ;
Dr. A. Harnack, Das Apost. Glatibensbekenntniss (Berlin, 1892) pp. 35 ff.
This pamphlet is part of a considerable agitation in Germany, and repre-
sents a widespread tendency in that country. The tendency is certainly
abroad among Christians at home, though perhaps at present more in
conversation than in literature.

B 3

4 Dissertations.

in St. Matthew and St. Luke ; and by circumstances
which are supposed to render those accounts unworthy
of the credit of serious critics. At the same time it is
often maintained that the belief in the Incarnation is not
bound up with the beHcf in the virginity of Mary : and
that, even if this latter point were rejected or held an
open question, we could still believe Jesus Christ to be
not as other men, but the Son of God incarnated This
latter belief in the person of Christ is, it is maintained,
legitimate as warranted by His claims, His miracles, His
resurrection, His kingdom ; but it does not therefore
follow that legend may not have gathered around the
circumstances of His birth. There is analogy, it is
suggested, for such an accretion in the birth-stories
of innumerable heroes, both Jewish and Gentile, from
]5uddha, Zoroaster, and Samson downwards to Augustus
and John the Baptist.

In view of this tendency of thought, I will endea-
vour —

( i) to account for the silence of St. Mark, St. John,
and St. Paul, so far as it is a fact, while at the same
time indicating evidence which goes to show that these
writers did in reality recognize the fact of the Virgin
liirth ;

(2) to justify the claim of Luke i-ii to contain
.serious history ;

(3) to do the same for Matt, i-ii taken by itself;

(4) to indicate the relation of the two accounts;

' Sec quotations in Dr. A. B. Bruce's Apologetics (Clark, 1892) pp. 408,
409; and cf. Dr. Fairbaim, Christ in Modern Theology ^Hodder &
.Stoughlon, 1S93) pp. 346, 347. I do not umlerstand Dr. Fairbairn to
express any doubt as to the fact of the virgin birth.

The Virgin Birth of our Lord. 5

(5) to show cause for believing- that the Virgin Birth
has in Christian tradition from the first been held insepar-
able from the truth of the Incarnation ;

(6) to deal with the argument derived from the
birth-legends of heroes ;

(7) to show cause for believing that the doctrine of
the person of Christ is in reality inseparable from the
fact of His birth of a virgin.

First however it is necessary to make plain the point
at which this argument begins, and the class of persons
towards whom it is addressed. I am assuming the
substantial historical truth of the evangelical narrative
common to the three synoptists and supplemented by
St. John : I am assuming the reality of the physical
resurrection and, accordingly, the possibility of miracles
and their credibility on evidence : I am assuming that
Jesus Christ really was the Son of God incarnate. One
who entertains doubts on these matters must satisfy him-
self by considerations preliminary to our present under-
taking \ just as in the beginning of Christianity the belief
in Jesus as the Son of God was, as will be presently
explained, prior to the knowledge of His Virgin Birth.
The question now is, — granted the miraculous personality
of Christ and His resurrection, granted the idea of the
Incarnation to be the right interpretation of His person,
is there still reason to doubt the historical character of
the miracle of the birth, and is it reasonable to imagine
that such doubt will be compatible with a prolonged
hold on the belief in the Incarnation itself?

' Such considerations 1 have endeavoured to present in summary in tlie
Bampton Lectures for 1891 (Murray) lect. i, ii, iii.

Dissertations.

§1.

The silence of St. Mark, St. John, and St. Paul

The original function of the apostles was mainly that
of eye-witnesses. It was therefore necessarily limited by
the period of the public ministry of our Lord, during
which period alone they had ' companied with him,' i. e.
from the days of John the Baptist till the time when He
was taken up into heaven ^. To have allowed their original
preaching to go behind the limit of this period would
have been to abandon a real principle of Christianity,
the principle that it was to rest upon the personal
testimony of men who in company with one another
had passed through a prolonged experience of the words
and works of Jesus of Nazareth, of the circumstances of
Mis death and the reality of His resurrection. To have
gone outside this period of personal witness would have
been, I say, to abandon a principle ; and there can
therefore be no question that the original ' teaching of
the apostles ' did not and could not include the Virgin
l^irth'-. If wc accept the trustworthy tradition which

' See Acts i. 8, 21, ii. .-^2, iii. 15, x. 39 ; St. Luke i. 2 ; St. John i. 14,
XV. 27, xxi. 24; Hebr. ii. 3.

' It is plain that Joseph and Mary must have Icept this event secret
from the world and their neighbours. When it was known through Christian
preaching, it led to slander, disagreeable even to think of, but widely
current in the second century. See Renan, Lcs P.vaitgilcs, p. 189 ' La fable
grossiere inventee par les adversaires du christianisme, qui faisait naitre
Jesus d'une avcnture scandaleuse avcc le soldat Panthere {Acta Pilati,

The Virgin Birth of our Lord. 7

makes St. Mark's Gospel represent the preaching of Peter
— the part of his experience which he embodied in his
primary instruction — we shall see at once why the
Gospel of Mark does not carry us behind the preaching
of John the Baptist. It needs to be remarked, over and
above this, that St. Mark in one passage exhibits a notice-
able difference as compared with St. Matthew and
St. Luke. Where St. Matthew has ' Is not this the
carpenter's son?' and St. Luke ' Is not this the son of
Joseph ? ' St. Mark writes ' Is not this the carpenter ? ' ^
It is probable that of these two expressions, St. Mat-
thew's (as corroborated by St. Luke) is primary, and
St. Mark's secondary ; and that the alteration in St.
Mark must be attributed to an unwillingness to suggest
— even in the surprised questioning of the Jews — the
proper parentage of Joseph, where nothing had been
previously given to prevent misunderstanding, as in
St. Matthew's and St. Luke's Gospels^.

As to St. John, it seems to me quite impossible to

A. 2; Celse, dans Origene, Contre Celse, i. 28, 32; Talm. de Jer. Schab-
bath, xiv. 4; Aboda zara, ii. 2 ; Midrasch Koh. x. 5, &c.), sortit sans trop
d'effort du recit chretien, recit qui presentait a I'imagination le tableau
choquant d'une naissance ou le pere n'avait qu'un role apparent. Cette
fable ne se montre clairement qu'au II® siecle ; des le I'"', cependant, les
juifs paraissent avoir malignement presente la naissance de Jesus comme
ill(?gilime.' It appears that Panthera is only in fact an anagram for
Parthenos: see Rendel Harris, Texts mid Studies ^Cambridge, 1891),
vol. i. no. i. p. 25.

^ St. Matt. xiii. 55 ; St. Mark vi. 3 ; St. Luke iv. 22.

^ So Baur, Hilgenfeld, and Bleek, quoted by Weiss, Handbuch iiber
Evajtg. Markiis und Lttkas, on Mark vi. 3. St. Luke (ii. 48) allows a parallel
expression, ' Thy father and I,' where it is liable to no misconception.
So also St. John (i. 45 'Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph'), writing at
a later period, when, I believe, the common teaching of the Church was
well established.

8 Dissertations.

believe that he was ignorant of the Virgin Birth of our
Lord. Ignatius, who was bishop of Antioch in Syria
a very few years after the writing of the fourth Gospel,
calls the virginity of Mary a ' mystery of loud procla-
mation ' in the Church ^ : it could not have been other-
wise considering the currency which the first and third
Gospels, and still more the materials of those Gospels,
had already obtained. More than this : wc know on
very high authority (that of Pol3^carp, John's disciple,
as quoted by Irenaeus^) that St. John was in sharp
opposition to the gnostic teacher, Cerinthus. Cerinthus,
like all Gnostics, denied the real Incarnation. He
distinguished between the higher being, the spiritual
Christ, and the human Jesus. He supposed the man
Jesus to have been born in the ordinary way of Joseph
and Mary, and to have been the most perfect of all men ;
he supposed the divine Christ to have descended upon
him after his baptism and to have left him before his
passion^. Cerinthus thus denied both the real Incar-
nation and the miraculous birth. St. John's whole force
is thrown into the affirmation of the real Incarnation.
He cannot have been ignorant that the denial of the
Incarnation was associated with the denial of the
miraculous birth. We may ask then, (i) Was he
indifferent to this latter? (2) If not, does he give any
indications that he believed in it? (3) Why did he not
narrate it at length? I should answer thus: (1) He was
not indifferent to it, but, as in the case of the institution of
baptism and of the cucharist^ he supplies the justifying

' .See b,low, p. 46. '^ con. Haer. iii. 3. 4.

' Iren. con. Ilacr. i. id. i. * St. John iii. 38, vi. 53-65.

The Virgin Birth of our Lord. 9

principle — in this case the principle of the Incarnation —
without supplying what was already current and well
known, the record of the fact. The denial of the fact
had been but the result of the denial of the principle.
Granted the principle, the belief in the fact would follow in-
evitably. (2) He does give indications that he recognized
the fact. In the scene of the marriage-supper at Cana,
before the first miracle had yet been wrought, he shows
Mary, our Lord's mother, manifestly expecting of her
son miraculous action, manifestly regarding Him as
a miraculous person ^. There is no such natural expla-
nation of this as that St. John regarded her as conscious
from the first of His miraculous origin and nature. Once
more: St. John's mind is full of the correspondence
between 'the Son' and the other 'sons' of God, be-
tween Christ and the Church. One main motive of his
Apocalypse is to exhibit the Church passing through
the phases of the life of Christ. Like Him it is born,
suffers, dies, rises, ascends^. When St. John then gives
us the picture of ' a woman arrayed with the sun and
the moon under her feet,' who brings forth ' a son,
a male thing,' and other ' seed ' besides '"^y he is probably
presenting the idea of the true Jerusalem, ' the mother
of us all,' bringing forth into the world the Christ
and His people. But there is a retrospect, or depend-
ence, which can hardly be disputed, upon Mary the actual
mother of Jesus, the Christ. The more sure one feels
of this, and the more one dwells upon the parallelism
exhibited throughout these chapters between the Head

' bt. John ii. 3-5. ^ Rev. xii. 5, 17, xi. 7-12.

= Rev. xii. i, 5, 17.

lo Dissertations.

and His body, the more disposed one is to see in the
picture of the dragon who watches to destroy the new-
born child and the flight of the woman into the
wilderness^ a mystically-worded^ retrospect upon the
hostile action of Herod who sought the young child's
life to destroy him ^, i.e. a recognition of the history of
the nativity as given in St. Matthew. (3) It would
have been impossible for St. John, consistently with
the main purpose of his Gospel, to have recorded the
Virgin Birth, for his Gospel is, before all else, a personal
testimony. It is the old man's witness to what he saw
and heard when he was young, and had brooded and
meditated upon through his long life. This witness he
now leaves on record, at the earnest request of those
about him, and for the necessities of the Church. Such
a Gospel must have begun where personal experience
began.

Once more with regard to St. Paul— it is a well-
known fact that his epistles are almost exclusively
occupied in contending for Christian principles, not in
recalling facts of our Lord's life. His function was that
of the theologian rather than that of the w^itness. One
conclusion from this might be that St. Paul was ignorant
of, or indifferent to, the facts of our Lord's life. But we
are restrained from this conclusion by the evidence which

* Rev. xii. 13, 14.

* It should be noticed that the account of the death, resurrection, &c.
of the ' two witnesses' who represent the Church in xi. 7-12 contains many,
points of difference from the actual history of the parallel events in our
Lord's case, as well as many points of similarity. The relation of tlie

' mystical ' and actual accounts of the death and resurrection is similar to
the relation of the two accounts of the birth and early persecution.
' St. Matt. ii. 13.

The Virgin Birth of our Lord. n

he gives at least on two occasions when his argument
compels him to recall to the Corinthians his first
preaching and he recalls it each time in the form of
an evangelical narrative ^ We learn from this that St.
Paul's first preaching contained at least a considerable
element of evangelical narrative. Of all the contents
of this narrative we cannot be sure : it is not impossible
that it made reference to the miraculous birth of Jesus.
But it would be foolish to maintain this in the absence
of direct evidence. What we can maintain, with great
boldness, is that St. Paul's conception of the ' Second
Adam ' postulates His miraculous birth. ' Born of
a woman,' ' born of the seed of David according to the
flesh V He was yet 'from heaven ^' : born of a woman.
He was yet a new head of the race, sinless, free from
Adam's sin ; a new starting-point for humanity ■*. Now
considering how strongly St. Paul expresses the idea of
the solidarity of man by natural descent, and the con-
sequent implication of the whole human race in Adam's
fall^, his belief in the sinless Second Adam seems to me
to postulate the fact of His Virgin Birth ; the fact, that
is, that He was born in such a way that His birth was
a new creative act of God. On this connexion of ideas,

* I Cor. xi. 23-25, XV. 3-8. ^ Gal. iv. 4; Rom. i. 3.

' I Cor. XV. 47. (5 hiVTipos dvOpojiros i^ ohpavov has been interpreted of
Christ at His second coming. But it describes the origin of the second
man, being parallel to 'the first man is of the earth earthy,' and must
therefore be referred to His first coming.

* 2 Cor. V. 21 ; Rom. v. 12-21 ; i Tim. ii. 5.

^ Rom. V. 12-21, especially the phrase k<f ^ -irayrts fmaprov. Cf. Acts
xvii. 26 tno'iTjafv l£ Ivos ndv 'iOvos dvdpwwajv : I Cor. xv. 48 oTos 6 xoi'/foy>
TotovToi Kal 01 \o'iKoi: Eph. iv. 22, and Col. iii. 9 6 iraKaios dv6pajTros,
which is morally corrupt.

Dissertations.

however, more will need to be said when we come to
deal with the relation of the Virgin Birth to the idea of
the Incarnation.

The 'argument from silence' then, so far as it is based
on the facts, appears to be a weak argument, because
it gains its strength from ignoring the character and
conditions of the ' silent ' records. At least their
silence suggests no presumption against the veracity of
the records that are not silent, supposing that they
present valid credentials, considered in themselves. Ac-
cordingly we proceed to the consideration of these
records, that is, the narratives of the Virgin Birth in the
first two chapters of the first and third Gospels.

§2.

The narrative of St. Lnke.

Suppose a Christian of the earliest period instructed,
like Theophilus, in the primitive oral ' tradition ' of the
Christian society ; suppose him familiar with the sort
of narrative that is presented to us in St. Mark's Gospel
of the words and deeds of Jesus, and convinced of His
Messiahship and divine sonship, — such an one would
beyond all question have become inquisitive about the
circumstances of the Master's birth. The inquiry must
have been general and must have arisen very speedily.
Let us transfer ourselves in imagination to that earliest

The Virgin Birth of our Lord. 13

period, of not less than about five years, before the perse-
cution which arose about the death of Stephen, when
the band of Christians in Jerusalem were continuing
steadfastly and quietly in the 'apostles' teaching,' and
constant repetition was forming the oral Gospel which
underlies the earliest evangelical documents ; we cannot
conceive that period passing without inquiry, systematic
inquiry, into the circumstances of our Lord's birth.
Now at the beginning of that period the Mother was
with the apostolic company. She may well— for all
we know— have continued with them to the end of it.
The Lord's 'brethren' too were there ^ There was no
difficulty, then, in obtaining trustworthy information.
Joseph and Mary must have been silent originally as to
the conditions of the birth of Jesus, for reasons obvious
enough. They could only have ' kept the things and
pondered them in their hearts.' But in the apostolic
circle, in the circle of witnesses and believers, the reasons
for silence were gone : Mary would have told the tale
of His birth.

Now in St. Luke's Gospel — to take that Gospel first—
we are presented with an obviously early and Jewish
narrative containing an account of the birth of Jesus,
incorporated and used by St. Luke. If then St. Luke
is believed to be trustworthy in his use of documents, if
the account given is credible considered in itself, there
is no difficulty at all in perceiving from what source

^ There is, however, nothing; improbable in the hypothesis that the
' brethren' did not originally share the secret of Joseph and Mary as to the
virgin birth. (The more piobable view, as it seems to me, is that which
makes the ' brethren ' half-brothers of our Lord, children of Joseph by
a former marriage.)

14 Dissertations.

originally it could have been derived and from what
epoch its information could date.

Now when we examine the opening chapters of St.
Luke, almost the first thing that strikes us is the contrast
in style between the elaborate preface of the evangelist's
own writing and the narrative to which he immediately
passes. There can be no doubt that in the narrative
of the nativity, St. Luke — writing, shall we say with
Dr. Sanday, about A.D. 80^ — is using an Aramaic
document -. But is St. Luke trustworthy in his use of
early documents ? The ground on which we can best
test this is the Acts of the Apostles. I assume — what
I think is the only reasonable view — that St. Luke
wrote the Acts as a whole : that he is the fellow-
traveller of St. Paul in the later portion ^, and that for
the earlier portion, the Jerusalem period, he has been
dependent upon information and documents supplied by
others — probably by Philip the Evangelist and by some
one — possibly Manaen or Joanna the wife of Chuza —
connected with the court of the Herods ^. Has he then

' See Sanday, Batnpton Lectures for 1893 (Longmans) pp. 277 ff. ; Book
by Book (Isbister, 1892) pp. 366, 404.

* See Weiss, Markus itnd Ltikas, p. 239 'Die hebraisiiende Diction
der Vorgeschichte sticht gegen das classische Griechisch des Vorworts so
augenfallig ab, dass hier die Benutziing einer schriftlichen Quelle kaura
gcleiignct wcrden kann.' Godet, Saint Lice, i. 85 ' II travaille sur des
documents antiques, dont il tient a conservcr aussi fidelcment que pos-
sible le coloris arameen.' Sanday, Book by Book, p. 399. Cf. also Ryle
and James, Psalms of Solomon (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1891), p. Ix
'The writings which, in our opinion, most nearly approach our Psalms
in style and character are the hymns preserved in the early chapters
of St. Luke's Gospel, which in point of date of composition probably
stand nearer to the Psalms of Solomon (B.C. 70-40) than any other portion
of the New Testament.' ^ Acts xvi. 10-18, xx. 6 to the end.

* Cf. Sanday, Book by Book, p. 399 ' Most of the occasions on which

The Virgin Birth of our Lord. 15

shown himself in this collection and use of documents
a trustworthy historian ? This question we answer with
a very emphatic affirmative. If Prof. Ramsay has
summed up the verdict of recent inquiry as to the his-
torical trustworthiness of the Pauline period of the Acts,
not less certainly does it seem to me that recent inquiry
has gone to confirm the historical worth of the early
chapters. The situation of the first Christians in Jeru-
salem : their preoccupation, not with the questions of
Pauline or Johannine theology, but simply with Jesus as
Messiah, and as fulfilling in His death and resurrection
the prophecies of the Messiah : the moral brilliancy
and yet simplicity of the first development of the
Church : the exact relation in which Pharisees with their
zeal for the law, and Sadducees in their hostility to
a resurrection doctrine, and their preoccupation with the
political situation, would stand to the new movement' :

we hear of Si. Luke have their scene at a distance from Palestine ; but at
one time he would seem to have been for fully two years within the limits
of the Roman province which bore that name. He accompanied St. Paul
on his last recorded journey to Jerusalem, stayed with him for some time
at the house of Philip the " Evangelist " at Caesarea, went up with him to
Jerusalem, and, as we infer, remained not far away from his person during the
time of his later confinement at Caesarea.' Philip the Evangelist — one of
the Seven — must have had an intimate acquaintance with the events of the
early period of the Jerusalem Church. Again, ' St. Luke displays a special
knowled;^'e of matters relating to the court of the Herods. He mentions by
name a woman whom none of the other evangelists mentions, " Joanna the
wife of Chuza, Herod's steward" [Luke viii. 3], and in like manner in the
Acts he speaks of Manaen, "foster-brother of Herod" [Acts xiii. i, one of
the " prophets" or '• teachers" at Antioch]. Here we have a glimpse of
a circle from which St. Luke probably got his account of ' events connected
with the Herods.

* See, for the Sadducees, Acts iv. i, v. 17, 24; for the Pharisees, with
the scribes and common people, v. 34, vi. 12 f., vii. 54 ff . ; for both
together, ix. i ; for their divergence, xxiii, 6 ff.

i6 Dissertations.

the circumstances out of which arose the appointment
of the Seven : the personality, work, and speech of
Stephen — all this is represented in such a way as
guarantees the faithful correspondence of the narrative
with the actual situation ; in other words, in such a way
as guarantees that St. Luke is trustworthy in his use of
his information and his documents. The study of the
Acts, then, sends us back to the Gospel with a greatly
invigorated belief in St, Luke's trustworthiness in his
use of documents. We examine further the document
of the nativity, and we find not only that it is Aramaic,
but that it breathes the spirit of the Messianic hope,
before it had received the rude and crushing blow
involved in the rejection of the Messiah. The Fore-
runner is ' to make ready a people prepared for the
Lord '.' The Child is to have ' the throne of his father
David,' and to 'reign over the house of Jacob for ever^,'
God hath ' holpen Israel his servant, that he might
remember mercy (as he spake unto our fathers) toward
Abraham and his seed for ever"^.' He hath ' visited and
wrought redemption for his people, and hath raised up
a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant
David, salvation from our enemies and from the hand of
all that hate us '*.' It is the hope of ' the redemption of
Jerusalem •' ' that is to be gratified. Now all this language
of prophecy does indeed admit of interpretation in the
light of subsequent facts. St. Paul could justify to the
Jews the actual result out of their own Scriptures". But
it is not the sort of language that early Jewish Christians

* i. 6S-71. s ii. 38. « Romans ix-xi.

The Virgin Birth of our Lord. 17

would have invented after the rejection of the Christ. It
contrasts very markedly with the language of St. Peter's
speeches in the Acts \ or of St. Stephen -, or of St. PauP,
or of St. James ^, or of St. John '. No doubt in the
language of Simeon the coming of the Christ is 'a light
for revelation to the Gentiles,' as well as ' the glory of
God's people Israel.' He too alone among the speakers
of these opening chapters sees that the crisis is to be
anxious and searching. He ' said unto Mary his mother,
Behold, this child is set for the falling and rising up of
many in Israel ; and for a sign which is spoken against ;
yea and a sword shall pierce through thine own soul ;
that thoughts out of many hearts may be revealed *'.'
But these are notes so often struck in the Old Testament
that they must have found some echo in the immediate
anticipation of the work of the Child. They are like
the warnings of John the Baptist". But they do not
anticipate the disastrous result. They do not forecast
wholesale rejection ; they only just interpose a note of
moral anxiety in the general tone of hopeful exaltation.
Nor is it unnecessary to observe that the conception of
the person of our Lord in these chapters is purely Mes-
sianic®. He is to ' be great, and shall be called the Son of

' See iii. 12-26, iv. 11, 25-28. 2 Acts vii. 51, 52.

^ Acts xiii. 46; I Thess. ii. 14-16.

* St. James v. 6. •' St. John xii. 37-43-
« St. Luke ii. 31-35. ' St. Luke iii. 8.

* The distinction however between the Messianic and the divine con-
ception of our Lord must not be pressed too far. It is true that the Jewish
thought of our Lord's time did not anticipate a divine Messiah. The
Messianic king of the Pharisaic Psalms of Solovion (c. 60 B. C.) does not
rise above the human limit: and the 'Son of Man' coming in glory as
found in the Book of Enoch (by interpretation of Daniel vii. 13) — probably

i8 Dissertations.

the Highest.' He shall be called 'holy, the Son of God,'
because 'the Holy Ghost shall come upon' His mother,
'and the power of the Most High shall overshadow'
her ^. Mary is made to understand that the child whom
she is to bear is to be the product of miraculous divine
agency and is to be the exalted Messiah, but the
doctrine of the Incarnation, strictly speaking, is not more
to be found here than in the early speeches of the Acts.
Here then is an account which presents phenomena
practically irreconcilable with the hypothesis that it
was an invention of the early Jewish Christian imagina-
tion ; an account which may well be Mary's account ;
which must be Mary's, in origin, if it is genuine ; and
which is given to us by a recorder of proved trust-
worthiness, who moreover makes a point of 'having
traced the course of all things accurately front the first!
Finally it is an account which there is no evidence to
show the imagination of any early Christian capable of
producing, for its consummate fitness, reserve, sobriety
and loftiness are unquestionable. Is there then any
good reason against accepting it ^ ?

a pre-Christian idea— is neither properly divine nor properly human. But
the highest Old Testament idea of the divine and human Messiah could
not, we may venture to say, have been realized and combined with the idea
of the servant of Jehovah, except by the eternal Son of God made very
man. Thus in our Lord's own thought and language there is no line of
demarcation between the Messianic and the Divine claim. To go no further,
a strictly divine meaning is given to the function of the Son of Man as
judge of the world. And the apostles and first disciples were carried on
insensibly frfim the confession ' Thou art the Christ of God ' to tlie further
confession ' My Lord and my God.' See on the subject generally Stanton's
Jewish and Christian Messiah (Clark, 1886).

' St. Luke i. 32, 35.

* Of course discrepancies with St. Matthew might discredit either it
or St. Matthew's account ; but these are considered later.

The Virgin Birth of our Lord. 19

I. It is often alleged that the notice of ' the first en-
rolment (or census), made when Ouirinius was governor
of Syria ^,' is unhistorical.

This objection had its full force when secular history
recognized no Syrian governorship of Ouirinius until
just before the time when Judaea became a Roman
province, when a ' census ' was certainly made (a. d. 6) -.
But Ouirinius' earlier governorship is now, chiefly
through the labours of Bergmann and Mommsen, recog-
nized as probable. The case may be fairly stated thus^.

Publius Sulpicius Ouirinius was probably governor
of Syria {legatns Aiigusti pro praetore) for the first time
between B. C. 4-2, but certainly after, not before, the
death of Herod (which occurred in B. c. 4) *.

There is no record, independent of St. Luke's, of any
' census ' (d7roypa(jf)7/) of the Jews till that which took
place during Ouirinius' second legation, and is mentioned
by Josephus. But St. Luke elsewhere alludes to this later
census ^, and apparently intends to distinguish an earlier
one from the later by the phrase he here uses, ' the first
census" under Ouirinius.'

The phrase ' there went out a decree from Caesar

* St. Luke ii. 2.

^ Mommsen, Provinces of the Roman Empire (Eng. trans., Bentley, 1886)
ii. 185-7.

•' The matter has been discussed ad 7iausea>n, as by Zumpt, Godet,
Keim, Edersheim, Farrar, Geikie, Didon. See Diet, of Bible, s. v. Cyre-
Nius. In Farrar's St. Luke (' Cambridge G. T. for Schools') there is an
excellert brief discussion of the matter.

* Mommsen, Kes gestae D. Augusti i, Berlin, 1883) p. 177 ; Keim, Jesus
of Nazara (Eng. trans., Williams & Norgate) ii. pp. 116 f.

* Acts V. 37 iv rats fjixipais rrjs dTToypa<pfjs.

* St. Luke ii. 2 avrr) uTroypaijii^ irpunr] iylvtro T/yfixovtvcvros t^s 'Xvpias
Kvprjviov.

C 3

20 Dissertations.

Augustus that a census be taken of all the world '
may well refer to the rationai-iinn or breviaritnn of the
empire which Augustus busied himself in drawing up,
and which included allied kingdoms ^ Herod, who
was not only a ' rex socius/ but wholly dependent on
the emperor", may well have been forward to supply
a census of his kingdom to please his master. At a
somewhat later date we read in Tacitus of the subjects
of an allied king (of Cappadocia) who were ' compelled to
submit to a census after our [the Romans'] fashion and
to pay tribute ^' On the other hand, it is exceedingly
improbable that any Christians would have invented
such an ignoble reason as an imperial census for bringing
Joseph and Mary up to ' the city of David.'

It must be remembered that the chronological data of
St. Luke ii and iii were in all probability supplied by
himself and not b}' his ' sources.' We are, therefore,
not at all concerned to deny that St. Luke may have
been slightly wrong in his date ; for our Lord must have
been born some months before the death of Herod and

' Cf. Suet AtigtistiiSy cc. ■zS, loi 'rationarium imperii; breviarium
tolius imperii.' Tac. Attn. i. ii 'opes publicae contiiiebantur, quantum
civium sociorumque in armis, quot classes, regna, provinciae, tributa aut
vectigalia, et necessitates ac largitioncs, quae cuncta sua manu perscripseiat
Augxistus.'

' The evidence of the entire subjection of Herod to Augustus may
be found in Joscphus, Atrt. xvi. 4. 1, 11. i (he seeks leave to tiy his sons,
iltc), xvii. 2. 6 {vavTus yovv tov 'lovSaixov Pf^aiwaavTos St' opKcuv 77 fxffv
tvvoTjaai Katrrapi koI roii /SaffiXt'ois irpdyfiami'). Herod was often under the
displeasure of Augustus, cf. xvi. 9. 3-4 (he threatens that having treated
him as a friend, he shall in future treat him as a subject).

' Tac. Ann. vi. 41 (a. D. 36) ' Clitarum natio Cappadoci Archelao sub-
iccta, quia nostnim in modum deferrc census, pati tributa adigchatur, in
iuga Tauri mentis abscessit.'

The Virgin Birth of our Lord. 21

therefore, as would seem certain, before the first governor-
ship of Ouirinius. It is noticeable that TertuUian ^ in
fact attributes the ' census ' to Sentius Saturninus, not
to Ouirinius. But it seems to me, especially in view of
the deficiency of historical authorities for the period, that
we display an exaggerated scepticism if we deny that so
well-informed a writer as St. Luke may have been quite
correct in ascribing the movement to Bethlehem of
Joseph and Mary to some necessity connected with a
'census' of Judaea which Herod was supplying at the
demand of Augustus -.

2. Again, angelic appearances such as occur thrice
in these chapters— to Zacharias, to Mary, and to the
shepherds, are a scandal to some minds, and tend to
discredit the whole narrative by giving it an air of
ideality, that is, unreality.

Now it is important not to allow this matter to assume
an exaggerated importance. For to suppose such angelic
appearances and communications as are related in these
chapters to be imaginative outward representations of
what were in fact real but merely inward communica-
tions of the ' divine word ' to human souls, is both a

^ adv. Marc. iv. 19' Census constat actos tunc [at the time of our Lord's
birth] in ludaea per Sentium Saturninum.' [b. C. 8-6].

^ It is remarkable how critics, like apologists, are apt to go for ' every-
thing or nothing.' St. Luke's credibility is not disproved, if it is made
probable that our Lord's birth took place not at the beginning of Qui-
rinius' governorship but at the end of that of his predecessor. I ought to
add, as I have quoted Mommsen in proof of the earlier governorship of
Quirinius, that he denies that any census took place at that time. Indeed
he uses somewhat strong language to express his resentment at his labours
having become in any way available for apologists — ' homines theologi
vel non theologi sed ad instar theologorum ex vinculis sermocinantes '
{pp. cit. p. 176).

Dissertations.

possible course and one which is quite consistent with
accepting the narrative as substantially historical and
true. No one who believes in God and His dealings with
men, and who accepts the testimony of all the prophets
as to ' the word of the Lord ' coming to them ^, can
doubt the reality of substantive divine communications
to man of a purely inward sort. Such an inward com-
munication is recorded in these chapters to have been
made to Elisabeth -' and the angelic appearances to
Joseph, recorded by St. Matthew ^, are merely inward
occurrences, i. e. they are intimations conveyed to his
mind in sleep. No one, moreover, who knows human
nature can doubt that such inward communications could
be easily transformed by the imagination into outward
forms. It is then quite conceivable that Zacharias on
the solemn, the unique, occasion of his approaching God
to offer the incense in the holy place '', did in answer to
his earnest prayer^, receive inwardly a divine intimation
of a mysterious sort as to what was to befall him, such
as made a vivid impression upon his mind, and even took
effect upon his organs of speech — as mental shocks do
produce physical effects — and that this divine intimation
represented itself to his imagination in the outward form
and voice of an angel. It is possible to give a similar
interpretation to Mary's vision, and to that of the shep-
herds, though in this case the account would have to be
more freely dealt with. There are no insuperable objec-

' Sanday, Bainplou Lechoes, lect. iii.

' St. Luke i. 41-45. 3 St jviatt. i. 20, ii. 13, 19.

♦ See Edersheini, y<;j//j the Messiah (Longmans, 1884) i. p. 134 'only
once in a lifetime might any one enjoy that privilege.'
'•" St. Luke i. 13.

The Virgin Birth of our Lord. 23

tions to a ' subjective vision' theory in these cases such as
do, unmistakeably, present themselves when the same
theory is applied to the appearances of our Lord after
the resurrection \ nor, as was said above, would such
a theory, if accepted, affect the credibility of the narra-
tive as a whole. The truth of the inward intimation
was, on the hypothesis, proved by the subsequent facts :
its form was recorded as it presented itself to the
subject of it.

And here, in a discussion which is concerned only
with the substantial truth of these evangelical narra-
tives, it might be wiser for me to leave the matter. But
the present seems a suitable occasion to go on to ask
whether it is really reasonable to find a scandal in
angelic appearances ? There can be no a priori objec-
tion against the existence of such spiritual beings, good
and bad, as angels and devils. Many of us would say that
the phenomena of temptation, as experienced by them-
selves, cannot be interpreted without a belief at least in
the latter-. Above all, our Lord's language certainly

' e. g. the empty tomb : the importance attached to the actual body
and its peculiar features : the appearance to great groups of men simul-
taneously : more than all, the fact that what reassured the disciples after
the death and burial of their master — and in fact transformed their character
and fundamentally altered their point of view — was no communication from
God, but the actual and repeated appearance of the person of Jesus in the
body. All the stress is on the fact.

2 Cf. Dale, Lect. on the Ephcsians (Hodder & Stoughton) pp. 422 f . ' Evil
thoughts come to us which are alien from all our convictions and all our
sympathies. There is nothing to account for them in our external circum-
stances or in the laws of our intellectual life. We abhor them and repel
thtm, but they are pressed upon us with cruel persistency. They come to
us at times when their presence is most hateful ; they cross and trouble the
current of devotion ; they gather like thick clouds between our souls and
God, and suddenly darken the glory of the divine righteousness and love.

24 Dissertations.

reaches the level of positive teaching about good, and
still more about bad, spirits. As regards good spirits, not
only does His language constantly associate angels with
Himself in the coming and judicial work of the last
day ^ but He talks of them with explicit distinctness as
beholding the face of God, as limited in knowledge of
the great day, as without sensual natures, as attached to
children, ministering to the souls of the dead, attendant
on Himself at His request^. As regards evil spirits.
He must Himself have related His own temptation to
His disciples, in which the personal agency of Satan is
vividly presented. He speaks with great simplicity of
the devil as disseminating evil and hindering good^. He
warns Peter of an explicit demand made by him upon
the souls of the apostles*. He deals with demons with
unmistakeable seriousness, emphasis, and frequency.
He sees Satan behind moral and physical evil ^. He

We are sometimes pursued and harassed by doubts which we have
deliberately confronted, examined, and concluded to be absolutely desti-
tute of force, doubts atiout the very existence of God, or about the authority
of Christ, or about tlie reality of our own redemjHion. Sometimes the
assaults take another form. Evil fires which we thought we had quenched
are suddenly rekindled by unseen hands : we have to renew the fight with
forms of moral and spiritual evil which we thought we had completely
destroyed.' Cf. also Trench, Studies in the Gospels (Macmillan, 1878)
p. 18 ' Assuredly this doctrine of an evil spirit ... so far from casting
a deeper gloom on the mysterious destinies of humanity . . . lights up with
a gleam and glimpse of hope regions which would seem utterly dark
without it.' And Y . D. Maurice, The Gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven
(Macmillan) lect. vi.

' St. Matt. xiii. 41, 49, xvi. 27, xxv. 31, and p.irallel passages; cf. St.
Luke xii. 8.

'■' St. Malt, xviii. 10, xxiv. 36, xxvi. 53; St. Mark xii. 25; St. Luke
xvi. 22.

^ St. Matt. xiii. 39; St. Luke viii. 12. * St. Luke xxii. 31.

'■' St. Luke xiii. 16 ; St. John vhi. 44.

The Virgin Birth of our Lord. 25

looks out upon the antagonism to good which the world
presents and says 'An enemy hath done this \' He
recognizes the approach of evil spirits in the trial of the
passion^. But He knows that the power of the forces
of evil is really overthrown and their doom certain^.

Now the question of diabolic agency and temptation
is one which really concerns the permanent spiritual
struggle of mankind. It is not, like questions of
literature and science, one with which religion is not
primarily mixed up. It is a matter of profoundly prac-
tical religious interest. Is that which opposes itself
to our efforts after God, whether individual or social,
that which seems to lie behind all the wickednesses of
particular men, and to organize evil broadly and con-
tinuously — is it inevitable nature, an essential element
in the constitution of things, is it in effect a rival God?
or is it, on the other hand, an evil will, or kingdom of
evil wills, hostile and active, but wholly subordinate to
God and destined to be overthrown ? To teach ignor-
antly on such a matter, or to inculcate false impressions
about it, would be most seriously inconsistent, I do
not say with the personality of the incarnate Son of
God, but even with the office of the Son of Man as
spiritual teacher of all mankind, having a perfect insight
into the spiritual condition of our human life. Nor is
it possible to suppose that our Lord, without emphasiz-
ing the existence of ' spirits,' connived in regard to it
at popular belief and language, and, as it were, used the

^ St. Matt. xiii. 28. See a very striking sermou in H. S. Holland's God's
City (Longmans, 1894).

^ St. Lukexxii. 53 ; St. John xiv. 30.

^ St. Luke X. 18 ; St. Matt. xii. 28, 29, xxv. 41.

26 Dissertations.

belief only so far as was necessary to render Himself
intellif?ible. He did much more than this. On a matter
— the existence of angels and spirits — which appears to
have been in controversy between Pharisees and Sad-
ducees \ He must be regarded as having taken a side.
Further, the teaching and method of Jesus Christ with
regard to Satan and the ' demons,' when compared with
current Jewish lore, exhibits a marked independence and
originality owing to its entire freedom from elements
of superstition. Our Lord in 'exorcising' demons
appears as doing by simple moral authority what the
Jewish exorcists did by incantations and charms^. On
the whole, it is impossible to treat His language about
spirits as ' economical ' without giving profound unreality
to His teaching as a whole.

The present writer then does not see how doubt
about the existence and action of good and bad spirits
is compatible with a real faith in Jesus Christ as the
absolutely trustworthy teacher. There is nothing con-
trary to reason in such a belief. That it should have
been associated with a vast amount of superstition and
credulity is no more an argument against its validity

' Acts xxiii. 8.

^ For Jewish exorcisms cf. Tobit vi. 16, 17 (Neubauer's trans, from the
Chaldee) ' And when thou shall come into the marriage-chamber wiih
her, take the heart of the fish, and smoke thereof imder her garments; and
the demon shall smell it and he shall run away and never come again.'
Cf. Joseph. Ant. viii. 2. 5, Bell. Jud. vii. 6. 3. See further on Jewish
belief in angels and demons, Charles' Book of Enoch ,Clar. Press, 1893)
]). 52. That our Lord does at times use merely popular language about
si)irits is certain, as in St. Matt. xii. 43-45. There, however, lie is jilainly
speaking in metaphor. The ' waterless places' through wiiich the demon
walks are as metaphorical as the ' cm])ty, swept, and garnislied liousc ' of
the soul.

The Virgin Birth of our Lord. 2-1

than asfainst religion as a whole. No one can deny that
in our Lord's case, the teaching which He gave about
spirits is guarded from superstition by His teaching
about God and human responsibility. Now, granted
the existence of devils and angels ^, there is no reason
for doubting that they have from time to time made
their presence perceptible to men — in the case of angels,
as messengers of God and instruments of His redemptive
purpose- — and to return to St. Luke's narrative of the
nativity, there is no reason for doubting that angelic
ministrations were actually employed to announce the
birth of the Forerunner and the incarnation and birth
of the Christ.

No other considerable objections than these two,
which have now been examined and set aside, have
been urged against the historical character of the first
two chapters of St. Luke's Gospel : we are justified
therefore in falling back upon the positive considerations
which indicate that the account in these chapters is
derived from no other person than the Virgin Mother
herself.

^ The belief in the existence and appearance of 'spirits' is quite consistent
with the recognition that we know hardly anything about them. The
amount of pretended knowledge on the subject in Jewish and Christian
writers is appalling. But in the Bible they are, we may say, never the sub-
jects of divine revelation for their own sake. Their 'persons' are merged
in their offices of adoration and service. Where angels appear in the Bible
they appear in the form of men.

^ The objection made against the early chapters of St. Luke on the score
of the similarity of their contents to the birth-legends of heroes is met
later on ; § 6, p. 55.

28 Disscrfatiojis.

k 3.

The narrative of St. Matthew.

Now we approach St. Matthew's account of the
nativity. The narrative of St. Luke, if it is authentic,
must, as was said above, have come from Mary. The
narrative of St. Matthew, on the other hand, bears upon
it undesigned but evident traces of coming from the
information of Joseph. It is Joseph's perplexities that
are in question^. Divine intimations arc recorded as
given to Joseph on three occasions, leading him to act
for the protection of the Mother and Child from external
perils^. Now supposing the conception of Jesus really
to have taken place without the intervention of Joseph,
and supposing Joseph to have been, as the evangelist
says, a 'just man' and to have died, as appears to have
been the case, before the public ministry of our Lord
began — it is only natural to suppose that he would
have left behind him some document^ clearing up,
by his own testimony, the circumstances of the birth
of Jesus. If the miraculous birth was ever to have
been made public, his testimony would have been
im[)crativel}' needed. This document he must, we
should suppose, have given to Mary to vindicate by
means of it, when occasion demanded, her own virginity.
Why should she not, after the establishment of the

' i. 19. '■' i. 20, ii. 13, 19, 22.

^ Joseph, like Zacharias (Luke i. 63;, would have been able tu write.

The Virgin Birth of our Lord. 29

Church at Pentecost, have given it to the family of
Joseph, the now beheving ' brethren of the Lord ' ?
Why should it not have passed from their hands to
the evangelist of the first Gospel, and have been worked
over by him in view of his predominant interest — that of
calling attention to fulfilments of prophecies? This theory
of the origin of the first two chapters of St. Matthew's
Gospel at once accounts for the phenomena they present
and vindicates, in substance, their historical character.
That the narrative did pass through the hands of our
Lord's family is more than likel}^ for Julius Africanus,
a Christian writer of the beginning of the third century,
who lived at Emmaus, informs us, and probably rightly,
that it is to the relations of our Lord (ot h^.a-Koavvoi
KaKovfjievot) that we owe the attempts to construct
genealogies of Christ ^

Is there then anything internal to the narrative pro-
hibiting such a view? It is a certain historical fact that
Herod was, from circumstances and disposition, acutely
jealous of any royal claim which might imperil his own
position and that of his family-. It is certain that his

' In Euseb. //. £. i. 7. Cf. Renan, Evang. pp. 60, 6r, 186 'Le lour
de la genealogie de Matthieu est hebraique ; les transcriptions des
noms propres ne sent pas celles des Septante (Boe'y, et non Boof). Nons
avons vu d'ailleurs que les genealogies furent probablement I'oeuvre des
parents de Jesns, retires en Batanee et parlant hebreu.'

^ See Joseph. Bell. Jud. i. 30. 4 \-nrlir\To to) (pu^ai nal npus nacrav inrouotav
e^eppiTTTei^eTo. Attt. xvii. 2. 7 [tlie Pharisees] irpcivXeyov d/s 'HpuiSri plv
KarawavatoDS u.pXH'^ ^"'^ Oiov eif/r](ptafj.(i'r]s avrai re Kal yevfi rai an' avrov t^j
Tf I3aat\(ias ei's re fKfivTjv [Pheroras' wife] vtpiTi^ovffijs Kal ^(pwpai>, TrafSds
T€ 01 (l(v avToh . . . Kal o ^acn\(vs tuv re ^apiffaiojv roiis alriajTarovs dvaipfi
Kal Baywav tov (vvovxov, k.t.K. KTfivei b\ Kal ndv otl tov oiKiiov (TvvftffTTjKd
oTs 6 ^apiaaioi i\(y(u. This incident was shortly before Herod's death.
' The momentary glimpses which we gain of him in the New Testament,'
says the late Dean Stanley, ' through the story of his conversation with the

3© Dissertations.

last days were, as Josephus records, marked by wild
ferocity and brutality. Josephus' story of his shutting
up in the hippodrome the elite of the nation and taking
measures to cause them to be murdered directly after
his own death, in order that it might not be unaccom-
panied with mourning^, may be a slander, but at least
illustrates the impression he left of his character in his
last days. Thus the history of the massacre of the few
babes of Bethlehem and its district is wholly consistent
with the man and the occasion. There is no one who
could corroborate the evangelist except Josephus, and
the silence of Josephus about all that concerns Chris-
tianity is so nearly complete- that it can hardly be
otherwise than intentional. Christianity was an object
of hatred and suspicion to the masters of the world,
when Josephus was writing -^ and he may well have
wished to say as little about it as possible in a work
expressly intended to conciliate Gentile readers.

Herod's ' massacre of innocents ' is thus an exceed-
ingly credible and natural incident. As to the visit of
the Magi — which (we may notice) is introduced into
the narrative chiefly as accounting for the threatened

Magi and his slaughter of the children of Bethlehem, are quite in keeping
with the jealous, irritable, unscrupulous temper of the last " days of Herod
the king," as we read them in the pages of Josephus ' {Hist, of Jewish
Church, iii. p. 380).

' Joseph. Ant. xvii. 6. 5. He describes the king as ' rabid with guilty
and innocent alike' ; or (c. 8. i) ' fierce to all alike, the slave of passion.'

^ I am assuming that the famous passage {Aitt. xviii. 4. 3) about Jesus
Christ is at least greatly interpolated.

^ The Antiquities was finished about A. i). 94, in Domitian's reign. On
Domitian as a persecutor, see Ramsay, The Church and the Roman Empire
(Hodtlcr & Sloughlon, 1893) p. 259. Josephus would be anxious to disso-
ciate his race from the Christians.

The Virgin Birth of our Lord. 31

massacre, and consequent flight of Joseph and Mary
into Egypt — it has its basis at least in what is natural
and well known. The diffusion of Jews in the remoter
East, the wide spread of the Jewish Messianic hope \
the attraction of all sorts of men towards Jewish
synagogues — all this makes it not improbable to those
who believe in a divine providence that some oriental
astrologers should have had their thoughts directed
towards Jerusalem, and should have paid a visit there,
under the attraction of some celestial phenomenon, to
seek a heaven-sent king. It is not improbable because
God works upon men by His inspirations through their
natural tendencies and occupations- — the supernatural,
in this as in other cases, operating through the natural.

It was said above that the narrative of Joseph had
been worked over by the evangelist in his predominant
interest in the fulfilment of prophecy. It is of course
maintained that this is less than the truth, and that the
prophecies have in fact created the supposed events : so

* Suetonius' words are well known and often quoted {Vespas. 4) ' Percre-
bruerat oriente toto vetus et constans opinio, esse in fatis ut eo tempore
ludaea profecti rerum potirentur. Id de imperatore Romano, quantum
postea eventu patuit, praedictum ludaei ad se trahentes rebellarunt.' But it is
doubtful whether he has any source of information other than similar pas-
sages in Joseph. Bell. Jud. vi. 5. 4 and Tac. Hist. v. 13, which attribute such
expectations only to \}nQjews. ( Josephus, the Jew, originated the idea that
the prophecy really referred to ' the government of Vespasian.') However,
the universal diffusion of the Jews meant the universal diffusion of the
Jewish expectations amongst themselves and their more or less attached
proselytes.

- See St. Chrysostom's excellent commentary on the event. God influ-
ences men through their national customs and ideas. As the whole Jewish
ritual system was only an instance of national Semitic rites taken as they
were and made the vehicle of divine leading, so now God led the Magi
through their astrology : 5ta twc avvi]Oojv aiiToiis KaKuoipoSpa avynaTalSaifcuv,
n.T.\. (on St. Matt. vi. 3).

32 Dissertations.

that in particular the Virgin Birth at Bethlehem is
a mere reflection of the prophecies of Micah and Isaiah,
as represented in the Septuagint version, and that the
visit of the Magi with the events following from it is
a merely imaginative construction out of materials
supplied by the anticipations and incidents of the Old
Testament.

It must be observed at starting that what we are
asked to admit is more than the unconscious modifica-
tion of some detail of history by adjustment to the
language of prophecy. It is quite possible that the intro-
duction of the ' ass ' beside the ' colt ' in Matt. xxi. 2,
the specification of ' thirty pieces of silver ' in Matt,
xxvi. 15 (cf. xxvii. 3-10), the mingling of 'gall' with
wine in Matt, xxvii. 34 — details where St. Matthew is
unsupported by the other evangelists, may be modifica-
tions due to the influence of the language of Zechariah
and the Psalmist respectively. But in all these cases
the historical event stands substantially the same
when the modification is removed. Christ rode into
Jerusalem upon the foal, and was betrayed for a sum
of money, and was given a drink of wine mingled
with m\Trh before His crucifixion. In the cases to be
discussed in these two chapters the prophecies, if they
had any effect on the supposed event, created them
altogether. Jesus was in effect born naturally and at
Nazareth : there was no visit of Magi or massacre of
innocents or flight into T^gypt.

Now in general the argument from the influence
of prophecy is weakened in proportion as the pro-
phecies in question arc such as would not to the pious

The Virgin Birtli of our Lord. 33

imagination of a Jew have required fulfilments such as
are found for them : in other words, the argument is
weakened in proportion as the application of the pro-
phecy is not such as would have suggested itself prior to
the event. Now there are five prophecies of which the
fulfilment is discovered in these two chapters. Of these
the last\ ' He shall be called a Nazarene,' finds its fulfil-
ment in an undoubted event, but as a prophecy cannot
be identified with any passage in the Old Testament.
The fourth" is a passage from Jer. xxxi. 15 which
describes Rachel, as the mother of Israel, weeping for
her children, carried away into captivity to Babylon. It
is an historical passage ; and while the association of
Rachel with Bethlehem, her burial-place ^, naturally sug-
gested its application to the ' massacre of the innocents '
— Rachel again weeping over her children — it could
hardly by any possibility have S2tggested this latter event.
The third ^ is again an historical passage from Hosea
xi. I : ' When Israel was a child then I loved him, and
called my son out of Egypt. As they called them, so they
went from them : they sacrificed unto Baalim,' &c. The
identification of the Christ with the true Israel no doubt
would suggest the appropriateness of Christ, like Israel,
being delivered from Egypt, when once the event had
occurred or when a narrative of it was before the evan-
gelist. But the historical passage cannot in this case
either be conceived to have produced the event. Critics
are at liberty to say that the evangelist's method of
interpreting prophecy is unconvincing. They cannot
say he forced the event to the prophecy.

' ii. 23. - ii. 17, 18. ' Gen. xxxv. 15. * ii. 15.

34 Dissertations.

On the other hand, there was a prophecy, or set
of prophecies, which might have suggested the episode
of the Magi, but if it had suggested it, would have
suggested it in a different shape. There was a pro-
phecy^ that 'Gentiles should come to Israel's light, and
kings to the brightness of his rising,' and another^ that
' the kings of Tarshish and of the isles should bring pre-
sents : the kings of Sheba and Seba should offer gifts.'
These prophecies, working in the imagination of later
Christendom, did in fact transmute the visit of the Magi
into the visit of the three kings. But they could not
have produced the event as St. Matthew records it, and
St. Matthew neither modifies the event to suit them
nor refers to the prophecies at all ^.

Such considerations as these must be with us in
approaching the first two of the five 'fulfilments ' pointed
out by St. Matthew in these chapters. The second
refers us back to a real prophecy of Bethlehem as
destined to the glory of producing the heaven-sent
ruler of Israel * : ' But thou, Bethlehem P^phrathah, which
art little to be among the thousands of Judah, out of
thee shall one come forth unto me that is to be ruler in
Israel.' It does not appear to have originally meant
more than that the Messianic king should come of
David's line, and so indirectly of David's city. But it

' Is. Ix. 3. 2 ps ]^,.ii jQ

' It should be noticed, as bearing on the date of St. Matthew's narrative,
that the story of the star, as it appears in Ignatius (c. A. D. no), Eph. 19,
already shows the influence of mythical exaggeration. It shone astonishingly
above all the stars, and the sun and moon and heavenly bodies were atten-
dant upon it. Here the accretion manifestly reflects the story of Joseph's
dream in Gen. xxxvii.
' Micah V. 2.

The Virgin Birth of our Lord. 35

did suggest to the Jews, and apparently before our
Lord's time \ that the Christ was to be himself born at
Bethlehem. Did then the prophecy, thus interpreted,
produce the event, and was Jesus really born, as Strauss,
Renan, Keim, and others affirm, at Nazareth ? The
suggestion can only be entertained by those who on
other grounds have arrived at a low estimate of the
historical trustworthiness of the evangelist altogether.
The entirely independent narratives of the first and third
Gospels agree in placing the birth at Bethlehem, and in
St. Luke's gospel this is not connected at all with pro-
phecy. The same argument applies to the first prophecy-
referred to by St. Matthew (Is. vii. 14). As rendered
in the Ixx version the prophecy ran, ' Behold, the
virgin shall conceive,' &c. It does not appear that the
Hebrew word need necessarily mean more than ' young
woman ^ ' : nor does it appear that there was any Jewish
expectation that the Christ should be born of a virgin*.
Did, then, the text as rendered in the Greek suggest the
idea ? It is impossible to think this if these early narra-
tives are anything better than imaginary productions at
all. For again St. Luke's and St. Matthew's independent
accounts are at one on this point ; and if any informa-
tion from Joseph and Mary underlies them, this is the
point on which their information must have centred ;
and if St. Matthew's interest is absorbed in prophecy,

^ See Edersheim, /. c. i. 206 ; Geikie, Life a7id IVoi ds ^' C'/^r/j-/ (Strahan,
1878), i. 148. Cf. St. John vii. 42.

2 St. Matt. i. 23.

^ See, among recent Roman Catholic scholars, the Abbe Loisy,,
V Enseignemciit Bihliqtie (Paris, 44 Rue d'Assas, 1893), n". 11, p. 54.

* See api'ended note A.

D 2

36 Dissertations.

St. Luke makes no mention of it. Moreover, it may be
said generally that the study of the origiiics of the
Church will convince any candid student that the truth
is rather that the actual events taught the first Christians
to read prophecy afresh, than that prophecy induced
them to imagine events — at any rate, important events —
which did not occur ^.

On the whole, then, (]) the character of St. Matthew's
applications of prophecy in these chapters, (2) the fact
that he does not modify the account of the Magi to suit
obviously applicable prophecies, (3) the agreement with
St. Matthew of St. Luke, who is without any special
interest in prophecy, prevent us from imagining that
the Virgin Birth of Jesus at Bethlehem was a romantic
and unhistorical idea suggested by the forecasts of the
Old Testament. An exact examination of the pro-
phecies and their fulfilment may tend to weaken a
certain form of the argmnent from prophecy, but not
the historical truth of the evangelic narrative.

§ 4.
The relation of the two narratives.

What then is the relation of the two narratives?
They are indeed obviously independent, but arc they
incompatible? The present writer is disposed to reply
that they arc indeed incompatible in certain details as
they stand, but that the incompatible elements are

' Cf. \J\^i{oo\!% Biblical Essays, p. 193.

TJie Virgin Birth of our Lord. 37

explicable quite easily by the use which the evangelists
made of the earlier documents upon which they relied.

Thus St. Matthew is apparently ignorant that Joseph
and Mary had been at Nazareth before the occasion of
their going there from Egypt ^. This is simply explained
by the previous residence there not having been alluded
to in the document which he used, as it was in that used
by St. Luke. On the other hand, St. Luke is probably
ignorant of the flight into Egypt and supposes that Mary
and Joseph returned to Nazareth from Jerusalem imme-
diately after the Presentation ^. The flight into Egypt
was not in his document, and he let the narrative run on
as a compiler would who was ignorant of its having
occurred ^. Granted these two points, the narratives
are quite compatible with one another — St. Luke i
St. Matt. i. 18-25'^; St. Luke ii. 1-21 [St. Matt. i. 25'']
St. Luke ii. 22-38 ; St. Matt, ii [St. Luke ii. 39]
St. Luke ii. 40-52, forming a more or less continuous
series of pictures.

But hitherto we have left out of consideration the
genealogies. That two apparently incompatible genea-
logies should have been left to stand in the Gospels and
create difficulties from the second century downwards, is
indeed valuable evidence of the independence of our first
and third Gospels, and that they were not modified to
suit one another after composition. But what is to be said
as to their origin ? We should judge that St. Matthew's
genealogy was attached to the account of the birth

^ St. Matt. ii. 23. ^ St. Luke ii. 39.

^ St. Luke's account of the interval from the resurrection to the ascen-
sion in c. xxiv, as compared with Acts i, is suggebtive of indifference to verbal
accuracy in note of time and place.

38 Disserfaiions.

which supplied him with his material. As already
mentioned, we believe it to have been, probably, the
work of our Lords relatives. However unknown to us
are the fortunes of David's family after the return from
the captivity, it appears that the great Hillel, grand-
father of Gamaliel, who belonged to a family of Jewish
exiles in Babylon and came to Jerusalem about B.C. 50,
was recognized as of David's family, and that appeal was
made in vindication of his claim to 'a pedigree found in
Jerusalem ^ ' : it is certain also that the claim of Jesus to
be of the royal house was acknowledged at the time
and by the later Jews -. Under these circumstances it
appears probable that the relatives of Jesus constructed
for him in the early days of the Church a genealogy from
the best sources, written or traditional, which were open to
them^. Jewish ideas of genealogy were XdiVgeXy putative :
it was thought that a man by marrying his deceased
brother's wife could raise up seed unto his brother^.
It is therefore more ihan likely that it would have

* See T>t\\Usch, Jesus and fft'/kl {'BzgsteT''s trans., 1877) P- I39- The
statement is based on Bcrcschith Rabba, § 98. Cf. Renan's j^z'a//^. p. 60, who
refers lo Talm. de Jer. Kilaiiii ix. 3 (Derenbourg, p. 349), from which he
infers 'La preoccupation de la race de David est assez vive vers Tan 100.'
Josej)hus gives us valuable information as to the keeping of the genealogies
of the priests in Jerusalem and in their own families (FiV. i,con. Apion. i. 7).

^ See (i) Rom. i. 3. St. Mark xi. 10, Rev. xxii. 16, Hebr. vii. 14 npuSrjKov
on. (2) Euseb. //. E. iii. 20 for Hegesippus' narrative of our Lord's
kinsmen being summoned to satisfy Domitian that though of the house of
David they made no dangerous pretensions: cf. Renan, llvang. p. 61.
(3) The proof which Renan gives (/. f.) that from the beginning of the
third century the Jews recognized the royal origin of Jesus (Talm. de Bab.
Sanbt'drin 43 a: cf. Derenbourg, p. 349, note 2).

' Cf. Africanus in Euseb. H. E. i. 7. 14 ti's oaov I^ikvovvto. But 1 do
not pause to discuss the details of the narrative of Africanus.

* St. Matt. xxii. 24.

The Virgin BirtJi of our Lord. 39

been held that the espousal of Joseph and Mary con-
stituted Jesus Joseph's son for all the purposes of
Jewish reckonin^^ ^ Luke's genealogy, on the other
hand, if we judge from the place where it occurs, appears
not to have been attached to the document of the birth ^.
We can make no guess as to its origin. We do not
venture to commit ourselves to any existing attempt to
conciliate it with St. Matthew's. We only emphasize
the fact that the Davidic origin of Jesus was acknow-
ledged, that His family and disciples made honest and
independent attempts to draw up the record of His
genealogy, and that putative ideas of descent are pro-
bably at least in part responsible for the divergence in
their results. If indeed it were the fact, as Godet and
other modern writers affirm, that in the Talmud Mary
is spoken of as the daughter of Heli, it would be natural
to identify this Heli with the person who is mentioned
as the father of Joseph in St. Luke's genealogy ; and to
suppose that this genealogy was intended by its un-
known compiler as the genealogy of Mary, though it
was apparently misunderstood by St. Luke to be the
genealogy of Joseph. But in fact the statement, which is
originally derived from Lightfoot, is based on a quite
untenable translation ^.

^ It is not, I think, possible to argue from the fact that genealogies are
traced through Joseph against the original belief in the virgin birth, when
these genealogies are in immediate connexion with the account of the virgin
birth. If the Evangelists who put them there did not think they were incom-
patible with the virgin birth, it cannot be argired that their original compilers
did. Cf. Loisy, I.e. p. 50 '[Les evangelistes] ont evidemment pense que
Joseph avait transmis a Jesus le droit davidique, par cela seul qu'il avait
tenu a I'egard de Jesus le role de pere. lis ont cru qu'une filiation legale et
interpretative suffisait pour Taccomplissement des propheties.'

- See Horae Hebraicac (Oxford, 1859) ''•• P- 55- The phrase in Ilieros.

40 Dissertations.

To go on answering objections made to the historical
trustvvortb.iness of documents is apt to give an appear-
ance of weakness. People complain, ' There is so much
that needs answering. Can a document which gives rise
to so many objections be really true? ' We return there-
fore in conclusion to our positive position. The belief
in the general trustworthiness of the evangelical records,
and in particular the belief in the trustworthy use which
St. Luke makes of the documents at his disposal, is
well established by the facts. The particuLir documents
of the infancy bear upon them unmistakeable traces —
while at the same time undesigned traces — of coming
ultimately from Joseph and Mary : the objections made
against their historical truth do not really stand, or at
least do not stand to any extent which affects the sub-
stantial truth of the narrative : in particular the idea that
prophecies of the Old Testament created the story that
Jesus was born at Bethlehem and born of a virgin will
not hold in the light of the use which St. Matthew on the
whole makes of prophecy in his first two chapters, nor
in the light of the independent testimony which St. Luke
affords to these events without exhibiting any interest
in prophecy. We conclude then that in all essential
features we are justified in taking these narratives for
real history.

Chagig. fol. 77, col. 4, is as follows, uh^i^ "hv T\-\2 D^ID Nf:m. Light-
foot renders I/e saw Aliriain the daughter of Hell among the shades
(D^pV? ''7V) '^"^ ^ ^^ assured that the only legitimate translation is He
saw Miriam the daughter o/^ Onioti- Leaves^ (D'^pifQ ^bj? — a nickname of
a kind not iincomm<in in the Talmud), and there is no reason to suppose any
reference to our Lord's mother.

Tlie Virgin BirtJi of our Lord.

§5.
The tradition of the churches.

Wherever the first and third Gospels were accepted
and read in the Christian assembhes, there the Virgin
Birth of Jesus would become an accepted fact, like any
other incident in the Gospel history. Now the traces
of the use of these Gospels go back to the beginning
of the second century. We should expect, therefore,
that, so far as the literature affords indications, we should
find the churches of the second century believing in the
Virgin Birth. But something more than this is the case.
The earliest churches, in their conflict with the difterent
heresies to which the restless spirit of those days gave
rise, make much appeal to tradition. The Church has
not only documents but oral tradition. This tradition
was stereotyped in the varying, but substantially similar,
baptismal creeds of east and west. But before it was
so stereotyped it was assuming gradually a fixed form.
It was the summary of that ' truth ' of which the Church
was to be the 'pillar and ground ^.' One main function
assigned to the apostolic succession of the ministry was
that of giving perpetuity to this tradition and preserving
it from corruption -. It was imparted as rudimentary
instruction to every catechumen. Such a • tradition ' is
presupposed as imparted and assimilated in every part

' 1 Tim. iii. 15.

^ See Irenaens,(W/ Haer. iii. 3-4, iv. 26. 2; "^^\\.\\\\\'\\\,dc Pracscr. 32, 36:
Ilegesippus, ap. Eus. H. E. iv. 22.

42 Dissertations.

of the New Testament ^ In different books different
elements of it are noticed or implied, such as (i) the
threefold Name, (2) the chief historical incidents of our
Lord's life, (3) instruction in moral duties and in the ' last
things,' (4) teaching about the sacraments^. Now it is
not perhaps too much to argue from St. Luke's preface
to his Gospel that the Virgin Birth of Jesus was already
part of that oral instruction which had been imparted
to Theophilus and to complete which he only needed
more secure information ^. In any case, what I am now
concerned to show is that in the creed-like formulas of
the churches the statement of the Virgin Birth had its
place from so early a date and along so many different
lines of ascent as to force upon us the conclusion that
already before the death of the last apostles the Virgin
Birth of Christ must have been among the rudiments
of the faith in which every Christian was initiated ^.

' See St. Luke i. 4 irepi Sjv KarTjxv^V^ Xv-ycvv : Acts ii. 42 ttj SiSaxv rwv
ditoaToXaii' : Rom. vi. ij^ th vv TrapfSuO-rjTf tvttov 5(5a\^s : 1 Cor. xi. 23,
XV. 1-3 : Gal. i. 8, 9 : 2 Thess. iii. 6 fj -napadoais : Hebr. v. 12 ra arotxeia :
2 Tim. i. 13 vnoTinraiaiv tiyiaivovTcov Kojojv : Jude 3 rfj awa^ irapaSoOeiari toi^
ayiois viard : 2 Pet. i. 1 2 : i John ii. 20.

^ See (i) St. Matt, xxviii. 19; cf. Didache, 7 (baptism into 'the Name'
implies teaching about it, which is also implied in all that familiarity
with the idea of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, which the
New Testament takes for granted) ; (2) Luke i. 1-4, i Cor. xi. 23, xv. 3-4 ;
(3) Hebr. vi. 1-2, i Thess. iv. 1-2, v. 2 ; (4) Hebr. vi. 1-6, Rom. vi. 3, i Cor.
x. 15-1''>, xi. 23 ff. ; cf. Acts ii. 38.

' St. Luke i. 4 ' tliat thciu niightest know the certainty concerning the
things in which thou wast orally instructed.'

* It is important to distinguish variations in the words of creeds from
variations in the substance of tradition. Thus, for exam])le, the creed of
the church of Caesarea, as it was jjresented in the Council of Nicaea (see
.Socrates, //. E. 1.8, and Heurtley, de Fide el Symbolo, p. 4), and the actual
creed of Nicaea itself, stale the fact of the Incarnation, but make no specific
mention of the virgin hiith, through which the Incarnation took place :
■niOTivoiitv tis iva \\.vpiov 'Itjaovu Xptarui', tov Xiijv rov &tov, . . . tov Si' fi/xas

The Virgin Birth of our Lord. 43

Thus (i) Irenaeus, writing, as he tells us, while
Eleutherus was bishop of Rome, i. e. not later than
A. D. 190, assures us of the place the Virgin Birth held
in the traditions of the whole Church.

' The Church,' he says, ' though scattered over the
whole world to the ends of the earth, yet having received
from the apostles and their disciples the faith
in one God the Father Almighty . . .
and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who was

incarnate for our salvation :
and in the Holy Ghost, who by the prophets announced

His dispensations and His comings:
and the birth of the Virgin, and the passion, and resur-
rection from the dead, and the bodily assumption
into heaven of the beloved Jesus Christ our Lord,
and His appearance from heaven in the glory of
the Father . . .
having received, as we said, this preaching and this
faith, the Church, though scattered over the whole world,
guards it diligently, as inhabiting one house, and believes
in accordance with these words as having one soul and
the same heart ; and with one voice preaches and teaches
and hands on these things, as if possessing one mouth.
For the languages of the world are unlike, but the force
of the tradition is [everywhere] one and the same ^.'

Tovs dvOpwTTovs Kai Sta ttjv rj^iripav acorrjpiav KareXOuvra Kal aapKajQfvra,
(vaudpanrrjcrafTa, -naOovra, k.t.X. This however does not mean any lack of
importance attached to the virgin birth. Eusebius, the bishop of the
church of Caesarea, shows us in his writings that the virgin birth was
supposed to be involved in any statement of the Incarnation. Thus in
contra Marcellum de Eccl. Theol., after much discussion of the Incarnation
in ii. 1 (Gaisford, p. 199), the virgin birth is incidentally mentioned — ii. 4
(p. 205) 6 iv T^ dyiq ■napOtvw -ytvufitvos, Kal aapKcuOels Kal fvavOpanTTjaas
Kal vaOwv.

' i-on. Haer. i. 10. i 77 \iXv yap iKKXrjala, Kaiirtp Ka9' oXtjs ttjs olKOvp.(vtjs
iajs ntpdrcuv t^s 7^$ 5i(aiTapfi(Vj], irapd 8i rwv d-noaruKcuv Kal twv kKUvmv

44 Dissertations.

So he proceeds to specify as agreeing in this faith the
churches of Germany, Spain, Gaul, the East, Egypt, Libya,
and Italy'. In the creed of Tertullian, who represents
Rome and Carthage, a little later than Irenaeus, the Virgin
Birth holds the same secure and prominent place. ' The
rule of faith,' he sa}'s, ' is altogether one, single, unalter-
able ; the rule that is of believing in one God Almighty,
the maker of the world ; and His Son Jesus Christ, born
of the Virgin Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate, &c.^'

The summary of faith which Irenaeus gave belongs, he
says, to all the churches, and is preserved by the epis-
copal successions everywhere. Rut he lays special stress
upon the representative witness of two churches : upon
that of the Church of Rome, in which he enumerates
the succession of bishops from the time of the founda-
tion of the episcopate by Peter and Paul ; and upon
that of the Church of Polycarp, Smyrna, with the other
churches of Asia. For before Irenaeus came to Rome he
had been brought up in Asia as the pupil of Polycarp,

^aOrjrSjv irapa\aPov(ra ttjV e's tva Otbv narepa -navroKpaTopa . . . tticttiV ical
(h tva XpirjTiv 'Irjaovv, tuv vluv tov 6(ov, tvv aapKcuOivra innp TTJi fjfj.i7(f<as
aoJTTjfiiai' Kat th irvivfia ayioi', tu Sia ruiv TTpoip-qTuiv iceKrjpvxui rn^ oiKovufxias.
Kal ras f AfiVfis, nai rijV (k irapOtvuv ytvvrjcrti', Kal to nnOos, ical ttjv tyepfftv
(K vficpuii', Kal TrjV tvaapicov els tuvs ovpavovs avuXrjipiv rod yyaTrr]/j.fvov yLpirrrov
'Irjaov TOV icvpiov r/fju/i', Kal rf^v (K jwv oiipavuf fv rfj So^t) tov irarpos irapovaiav
avTov . . . TovTo TU KTipvyfia Trap(i\Tj(pvia Kal ravrrjv tt)v rriaTiv, wy ■npoi(pafiiv,
77 tKKXrjcria, Kaiirtp Jc oKcp tw Kuapto) ^itmrapfjuvrj. i-nipuXQis (l>vXa(raei, tus tva
ohcov otKovaa' Kal ufiolcos ntaTeiifi TovTOfs, uis jxtai' ifv\f]V Kal ttjv avri^v t\i>vaa
KapZiav, Kal avfxipwvws ravra Krjpvaati Kal htSdoKd Kal vapaSiSwcriv, wi tv aropta
KfKTrjftfvt], Kol ycip at Kara tov KuapLov 5ia\fKToi ut'opioiot, dWci 77 Svvapn
TTJs irapa5u<rtais pua Kal ff avr-fj.

' (on.IIacr. i. 10. 2. Cf. iii. 4. 2, where this is repeated in suh-tance,aiui
the virgin birth still appears among the rucliments. In iv. 33. 7, a shorter
form is given, where only the Incarnation i-; actually specified.

^ See de Virg. I'dand. i (written about A. u. 210).

The Virgin Birth of our Lord. 45

who had himself belonged to the circle of the last of
the apostles. So that his testimony has value both for
the range which it covers and for the source out of which
it springs. We have evidence however of the truth of
what he says from earlier witnesses.

(2) Justin Martyr passed before Bar-cochba's revolt
(a. D. 13--6) from his Samaritan home in Palestine to
Ephesus, and from Ephesus to Rome. His summaries
of Christian beh'ef, which he gives in his Apologies (c. 150)
and Dialogue, have sometimes a creed-like ring: and in
these creed-like summaries the Virgin Birth holds the
same conspicuous place as in those of Irenaeus. ' For in
the name of this very person,' he says to Trypho the Jew,
'the Son of God, and first begotten of all creation^ and
born of a virgin and made passible man, and crucified
under Pontius Pilate by your people, and dead, and risen
from the dead, and ascended into heaven, every demon
when exorcised is conquered and subdued ^'

' Dial. 85 Kara, yap rod uvuixaros avrov tovtov tov vlov tov 9eov Kal
npwTOTuKOv irdarjs KTiaecvs, Kal Ziatrapdivov y(vvr]6fvros Kal naGrjTov ytvofxivov
dv9pujiTov, Kal aravpaiOtVTOs iirl Uovrlov JIiAaTOV vtto tov \aov iifiu/v Kal diro-
OavuvTOS, Kal dvaaravros eK vfKpwv ical dvapavTOS fh tuv ovpavov, -nav
Satfioviov e^opict^o/xevov viKarai Kal inroTciacfiTai. Here we have, no doubt,
a reflection of the/orwu/a of exorcism; cf. Origen c. Ccls. i. 6 ov yap Kara-
KXijafaLV laxvuv SoKovaiv dWd tcv uvujxari 'irjaov fierd rfjs aTrayyiKias
Twv irepl avTuv laropiujv. But the formula of exorcism is not likely to
differ in the facts recited from the creed of baptism. Other summaries in
Justin are Apol. 46 hid napQtvov dv6puTT0<; uneKv-qO-q Kal 'Irjaovi iTTcuvoixdaOrj
Kal (TTavpw9els diroOavajv uviOTq Kai duf\rj\v6ei' eh ovpavuv. Apol. 31 yivvm-
fXivov Sia TTapOh'ov Kal dv^povpLivov Kal GipaTTtvovra irdaav voaov . . . Kal
<p9ov 01! ixivov Kal dyvoovpLivov Kal OTavpovpLfvov . . . Kal diroOyqaKovra Kal
dvayfipupLfvov Kal els ovpai ovs uvep^ufievov (this is a summary of the pro-
phecies about Christ). In all the above quotations virgin birth, incarnation,
crucifixion, death, resurrection, ascension, are the chief points of belief
about Christ.

46 Dissertations.

(3) Still earlier, Ignatius, who must have become
bishop in Antioch by the very beginning of the second
century, as he passes through the churches of Asia on his
way to his martyrdom, about A. D. 1 10, gives the same
witness as Justin. ' The virginity of Mary and her child-
bearing and in like manner the death of the Lord,' that is,
the atoning value of the death, are 'three mysteries of loud
proclamation which were wrought in the silence of God.'
That is to say, hidden as were the original transactions,
they have become part of the loudly proclaimed message
of the Church ^.

(4) The Christian philosopher Aristides of Athens is
not so widely representative a man as those hitherto
mentioned,butheandOuadratus are the earliest Christian
apologists. And in his recently recovered Apology ^ the
Virgin Birth is mentioned, and in such a manner as to

' Itjn. Eph. 19 7) wapOevia Mapi'ns Kal u roKfToi avT^?, ofioiais Koi o Oavaros
Tov Kvpiov Tpia fj.vaTrjpia Kpavy^s ariva h' ■^avxia 0eov (irpaxO'] '■ cf. CC. 7) j8-
Sinyin. i y(yfvvr]fj.ivov dKr]6u/i Ik irapOivov, ^(^aTmafxfi'ov vni 'laiapvuv . . .
d\r]6u)S (irt Tloi'Ttuv niKdrov Kal 'HpuiStiv rtTpdpxov KaOrjXajfiivov vnlp rjfxSjv
iv aapiii . . . i'va . . . StcL ttjs dvnaTaafa;^, k.t.\. Trail. 9 '\r]ao\i Xpiarov . . .
TOV (K yivovi AavfiS, tov iK Mapias, os dK-qOwi (ytvvrjdT], i<l>i.y(v rt Kai
(Vifv, d\Tj9wi (Stw^Br] irrl Xlovriuv TliXaTov, dKrjOuis laravpujOri Kal dniOavtv . . .
dKrjOws -I'lyipO-q. The birth of Mary and the passion and the resurrection
aie already in I_t,'natius the c\\'\c{ tuonietits of the incarnate life.

^ The date is c. 126, or perhaps 140. See TVjt/j' rt«(/.S'/«(//('j (Cambridge,
1891) vol. i. no. I, pp. 6 ff. The editor of the Apology, Mr. Rendel
Harris, says (p. 25) ' Plvcrything that we know of the do;j;matics of the early
part of the second century agrees with the belief that at tliat period the
virginity of Mary was a part of the formulated Christian belief. . . . We
restore the fragments of Aristides' creed, then, as follows : —

We believe in one God, Almighty, He was pierced by the Jews:
Maker of heaven and earth : He died and was buried :

And in Jesus Christ His Son, The third day He rose again :

l^om of the Virgin Mary

He ascended into heaven,

He is about to come to judge.'

TJie Virgin Birth of our Lord. 47

suggest that it had a place in the creed of the Church of
his day. ' The Christians,' he says. ' reckon the beginning
of their religion from Jesus Christ, who is named the
Son of God Most High : and it is said that God came
down from heaven, and from a Hebrew virgin took and
clad Himself with flesh . . . He was pierced by the Jews;
and He died and was buried ; and they say that after
three days He rose and ascended to heaven.'

(5) The Church of Alexandria has distinctive charac-
teristics and a more or less separate history. It is there-
fore important to notice that in respect of the emphatic
belief in the Virgin Birth it did not differ from other
churches. When Origen (c. A.D. 230) states in summary
' the teaching of the Church which has been handed
down from the apostles in the order of succession and
continues in the churches to the present time,' he
specifies that Jesus Christ ' was born of a virgin and of
the Holy Spirit, that He was truly born, did truly
sufTer and truly die, did truly rise from the dead and
after His resurrection was taken up ' : and when arguing
with Celsus the Platonist, he exclaims ' Who has not
heard of Jesus' virgin birth, of the crucified, of His
resurrection, of which so many are convinced, and the
announcement of judgement to come ? ^ ' So the earlier
Clement (c. 190-200) describes 'the whole dispensation '
thus : ' When one says that the Son of God who made
the universe took flesh and was conceived in the womb
of a virgin . . . and suffered and rose again-.'

(6) Besides the testimonies to the place the Virgin

* de Princip. pref. quoted below, p. loS, and cou. Ceh. i. 7.
" Clem. Strom, vi. 15. 127.

48 Dissertations.

Birth held in the creeds which were taking shape in
the second century, we may mention that it is referred
to in the Testament of tJie Tivclve Patriarchs ^ : and that
if, as Origen tells us, the Gospel of Peter affirmed that
'the brethren of the Lord' were the sons of Joseph by
a former wife, that docetic production of the early part
of the second century recognized not only the virginity,
but the perpetual virginity, of Mary ^.

We have evidence then that the Virgin Birth held
a prominent place in the second-century tradition or
creed of the churches of Rome", Greece^, Africa ^ Asia'',
S}'ria and Palestine", Alexandria ^. Such a consensus
in the second century, reaching back to its beginning,

* Test. Joseph, ig tK rod 'Iuv5a kyivvqOr] napOevos . . . itat i^ avrrji irpo-
fi\6ev aixvui aixa>yi.os. These Tesfa/nciits have been commonly quoted as the
work of a 'Nazarene' Jewish Christian written in the earlier part of the
second century, probably before Bar-cochba's revolt (A. D. 132). But Mr.
Conybeare has discovered an Armenian ms. in which some of the manifestly
Christian allusions disappear. Ste Jeivis/i Quarterly Review, April 1S93,
p. 375. The particular passage cited above appears in a longer but less plainly
Christian form, p. 390. This and other evidence makes for the theory that it
was originally a purely Jewish work gradually interpolated with Christian
])assages : see Dr. Kohler, I.e. p. 401. (If we cannot however quote this
work as evidence for Jewish Christian belief, we can get behind it : for the
documents of the birtli in Matthew and Luke unmistakcably came from
Jewish circles.)

^ Origen, in ]\Iatt. x. 17 tous 5( dSfXc^ovy '\riao\i (paai rif ey fh'ai, eK
TTapaSuaeojs vpfxw/xfyoi rod (in-yeypafXfiivov Kara IliTpov evayytXiov fj t^j
fii/SAoi' 'laKuiliov, vlox/s 'Iwar](l) «« TTporipas yvvaiKus cwaiKrjKv'ias airw itpb tjJs
fJlnpias. As is well known, a fragment from the end of the Gospel has
recently been discovered. For the above argument cf. Ch. Quart. Rev.
Jan. 1893, p. 480. Dr. Taylor finds reference to the virgin birth in the
Shepherd of Hermas : see Hernias and the Four Gospels (Cambridge, 1892),
pp. 29-32.

^ Irenaeus. * Aristides. * Tertullian.

" Irenaeus, Justin, and Ignatius.

^ Ignatius, Justin, documents for first and third Gospels.

" Clement and Urigen.

The Virgin Birth of our Lord. 49

among very independent churches, seems to us, apart from
any question of the Gospels, to prove for the behef an
apostolic origin. It could not have taken such an undis-
puted and universal position unless it had really had the
countenance of the apostolic founders of churches — of
Peter and Paul and John, of James and the Lord's
' brethren.' The argument of Tertullian and Irenaeus
from the identity of distinct traditions to their apostolic
origin has within certain limits conclusive force.

For there is a consensiLs of traditions. Opponents of
the Virgin Birth appear, but it must be admitted that
they are innovating upon earlier tradition or retrograding
from it ; and that they are opponents also of the principle
of the Incarnation. There are no believers in the Incarna-
tion discoverable, who are not also believers in the Virgin
Birth : while on the other hand, it must be said that the
teaching of the Virgin Birth proceeded out of that
thoroughly Jewish section of the early Christian Church
in which the belief in the Incarnation was not clearly
developed out of the belief in Jesus as the Messiah.

(i) The first Christian who is known to have denied
the Virgin Birth is Cerinthus, whom a credible tradition
makes a contemporary of St. John. Among much that
is legendary in his story, certain facts emerge as very
probably true ^ He was a Jew, ' trained in the teaching
of the Egyptians,' i.e. presumably in Alexandria. His
teaching in some respects was characteristically Jewish,
in particular in its chiliastic eschatology and, appa-
rently, in its insistence upon the permanent obligation
of the Jewish ceremonial law, at least in parts. But his
1 See Did. of Chr. Biog., art. Cerinthus.
E

50 Dissertations.

Judaism was tinged with that oriental horror of the
material world which he would have learnt from the
great Alexandrian Jew Philo, and which was one main
characteristic of the various gnostic sects. The 'gnostic '
tendency led him to attribute the creation of the world
to a lower power than the Supreme God, and to draw
a distinction between Jesus the material man and the
' spiritual ' Christ. He declared that Jesus was not
born of a virgin but was the son of Joseph and Mary,
after the ordinary manner ; only as he was pre-eminent
beyond all other men in moral excellence, so after his
baptism the Christ in the form of a dove descended
upon him from the supreme region to enable him to
reveal the unknown Father and to work miracles : but
finally left him again before the passion, so that the
man Jesus suffered and rose again, but the Christ
remained spiritual and impassible ^ This is a doctrine
which has remarkable affinity with the sort of gnostic
docetism which appears also in the Gospel of Peter,
though that document is intensely anti-Jewish, and
appears to have accepted the Virgin Birth -. We need
not dwell long upon it. Whatever its importance for
the history of the Church, it is wholly alien from

' \xtu. con. Haer. i. 26. i ' Ic^um autem subiccit iion ex virgine natum
I'impossibile enim hoc ci visum est') ; fuisse autcm euni Joseph ct Marine
filiuin similiter ut reliqui omiics homines, et plus potuisse iuslitia et j^rudentia
ct sapieutia prae omnibus. Et post baptismum dcscendisse in cum ab ea
principalitate, (juae est super omnia, Christum figura cohimbac ; et tunc
annuntiasse incognitum Patrem ct virtutcs pcrfccissc : in tine autcm rcvolasse
iterum Christum de lesu et lesum passum esse et resurrexisse ; Christum
autem inipassibilcm persevcrasse, exsistentem spiritualem.'

' Sec toward tlic beginning of the recovered fragment, The Gospel accord-
ing to Peter, a lecture by J. A. Robinson ;,Camb. 1892) pp. 20 f.

The Virgin Birth of our Lord. 51

the Christianity of James or Peter, Paul or John,
Matthew or Luke. To them there is no antagonism,
as there is none in the canonical Old Testament, between
God and the material world, and no objection, therefore,
arising from such an idea to belief in the incarnation
and the passion of the Son of God. The separation
between the higher impassible person Christ and the
lower Jesus is alien to them. Of Cerinthus then it is
emphatically true that he does not represent earlier
tradition, and that his rejection of the Virgin Birth arises
from a rejection of the principle of the Incarnation.

(2) Justin Martyr, in argument with the Jew Trypho,
tells him of the existence of a considerable body of
Christians (men ' belonging to our race ') who denied
the Incarnation and the Virgin Birth, but still believed
Chri.st to be the Messiah. They are not the majority,
for the majority prefer to be guided by the teaching of
the prophets and of Christ. But they exist, and Justin is
ready to urge Trypho and other Jews, if they cannot
accept the idea of the Incarnation and Virgin Birth, at
least to come as far as these persons and to believe that
Jesus is the Messiah ^.

The Christians here alluded to are no doubt the

' Justin. Dial. c. Tryph. 48 ovk airoWvTai to tovtov flvai XptffTuv rov
6iov, lav avobii^ai fji.fj Svvojfiai on Kal npovv^pxtv vlus tov ttoitjtov rwv oKcuv,
6(bi cjv, Kal yeyivvTjTai avOpairros Sia rijs -napOivov. . . . Kal yap elai Tives, Si
<pi\oi, iXtyov, dno rod fjfUTfpov ytvovs oixoXoyovvra avTov XpiaTof dvai,
avOpomov St If avOpunrwv ytvojifvov diroipatvufievor oh ov owTiOffiai, ov5
av ir\(iaToi ravTci fioi bo^daavTd uttouv (neiSr^ ovk di'Opwntiois di5ayfj.a(Ti
KtKiXfxianiOa vn' avrov tov XpiTTov Trti9ea9at, dWd tois Sid twv fiaKapiwv
7rpo(priTwv KTjpvxOeici Kal Si' avrov St5ax9fic!i. In c. 49 he gives us to under-
stand that these (Ebionite) Christians believed Jesus to have been 'anointed
(at His baptism) in accordance with divine selection, and thus to have
become Christ.'

E 2

52 Dissertations.

' Ebionites,' as they are called by Irenaeus and later
writers. Two things are worth notice in this passage of
Justin. First, that his willingness to call the Ebionites
Christians indicates that the line of demarcation between
orthodoxy and heresy was not at that time, at least in
his Palestinian home, as sharply drawn as it was in
the Church at large before the end of the second
century ^ Palestinian Ebionism in fact probably repre-
sents a gradual ' reversion to type ' or deterioration
from the original apostolic standpoint towards pre-
Christian Judaism. There was no originator of the
heresy such as the ' Ebion ' whom the Fathers imagined.
Secondly, we should notice the rejection of the Virgin
Birth coincided in this case, as in that of the Cerinthians,
with a rejection of the principle of the Incarnation.

It is of course often maintained that Ebionism — i.e. the
doctrine that Christ was naturally born and was a mere
man to whom the Divine Spirit united Himself at His
baptism, anointing Him to be the Christ — is the original
Jewish Christianity. To this we reply that there is
no Christianity older than the Jewish Christianity of the
documents used b}' St. Luke in the first two chapters of
his Gospel and the opening chapters of the Acts. What
appears to be the case, to judge from the early history
of the Acts, is that all the stress at the beginning of
the apostolic preaching was laid on the Messiahship

* See Stanton, _/(?zt//jA and Christian Messiah, p. 167. I am concerned
here only with the older ' Pharisaic Kbionism.' The ' Gnostic Ebionism '
was a later formation, and, in part at least, admitted the miraculous birth.
See Hippolytus, Philosoph. ix. 14 ; Origen, c. Cels. v. 61 ; and cf. Diet, of
Chr. Biog., s. v. Eb;onism. The 'Nazarenes' are also called Ebionites
(Orig. c. Cels. ii. i, v. 61), but ihcy admitted the miraculous biith.

The Virgin Birth of our Lord. 53

of Jesus, as vindicated in His resurrection from the
dead and His glorification in heaven, whence He should
come again to judge the quick and the dead. Many
Jews no doubt became Christians confessing simply
in this sense that ' Jesus was Lord.' They had no
theology of His person of a distinctive sort. It is this
sort of Judaism, intensely conservative and tending to
reaction, with which St. Paul is confronted. His anti-
judaistic epistles are an attempt to persuade its adherents
that they must recognize more fully the fresh departure
involved in Christianity, or else go backwards and
prove false to Christ. In his earlier epistles the point
of controversy is not the person of Christ, but the basis
of justification. But in 'the epistles of the first captivity'
it is the person of Christ which is his starting-point
for exhibiting the inadequacy of Judaism. Similarly
in the Epistle to the Hebrews we have an apostolic
writer striving to lift Judaizing Christians out of an
inadequate and reactionary position into a fuller con-
ception of the person of Christ. More and more the
decision whether 'Judaizers' would go forward into
a full Christianity or slide backward out of the Christian
Church turns on their conception of the person of
Christ. In the document called the Didache we
have a specimen of an inadequate, indecisive Jewish
Christianity. It has indeed broken with legalism and
circumcision — as a result in part of the destruction of
Jerusalem and the Temple — but it has got no distinctive
Christian theology beyond the barren recitation of
the formula of baptism \ Out of such inadequate

' See my Church and the Minisiry (Longmans), app. note L.

54 Dissertations.

Christianity, the Ebionites of Justin's experience had
their origin. We have it on the authority of Hege-
sippus, who certainly was a Catholic Christian ^, that the
Church (of Jerusalem and Palestine) ' continued a pure
and uncorrupt virgin' — i.e. undefiled by open heresy —
till the time of the martyrdom of Simeon, at the be-
ginning of the second century^. This would naturally
mean that about this time there arose the conscious
antagonism of Ebionism to Catholic Christianity.
Ebionism may thus be regarded as a real inheritor of
the inadequate Judaism of St. Paul's day, but it is
a falling away from the Christian positions, which were
not only held by St. Paul and St. John in his Gospel
and Epistles, but belong also to the Apocalypse, to
St. Peter's Epistle, and are involved in the language of
St. James about Christ . The full Messianic belief as
it appears in the early speeches of the Acts was in
fact found incompatible v/ith anything short of the
doctrine of the Incarnation ^.

^ See Diet, of Chr. Biog., s. v.

^ ap. Eus. //. E. iii. 32. Hitherto the heretical tendencies had been
secret, iv o-StjAoj vov OKOTiais <paj\fvuvTOJv.

* The Apocalypse involves the full belief in the Incarnation : see the
worship paid to Christ, v. 1 1-14, and compare xix. 10, xxii. 9 ; see also i. 8,
17, xxi. 6, xxii. 13. St. Peter's first Epistle involves the doctrine of the
Incarnation, i.e. the pre-existence of Christ, see i. 1 1 ; for His identity with
'the Lord ' of the Old Testament, see iii. 14. St. James identifies Christ's
Lordship with that of God, especially in v. 7-1 1, 15, and cf. ii. 1.

* Mr. Simcox, Early Church History, pp. 296 f., gives an excellent
account of the origin of Ebionism.

The Virgin Birth of our Lord. 55

The theory of legend.

But once more — and for the last time — it is suggested
that the miraculous history of the nativity of Jesus
Christ, with its accompanying incidents, is to be accounted
for by a very general tendency to decorate the cradles of
heroes with legendary stories, and especially with antici-
pations of future greatness. Thus of our Lord's human
contemporary Augustus (B.C. 63-A. D. 14) it is recorded
by Suetonius^ (c. A. D. 120) on the authority of Julius
Marathus, the Emperor's freed man, that a few months
before he was born a prodigy at Rome was publicly recog-
nized as intimating that ' nature was producing a king
for the Roman people' ; that the Senate in a panic decreed
that no child of that year should be brought up, but that
those among the senators who had wives with child took
care that the decree should not be published. Further
he relates, on the authority of the Theologumena of
Asclepiades of Mende, that Atia, whose second child
was Augustus, had been visited, while she was sleeping
with other matrons in the temple of Apollo, by a serpent
which had left his mark on her person ; from which it
was concluded that Apollo, in the guise of the serpent,
had been the father of Augustus.

' Suet. Aug. c. 94. Renan (£vaiig. p. 194' thinks this story in part
accounts for the narrative of the massacre of the innocents : see also Estlin
Carpenter, Synoptic Gospels, [Unitarian] Sunday School Association, 1890,
p. i-;4. On Mr. Conybeare's restatement of the legend theory see app.
note A.

56 Dissertations.

Again, the earlier narrative of the Buddha ^ relates
how ' the knowledge of his birth was made known b}'
rejoicing deities to a hermit named Asita, who thereon
repaired to Suddhodana's palace, saw the child in his
glory surrounded by deities, &c., and announced to the
Sakyans that the child was to be a Buddha -.'

This story of the Buddha was possibly, and those
of Augustus were certainly, current in the generation
which followed the death of the persons to whom they
relate. And it is not at all disputed that legends might
have gathered rapidly around the infancy of Jesus
Christ. Nay, more : it is a fact that such legends did
actually gather round both His infancy and that of His
mother. The apocryphal gospels narrate the details
of the infancy of Mary, and they tell also how, when
Mary was to bring forth her child, Joseph went out to
fetch a midwife and saw the birds stopping in mid-air
and every living thing struck motionless ; how after the
flight into Egypt the idols of Egypt recognized the child
as the true God ; how His swaddling-clothes worked
miracles ; how He made clay birds to fly, turned boys
into kids, taught His teachers, disputed on astronomy and
metaphysics, and worked all manner of miracles. These
stories are exactly of the same literary quality as the
legends of Augustus and the Buddha, though it would
seem as if the higher temper of the Church restrained for

' Referred to in this connexion by Estlin Carpenter (/. c.) as analogous to
St. Luke ii. 25 ff.

* Coplcston, Btiddhism ^Longmans, 1S92) p. 34. Of liic visit of Asita,
Copleston says (p. 36) It ' is not mentioned by Prof. Oldenberg among the
points contained in the oldest tradition, but whatever be the date of the
.Siuta whicli contains it, it certainly belongs to the older cycle of traditions.'

The Virgin Birth of our Lord. 57

a while the action of the vulgar imagination. But there
is all the difference in the world between these silly
tales and the narrative of the canonical Gospels with its
marked reserves and spaces of silence. In the narrative
of St. Luke the holy Child in the temple is only repre-
sented as impressing the doctors with the intelligence
of a perfect boy, not with a vulgar and miraculous
omniscience.

The fact that there exists a tendency to decorate with
legend the infancy of heroes can in itself be no argu-
ment against our having a real history of certain rare
events attendant upon the birth and childhood of Jesus.
The tendency itself only points to the general recogni-
tion of a truth — the truth that a hero or religious leader
is in a special sense God-sent. In the case of our Lord
two considerations in particular give a special credibility,
apart from the question of the evidence for the narratives
containing them, to the miraculous circumstances alleged
to have attended His birth. For in the first place, His
subsequent life was miraculous and His mode of exit
from it^; and beyond all question this fact conditions
the evidence as to His nativity. In the second place, the
providential circumstances which attended His nativity
are part of a much larger set of phenomena — the pheno-
mena of prophecy. And reasonable criticism, if it has
more or less modified our view of these phenomena, has
not by any means destroyed their force ^. If then the
advent of our Lord was providentially prepared for by

' The present argument is not (see above p. 5) with those who deny the
miracles ol Christ and His resurrection.

^ Cf. Licx Muudi (Murra)'), small ed. pp. 253-4.

58 Dissertations.

forecasts of inspired men, extending over a long period of
time — if there was certainly this supernatural prepara-
tion for His advent — this fact gives greater probability
to the prophecies of Zacharias, Simeon, and Anna, which
again receive confirmation from the later, but not less
prophetic, testimony of John the Baptist, one of the best
accredited elements in the Gospel history.

Under these circumstances we cannot but feel that, in
all reason, the resemblances between the birth-stories of
Jesus and those of the Buddha and other religious heroes
must have been very much closer than in fact they are
to justify the idea that they are simply similar growths.
In fact in the older Buddha legend the nearest approach
to resemblance lies in the visit and prognostication of
Asita, as compared with the prophecies of Simeon.
And of this visit of Asita Bishop Copleston remarks, 'It
takes its particular shape from the visit of the astrologer
— which is still almost universal among the Sinhalese — to
prepare the horoscope of a new-born child \'

In the later and developed legend, which is given in
one form in Prof Rh)'s Davids' Buddhist Birth Stories ^,

' Buddhism, pp. 35-6.

" In Triibner's Oriental Series, 1880, vol. xvi. pp. 58 ff. Another form of
legend is translated in lieal's Romantic Legend of S&kya Buddha (Triibner,
1875). Jerome appears to be speakini^ inaccurately when he says {adv.Jovin.
i. 42, ed. Vallarsi ii. p. 309) that it is handed down as a tradition 'among
the Gymnosophists of India tliat I'luldhn, the founder of their system, was
brought forth by a virgin fiom her side.' One later legend was that (see
Beal's Romantic Legend, pp. 36 ff.) ' At this time when Bodliisatwa was
about to descend and in a spiritual manner enter the womb of Queen Maya
[the mother of the Buddha] ; then that Maya on that very night addressed
Suddhodana Raja, and said, " Mahaiaja ! I wish from the present night to
undertake the eight special rules of self-discipline, to wit not to kill any-
thing that lives, ... to have no sexual pleasures, &c." To this her husband
consents, and the Buddha "descended from Tusita to sojourn on earth,

The Virgin Bitih of our Lord. 59

what strikes the present writer, as he reads it at

length, is the profound contrast which it presents to

the narratives of our Lord s birth and infancy ; the

points of resemblance seem as few as are consistent with

the fact that, according to the later Buddhist belief,

a quasi-divine Bodisat was becoming a Buddha by

a human birth for the salvation of mankind. And it

must be remarked that only by reading the legend

itself at length can anything like a right impression

be obtained. Such selected and adapted stories as

are versified in Sir Edwin Arnold's Light of Asia, or

even such a summary as Professor Rhys Davids gives

in his Hibbcrt Lectures^, give an impression thoroughly

misleading.

For clearness sake I restate this argument as follows :

(1) The tendency to invest the birth of heroes with

legendary stories and prognostications of future greatness

proves in itself neither more nor less than a universal

human tendency to believe in a special divinity attaching

to specially great and good men, and therefore a special

likelihood of divine intervention to signalize their birth.

and entered on the right side of Queen Maya . . . and there rested in
perfect quiet." At once a bright light shone on the whole universe,
every kind of physical portent occurs, while Maya in the midst of
her sleep dreamed that a white elephant, with six tusks, &c., entered
her side. In the morning again she addressed her husband, and said,
after telling her dream, " From this time forth I -will no more partake of
any sensual pleasnrey ' Then after ten months' gestation she gave birth to
the Buddha. According to this account it is suggested indeed that the
conception of the Buddha was without the intervention of the father; but
his mother was not a virgin. Cf. on the subject, Rhys Davids' Btiddhisni
(,S. P. C. K.) pp. 183-4. This legend of course is quite without historical
value. On Buddhist books, see Copleston, op. cit. p. 23 ; Rhys Davids,
op. cit. pp. 1 1 ff.

^ Hibbert Lectures (Williams & Norgate, 1881) p. 148.

6o Dissertations.

This tendency is in itself rooted in a great truth, and
can at least afford no argument in general against such
special divine manifestations having at some time or
times occurred.

(2) It could only afford an argument against such
divine manifestations in the particular case of the birth
of Jesus Christ if the supposed manifestations in this
case were of a markedly generic type, i. e. bore very
much closer resemblances than in fact they do to those
which are pretended in other cases.

(3) In fact in the case of our Lord ' the distinction
between history and legend could not be better marked
than by the reserve of the canonical and the vulgar tattle
of the apocryphal Gospels ^.'

(4) Moreover the particular phenomena, prophetic
or miraculous, attendant on our Lord's birth cannot be
separated from the subsequent miracles of the life and
resurrection and the whole phenomenon of prophecy
from Micah and Isaiah down to John the Baptist.

We conclude therefore that we may simply pay at-
tention to the positive evidence which indicates that
the histories of the nativity are trustworthy ^.

But setting aside supposed heathen parallels, it is
more opportune to ask whether the circumstances of our
Lord's birth can be regarded as mere repetitions of
Old Testament incidents. Is the story of the birth of
John the Baptist a mere repetition of that of Samuel, and

' iJr. A. M. Faiibaini. Studies in the Life of Christ (Ilodder &
Stoughton, 1881) p. 31.

^ I have assumed in this discussion that the Christian story was not
influenced by the Buddhist — which is certain — and also that the Buddhist
stories are not rtflcclions of the Christi.in.

The Virgin Birth of our Lord. 6i

the perils of the Christ of the perils of Moses^? No, we
reply, unless there is 110 similarity in historical incidents
and no similarity in the methods of God. But for our
present purpose we only need to insist that the Old
Testament afforded no analogy for the circumstances of
our Lord's birth. The perils of Moses resemble those of
the infant Christ, but very remotely, and there is no
analogy in the Old Testament for the Virgin Birth.

It has however been alleged ^ that the language of
Philo, "whose influence may be traced in almost every
page of the fourth Gospel,' suggests in the case of the
Old Testament mothers of saints a sort of ' miraculous
conception ' without the intervention of a man, which
may have afforded a basis for the attribution of a
miraculous conception to Mary. For instance ' Moses,'
says Philo, 'introduces Sarah as pregnant when alone
and as being visited by God.'

To this suggestion the answer is twofold. (1) The
language of Philo is characteristic and peculiar. Pie
calls attention ^ to the supposed fact that in the case
of Old Testament saints — Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses
— no mention is made of their ' knowing ' their wives.
This it is explained is because the woman symbolizes
the senses from which the lovers of wisdom must keep

' Renan, £.vang. pp. 189-91 'La legende de Samuel engendra celle de
Jean-Baptiste. . . . Quant aux dangers dont on supposait que fut entouree
I'enfance de Jesus, c'etait la une imitation de I'enfance de Moise, qu'un loi
aussi voulut faire mourir, et qui fut oblige de se sauver a I'etranger.'

^ The Kernel and the Husk, pp. 270 ff. This argument has been recently
repeated by Mr. Conybeare in the Academy in connexion with the question
raised by the Codex Sinaiticus, on which see appended note B.

^ bee esp. de Cherub, ^-p. 115-6, and cf. the account of Bethuel in de
Profugis, p. 457.

62 Dissertations.

themselves aloof. Those who are called their wives,
such as Sarah, Rebecca, Leah, Zipporah, were in
name women, but in fact virtues. Such virtues can
conceive seed ' only from God,' though — as God needs
nothing for Himself- -they conceive seed to the men
who are their lovers. It is for this reason that Holy
Scripture uses such modes of speech as indicate that
these women, i. e. virtues, conceive for their husbands
indeed hxxt from God. Thus (Gen. xxi, i) Sarah is in-
troduced as pregnant when God visits her alone. Of Leah
it is said (xxix. 31) that God 'opened her womb,' which
is the work of the man. Rebecca (xxv. 21) conceived
divinely in answer to Isaac's prayer. Again ' apart from
supplication and prayer Moses having taken to wife the
winged and lofty virtue Zipporah found her with child
of no mortal ^' The meaning of this mystical language
of his Philo subsequently guards. Men, he says, make
virgins into wives. God, by spiritual relationship with
souls, makes wives into virgins. ' The scripture (Jer.
iii. 4. Ixx) is careful to describe God as the husband
not of a virgin but of virginity.' Now all this argument,
which is quite in the mystical gnosticizing manner of
Philo, is wholly alien to the spirit both of the Old
Testament and of the New. We notice, for example,
that when St. Paul is speaking in the case of Isaac of
a ' birth after the spirit ',' he shows no tendency to pass
like Philo to the idea of ' virginity,' or to shrink from
associating divine action with the language descriptive
of the ordinary physical process of generation. P^urther

' Tliis seems built on no words in the biblical account.
' Gal. iv. 21, 2(j.

The Virgin Birth of our Lord. 63

there is no evidence justifying the belief that such
a mode of thought as is found in Philo existed in the
Palestinian Judaism out of which the narratives of the
nativity have their origin.

(2) Setting aside the question whether Philo did or
did not influence the fourth Gospel, it may be taken
for certain he did not influence the language of the
authorities upon which St. Matthew and St. Luke
depend ^. On the whole we may say that there is no
connexion at all probable between the thoughts and
language of the narratives of the nativity and the
speculations of Philo about spiritual virginity.

The connexion of doctrine and fact.

What has been hitherto attempted is both to
vindicate the historical character of the records of our
Lord's miraculous birth at Bethlehem and also to show
that in the earliest tradition of the Christian churches,
as far as we can trace it, the belief in the Virgin Birth
is found as a constant accompaniment of the confession
of His Incarnation. What we have finally to do is
to show cause why we should regard the belief in the
Virgin Birth as, in fact, inseparable from belief in the

' The author of The Kernel and the Husk assumes that the idea of the
virginity of Mary was of Gentile origin, which is contrary to the evidence.
The documents of the nativity are intensely Jewish.

64 Dissertations.

Incarnation and, even more from belief in the sinless
Second Adam.

For beyond a question, our opinion as to the insepara-
bility of the supposed fact from the Christian idea will
affect our estimate of the evidence. The historical
evidence for our Lord's birth of a virgin is in itself
strong and cogent. But it is not such as to compel
belief. There are ways to dissolve its force. To pro-
duce belief there is needed — in this as in almost all
other questions of historical fact — besides cogent evi-
dence, also a perception of the meaning and naturalness,
under the circumstances, of the event to which evidence
is borne. To clinch the historical evidence for our
Lord's virgin birth there is needed the sense, that being
what He was, His human birth could hardly have been
otherwise than is implied in the virginity of His mother.

The logic of the matter may be represented on the
ground of the Incarnation. Granted that the eternal
Son of God did at a certain moment of time take flesh
by a real incarnation in the womb of Mary, — granted
that He was born as man, without change of personality
or addition of another personality, but simply by the
assumption of a new nature and by an entrance into new
conditions of Hfe and experience — granted in this sense
the incarnation of the Son of God in the womb of
Mary, can we conceive it to have taken place by the
ordinary process of generation ? Do not we inevitably
associate with the ordinary process of generation the
production of a new personality? Must not the denial
of the Virgin Birih involve the position that Jesus was
simply a new human person in whatever specially

The Virgin Birth of our Lord. 65

intimate relations with God? This seems to the present
writer to be very probably the case, but at the same
time to be a question very difficult to argue. But the
argument becomes almost irresistible when the question
is removed from the idea of incarnation strictly con-
sidered, to the associated idea of the sinless humanity,
the humanity of a ' Second Adam.'

Jesus Christ was a new departure in human life.
Philosophers of different ages, from Plato to Carlyle,
have been found scoffing at contemporary reformers,
on the ground that their proposed reforms did not,
could not, go deep enough to get at the root of the
evils of human society. What is wanted to remedy
these evils is a fresh departure — in some sense, a new
birth, or regeneration of humanity \ So moral philo-
sophers have reasoned : but it has been a matter of
words. Jesus Christ alone has, in any adequate sense,
translated this logical demand into actual reality. In
Him we really find a 'Second Adam,' a new manhood.
He appears among men in all the fulness of human
faculties, sympathies, capacities of action and suffering ;
He was in all points such as we are except sin. But what
an exception ! As Jesus moves among the men of His
day, as His historical presentation renews His image
for each generation, by how great a gulf is He
separated in His sinlessness. His perfection, from other
men. He is very man, but new man. And with this
quality of His person coincides His method. He will
not take other men as He finds them and make the best

' See Carlyle, Past and Present, bk. i. ch. 4 ' Morrison's pill ' ; Plato,
Republic— ihe argument of the whole work, especially bk. iv. pp. 425-6.

66 Dissertations.

of them. He demands of them the acceptance of a new
birth ; the fundamental reconstruction of their moral
being on a new basis, and that basis Himself. ' Except
a man be born anew he cannot see the kingdom of
God.' ' Except ye turn ' — with a radical conversion of
the moral tendency of your being — ' except ye turn and
become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into
the kingdom of heaven^.' Christ demands, then, a funda-
mental moral reconstruction of humanity, and He makes
it possible because He offers to men a new life. He
offers to reproduce in each man who will believe in
Him and yield himself to Him, the quality of His
own life by the bestowal of His own Spirit. Him-
self the New Man, He can make all men new. But
granted that in this fundamental sense Christ Jesus is
a new moral creation, is it possible that this new
moral creation can have involved anything short of
a new physical creative act? Does not all we know
of physical heredity, all we know of the relation of spirit
and body, lead us to believe that the miracle of a new
moral creation must mean the miracle of a new physical
creation ? If the moral character was new, must not
the stuff of the humanity have been new too? Must
not the physical generation of the Second Adam have
been such as to involve at once His community with
our nature and His exemption from it? I am not lay-
ing all the stress on this sort of logic. I would, here
and elsewhere, keep a priori arguments in their place.
But this logic seems to me at least strong enough to
clinch the historical argument or even to condition the

' St. John iii. 3 ; St. Matt, xviii. 3.

The Virgin BirtJi of our Lord. 67

historical discussion by an antecedent expectation that
the birth of the Second Adam must have been physically
as well as morally miraculous.

I have come to the end of the task which I set myself
at the beginning of this discussion. Something I trust
has been done to show on the one hand the weak-
ness of the objections brought against the historical
character of the narratives of the nativity and on the
other hand the strength of the positive ground on which
they stand. We cannot be accused of an uncritical,
unhistorical disposition in accepting the Virgin Birth
of Jesus Christ as a fact of history. Throughout this
discussion I have, for obvious reasons, avoided resting
anything on the question of authority. But considering
the position which the Virgin Birth holds in the creeds,
it cannot be denied that the authority of the Christian
Church is committed to it as a fact, beyond recall. To
admit that its historical position is really doubtful
would be to strike a mortal blow at the authority of
the Christian Church as a guide to religious truth in
any real sense. Such a result is in itself an argument
against the truth of any position which would tend to
produce it ; for it is very difficult to scrutinize narrowly
those articles of the Christian faith which have really
been believed and taught in the Church semper, ubiqiie,
ab omnibus, without being struck with the conviction
that a divine providence has been guarding the Church

F 2

68 Dissertations.

in her production of such definitions or formal de-
clarations of her faith as can really be called catholic —
guarding her from asserting anything which can reason-
ably be called unwarranted or superstitious ; and such
a conviction does in itself create a presumption against
any conclusion which would invalidate any single article
of the original creed.

DISSERTATION II

THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF
OUR LORD IN HIS MORTAL LIFE

The subject of the following discussion is our Lords
consciousness during the period of His human and mortal
life. In the first part (I) what appears to be the view of
the New Testament writers will be provisionally stated
with the evidence upon which it rests. In the second
part (II) the teaching of the Church on the subject will
be exhibited at times in outline, at other times more
fully, and its relation will appear to the provisional
conclusion already reached. In the third part (III) the
conclusion will be restated, its relation to Church
authority examined and its rationality vindicated.

Any writer who cares for Catholic sentiment and
traditional reverence — nay more, any writer who realizes
in any degree the limits which are set to human thought
— must approach this subject with great unwillingness.
But there is so much in the New Testament directly
bearing upon it that if the character in the Gospel is to
be a real object of contemplation, for the intellect as well
as for the heart, it can hardly be avoided. That the
actual evidence has been in fact so little considered
has led to serious dangers in the way of unscriptural

Dissertations.

theorizing. So that it appears to the present writer
that to refuse to consider the subject, in full view
of the New Testament language about it, would be
a false reverence, or what Hilary of Poitiers calls an
' irreligious solicitude for God \'

But if so anxious a subject has to be approached at
all, one may be pardoned for dwelling a little by way
of preface on the place which it holds with reference to
the creed of Christians, and on the temper in which it
ought to be approached.

First, then, this is not a question which ought to be
encountered on the road towards orthodoxy. Its logical
place is, I venture to think, that in which I have tried,
summarily, to treat it in the Bainpton Lectures of 1(^91,
i.e. after faith in the Incarnation has been established.
It requires only a little thought to sec that the belief
that God is incarnate in Jesus Christ does not carry
with it to any tolerably cautious mind one certain and
necessary conclusion, a priori, as to the question of the
consciousness of the incarnate person. And conversely
the utterances in the Gospels which must determine our
conclusion on this mysterious subject will not be found
to touch those moral and theological claims, those
spiritual and physical powers of Jesus Christ, which
justify, or rather postulate, the belief in the Incarnation.
It is hoped that these assertions will be justified in the
course of our discussion to the minds of any who feel
doubtful about them at starting. For the present they

* de Trin. \\\ 6 'O sliiltos alque impios melus, ct irreligiosam de Deo
sollicitudinem ! ' The exolamalion has reference to the fear professed by llic
Arians lest by confessing tlic eternity of Ciirist they should do violence to
His nature as Son.

The Consciousness of our Lord. 73

are assumed. And in accordance with this assumption
the truth of the Incarnation is, in this essay, taken for
granted, and, though no special view is put forward as to
the nature of inspiration, the language of our Lord in the
Gospels about Himself is taken to be historically true.

Secondly, the question of our Lords consciousness is
not — granted His infallibility as a tcachej' — one \\'hich
ought to harass the ordinary life of faith. Thousands
of pious Christians have believed that the eternal ' Son
of God for us men and for our salvation came down
from heaven and was incarnate, and was made man, and
was crucified, and rose again,' and on the basis of this
faith have read their Gospels and taken the real human
experience and sympathy of our Lord for truth in
simple trust, without any inquiries into the condition
of our Lord's consciousnesss seriously arising. And
this is quite right. People who do not feel bound to
embark upon the difficulties of mental philosophy as
regards men in general, still less as regards God, have
no cause to be disturbed in regard to similar problems
in relation to the person of Him who is both God and
man. And when the questions are reached, if we realize
the difficulty of understanding the human mind and the
certain incomprehensibility of that which is divine, we
shall not even imagine that the problems here raised can
be fully sounded or solved. We shall bow in awful
reverence before the deep things of God, but we shall,
none the less, in this as in other departments of inquiry,
seek to go as far as we can, and at least to be true to all
the facts which are, and can be brought to be, at our
disposal. Nor shall we be surprised if more accurate

74 Dissertations.

investigations require in us some change of mind, not in
the region of our central faith, but in its more outlying
districts. For myself as an author I would only ask
to be read carefully by those who wish to criticize me,
so that, as far as it is given me to express my meaning
plainly, I may be judged for what I have said and not
for what I have not. Throughout this discussion I shall
be so frequently citing authorities that I may be for-
given for citing, as a conclusion to these few words
of preface, some passages from the father already referred
to, Hilary of Poitiers— passages which admirably express
the temper of mind required in approaching either the
doctrine of the Holy Trinity, which was Hilary's subject,
or our Lord's consciousness as man, which is what lies
before us.

(i) That such inquiries are not necessary for faith.

De Trin. x. 70 ' Non per difficiles nos Deus ad beatam
vitam quaestiones vocat, nee multiplici eloquentis facun-
diae genere sollicitat. In absoluto nobis ac facili est
acternitas, lesum et suscitatum a mortuis per Deum
credere ct ipsum esse dominum confiteri. Nemo ita-
que ea quae ob ignorationcm nostram dicta sunt ad
occasionem irreligiositatis usurpet.'

(2) As regards the incomprehensibility of God and that
zee can knozu Him only tJirougJi His own disclosure of
Himself.

* Perfecta scientia est sic Deum scire ut licet non
ignorabilem tamcn incnarrabilcm scias ' (ii. 7).

'Animus humanus, nisi per fidem donum Spiritus
hauscrit, habcbit quidcm naturam Deum intelligendi
scd lumen scicntiac non habebit ' (ii. 34).

The Consciousness of our Lord. 75

'Nee enim coneipiunt imperfecta perfectum, neque
quod ex alio subsistit absolute vel auctoris sui potest
intelligentiam obtinere vel propriam ' (iii. 24).

' Neque enim nobis ea natura est ut se in caelestem
cognitionem suis viribus efferat. A Deo discendum est
quod de Deo intelligendum sit ; quia non nisi se auctore
cognoscitur . . . Loquendum ergo non aliter de Deo est
quam ut ipse ad intelligentiam nostram de se locutus
est' (v. 21).

(3) As regards the readiness to change onr minds and
to advance to more accurate knowledge of divine tilings.

' Et si forte humanae conditionis errore praesumptum
aliquid sensu tenebimus, profectum intelligentiae per reve-
lationis gratiam non recusemus. Ne intellexisse aliquid
semel suo sensu ad id valeat ut pudeat rectius aliquid
demutando sentire ' (xi. 24).

(4) The author s request for fair-minded readers.

' Optimus lector est qui dictorum intelligentiam ex-
spectet ex dictis potius quam imponat, et retulerit magis
quam attulerit, neque cogat id videri dictis contineri quod
ante lectionem praesumpserit intelligendum' (i. 18).

76 Dissertations.

The view of our lord's consciousness during
his human and mortal life which is pre-
sented in the new testament.

It should be explained at the beghiniiig of this part of
our inquiry that the question whether the views of all
the New Testament writers as to our Lord's person and
consciousness are in substantial agreement or not, is not
here directly argued. It is plain that there is inde-
pendence among them, differences of point of view and
different stages of theological development. Thus, in
the speeches of the early part of the Acts, our Lord is
simply regarded as the Messiah ; in other parts of the
New Testament the view of His authority as Messianic
seems to be merged into the view of it as strictly
divine : He is ' the Lord ' or ' the Son of God.' In
St. Paul and St. John the divine sonship of Jesus Christ
appears as the central point of a definite Christian
theology : and it must be noted that St. Paul and
St. John plainly regard their theology not as the result
of their own speculation, but, in the strictest sense, as
revealed truth ^ In each of the Gospels both views of
our Lord's person exist, and closer examination con-
tradicts the still current opinion that in the synoptists He

' Cf. Sanday, Bainplon Lectures, p. 353 ' It [the inspiration of the
apostles] is more sustained than the inspiration of the prophets in the Old
Testament ; it extends not merely to single truths revealed for a special
object, but to a body of connected truths, a system of tiicology.'

The Consciousness of our Lord. 77

appears as the Messiah, the Son of Man, in the fourth
Gospel as the incarnate Word of God. The divine son-
ship proper emerges out of the Messianic claim in the
common synoptic tradition and the Messianic character
is prominent in St. John. But still there is a difference
in the point of view, and the strictly divine nature of Jesus
is more emphatic in the fourth Gospel than in the other
three. Thus there exist among the writers of the New
Testament differences in point of view as regards the
person of Christ and distinct stages of doctrinal develop-
ment. But that these differences are not discrepancies
may be best shown by the fact that they admit of
being brought together in one comprehensive theory
without violence to any.

§1-

The evidence of the Gospels \

The conditions of our Lord's early childhood are
veiled from us. Nothing is told us about His education,
nor are we given any glimpse of Him at the period
when men learn most from those outside them, but He
grew so truly as a human child that Joseph and His
mother had not been led to expect from Him conduct
incompatible with childhood, when they took Him up
with them to the temple in His thirteenth year. This
must mean that He was taught as the young are taught ;

^ What follows is laigely, but not altogether, repeated from my Bampton
Lectures, pp. 145 ff.

78 Dissertations.

and in the temple courts He impressed the doctors as
a child of marvellous insight and intelligence. Not but
what, even then, there was present to Him the con-
sciousness of His unique sonship : 'Wist ye not,' He
said to His parents, ' that I must be about my Father's
business ^ ? ' but that consciousness of divine sonship did
not, we are led to suppose, interfere with His properly
human growth. '• The child grew and waxed strong,'
says St. Luke, ' becoming full of wisdom, and the favour
of God was upon him.' Again, ' Jesus advanced in
wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and men - ; '
— the phrase being borrowed from the record of Samuel s
childhood, with the specifications added, ' in wisdom and
stature.' There was a real growth in mental apprehen-
sion and spiritual capacity, as in bodily stature.

The divine sonship is impressively asserted at the
baptism of Jesus by John in the river Jordan ^. The
pre-eminent dignity of the person of Jesus appears indeed
nowhere in the Gospels more strikingly than in His

' St. Luke ii. 49 iv rofs rov Trarpos /^od, ' among my Father's matters,'
or, perhaps, ' in my Father's house ' (as R. V.). The expression ' my
Father' ap[)ears to involve, in some measure, a repudiation of Mary's phrase
'thy father,' as applied to Joseph (ver. 4S). I think it is plain that our
Lord claims a certain unique sonship, but wus the consciousness of this
derived from meditation on such phrases in the O. T. as ' lie shall call me,
Thou art my fatiier' (Ps. Ix.xxix. 26), the child Jesus being already con-
scious of His Messianic mission as Son of David ? or was it the absolute
consciousness of divine sonship ? To answer this cpiestion requires, per-
haps, more knowledge than we possess. But it is plain that to our Lord's
mind during Ilis ministry the office of the Messiali, including as it did the
office of universal and ultimate Judge, was inseparable from proper divine
sonship. The Christ was also the Son of God : cf. above, p. 17, n. 8, for
a very brief discussion of the relation of the Messianic to the divine claims
of our Lord.

"^ St. Luke ii. 40, 52 ; cf. i Sam. ii. 26. ' St. ^Lirk i. 1 1.

The Consciousness of our Lord. 79

relation to John the Baptist, as described in all the
Gospels ; and that this pre-eminent dignity carried with
it throughout our Lord's ministerial life a consciousness
of properly divine sonship, it is not possible for any one
to doubt who accepts, even generally, the historical char-
acter of the synoptic Gospels and of St. John's. If His
eternal pre-existence is plainly asserted by Him only in
St. John, yet this is not separable from the essential
sonship asserted in the synoptists ^. But this conscious-
ness of divine sonship is represented as co-existing with
a really human development of life. He receives as man
the unction of the Holy Ghost ; He was led as man 'of
the Spirit into the wilderness,' and hungered, and was
subjected as man to real temptations of Satan, such as
made their appeal to properly human faculties and were
met by the free employment of human will. He was
' in all points tempted like as we are, apart from sin -.'
When He goes out to exercise His ministry, He bases
His authority on the unction of the Spirit according to
Isaiah's prophecy. ' The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,'
He reads, ' because he anointed me to preach ^.^ ' God,'
comments St. Peter, ' anointed Jesus of Nazareth with
the Holy Ghost and with power : who went about doing
good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil ;
for God was with him ■^.' Thus if His miraculous power
appears as the appropriate endowment of His person, it

' The essential sonship is in the synoptic Gospels expressed in such
passages as St. Matt. xi. 27, St. Mark xii. 6, 37, xiii. 32, xiv. 62, and
the parallel passages.

^ Hebr. iv. 15. On the temptations 'apart from sin,' see Bainpton
Lectures, pp. 221-222.

^ St. Luke iv. iS, * Acts x. 38.

8o Dissertations.

was still a gift of God to Him as man. ' The power of
the Lord was with him to heal,' says the evangelist : ' by
the Spirit of God,' He Himself declared, He cast out
devils ^ : and St. John, in recording the words of Jesus
before the raising of Lazarus, would teach us to see, at
least in some of His miracles, what is suggested also
elsewhere by our Lord's gestures, a power dependent on
the exercise of prayer. ' Father, I thank thee that thou
didst hear me-.''

Once more, to come more closely to our proper
subject, while as very Son Jesus knows the Father as
He is known of Him and reveals Him to whom He
will, He does not appear to teach out of an absolute
divine omniscience, but rather as conditioned by human
nature. It is surely beyond question that our Lord is
represented in the Gospels as an infallible no less than
as a sinless" teacher. He challenges criticism. He
speaks in the tone of authority only justifiable to one
who taught with absolute certainty ' the word of God.'
' Heaven and earth,' He said, ' shall pass away, but my
words shall not pass away ^' But infallibility is not
omniscience. Again it is beyond cjuestion that our
Lord's consciousness, not only towards God but towards
the world, was extraordinary. Thus He frequently
exhibits a supernatural knowledge, insight, and fore-
sight. He saw Nathanael under the fig-tree, and knew
the incident in the life of the Samaritan woman, and
told Peter how he would find the piece of money in the

^ St. Luke V. 17 ; St. Matt. .\ii. 2S.

* St. Juhn .\i. 41 ; St. Matt. .\iv. 19 ; St. Mark vii 34 : cf. v. ly.
^ On our Lord's sinlessness and impeccability, see B. L. pp. 165 ff., also
p. 153. * St. Matt. .\.\iv. 35.

The Consciousness of our Lord. 8i

fish's mouth, and the disciples how they would find the
colt tied up in the village and the man bearing a pitcher
of water to take them to the upper chamber. He dis-
cerned 'from the beginning' the heart of Judas \ and
prophesied the denial of Peter, and had in view His
own passion, death, and resurrection the third day.
But all such supernatural illumination is, if of higher
quality, yet analogous to that vouchsafed to prophets
and apostles-'. It is not necessarily divine conscious-
ness. It suggests in itself no more than the remark
of the woman of Samaria, ' I perceive that thou art
a prophet "'.' And it coincides in the case of our Lord
with apparent limitations of knowledge. The evidence
for this we may group under four heads.

(i) There are constantly attributed to our Lord human
experiences which seem inconsistent with practical om-
niscience. Thus He expresses surprise at the conduct of
His parents, and the unbelief of men, and the barren-
ness of the fig-tree, and the slowness of His disciples'
faith*. He expresses surprise on many occasions, and
therefore, we must believe, really felt it ; and on other
occasions He asks for information and receives it, as
when He came down from the Mount of Trans-

^ St. John vi. 64. The words ' from the beginning' apply undoubtedly to
the early days of His ministry, when Pie first began to gather around Him
a circle of personal disciples. Cf. xv. 27, xvi. 4 ; Acts i. 21, 22.

2 2 Kings vi. 12 'Pllisha, the prophet that is in Israel, telleth the king
of Israel the words that thou speakest in thy bedchamber.' Cf. v. 26 ' Went
not mine heart with thee?* Acts v. 3, 4 ^St. Peter discerning the sin of
Ananias), xxi. 11-14 ('•^^ foreknowledge of St. Paul's fate).

■' St. John iv. 19. Cf. St. Luke vii. 39 ' This man, if he were a prophet,
would have perceived who and what manner of woman this is which
toucheth him, that she is a sinner.'

* St. Luke ii. 49; St. Mark vi. 6, xi. 13, iv. 40, vii. iS, viii. 21, xiv. 37,

82 Dissertations.

figuration and was presented with the child which the
disciples had failed to cure, He asked the father, like
any physician, ' How long time is it since this hath
come unto him?' and when He is on His way to heal
Lazarus, He asks 'Where have ye laid him^?' It is
of course a common form of human speech for men to
ask questions in order to draw out the feelings of
others or to reproach them, without any implication of
ignorance on their own part. Thus some of our Lord's
questions are not asked for the sake of information" —
and this is apparently true of all those asked after the
resurrection ^ — but there are a number on the other
hand of which this is not at all a natural explanation.
They represent a natural need of information. It is in
agreement with this that, as St. Luke especially teaches
us^, He lived in the constant exercise of prayer to
God, which is the characteristic utterance of human
faith and trust, that human faith and trust of which
the Epistle to the Hebrews sees in Jesus the supreme
example ^.

This reality of human faith becomes more obvious as
the anxieties and terrors of the passion close in upon
Him. He shows us then the spectacle of true man,
weighted with a crushing burden, the dread of a cata-

* St. Mark ix. 21, cf. vi. 38, viii. 5 ; St. Luke viii. 30; St. Jolin xi. 34.

' e.g. St. Malt. xvi. S-ii, and esp. St. John vi. 6 ' This he said to jirove
him, for he himself knew what he would do.'

^ St. Luke xxiv. 17, 19, 41 ; St. John xx. 15, 29 (R. V. margin}, xxi. 5,

15-17-

* St. Luke iii. 21, v. 16, vi. 12, ix. iS, 28, xxii. 32, 42, x. 21.

* Hebr. ii. 13 * I will put my trust in him'; xii, 2 'the captain of
our faith,' i.e. leader in the life of faith ; see Westcott in loc.

TJie Consciousness of our Lord, 83

strophe awful and unfathomed. No doubt it is implied
that the burden was voluntarily accepted \ but accepted
it was in all its human reality. It was only because
the future was not clear that He could pray : ' O my
Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass away from
me V Boldly simple is the language of the inspired
commentator on this scene of the agony : ' Christ,' he
says, ' in the days of his flesh, having offered up prayers
and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him
that was able to save him from death, and having been
heard for his godly fear, though he was a son, yet
learned obedience by the things which he suffered "\' No
language less than this would correspond with the
historical narrative, but it is language which implies
very strongly the exercise of human faith in our Lord's
case ; nor is it possible that He could have cried with
real meaning upon the cross, ' My God, my God, why
hast thou forsaken me ? ' unless He had really entered
into the experience which originally prompted that cry
of the psalmist, into the trial of the soul from whom
God hides His face, the trial of the righteous man, as
far as his own perception goes, forsaken.

(2) Though our Lord knew so well, and told so plainly,
the moral conditions of the great judgement to come,
and discerned so clearly its particular application in the
destruction of Jerusalem, yet He expressly declared, as
St. Matthew as well as St. Mark assures us, that of the
day and the hour of His second coming no one knew
except the Father, 'not even the angels of heaven,

1 St. John xii. 27, x. 11 ; St. Matt. xxvi. 53, 54.

^ St. Matt. xxvi. 39. ''■ Hebr. v. 7, 8.

G 2

84 Dissertations.

neither the Son ^ ' ; and we cannot hold this declaration
apart from the other indications that are given us of
a limited human consciousness. It may fairly be
contrasted with the phrase used to the apostles after
the resurrection -, ' It is not for you to knozv times or
seasons, which the Father hath set within his own au-
thority.' More than this : no one can study attentively
the eschatological discourses of our Lord in the various
accounts given us of them, without reaching the con-
viction that they are strictly of the prophetic quality and
exhibit the limitations proper to prophecy — that is to
say, they announce the moral and spiritual conditions of
the judgement to come on the Jewish nation and on the
world at large ; but they cannot be rightly described as
history written beforehand by the hand of omniscience.
It is therefore quite misleading to argue, as many
orthodox persons have argued in ancient and modern
times, that one who knew so much as these discourses
disclose must have also known (in fact) the day and
hour of the end.

(3) A similar impression is left on our mind by the
Gospel of St. John. Unmistakeably is our Lord there
put before us as the eternal Son of the Father incarnate,

1 St. Matt. xxiv. .^6 [R. V. Tliis reading will, I suppose, stand preferred
in spite of the fact that the new Sinaitic palimpsest omits the words ' neither
the .Son '] ; St. Mark xiii. 32. It has been suggested that ignorance is here
predicted of ' the Son,' used absolutely, not of the incarnate Son in the
period of His humiliation merely. This seems to me a greatly overstrained
argument. The Son was speaking of Himself as lie then was.

^ Acts i. 7 (R. V.) After the resurrection our Lord speaks of the day
of the end as reser\-ed in ' the Father's power.' P.ut He docs not any longer
suggest that He is ignorant of the day ; and He seems to speak of Himself
as not only foreseeing but controlling the time of St. John's death in a manner
unlike to that in which He spoke in His mortal life ^St. John xxi. 22 .

The Consciousness of our Lord. 85

and Linmistakeably is the inner, essential unity of the
Son and the Father and their continual abiding one in
the other there insisted upon \ but it also appears that
the Son of the Father is living and teaching under
restrained human conditions: He has 'come down'
from the heaven where He ' was before ' with the Father,
He has been 'sanctified and sent into the world,' He
has ' come out from God,' He ' has left the glory 2.' Thus
He 'speaks the words of God' indeed infallibly, but it
is, as St. John tells us, because God ' giveth not the
Spirit by measure^,' that is, because of the complete
endowment of His manhood. He Himself says that He
accomplishes ' what the Father taught him ' : that He
can do only ' what he sees the Father doing ' : that the
Father makes to Him a progressive revelation, 'he shall
show him greater works than these': that the Father
'hath given him commandment what he should say and
what he should speak ' : that the Father ' hath given

* X. 30, xvii. 21, 22.

^ vi. 62, X. 36, xiii. 3, xvi. 27, xvii. 5. In iii. 13 the words 6 wv iv to)
ovpavf — 'which is in heaven' — are very doubtful; see Westcott in loc.
' Heaven ' and 'glory ' are apparently what He had abandoned. ' God,' tliat
is ' the Father,' is still with Him : and therefore ' glory ' of a different sort
which He can communicate to His disciples (xvii. 22, cf. i. 14). [In the
recently discovered Sinaitic palimpsest the Syriac translates ' the Son uf
Man which is from heaven.']

^ iii. 34 tiv "yap airkaTiiXiv o Oius to. prj/xaTa rov Oeov XaXet, ou yap etc
fiirpov SiSajcTiv to irvev/xa. The words may be translated, ' //it: Spirit
giveth not [to Him] by measure''', hardly, I think, ^ he [the Son] giveth
not the Spirit by measured The unmeasured, full, gift bestowed upon the
Son is put in contrast to the measured partial gift which in Rabbinic belief
was bestowed upon prophets, and in Christian belief upon members of the
Church (I Cor. xii. 11) ; cf. Alford in loc. What the exact content of the
full human endowment would have been we cannot say a priori. But it
was a human endowment, an endowment of our Lord as man, and suggests
therefore properly human limitations.

86 Dissertations.

him' the divhie 'name,' that is, the positive revelation
of Himself, to communicate to the apostles : that He has
made known to them ' all things that he had heard of
the Father ' or ' the words which the Father had given
him ^' The idea is thus decidedly suggested of
a message of definite content made over to our Lord
to impart. Now, even though we bear in mind to the
fullest extent the eternal subordination and receptivity
of the Son, it still remains plain that words such as have
been quoted express Him as receiving and speaking
under the limitations of a properly human state.

We must also notice that our Lord repeatedly speaks
of that inner leading by which the divine love draws
human souls and prepares them to welcome the Christ,
as not His own but the Father's : He speaks of it as
belonging to the Father, as distinguished from Him-
self. ' All that which the Father giveth me, shall
come to me ; and him that cometh to me I will in no
wise cast out.' ' No man can come to me, except the
Father which sent mc draw him : and I will raise him
up in the last day. It is written in the prophets, And
they shall all be taught of God. Every one that hath
heard from the Father, and hath learned, cometh unto
me^.' Now of course this inner leading belongs to the
eternal Word (and to the Spirit) as much as to the
Father. 15ut our Lord's mode of speech leads us to
think of Him, under the conditions under which He
spoke, as not inwardly inspiring human souls, but
dealing with them only in the spiritual relationship

' viii. 28, V. 19, 20, xii. 49, xvii. 11,8, xv. 15.
* vi. 37, 39, 44-45 ; cf. X. 29, xvii. 6, 9, 24.

The Consciousness of our Lord. 87

which belongs to humanity. I do not say more than
'leads us to think of Him,' because the full meta-
physical reality may not admit of expression in human
words. But the tendency of what is said must be
admitted.

(4) Lastly, there is the argument from silence, coinci-
dent with these indications. Our Lord exhibits insight
and foresight of prophetic quality. He exhibits towards
all facts of physical nature the receptiveness of a perfect
sonship, so that, for example, the laws of natural waste
and growth are pointed out by Him with consummate
accuracy in the parable of the sower. But He never
enlarges our stock of natural knowledge, physical or
historical, out of the divine omniscience.

The recognition of these phenomena of our Lord's life
leads us to the conclusion that up to the time of His
death He lived and taught, He thought and was in-
spired and was tempted, as true and proper man, under
the limitations of consciousness which alone make possible
a really human experience. Of this part of our heritage
we must not allow ourselves to be robbed, by being
' wise above that which is written.'

At the same time it must be remembered that this
idea of the meaning of the Incarnation is suggested by
the Gospel narrative concurrently with the truth of our
Lord's divinity, which is here not proved but assumed.
The facts which continually suggest that He is more
than man, that He is in a unique sense Son of God ^,
and those which suggest that He is living and speaking
under conditions of human limitation, are indissolubly

' Summarized in B. L. i. and iii.

88 Dissertations.

intermingled with one another. One impression is given
by the Gospels, taken together, of a real entrance of
the eternal Son of God into our manhood and into the
limited conditions of consciousness necessary to a really
human state. This view alone can interpret and hold
together all the phenomena, and this view does hold
them all together and does enable us to read the
Gospels without doing violence to any element in the
many-sided but consistent picture which they present.

The language of St. Paul.

This idea of the meaning of the Incarnation derived
from the Gospels, while it has no single certain passage
of the Neiv Testament against it, is on the other hand at
least strongly reinforced by the language already quoted
of the Epistle to the Hebrews-^, and also by St. Paul's
language in two remarkable passages of his epistles.
In a passage of the Epistle to the Philippians he is
holding up our Lord in His incarnation as an example
of humility, and this leads him to give, as we may say,
a certain theory of it. He describes it as a self-empty-
ing 2. Christ Jesus pre-existed, he declares, in ihcfonn

1 Hcbr. V. 7, 8.

* rhil. ii. 5^11 Tovro tppoviije iv iifiTu u Hal iv Xpiarw 'hjnov, vs iv pop(f>rj
6(ov v-napxojv, ovx apna-yp.uv TjyrjoaTo tu elvai iaa 6(w, dWa iavTuu hcivwaiv,
fiopcpfiv Sovkov Xaliujv, iv op.OLUjp.aTi dvOpuj-nwv yfvofifvos' Kal axTjlJ^ciTi fvpeOels
uis dvOpwitos (Tanfiyaiirev tavrijv ■^ivuixivos vtttjkoos /*e'x/" dafdruv, Oavarov 5k
aravpov. Sec Lightfuot in loc.

The Consciousness of our Lord. 89

of God. The word ' form ' transferred from physical
shape to spiritual type, describes — as St. Paul uses it,
alone or in composition, with uniform accuracy — the
permanent characteristics of a thing. Jesus Christ then,
in His pre-existent state, was living in the permanent
characteristics of the life of God. In such a life it was
His right to remain. It belonged to Him. But He
regarded not His prerogatives, as a man regards a prize
he must clutch at. For love of us He abjured the pre-
rogatives of equality with God. By an act of deliberate
self-abnegation, He so emptied Himself as to assume
the permanent characteristics of the human or servile
life : He took the form of a servant. Not only so, but
He was made in outward appearance like other men
and was found in fashion as a man, that is, in the
transitory quality of our mortality. The ' form,^ the
'likeness,' the 'fashion' of manhood, He took them
all. Thus, remaining in unchanged personality, He is
exhibited as (to use Dr. Westcott's words ^) 'laying
aside the mode of divine existence ' (ro tivai tcra 0ew) in
order to assume the human.

Again, St. Paul describes the Incarnation as a ' self-
beggary ^.' The metaphor suggests a man of wealth

^ In the Speaker's Commentary, on St. John i. 14. The question has been
asked, Does St. Paul imply that Jesus Christ abandoned the hofxpf) Oeov ?
I think all we can certainly say is that He is conceived to have emptied
Himself of the divine mode of existence (ixop<prj), so far as was involved in
His really entering upon the human mode of existence (/irpt^Tj). St. Paul
does not use his terms with the exactness of a professional logician or
scholastic. On the subject, and on the passage generally, see Bruce, Humilia-
tion of Christ (Clark, 1876) lect. i.

^ 2 Cor.viii. 9 'yiviiOKtre -yap ttjv x^P^" '''^^ icvpiov ■^p.wv 'Irjaov [Xpiarov']. bri
5«' vfj.as eiTTujxfva'fi' nXovcnos wv,'iva Vfxus ttj ikuvov tttoix*''? TTXovTqarjTe.

90 Dissertations.

who deliberately abandons the prerogatives of possession
to enter upon the experience of poverty, not because he
thinks it a better state, but in order to help others up
through real fellowship with their experience to a life of
weal. 'Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,
that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he beggared
himself, that ye through his poverty might become rich.'
This is how St. Paul interprets our Lord's coming down
from heaven, and it is manifest that it expresses some-
thing very much more than the mere addition of a man-
hood to His Godhead. In a certain aspect indeed the
Incarnation is the folding round the Godhead of the veil
of the humanity, to hide its glory, but it is much more
than this. It is a ceasing to exercise, at least in a
certain sphere, and so far as human tJionght can attain^
some natural prerogatives of the divine existence ; it
is a coming to exist for love of us under conditions of
being not natural to Godhead. For our sakes the Son
of God abandoned His own divine prerogatives in God
in order to win and merit, as man, by gradual and pain-
ful effort, a glory which, by right, might have been His
all along, the glory which He had with the Father
before the world was. And that glory in fact He
received as the reward of His human obedience : because
of the obedience of His mortal life God, says St. Paul,
'highly exalted him, and gave unto him the name which
is above every name — the divine name.' So that ' In
him (i.e. in the exalted Christ) dwclleth all the fulness
of the Godhead bodily,' in him ' arc all the treasures of
wisdom and knowledge hidden ^'

' Phil. ii. 9; Col. ii. 3, 9. These phrases are used of Christ in glory.

TJie Consciousness of our Lord. 91

§ 3.

An absolute KevwaLs not affinned in the
New Testament.

The view here expressed leaves a great deal unex-
plained, and specially the relation of the Incarnation to
the eternal and cosmic functions of the Word. The
Word or Son in the Incarnation comes forth from
the Father, comes down from heaven. The Father, on
His side, is represented as ' sending ' Him and ' giving
Him up ^.' There is no text, certain enough to be
quoted — ' the Son of Man which is in heaven ' being, as
has been mentioned, highly uncertain on critical grounds
^which directly suggests that the incarnate Person
during the period of His humiliation was still none the
less in heaven, i. e. in the fulfilment of His divine
functions. On the other hand the theology of St. John,
St. Paul and the Epistle to the Hebrews leads us to
believe that the Word belongs to the eternal life of
God, and is also the sustaining principle of all crea-
tion — ' in whom all things consist,' who ' bears along all
things by the utterance of his power -.' In the first of
these passages St. Paul is contemplating the Son of God
as holding an eternal place in the life of God as His
image or self-expression, and a fundamental and per-
manent relation to all created things, not to men or to

' St. John iii. i6 tZwK(v, Rom. viii. 32 TrapiSwKtf, St. John xx. 20,
I St. John iv. (J a-niaTa\K(v.

" Col. I. 17 rd iravra iv avTw avvtaTrjKiv, HeLr. i. 3 tfiepcuv rd Travra rai

pTjfXaTl TTjS SvvdfXiWi avTov.

92 Dissertations.

this world only^ but also to all unseen intelligences and
beings whatsoever. In Him they had their origin ; to-
ward Him they tend ; in Him they permanently subsist.
' He is the principle of cohesion in the universe. He
impresses upon creation that unity and solidarity which
makes it a cosmos instead of a chaos ^.' St. Paul goes
on to suggest how this fundamental relation of the Son to
the universe as its creator, its immanent principle of
life and order, and its goal or end, is reproduced in
His relation to the new creation, the Church. But the
language which he uses of the relation of the Son to
nature is such as to make it almost impossible to imagine
that St. Paul conceived it to be internipted by the
Incarnation. The Incarnation is an episode in it, or
rather its consummation and completion. How much
St. Paul reflected upon the relation of the ' self-emptying '
of the Son which he postulates in other epistles to this
permanent cosmic function which he here describes, we
cannot say. But he must at least have been prepared to
postulate the first with all reality, and still to maintain
the permanence of the second. Again, in the passage
just quoted from the prologue of the Epistle to the
Hebrews, the Son's function of 'bearing along all things
by the utterance of his power ' appears to be conceived
of as continuous and not affected by that purging of
our sins and subsequent sitting down on the right hand
of the divine majesty, for the realization of which the
author of the epistle postulates His entrance into all
sinless human experience and infirmity. This writer also
must have believed the self-emptying in the one sphere

^ Lii/htfoot in loc.

The Consciousness of our Lord. 93

to have been compatible with the cosmic function in
another sphere. Nor has the thought of the Church
found the abandonment of the cosmic position even
a conceivable hypothesis. Thus, if we are asked the
question — Can the functions of the Son in the Godhead
and in the universe have been suspended by the Incar-
nation ? we cannot but answer, with the theologians
of the Church from Irenaeus to Dr. Westcott, that it
is to us inconceivable ^. Nor can we dissociate the
fulfilment of these functions from the exercise of omni-
science. We must suppose, then, that in some manner
the humiliation and the self-limitation of the incarnate
state was compatible with the continued exercise of
divine and cosmic functions in another sphere. But
although we cannot but suppose and believe this, we
must remember that the language of the New Testament
is much more full and clear on the fact of the human
limitations than on the permanence of the cosmic func-
tions ; and that our capacities for speculation about God,
beyond what is disclosed in experience "and revelation,
are exceedingly limited. If Scripture represents the
divine intention, then we should conclude that it is the
divine intention that we should meditate on the reality
of the self-humiliation of the Son which is revealed to us
and pressed upon our notice ; and if we can but very
dimly hold this together with the unchangeable exercise
of His divine functions in the life of God and in the
universe, we shall surely not be surprised : for beyond
all question we ' know^ in part,' we see ' as in a mirror,'
we understand ' as in a riddle ' the mysteries of God.

■^ See below, pp. 9S ff.

94 Dissertations.

§ 4.

Provisional conclusion.

Our examination of the New Testament language —
especially of the narrative of the Gospels and of the
theology of St. Paul and St. John — would so far
appear to justify a conclusion which may be stated in
two ways.

(i) The Incarnation of the Son of God w^as no
mere addition of a manhood to His Godhead : it
was no mere wrapping around the divine glory of
a human nature to veil it and make it tolerable to
mortal eyes. It was more than this. The Son of God,
without ceasing to be God, the Son of the Father, and
without ceasing to be conscious of His divine relation
as Son to the Father, yet, in assuming human nature, so
truly entered into it as really to grow and live as Son
of Man under properly human conditions, that is to say
also under properly human limitations. Thus, if we
arc to express this in human language, we are forced
to assert that within the sphere and period of His
incarnate and mortal life, He did, and as it would
appear did habitually — doubtless by the voluntary
action of His own self-limiting and self-restraining
love^ — cease from the exercise of those divine functions
and powers, including the divine omniscience, which

* St. John X. 1 8.

The Consciousness of our Lord. 95

would have been incompatible with a truly human
experience.

(2) Jesus Christ, the Son of God incarnate, was and
is, at every moment and in every act, both God and
man, personally God made man ; He is as truly God
at His birth or death as now in His glory, and as truly
man now in His glory as formerly in His human birth
and mortal life, but the relation of the Godhead and
the manhood is not the same throughout. Now in His
glory we must conceive that the manhood subsists
under conditions of Godhead, ' the glory of God ' : but
formerly during His mortal life and within its sphere,
the Godhead was energizing under conditions and limi-
tations of manhood. The Son of God really became
and lived as Son of Man.

This provisional conclusion may be further defined
by contrasting it, broadly, with other well-known views,
before we go on to examine it in the light of the
historical development of theology.

It is opposed, then, on the one side, to the view,
which I must call the ^/rz'^r/, dogmatical and unhistori-
cal view that Christ's human mind was from the first
moment of the Incarnation and continuously flooded
with complete knowledge and with the glory of the
beatific vision, so that He never could really grow in
knowledge or be ignorant of anything, or be personally
in any perplexity or doubt ^ It is opposed, on the other
hand, to the a priori, humanitarian and also unhistorical
view that the Son in becoming man ceased to be
conscious of His own eternal sonship, and became, not

* On which see furth'.r II. § S.

96 Dissertations.

merely a human, but a fallible and peccable teacher.
This view is unhistorical equally with the other. That
the consciousness and claim of Christ is represented in
the Gospels as properly divine, the claim of the Son
of God. does not admit of reasonable doubt : and again
His words as a whole, with the claims they involve and
the tone impressed upon them, will not allow us to think
of Him as liable to sin or liable to mislead \ He never,
as He is represented to us in the Gospels, fears sin or
hints at His inadequacy to the tremendous mission
which He bore. He challenges criticism. He speaks
as the invincible emancipator of man, the deliverer who
stands in no relation to sin but as the discerner, the
conqueror, the judge of it in all its forms and to the end
of time-. In the same way, whenever and whomsoever
He teaches, it is in the tone which could only be
morally justifiable in the case of one who taught infal-
libly ' the word of God.' ' Heaven and earth,' He said,
' shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away ^.'
' Lo,' said the apostles, amazed at the calm authority
of His tone, ' now know we that thou knowest all
things and needest not that any man should ask thee ;
by this we believe that thou camest forth from God'.'
Both these views then appear to be equally contra-

' See above, p. 80.

^ St. John xiv. 30-31 'The prince of the world cometh : and he hath
nothing in me,' sums np the whole impression left by the Gospels. The
only passage which could be alleged to the contrary is the ' Why callest
thou me good ? ' (St. Mark x. 18'. But this, interpreted as a repudiation of
goodness, is too utterly out of keeping with our Lord's general claims. It
must t)e regarded as a question asked of the young man to test his motives
and principles, s:e B. L. pp. 13, 19S.

^ St. Matt. xxiv. 35. * St. John xvi. 30.

The Consciousness of our Lord. 97

dieted by the evangelical narrative taken as it stands.
The view which is truly in accordance with the narrative
must lie in between these two extremes ; but even within
the intermediate area we cannot, I think, be contented
with a view which simply puts in juxtaposition, during
our Lord's earthly life, the divine and human conscious-
nesses — which represents Him as acting and speaking now
as God and now as man, and which attributes to Him
simultaneously omniscience as God and limitation of
knowledge as man. It is no doubt true that as God He
possessed potentially at every moment the divine as well
as the human consciousness and nature. But the self-
sacrifice of the Incarnation appears to have lain in great
measure, so far as Junnan %vords can express it, in His
refrainine from the divine mode of consciousness within
the sphere of His human life, that He might really
enter into human experience. It is not enough, for
example, to recognize that our Lord was ignorant of
the divine secret of the day and hour of the end, in
respect of His human nature, unless we recognize also
that He was so truly living under human conditions as
Himself to be ignorant. The Son Himself, as He
reveals Himself to men in manhood^ did not know.

98 Dissertations.

II.

The history of christian opinion, outside the

CANON, ON THE SUBJECT OF OUR LORd's HUMAN
CONSCIOUSNESS.

§1.

Preliminary. On the permanence in the Incar-
nation of the Godhead of Christ.

I have mentioned above that all theologians of the
Church from Irenaeus downwards affirm that Christ in
becoming incarnate did not cease to be God or to
exercise the cosmic functions of the Word. His human
birth, it is frequently expressed, was no diminution or
destruction of what He was before. ' Hoc enim quod
ex carne atque in carne venit, ortus cius fuit, non
imminutio ; ct natus tantum est non demutatus ; quia
licet in forma Dei manens formam servi assumpserit,
infirmitas tamen habitus humani non infirmavit naturam
Dei.' This passage from Cassian [de Incarn. vi. 19) may-
stand as an example of innumerable others from all periods
of Christian theology. The Christian consciousness has,
as a fact, from its beginning down to the Reformation,
and for the most part since then, found it an inconceivable
supposition that the cosmic functions of the Son and
His divine functions — such as His share in the eternal

Tlie Consciousness of our Lord. 99

procession of the Holy Ghost — should be interrupted
by the Incarnation. But it is important to notice that,
granted this, there is still room for difference in statements
of the truth, according as the divine and cosmic functions
(and accompanying consciousness) of the Son are or are
not brought into juxtaposition with the human function
(and consciousness) so as practically to overwhelm them.
The following quotations will illustrate the difference
and also the general theological assumption.

Irenaeus, con. Haer. v. 18. 3 ' Mundi enim factor
vere Verbum Dei est : hie autem est Dominus noster
qui in novissimis temporibus homo factus est, in hoc
mundo exsistens et secundum invisibilitatem continet
[-ens ?] quae facta sunt omnia et in universa conditione
infixus ^ quoniam Verbum Dei gubernans et disponens
omnia ; et propter hoc in sua visibiliter ^ venit et caro
factum est et pependit super lignum, uti universa in
semetipsum recapituletur. . . . Ipse est enim qui uni-
versorum potestatem habet a Patre quoniam Verbum
Dei et homo verus, invisibilibus quidem participans
rationabiliter et sensuabiliter^ legem statuens universa
quaeque in suo perseverare ordine ; super visibilia autem
et humana regnans manifeste.'

't>'

Here Irenaeus certainly asserts that the Incarnation
did not interrupt the cosmic activity of the Word. ' In
the last times,' he informs us, ' He was made man, while
all the same existing in the world and invisibly sustaining
all creation. It was because of the universal cosmic

^ i. e. implanted in the whole creation.

^ The sense requires ns to read visibiliter, not itivisibiliter, here.

^ This must represent votjtuis or I'oepws, and means ' in a manner
perceptible to the reason ' (not the senses). The translator of Irenaeus
translates vovs by scnsus.

H 3

loo Dissertations.

government entrusted to Him that He rendered Himself
visible and was made flesh and hung upon the cross,
in order to accomplish a work of recovery, which was
necessary to recapitulate all things into Himself.' But
when previously Irenaeus had spoken of the human
consciousness of Christ, he markedly abstained (as will
appear shortly, when the passages are quoted) from
bringing this universal activity of the Word into juxta-
position with His human life and experience.

Origen, speaking of the Incarnation of the Son {de
Princip. iv. 30, Rufinus' translation) writes :

' In quo non ita sentiendum est quod omnis divinitatis
eius maiestas intra brevissimi corporis claustra conclusa
est, ita ut omne Verbum Dei et sapientia eius ac sub-
stantialis Veritas ac vita vel a Patre divulsa sit vel
intra corporis eius coercita et conscripta brevitatem, nee
usquam praeterea putetur operata.'

On the other hand, like Irenaeus, though perhaps with
more of the hesitation begotten of his philosophy, he
inclines (as will appear) to give a real meaning to the
divine self-emptying in the assumption of manhood.

EUSEBIUS, Dein. Evang. vii. 1 'w ohv kuI 8ia croj/xdrcoy
alcrOi'jaecos r?/? tQv voi]tG>v naX aacofxaToov evvoias eiTLkajScaixeda,
Tov ijfxlv avyyeirj kol yvcapLjjLov [Ao'yoz^J avrb^^ 6 6€u<; Ao'yos
ave\dix[iav€, /cat TTcivTa ye bi avrov to, crcoTijpLa Tols avTr]Kaots
Kal avTOTTTai,^ Tdv h'Oeoiv avrov Xoyuiv re koI epycov irpo-
e/3dAAero. Kal ravr e—puTre ratj rod auipiaTos avdyKai'i ojxoiut'i
i]fxiv ovbap.oi'i KaTahe(Tpiovp.€VOS ovbi tl -yeZpov ?/ fxel^ov aiiTos
kavTov TT/s' OeoTrjTos vnojjiercov, ovb^ ovrua ola dvOpcoTTOv ^/'l'X'/
Tui au)[xaTL TTeboviJ.evos ojs [xi] irepyuv bvvacrOaL to. dda, ju?) be
TTavra^?} Trapelvai Oeov Xoyov ovra KOt to. -navTa iT\i\povvTa
KoX bid TxdvTMV ijKovTa' oAA' oibe pvirov ij (f)Oopdv i] jxiaajxa

The Consciousness of our Lord. loi

e^ ?%- ai'€L\ri(p€ trapKos k'mvi)V€.y}xivo'S, on hi] aacSixaTO^ wv ttjv
<pv(rLv Kai avkos aal aa-apKos ola 6(ov Ao'yo?, ivde(o bwajxeL Kal
Ao'yots fjjjup appi]Tois TTacrav VTTtj^t ti]v olKOvopLiav, tG>v otKeLcoi'
fj.eTabiboTJS, aW' ovk ai'TarayopLevos rwf aXkorpLcov. ovkolv tl
(^oftdtTdai \pi] Ti]v ^vaapKov oiKOVo[j.iav, eirei [xrj e/xoAwero 6
ajjioXvvTos, p-i] be e/c rrjs a-apKos 6 ajxCavros kjXLaiv^To, p.!] be
(TwecpOeipeTo rrj tov (ToopaTos olKeia (pvcrei 6 aTTaOi]^ tov Oeov
X('yos, iirel pi] be t/Aiou iradouv civ tl uKTlves veKpuJv kol
iravTOLUiv aoyp-aroiv iTta(pu)p.€vaL ;

The sense of this passage may be given briefly thus :

' The Word was incarnate in order to present spiritual
and rational realities to us men under forms of sense.
But in doing this His own divine nature was subjected
to no change : He was not fettered to the necessities
of the body which He assumed. He was not involved,
like a man's soul, in his body, so as not to be able to
operate divinely in the whole universe. He suffered no
defilement in his immaterial and impassible essence,
nor contracted any attributes alien to it while He was
imparting His own, any more than the sun contracts the
defilements of the objects which its light illuminates.'

This passage is typical of Eusebius" thought. We may
compare it with another, Dcm.Evang. iv. 13 [Pair. Graec.
xxii. pp. 284 ff.). Here he is again emphasizing that
while Christ was conversing among men He was at the
same time filling all things and subsisting in the Father
(p. 288 a). He describes Him as ' imparting what is
His own to the manhood, but not receiving its attributes
in exchange ' (ra pkv ef avrov pLerabibovs rw avOpccnc^, tol
b\ €K TOV dvi]Tov pi] avTiXap.^av(x>v) ; He calls the man-
hood an ' instrument which he held out before Him '
{bi opydvov ov T7povj3i^Kr]To avOpui-nivov). and compares His

I02

Dissertations.

relation to it to that of a musician to liis lyre (285 c)
who is not himself affected by the blows which strike the
strings (288b). The metaphor of the sun again appears:
the nature of the Word is no more involved in the
passions of the body which He assumed, than the sun's
rays are defiled by the objects which they touch (288 c).
Such a line of thought is typical not of Eusebius only
but of many of the more philosophical fathers. Current
philosophy was, perhaps, overmuch occupied with the
impassibility of God. At any rate to guard the concep-
tion of the divine impassibility, philosophical Christians
— and Eusebius among them — go dangerously far in
minimizing the meaning of the Incarnation. It is over-
much assimilated to the immanence of the divine reason
in the universe. The above metaphor of the sun (not
used by Eusebius alone ^) is surely very inadequate to
express the relation of the Word to His own manhood. In
fact Eusebius is here speaking much more the language
of current philosophy than of the New Testament writers.
His first thought is of the impassibility of the Word and
His cosmic function. In the New Testament writers, on
the other hand — for St. Paul and St. John and the
author of the Epistle to the Hebrews — the Son of
God made man, the Word made flesh, is the primary
thought. He being what He was, really did humble

* See reffs. in Newman, Tracts Thcol. and Eccl. p. 314. Cf. a fragment
of a letter ad Cacsariuin attributed to St. Chrysostom {Opera, ed. Migne,
torn. xiii. p. 497) where the divine Son is said to suffer in the passion no
more than the sun suffers when a tree is cut down which it is completely
penetrating with its rays. .St. John Damasc. de Fid. OrtJt. iii. 26 repeats
the metaphor anil argument, which is also found in Alcuin, de lid. s. Triii,
iii. 16.

The Consciousness of our Lord. 103

Himself to conditions of human suffering and trial and
death, for us men and for our salvation. So preoccu-
pied are they with the thought that they do not for the
time seem to ask the question — what is the relation of this
humiliation to those cosmic functions of theWord, which,
antecedently and subsequently to the humiliation, they
have full in view? I should contend then that in this
passage Eusebius is making primary metaphysical con-
siderations which should be kept strictly secondary, and
allowing a philosophical deduction to obscure the full
meaning of the Gospel revelation.

AthanasiuS, de Iiicarnatione, 17. 4, 5 ov 8?j roiovTo<5
y]v 6 Tov ^eou Ao'yo? Iv tw avOpfLin^' ov yap avrebebero
roj crcofxaTL, akka jxaKXov avTos eKpoLTei, tovto, ajore Kal ^v
TOVTca Tjv Kol €V Toli Tiacnv €Tvy)(jixve. Kai I'fco xGiv ovtoov
T]v Kol (V /xoro) rw Tiarpl ave-nav^To' Kai rb davfxaaTdv tovto
tji', oTi Kol ws uvdpcoTTOs eTioXiTeveTo Kai ws Ao'yos to. navTa
k^oioyovei Kal ws vlbs tw iraTpi (Tvvi]v.

Here Athanasius, almost repeating the words of
Eusebius in the passage just referred to, simply asserts
that the Incarnation did not limit the Word in Himself.
He was still in the universe and in the bosom of the
Father. With this position, as a necessary philosophical
conclusion, there is — it seems to me — no fault to be
found so long as the Gospel revelation of the meaning
of the Incarnation is kept in the foreground. But
Athanasius like Eusebius goes on —

66ev ovbe tt]^ -napOivov TLKTOva-qs iTTaa^ev avTos, ovbk iv
(TCopLaTL u)V ifjiokvpeTO' akXa fxakkov Kal to (rS>jxa i]yia^(.v. ovhe
yap kv Tols Tiaaiv oov tu)v iravTutv pLerakapL^aviL, akka TiavTa
fxakkov vtt' avTov {cooyoi^etTat Kal rpe'^erat.

104 Dissertations.

Then follows the metaphor of the sun, employed
exactly as by Eusebius. Here again then I cannot
but think that the philosophical interest overpowers the
evangelical truth: as again in c. 41, where, in order to make
Christian truth easy for 'the Greeks,' the Incarnation is
assimilated to the eTrt'/^ao-t? of the Word upon nature.
On the other hand Athanasius later in his life strongly
insisted on the Word having really identified Himself
with the humanity which He assumed : see Ep. ad
Epictetinn, as referred to on p. 1 24.

Proclus of Cyzicus, Orat. i. 9 {P. G. Ixv. p. 690 c)
6 avToi cbv ev rot? koXttols tov Trarfjos koI ev yaa-Tpl irapOevoV
6 avTos kv ayKaXais fx-qvpos koi eirl TrTepvy(DV avipanv' 6 avrbs
avu) VTTO ayyeXoiv TpoaeKVvelro nai kuto) reAwrat? (TVvaveKXi-
veTO' TO. a€pa(j)lpL ov irpoaelSXeiTe /cat UlXutos rjpuiTa . . . c58e
77Aaro9 i(TVKocj)avT€lTO KOL eKct ayios ^bo^oXoyelTo.

' He, the same, was in His Father's bosom and in the
womb of the Virgin ; in His mother's arms and on the
wings of the winds ; He was being worshipped by the
angels in heaven and He was supping with publicans on
earth ; whom the Seraphim dare not gaze at, Pilate was
questioning . . . Here He was being maligned as a cheat,
while i/iere He was being glorified as the Holy One.'

This is a passage from a memorable and splendid
sermon ^ preached in reply to Nestorius' follower Anas-
tasius in the Cathedral of St. Sophia at Constantinople.
Proclus is emphasizing that tlic incarnate person is no
other than the eternal Son, and he puts into strong
rhetorical juxtaposition the humiliating sufferings of the
manhood and the glories of the Godhead, as belonging

* See Bright'b Early Church History, p. 313. Cf. Hilary, de Trin. x. 54.

The Consciousness of our Lord. 105

simultaneously to the same person. I would only
contend that there is nothing in the New Testament
to justify this sort of language, and that it gives an
unnatural meaning— if meaning at all — to such a fact
as our Lord's cry of desolation upon the cross, if
within the sphere where that cry was uttered, He was
personally living in the exercise of the beatific vision,
if that vision was (so to speak) side by side with the
experience upon the cross. When, as in this case, the
abstract movement of human thought is necessarily
baffled by the conditions of the subject, it is specially
necessary to keep close to the facts, in this case the
revealed facts, and to let the language follow closely
upon them.

I would conclude then, on this preliminary matter,
that it is necessary, if we would be true to the New
Testament in thinking or writing of the incarnate Christ,
to put into the foreground and to emphasize the human
state as it is described in the Gospels. The truth of the
New Testament is impaired or destroyed if the divine
state is put into immediate juxtaposition with this.
Only as there is real reason to believe that the apostolic
writers did contemplate the continuance of the cosmic
functions of the Word, and as the thought of the Church
has found it impossible to conceive the opposite, it is
right to explain that the real KeVcoats within the sphere
of the Incarnation must be held compatible with the
exercise of divine functions in another sphere. On the
question whether this is conceivable by us, more will
need to be said later on.

io6 Dissertations.

§2.

Early tradition and speculation on the special
subject of tlie human consciousness of Christ.

The 'churches' were started on their career with
a 'tradition' of faith which it was their office to guard.
This tradition was conceived to embody the teaching of
the apostoHc founders on the matters which constituted
' the faith once for all committed to the saints.' This
idea of tradition, to which the New Testament bears
frequent testimony, has been mentioned before ^ All that
we now have to inquire is whether in the earliest churches
this tradition was conceived to contain any information
on the subject of our Lord's human consciousness, or
whether the subsequent development of Christian thought
upon the subject was due simply to the influence of
certain ' texts ' in the apostolic writings and to con-
clusions drawn from the general idea of the Incarnation.

The divinity of Christ — that He was the Son of God
made man — is assumed by the subapostolic representa-
tives of the churches of Rome and Antioch, Clement and
Ignatius -. It is assumed, not as matter of controversy,

' See above, p. 4 1 .

^ Clement, ad Cor. 2 rd iraO-qfjiaTa avTov, i. e. tov ^€oi) ( = Christ); Ignatius,
£p/i. I fv ai'fj.aTi 0(ov, Roin. 6 toC itaOovz tov dtov. See further Lightfoot's
notes on Clem, ad Cor. 2. I ought to add that since Lightfoot decided for
Ofov not Xpiarov as tiie true reading in this place, the ancient Latin version
published by D. Germanus Morin in AnecJota Maredsolana has increased the
evidence on the other side. If Xpiarov is to be used, however, there still

The Consciousness of our Lord. 107

but as truth which can be alluded to, i, e. as matter
of traditional acceptance common to the churches of
Rome and Antioch with those churches — of Greece and
Asia — to which Clement and Ignatius were writing^
Considering what the teaching of St. Paul and St. John on
the subject of the Incarnation had been, this could hardly
have been otherwise. When we first get formulated
summaries of 'the tradition,' i.e. creeds, longer or shorter,
this principle is the centre of the Christian theology.

Thus the creed of Irenaeus, often repeated in sub-
stance, is ' in one God Almighty, from whom are all
things ; and in one Son of God, Jesus Christ, our Lord,
through whom are all things, and in His dispensa-
tions, by which the Son of God became man ; and in
the Spirit of God ^' And the ' rule of faith ' as stated

remains evidence of the faith of Clement and his church: (i) In the fact
that he quotes and depends upon the language of the Epistle to the Hebrews
(Heb. i. 5) about the person of Christ, c. 36. (2) In his reference to Christ
as of Jacob, according to the flesh, to Kara aapKa, c. 32. (3) In doxologies
addressed apparently to Christ, cc. 20, 50. (4) In the Trinitarian phrase,
^'77 6 dibs Kal ^Tj 6 Kvpios 'Irjaovs XptaTos Kairu nvevfia tu djiov i] t« mans Kai
ij kKms tBv iicKiicTuv, c. 58, cf. c. 46.

It should be added that the Shepherd of Hernias contains in the clearest
form the principle of the Incarnation (not so clearly the doctrine of the
Trinity) as accepted Christian truth. The Son of God, begotten before all
creation as the counsellor of His Father in creation, was in the last days
manifested for the salvation of man (Sim. ix. 12).

It is noticeable that Ignatius is contending not for the Godhead of Christ,
but for His true humanity. The note of contention for the divinity of
Christ appears first in the so-called second Epistle of Clement, probably
a homily of the Corinthian Church belonging to the first half of the second
century, but later than Ignatius. Here the preacher, having no doubt the
Ebionites in his mind, begins ' Brethren, we must think of Jesus Christ as
of God, as of the Judge of quick and dead : and we must not have mean
views of our salvation ; for if we think meanly of Him we expect also
to receive but a mean reward.'

' Iren. con. Ilacr. iv. 33. 7 «ts "kva Qiov vavTOKparopa, «£ ov rd irdvra, mans

io8 Dissertations.

by Origen is, so far as it bears on the Incarnation, as
follows ^ :

' The particular points clearly delivered in the teaching
of the apostles are as follows. First, that there is
one God . . . Secondly, that Jesus Christ Himself who
came [into the world] was born of the Father before all
creatures ; that after He had been the minister of the
Father in the creation of all things- — for by Him ivere
all things made — in the last times, emptying Himself
[of His glory] He became man and was incarnate,
although God, and while made man remained the God
which He was ; that He assumed a body like to our
own, differing in this respect only that it was born of
a virgin and of the Holy Spirit. . . .'

But this common doctrine of the Incarnation may
bring with it one of several different answers to the
question of our Lord's consciousness in His mortal life.
On this latter subject there was no tradition, and the
early Church was left, as we are, to the examination of
' texts ' and the formation of opinions. This appears
from the three earliest statements on the subject.

Irenaeus, assuming the principle of the Incarna-
tion, emphasizes the reality of our Lord's entrance into

o\CkXt)pos' koX (h Tuv vluv rod 6eov 'lijcrtidv Xptffr/jv, Toy Kvpiov fjn^v, 5i' ov
Tfl ■navra, Kal rdy oiKovofx'ias avrov, 8t' uiv avdpwtros (yivero 6 vlus tov
6fov, ■niKjjiovf) 0(l3aia' Knl eh ru iryevixa tuv 6(ov.

' Origen, dc Priiic. pref. 4 ' Siiecies vero eorum quae per pmedicationem
apostolicam manifeste tradiintur istae sunt. Primo qucd unus Deus est . . .
Turn deinde quia lesus Christus ipse qui venit, ante omnem creaturam
natus ex Patre est. Qui cum in omnium conditione Patri ministrasset,/i?r
ipsiim txnm onntia facta sunt, iiovissimis temporibus se insum exinaniens,
homo factus, incarnatus est cum Deus esset et homo factus mansit quod
erat Deus. Corpus assumpsit nostro corpori simile, co solo dififerens quod
natum ex virgine et Spiritu sancto est.'

The Consciousness of our Lord. 109

human experience. That he should have done this is
no more than what we might expect from the greatest
of the opponents of Gnosticism. ' Gnosticism ' is a vague
term, but a general characteristic of the phases of
speculation and belief, which are grouped under the
name, is a radical disbelief in the compatibility of the
spiritual and the material, of God and nature, and, there-
fore, a radical antagonism to the root-principle of the
Incarnation. Thus opposition to Gnosticism leads the
Church teachers to a healthy emphasis, as on other
things, so also on the reality of the human ' flesh ' of
Jesus. God really was made man. The Supreme did
really enter into nature and manhood. Tertullian chiefly
emphasizes this in regard to physical processes and
sufferings and in regard to the actual human birth and
human sufferings of the Son of God. But Irenaeus
emphasizes it more broadly. He claims that God. the
Son of God, did truly enter into all that makes up the
nature of man in body, mind and soul. Not only, then,
did He reveal God to man, but He ' exhibited man to
God ^.' He really went through human struggles and
won a human victory. ' He struggled and overcame :
He was man fighting for his fathers, and by His
obedience paying the debt of their disobedience : for He
botind the strong (adversary) and loosed the weak
(captives) and gave deliverance to His creatures, destroy-
ing sin ^.' And in order to fight the human fight fully,

^ iv. 20. 7 ' Deo autem exhibens hominem.' This activity of the Word is
not, however, confined to the Incarnation by Irenaeus.

■^ iii. iS. 6, 7 'Luctatus est enim at vicit; erat enim homo pro patribus
certans tt per obedientiam inobedientiam persolvens ; alligavit enim fortem
et solvit infirmos et salutem donavit plasmati suo, destruens peccatum. . . .

no Dissertations.

' He passed through every age, from infancy to man-
hood, restoring to each communion with God.' And in
order that His human struggle may be beheved to have
been real, St. Irenaeus postulates a quiescence of the
divine Word ' while He was tempted and dishonoured,
and crucified and slain,' as on the other hand its ' co-
operation with the man (or manhood) in His victory
and endurance and goodness, and resurrection and
ascension^.' Irenaeus thus emphasizes the reality of

Quapropter et per omnem venit aetatem, omnibus restituens earn, quae est
ad Deum communionem.' Cf. also ii. 22. 4, an interesting passage, where
great stress is laid on our Lord behig truly -v hat He seemed, and not violating
the law of human life : ' Triginta quidem annorum exsistens quum veniret ad
baptismum, deinde magistri aetatem perfectam habens, venit Hierusalem,
ita ut ab omnibus iuste audiret magister : non enim aliud videbatur et aliud
erat, sicut inquiunt qui putativum introducunt ; sed quod erat hoc et
videbatur. Magister ergo exsistens, magistri quoque habebat aetatem, non
reprobans nee supergrediens hominem, neque solvens legem in se humani
generis, sed omnem aetatem sanctificans per illam, quae ad ipsum erat,
similitudinem. Omnes enim venit per semetipsum salvare ; omnes, inquam,
qui per eum renascuntur in Deum, infantes et parvulos et pueros et iuvenes
et seniores. • Ideo per omnem venit aetatem, et infantibus infans factus,
sanctificans infantes ; in parvulis parvus, sanctificans banc ipsam habentei
aetatem, simul et exemplum illis pietatis effectus et iustltiae et subicctionis ;
in iuvenibus iuvenis, exemplum iuvenibus fiens et sanctificans Domino.
Sic et senior in senioribus, ut sit perfectus magister in omnibus, non solum
secundum expositionem veritatis, sed et secundum aetatem, sanctificans
simul et seniores, exemplum ipsis quoque fiens ; deinde et usque ad mortem
pervenit, ut sit primogenitus ex tnorttiis, ipse primattim tencns in omnibus,
princeps vitae, prior omnium et praeccdens omnes.'

* iii. 19. 3 uiairfp yap ^v dvOpajiroi, i'va irfipaaOrj, ovtws kol Ao-yo?, Iva
So^aaOfi' -qavxa^ovTos fiiv rov \6yov iv to) ireipa^fffOai . . . Kal aravpovaOai
Kal aTToOv-qaicdV (rvyyivonivov 5( tcD avdpanrcp tv tw viKav Kal hiTop.ivtiv
Kal XprjcjTtviaOai Kal dviOTaaOat Kal dvaXafxPaveaOat. Irenaeus' expression
here admits of criticism. By the divine Word he must be understood to
mean the powers of the divinity, if this passage is to be brought into agree-
ment with his general doctrine. And his ascription of the elements of
weakness only to the manhood, the element of victory to the Godhead, is not,
as we shall see, justifiable from Scripture. But these defects of statement do
not affect our present purjiosc. It ought of course to be remembered that

The Consciousness of our Lord. m

our Lord's human experiences. And, in accordance
with this, the reality of our Lord's human ignorance.
Then he rebukes the would-be omniscience of the
Gnostics :

' Unreasonably puffed up, you audaciously declare that
you know the unutterable mysteries of God ; unreason-
ably — seeing that even the Lord, the very Son of God,
allowed that the Father alone knew the actual day and
hour of judgement, saying plainly of that day and hour
knozveth 710 man, neither the Son, except the Father
only. If therefore the Son did not blush to refer to the
Father the knowledge of that day, but said what is true;
neither let us blush, to reserve to God those points in
inquiries which are too high for us. For no one is above
his master. . . . For if any one ask the reason why the
Father, though in all things holding communion with
the Son, was declared by the Lord alone to know the
day and hour ; he could not at present find one more
suitable, or proper, or less perilous than this (for our
Lord is the only true master) — that we may learn
through Him, that the Father is over all. For the
Father, He says, is greater than L And that even in
respect of knowledge the Father is put over [the Son] is
announced to us by our Lord, in order that we too, so
long as we belong to the fashion of this world, may leave

a good deal of confusion of language (and thought) is due to the use of
d^^pcuTTOJ, and still more of homo, for the manhood. Sometimes homo
is used where what is clearly meant is not ' man' but 'manhood,' e.g. in
Hilary, de Trin. ix. 7 homo nosier = our manhood. But the use of the
concrete term to express the abstract coincides with a frequent confusion of
thought between the ideas of ' man ' and ' manhood.' When opposition to
Nestorianism led to clear definition the confusion of thought is over, though
even then the use of homo for manhood does not cease. Thus e.g. the cont7-a
Eutychcn d Ncstorium, assigned to Boetius, a treatise devoted to defining
exactly the distinct meanings of ' person ' and ' nature ' in the Incarnation,
Still uses the phrase (c. 7) vcstihis homine as= ' clothed with \ht manhood^

112 Dissertations.

to God perfect knowledge and such investigations [as
the Gnostics were presuming to undertake] ^.'

It might appear as if St. Irenaeus attributed this
ignorance to the Son simply as Son ; but the phrase, ' so
long as we belong to the fashion of this world,' and
a previous expression^ ' while we are still in this world,'
show that he was thinking of human ignorance generally,
and therefore of our Lord's ignorance as belonging simply
to that mortal state which He assumed in assuming
humanity. To the person of the Son incarnate then, as
He was among men, Irenaeus certainly attributes limita-
tion of knowledge^.

' ii. 28. 6-S ' Irrationabiliter autem inflati, aiidaciter inenarrabilia Dei
mysteria scire vos dicitis; quandoquidem et Dominus, ipse Filius Dei,
ipsnm iudicii diem et horam concessit scire solum Patrem manifeste dicens :
dc die autem ilia ct hora nemo scit, neque Filius, nisi Pater solus. Si autem
scientiam diei illius Filius non erubuit referre ad Patrem, sed dixit quod
verum est, neque nos erubescamus quae sunt in quaestionibus maiora secundum
nos reservare Deo ; nonoemm super magistniiii est. . . . Etenim si quis exquirat
causam, propter quam in omnibus Pater communicans Filio. solus scire horam
et diem a Domino manifestatus est ; neque aptabilem magis neque decenti-
orem nee sine periculo alteram quam banc inveniat in praesenti (quoniam
enim solus verax magisterest Dominus"), ut discamus per ipsum super omnia
esse Patrem. Etenim Pater, ait, maior me est. Et secundum agnitionem
itaque praepositus esse Pater annuntiatus est a Domino nostro ad hoc, ut et
nos, in quantum in figura huius mundi sumus, perfcctam scientiam et talcs
quacstioncs concedamus Deo.'

^ See ii. 28. 7 'nos adhuc in terra conversantes.'

^ In the same chapter in which he speaks of this ignorance of the Son,
he ascribes to Him, in His eternal being, the knowledge of the meaning of
the divine generation, unknown to tlie highest created existences (ii. 28. 6),
and to the Son, as exalted Christ ^apparently), the knowledge of the
mysteries of sin and of the fall (ii. 28. 7). The context generally, and
Irenaeus' theology as a whole, lead us to conclude with Bull {Defence of the
Nicene Creed, in Library of Anglo- Catholic Theol. i. 176), though not exactly
for his reasons, and with Dorner {^Doctrine of the Person of Christ, Clark's
Library, i. p. 309) that Irenaeus ascribes true limitations of knowledge to
the incarnate Son, in His mortal life.

The Consciousness of our Lord. 113

Meanwhile, Irenaeus^ contemporary at Alexandria,
Clement, was apparently asserting that the incarnate
Christ was omniscient because He was God.

' While the Lord was actually being baptized, a voice
sounded upon Him from heaven in witness to the beloved,
Thou art my beloved Son ; to-day have I begotten thee ^
Let us inquire of these wise men [the Gnostics]: Ls
Christ begotten again to-day [in baptism] already perfect
or — what would be most strange — is He deficient? If
the latter, He must acquire information. But, as He is
God, it is not likely He would acquire any information
whatever. For no one could be greater than the Word or
teacher of the only teacher. Will they, then, unwillingly
confess that the Word, begotten as He was of the
Father, perfect of the perfect, was begotten again [in
baptism] according to the forecast of revelation perfectly?
And if He was perfect, why was the perfect one baptized?
He needed, they say, to fulfil the profession which
belonged to man. Quite true. I say the same. Does
He then become perfect in the act of His being baptized
by John ? It is plain that this is so. Did He then
learn nothing from him ? Nothing. But He is perfected
by the font alone and sanctified by the descent of the
Spirit. So it is-.'

' St. Mark i. ii, assimilated to Ps. ii. 7.

* Clem. Paedagog. i. 6. 25 (Dindorf) avriKa yow PairTi^of^tpw rw Kvpioj
dir' oiipavwy ewrjxV'^^^ <paivf) fiaprv? yjmrrjfj.^vov vlus (jlov u aii dyanijTos, fyu
arjix(pov -yeyfvurjKa ae. TrvOwfitOa ovy run' acxpaiv ari^ifpov di'ayivi>T]9els 6
XpLOTus Tji'Ti Te'Afio; eartv rj uirfp UTOirdiraTOV (Wtv-qs; d 5i tovto, npoaftaOeiv
T( avrw Sfi. aAAa -npoafxaOnv ptiv avrov eiKo9 ovSe €U Giov orra. ov yap
pifi^ojv Tis e't'r] au tov Kuyov, ovSe pcfji' SihdrrKaKos rov fivvov Si^acicdKov. piT] ri
oZv vixoXoy-qaovaiv aKoi'Tts ruv \uyov reXeiov iK TiXeiov (jiivra tov iraTpos
Kara t^j/ u'lKovopitcrji' TrpoSiaTinrojaif dvayivvqOfjvai TeKdocs ; Kal u Te\(ios ^f,
ri (PaTtTi^eTO u TiKnos ; eSei, (pa<j'i. -aXripwaai to ivdyytXpLa to dvOpwirivov,
vayitdXais. <pTiptl yap' dpia to'u'vi' tw BanTi^fadai avTov vnu 'icudvvov yiverat
T6A<i09 ; 5^Aoi' on' ovbev ovv irpus avTov TrporripiaBev ; ov yap- TfXaovTat 5^
to) XovTpw piui'O! Kal ToC TTVivpiaTos Tij KuOoSo) dyid^eTaf ovtojs €\f«.

114 Dissertations.

The passage is not, perhaps, quite clear in its meaning;
but Clement appears to attribute to our Lord both
divine omniscience, which cannot learn from outside,
as well as a perfect (human) enlightenment acquired in
His baptism, the like of which he attributes, as against
the Gnostics, to all baptized Christians. He appears
then to think of our Lord on earth as exercising both
the divine omniscience of the Godhead and the perfect
enlightenment of the manhood. But we should hardly
expect from Clement, who went as far on the road of
Docetism as to deny the existence in our Lord of any,
even the most innocent, human emotions or appetites \
a very full realization of his real humanity.

Origen, who succeeded Clement in the Catechetical
School of Alexandria, gives us more to dwell upon. So
far as tradition goes, what it gave to Origen was (as we
have seen) the principle that the Son of God divesting
Himself, but none the less remaining God, became truly
and really man by a human birth. We should expect
Origen to fill up this outline by scrupulous attention to
the letter of Holy Scripture. It cannot be too often
emphasized that Origan's errors^ — so far as his opinions
are certainly errors — were mainly due to an over-
scrupulous literalness in the interpretation of Holy
Scripture, that for instance his doctrine that the Son was
not the absolute Goodness, as He was the absolute
Wisdom, was due to his interpretation, more literal than
true, of the text ' There is none good but one, that is

' He was aTra^airXwi uTTa6r]s. He neither experienced the appetite of
hunger, nor the emotions of joy and grief {S/rom.vi. 9. 71). In Strom, iii. 7. 59
Valentinus is quoted, and apparently with approval, as denying in our Lord
the natural physical process of digestion.

The Consciousness of our Lord. 115

God.' We turn then with interest to Origen's com-
mentary on such a critical passage as St. Matt. xxiv. 36,
which unfortunately remains to us only in an old and
very bad Latin version ^ : De die aittcin ilia ct hora
nemo scit, ncgue angcli caelorinn, jieqtie Filiiis, nisi Pater
solus. After noticing that this text serves to rebuke
those who pretend to know too much about the last
things, Origen remarks that the Saviour appears, accord-
ing to this passage, to join Himself to those who do not
know the day and hour. How is this consistent with
His perfect knowledge of the Father (St. Matt. xi. 27) ?
How did it come about that the Father concealed this
from Him ? He proceeds to give two main interpretations,
which we can more or less discern through the dimness
of the bad Latin translation.

(a) Some will have the courage to attribute this to
the proper human development ascribed to our Lord by
St. Luke (ii. 52). According to this interpretation He
too. the man Christ Jesus, must wait His time for perfect
knowledge^. Therefore now, 'before He had fulfilled
His dispensation,' it was no w^onder if He was ignorant
of this one point alone. After the resurrection, when God
highly exalted Him and bestowed upon Him the name
which is above every name, He uses different language :
' It is not for yo?i to know the times and the seasons.'
For by this time He knew all that the Father knew.

^ Huet, Origeniana, lib. iii. cap. 2. qu. 3. § 12 ascribes this translation,
not without reason, to a companion of Cassiodorus.

^ '■Homo qui secundum Salvatoreni intelligitur proficiens,'&c. — (I suppose)
' the man who (or the manhood which ) in the case of the Saviour.' Cf. his
' secundum historias ' (in Tom. xv. 5 of the same commentary) which = ' in
the case of the O. T. stories.'

I 2

ii6 Dissertations.

Origen however further suggests that by the words which
follow — ' which the Father has put in His own power' —
it is inniphed that the Father Himself, waiting upon the
outcome of human conduct, has not fixed the day of the
end, but keeps it open ^.

(^) He then gives another interpretation, which he

^ in Matth. Comment. Series 55 (Lommatzsch iv. p. 329) ' Et se ipsum
Salvator, secundum hunc locum, coniungit ignorantibus diem illam et
horam. Et rationabiliter est quaerendum quomodo qui confidit se
cognoscere Patrem, dicens A'cmo novit Patrcin nisi Filius, ct cui vohterit
Filius revelare, Patrem quidem novit, diem autem et horam consumma-
tionis non novit? et quare hoc abscondit Pater a Filio? Omnino enim
ratio esse debet, quod etiam a Salvatore tempos consummationis abscon-
ditum sit, et ignoret de eo. Audebit autem aliquis dicere, quoniam homo
qui secundum Salvatorem intelligitur proficiens sapientia et aetate et gratia
coram Deo et hominibus, qui proficiens proficiebat quidem super omnes
scientia et sapientia, non tanien ut veniret iam quod erat perfectum, prius-
quam propriam dispensationem impleret. Nihil ergo miruni est, si hoc
solum nescivit ex omnibus, id est, diem consummationis et horam. Forsitan
autem et quod ail nescire se diem consummationis et horam, ante dispensatio-
nem suam dixit, quia nemo scit, neque angeli, neque Filius, nisi solus Pater.
Post dispensationem autem impletam ncquaquam hoc dixit, postquam Deus
ilium superexaltavit, et donavit ci no?nen quod est super omne no/nen.
Nam postea et Filius cognovit scientiam a Patre suscipiens, etiam de die
consummationis et hora, ut iam non solum Pater sciret de ea, sed etiam Filius.
Et in Actilms quidem Afostoloi-um convenientcs apostoli interrogaverunt
eum dicentes : Dotnine, si in hoc tempore rest it lies regniim Israel? Ille
autem dixit ad eos : N^on est vestrum nosse tempora vel momenta quae
Pater fosuit in sua potestate. Et quoniam in sua potestatc tempora et
momenta consummationis mundi et restitutionis regni Israel posuit, ideo
quod nondum fuerat praedefinitum a Deo, nemo poterat scire. Si autem ita
est, praefinivit quidem consummationem facere mundi, non autem et tempora
et momenta praefinivit quae posuit in sua potestate, ut si voluerit ea augere,
sic iudicans augeat ea ; si autem abbreviare, abbreviet, nemine cognoscente.
Et ideo de temporibus et momentis consummationis mundi in sua posuit
potestate, ut consequentcr humano generi in suo arbitrio conslituto talia vel
talia agenti definiat iudicium debitum. Multa et in prophetis est invenire ad
utililatem audicntium scripta,in praeceptisetdenuncialionibus, quasi Deo non
praefiuienle quicquam de iis, sed puniente quidem si peccaverint, salvante
autem si praecepta servaverint. Et sicut in illis non introduxit scriptura
Deum praefinientem, sed secundum ulilitatem audientium proloquentem,
sic intelligendum est et de die consummationis et hora.'

The Consciousness of our Lord. 117

describes as ' more celebrated than the above.' It is
that Christ is speaking in the person of the Church. ' For
while the Church, which is His body, does not know that
day and hour, so long neither the Son Himself is said to
know it ; in order that He may then be understood to know
when all His members also know,' This interpretation
is paralleled by the interpretation of 1 Cor. xv. 28, accord-
ing to which the subjection of the Christ means the
subjection of the Church in Christ ^ The sense thus given
is modified by the suggestion that to ' know ' means to
experience. It is the experience of the glory of the last
day which lies in the mind of the Father alone, unrealized
alike by the Head and the members of the Church. But
Origen seems to return to the suggestion of a real
ignorance or incompleteness of some sort in Christ,
owing to His having put Himself in our place : ' But
the consummation of each single person . . . the Father
alone knows ; for the Son, accompanying and preceding
His followers, and willing (their salvation) is, so to
speak, about to come, and delays that they who seek

* ib, ' Alia expositio, quae famosior est iisquae iam tradita sunt, aliud dicit
de eo quod scriptum est : Ncqiie Filiiis, nisi solus Pater. Dicit, inquit,
alicubi de Salvatore apostolus, et de rebus in fine saeculi ordinandis, lioc
mode : Citm autem subiecia illiftierint omnia, tunc et ipse Filius subiecttis
erit ci qui sibi siibdidit ovinia, tit sit Dciis oiiuiia in omnibus. Et videtur
per haec dicere subiectionem Filii fieri subiectionem omnium qui ei erant
subiiciendi, et adventum eorum per Filium ad Deum, et perfectionem. Si
ergo bene dicitur hoc de Filii subiectione ad Patrem futura, ut tunc hi, qui
futuri sunt Christi et adhaeserunt ei, cum ipso Christo Patri subiiciantur :
quare non et de die ilia et hora neminem scire, neque Filium, similiier
exponemus ? Donee enim ecclesia, quae est corpus Christi, nescit diem illam
et horam, tam diu nee ipse Filius dicitur scire diem illam et horam ; ut
tunc intelligatur scire, quando scierint et omnia membra eius.' CT. de
Princip. ii. 8. 5.

ii8 Dissertations.

to follow Him may be able to do so and be found with
Him at that day and hour ^'

In another passage, where we have the original Greek
to examine, Origen appears to postulate a real entrance
of the Son into human ignorance. He is conceived to
have really emptied Himself and descended to actual
human limits. Origen is considering how the words
of the prophet (Jer. i. 6), ' I am a child : I cannot speak,'
can be applied to Christ. He replies by referring to
the testimony of the Gospel. ' Jesus, while yet a child,
before He became a man, since He had " emptied Him-
self," is seen to " advance." Now no one who is already
perfect advances, for to advance implies the need of
advance. Therefore He advanced in stature, in wisdom,
in favour with God and man. For because He had
emptied Himself in coming down to us, therefore,
having emptied Himself, He proceeded to take again
that of which He had emptied Himself, such self-
emptying having been a voluntary act. What wonder
then if He advanced in wisdom and stature and in favour
with God and man, and that it should be truly said of
Him by Isaiah [vii. 15, 16], that " He shall choose the good
and refuse the evil, before He knoivs evil and good'- ""i'

' ib. ' Et diem ergo consummationis huiiismodi et corruptionis saeculi nemo
scit, neque angeli caelorum, neque Filius Dei, de Sanctis Ueo melius provi-
dente, ut simul fiant in beatitudine quae fulura est post diem et horam
consummationis illius . . . Et uniuscuiusque autem consummationem . . . solus
scit Pater : quoniam Filius comitans, et praccedens ante sequentes,et volens,
ut ita dicam, venturus est, et tardat, ut possint cum sequi qui ccrtant sequi
eum, et sequentes eum inveniantur cum eo in die ilia et hora.'

^ ill Icr. honi. i. 7 si 5« icaX a/no (vayytXiov Hh Xafx^avnv irapaSttyfia,
'inffoCs ovK dvfjp yevofitvos, dW' tri TTaiSiuv cuv, (ttiI iicivwatv tavTov, irpotKon-

T(V OvSdi yap TTpUKuTTTd T(T(K(lOJjJ.ivO?, dWa ■npOKuTTTfl SfUpLfVOS TTpOKOirrji'

oiiKOvv irpotKonTfi' r)AiK.'a, nputxonTf co(f>ia, vpotKomi \dpiTi napd Oew kuI

The Conscioiisfiess of our Lord. 119

This learning on the part of the Son is like a grown
man's learning to talk like a child. Because he is full
grown, he has to put violence on himself to talk with
children after their manner. So the Son sets Himself to
learn what lies below Him. Subsisting in the majesty
of the glory of God, He does not speak human words,
He does not, as it were, know how to speak to those
below. Therefore it is that when He comes into the
human body, He says to the Father ' I cannot speak :
I know indeed things too great for human speech. But
Thou wishest me to speak to men. I have not yet
acquired human speech. I have Thy speech, I am Thy
Word, I can speak to Thee ; but I know not how to
speak to men for I am a child ^.'

Further on the language of the Incarnation is
described, in St. Paul's phrase, as the ' foolishness of
God.' The self-emptying of the Incarnation is a coming
down of the divine Word into conditions in which the
divine wisdom must become what, compared to its own
essential character, is foolishness, though as compared
to all human wisdom it is ' wiser than men 2.'

avBpwTTOi^. (i yap (icevoocrev kavrbv Karn^aivwu evravOa, Kal Kevwaai eavrov
k\anliavi -naXiv ravra atf)' uiv iKevwaev eavTov, e/cbcu Kfvdiaas eavTuf Tt arovov
aiiTuu Kal 7rpoK(KO(p(vat <TO<pia Kal fjKiKla Kal X^P'-''''- '"'apo- ^'<? Kal aiOpojiroti,
Kal a.\r]9€iiea6ai nfpl alrov to" IlpiV -q -yvaivai avTov KaKbv rj TTOv-qpuv, (k-
Xe^fTUt ru dyaOw Kal dneiOeT wovqpia ;

1 ii>. S nay6dvei ovv, Kal olovel duaXafiPdvei tm(TTr]ixr]V ov ixejd\uv, dW'
virobitaTfpwv. Kal wanep fiavOdvoj, ^la^ofitvos kfiavTov rpeWi^eiv, on iraihivi^
biaXi-fopiaf ov yap €maTdpt.fi'os TraiStari, IV ouroiy finoj, XaXetv, Pial^ofiai
TeXeios div ; ovtws Kal kv rfj p.e-/a\(i6TTjTi t^s Su^t/s tov 6(ov Tl;7xa^'a)^', ov
XaXei dvOpwinva, oxjk oTtx: (pQkyyioQai tois Kara), ore 51 ipx^Tat ds awpxi
dyOpwnivov, Xeya Kara ray upxds' Ouk (mffTap-at XaXtiv, on vfilntpo's elfu.

'^ ib. horn. viii. 8 p-eWet tl l-nnoXpiav b Kbyos Kal Xeyeif bn to eniSTjp^aav tw
Piai fKtvccaev tavrbv, 'iva tw Kivwpari avrov TrXrjpcvdfj u Koapo's. d 5« iKtvojaiv
Ikiivo to ein5T]fj.fjaav tw fiicu, avro (Keivo to Kfvojua ao(pia ^v on to pwpbv tov

I20 Dissertations.

We may notice one other passage from Origen
bearing on the subject because it is highly ambiguous
and, in company with other passages, illustrates the
tentative uncertainty of Origen's view. In Jerome's
version of the Homilies on St. Luke, the comment of
Origen on the words in St. Luke ii. 40 and 52, Jesus
' waxed strong, being filled with wisdom ' and ' Jesus
increased in wisdom, &c.,' is twofold. On the first
passage he declares that His wisdom was for a boy
supernatural : ' ReplebaUiv sapicntia. This is beyond
human nature, nay, beyond the whole rational creation.'
' We doubt not that something divine appeared in the
flesh of Jesus ^.' On the second he comments as fol-
lows : ' Was He not wise before, that He should increase
in wisdom? or is it that, as He had emptied Himself
when He took " the form of a servant," so now He was
resuming that which He had lost, and was being filled
with excellences which He seemed to have lost when
a little before He had taken the body^?'

Qiov <!of\>wrfpov Toi!' uvOpdnrojv eariv. A passage (quoted by Newman, Tracts
llicol. Eccl. p. 314) might, taken by itself, be interpreted to deny the reality
in Christ of a truly human activity : ' omne quod agit, quod sentit, quod in-
telligit, Deus est ' {de Princ. ii. 6. 6) ; but in its context it would appear that
Origen is only vindicating such a union of Christ's human ?oul with God as
renders possible His moral unalterableness. The words which follow are :
' et idco non convcrtibilis aut mutabilis dici potest quae inconvcrtibilitatem
ex Verbi Dei unilate indesinenter ignita possedit.' In such a passage as con.
Cels. iii. 41, it appears that the transformation of the humanity into an ethereal
and divine quality there spoken of refers to the period after the resurrection;
of. con. Cels. ii. 63-67, and Huet, Origcniajm, 1. ii. c. 2. qu. 3. 17.

' in Ltic. horn, xix ' Puer . . . replcbatiir sapieiitia. Hoc hominum
natura non recipit, ut ante duodecim annos sapientia compleatur. Aliud
est partem habere sapicntiae, aliud sapientia esse con-.pletum. Non ambi-
gimus ergo, divinum aliquid in came lesu apjaruisse : et non solum super
hominem, sed super omnem quoquc rationalem creaturam.'

' in Luc. horn, xx * Numquid sapiens non crat, ut sapientior fieret ? An

The Consciousness of our Lord. 121

These passages from Irenaeus, Clement, and Origen,
have been dwelt on and quoted at length because they
seem to prove —

(1) That the 'apostolic tradition' as understood by
these great fathers, had nothing to say in regard to the
consciousness of the incarnate Son. Men were left
then, as now, to the examination of our Lord's words
and to conclusions from the principles involved in the
Incarnation.

(2) That there were different opinions and tones of
thought on this great subject in the second century.
There were those who, like Irenaeus and (generally)
Origen, took the language of the Gospels as strictly true,
and believed in the limitation of our Lord's conscious-
ness, whether through a 'quiescence' of the divine activity,
or as a sympathetic entry on the part of the eternal Word
into a consciousness lower tlian His own. There were
those on the other hand who would argue, like Clement,
that Christ, as God, could not grow in knowledge, and
who, accepting the ' more celebrated ' interpretation of
our Lord's words, ascribed ignorance to Him, not in
Himself but in His Church.

quoniam evacuaverat se formam servi accipiens, id quod amiserat resumebat
et replebatur virtutibus quas pauUo ante, assumpto corpora, visus fuerat
relinquere?" The visits fticrat (and vidcbatiir a!bov€) indicate a Iiesitation
in Origen's mind, which is apparent in other places, as to the nature of
the KevQjais: see, for instance, con. Cels. iv. 15. At the end of this passage
he declares the Word unaffected in His own nature by the afiections of the
human fiesh and mind, and indeed uses language which would make the
humanity a mere transitory veil of His divine glory. In other passages
where the truth of the human mind is better guarded, the tone is very
Nestorian, and coloured by the idea of the pre-exislence of all souls, including
the soul of Jesus, e. g. de Priiuip. iv. 31.

122 Dissertations.

§ 3.

The anti-Arian zvriters zvho admit a human

ignorance.

It has been worth while dwelling at length on these
passages, not only because they indicate the absence of
any original tradition on the subject we are dealing with,
but also because they represent, strange as it may seem,
the highest level of ecclesiastical thought on this subject
for a long time to come. In the third and fourth
centuries the theological attention of the Church was
diverted from the Incarnation proper to the doctrine
of the Trinity. The conflict was against Unitarian
Sabellianism on the one hand, which would have
annihilated the ' distinction of persons,' and the extreme
subordinationism on the other which was countenanced
by some language of Origen and Dionysius of Alexandria,
and which afforded an excuse for what was none the less
the essentially different Arian position according to which
the Son was no more than the highest of the creatures ^
As a consequence of this long and complicated
controversy, the Trinitarian terminology was arrived at
by which the Church affirmed the existence of three
'persons' {h-nofnaan'i ox pcrsonac) coeternal, coequal and

^ Of recent years a fresh interest has been given to the question of the
origin and meaning of Ariaiiism, by the writings of Gwatkin and Harnack.
The summary of Robertson in Athanasiiis {Nicciic and Post- Niccne Fathers :
pp. xxi-xxx. is admirable. One cannot but hope that it may exist shortly
in a more accessible form.

TJie Consciousness of our Lord. 123

coessential in the one essence or substance of the
Godhead. This controversy was carried on mainly as
regards the person of the Son, and as a result no aspect
of His essential relation to the Father was left un-
touched ; but very little was contributed as regards the
doctrine of His incarnation, or specially as regards His
human consciousness. When the Arians however pro-
duced texts such as 'Jesus increased in wisdom,' 'of
that day and hour knoweth no man, neither the Son,'
as evidence of the essential inferiority of the Son,
Athanasius referred them to our Lord's humanity, on the
assumption that in respect of His humanity there was
a real growth and a real limitation of knowledge. This
assumption — though it may be said to have been made
incidentally, by way of setting aside the proposed texts
as irrelevant to the discussion of the Godhead, rather
than by way of positive treatment, and though it is
not made without vacillation — is still clearly made by
Athanasius, and it is implied that it is a common
assumption of Churchmen. A concession, similar to
Athanasius' assumption of a human ignorance, is to be
found in Gregory of Nazianzus, but it is not very clear :
and St. Basil, while not himself assenting, allows such
a concession of human ignorance. The passages referred
to are as follows :

Athanasius, in Orat. adv. Arian. iii. 51-54, com-
ments on St. Luke ii. 52 upoiKo-nj^v rr\ aocpLq. His chief
contention is that this is no advance of the Word or
Wisdom as such, but only in respect of the humanity He
assumed : 6ta tovto, ws 7TpotiiTO[xev, ov-^ 7; aocjiia, ?/ (ro0ta
(.(jtIv, axiTT] KaO^ kavrijv TtpoiKO-nT^v' akka to avOpd^inrov ev ry

124 Dissertations.

ao(j}[a TrpotKOTrrer, v-n^pava-^alvov Kar oXiyov ttjv av9pu>'nivi]v
(pvaLV Kal OiOTTOLovjxevov kol opyavov avrrjs irpos ti]i> evepyaav
irjs OeoT-qTos Kai t-i]v e/cXa/xx/ztz' avTrjs yivop-^vov Ka\ (jtaivo-
yL€vov TiaaLV. hio ovhe eiirev 6 Xoyo? TrpoeKoirrec, akXa 6 Ir^o-ous,
oirep 6vop.a yevopevos avOpcoiTos 6 Kvpios eKXi^dr], ws" dvai
TJ;? avdpoiTrivT^s (j^vcreoi'i tijv TTpoK07Ti]v oi/Vojs w? ev toIs
epirpoadev eliTopev. Here Athanasius does recognize
a human advance: more than a mere increased mani-
festation of the Godhead in the human body which he
had spoken of in the previous chapter (52), tov o-wjaaros

lipa icTTLV 7] TTpOKOTTlj' aVTOV yCip 77 pOKOTTTOVTOS, TTpOtKOTTTeV (V

avT<^ Ktti 7] (pav^poocns r?/? deorrjTOs rots opSxrLP. He also
recognizes that the subject of the advance is the eternal
person, because He appropriated or identified with
Himself the human nature which He assumed. Thus
speaking of the human states of trouble, fear, progress,
&C.J he says ovk r]v Ihia (pvcm tov Xoyov ravra, ?; Xoyos ^v,
kv he Tjj TOLavTa ttaa^^pvcrrj crapKl i]v 6 Xoyos (c. 55) > oi»8e
yap ovh^ e^aydev ovtos tov Xoyov kyivtTO rj irpoKOin], ola iaTiv,
7]V €lpr]Kap.€v' (V avT(2 yap t]V rj (rap^ rj TrpoKOTTTovcra, Kal
avTOV Xiye.Tai (c. ^7,^ ; avayKrj (v Trdrr^oi-Tt (rcopLart, aal KXaiovii,
KOL KapvovTL y(i'op.ei'ov avTov, avrov XiyeaQai jx^to. tov acajxaTO'i
Kal TavTa aTiep eoriv ibia ttjs aapKos (c. 56). Compare
the language of the Epistle to Epictetus. c. 6, as to the
Word ' appropriating ' {pno-noiCicrQai) the properties of
the body, as being His own body.

His language as to St. Mark xiii. 32 {ovhw olbev . . .
ovbe 6 vlos) is perhaps more explicit. First, it is not
gtia Son that Christ is ignorant. See Orat. adv. ^Ir. iii.
44 bta TOVTO Kal Tiepl ayyiXtav Xiyiav, ovk elprjKev eTtava-
^aCvctiv uTL ovbk TO TTvevp.a to aytov' ^AX' ecrtcoTrrjcre, beLKVvs

The Consciousness of our Lord. 125

Kara hvo Tavra on, el to TTvevixa olbev, ttoAAco jjiaWov 6
Xoyos, r\ Xoyos eoriV, olhev, Trap' ov kol to irvevixa kaixfidvei'
Kai OTL, Tiepi Tov TTi'evp.aTos o-tcoTrr/fray, (fiavepbv TreTTOirjKev otl
TTcpl Tijs avdpcoTTLvrjs avTOv XcLTovpyCas e'Aeyey ou8e 6 utds.

But t/ie Christians recognize that this expression ''the
Son knows not' is spoken by Christ truly as man (c. 45);
ot 8e (\)i\6y^pi(JToi Koi yjpi(JTO<\)6poi yti'wcrKopev w? ovk. ayvou>v
6 k6yo9 fi Ao'yoj eorty ekeyev ouk olSa, olbe yap' aX\a to
avdp(s)Tnvov heiKvvs otl T(av avdpdiitMV Ihiov eort to ayvoelv koi
otl adpKa dypoovaav kvehvaaTo, Iv 7) oov (rapKiKcos ekeyev' ouk
olSa. Cf. c. 43 o)? jJ-ev Ao'yos yu'cocTKet o)? be avOpoiTTos dyvoe'i
. . . eiSoj? 0)9 Oeos, ayvoe'i (TapKi.KG>s. ovk etprjKe yovv, ovhe 6
wlos TOV diov olhev, tva jxr] rj deoTTjs ayvoovcra cfyaivrjTaL' aAA'
aTrAco? ouSc 6 olos" Iva tov e^ dv9p(07T(ov yevojxevov vlov ?;
ayvoia y. C. 46 uxmep yap avOpoiiroi yevofxevo^ juer' dvOpco-
TTOiV Treivq kul bL\lrq Kal 7rdo-)(et, oi/Vcos juera jxev Tcav dv6pojiT(x)p
0)5 ar^pcoTTO? OVK oibev, ^e't/cw? 8e ev t<2 TraTpl u>v Aoyo? Ka\
aocpLa oibev.

In c. 47 however he assimilates our Lord's profession
of ignorance to St. Paul's, when he says ' whether in the
body or out of the body, I know not ' (see 2 Cor. xii. 2],
and he assumes that St. Paul really knew the conditions
under which the revelation was given to him, though
he concealed his knowledge. Thus in this passage he
seems to make our Lord's profession of ignorance only
' economic' On the other hand in c. 4(S he reaffirms that
in professing ignorance Christ did not lie, ' for He spoke
humanly — as man I do not know ' (kuI ovTe exj/eva-aTo tovto
elpr]Kws' dvdp(ai:ivoi<i yap elirev, w? dvdpu>TTOs, ouk olSa).

Agreeably to the hesitation exhibited by Athanasius
in these passages, when he is commenting on our Lord's

126 Dissertations.

questions, ' where have ye laid him ? ' ' how many-
loaves have ye^?' he both admits a possible ignorance
as appertaining to our Lord's manhood, and at the same
time explains the questions as not in fact involving
ignorance. See Orat. adv. Ar. iii. 37 orav ipooTo. 6 KvpLos
OVK ayvoS>v . . . eTrepcora, aWa yLvcoaKcov oirep rjpd^Ta avTos . . .
av be (piKoveiKUXTLv ert 8ia to eirepajTav, aKOveTOiaav on, ev
ptev TTj OeoTTjTL OVK €aTLV ayvoia, rrjs be aapKos XbLOV ecm to
ayvoelv, KaOdirep etprjrat.

St. Gregory Nazianzen, OraL xxx. 15, says
with reference to St. Mark xiii. 32, ?) iraa-iv evbr]Xop otl
yivu)(TK€i }xkv ws Oeos, ayvoelv be ({)ri(Ti.v o)? avOpcaTTOS, av rts
TO (f)aLv6p.evov xiopiar] tov voovp-evov^. He notices that
ignorance is attributed not to the ' Son of God ' but to
' the Son ' simply, and this he says gives us opportunity —
ojoTe Ti]v ayvoiav viroXap-lBdvetv eirl to evae^ecrTepov, tw
dvdpdiTTivio, p-i] Tw deiio, TavTrjv Xoyi^op-evovs. But he goes
on (c. 16) to suggest that another interpretation is
tenable w^iich makes the words mean only that the
Sou does not hiow apart from the Father. Indeed,
taking the passage as a whole, it must be admitted that
he is not disposed to think of our incarnate Lord as in
any sense really ignorant.

Previously (c. 5) he has interpreted the subjection of
the Son (i Cor. xv. 28) as the subjection of us in Him :
He presents us to God, kavTov Tioiovp-evos to ■))p.eTepov.

• St. John xi. 34 ; St. Mark vi. 38.

* Later ■writers, Eulogius of Alexandria (see p. 159) and John of Damascus,
{^e Fide OrlJiod. iii. 21, take Gregory to mean hy this phrase that Clirist was
only ignorant in His humanity, if you consider the humanity as an outward
object in abstraction from tlie Godhead to which in fact you know it to
have been united : and this is not an unfair interpretation of the passage.

The Consciousness of our Lord. 127

(Cf. Gregory of Nyssa adv. Etinom. xi. 14, P. G. xlv.
p. ^^'] aXKa KoX iravToiv twv avOpioircov ttjv Trpbs tov 6edv
vTTorayriv, orav evoidevres ol Travres dAA7jAot? 8ta rrjs TriVreo)?
€v a&ixa TOV Kvpiov tov kv iracnv ovtos yevcojJieOa, tov vlov
7Tpo9 TOV iraTipa vTTOTay-t-jv 6 clttocttoXos Aeyei.) So the cry
'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?' is the
cry of ot(r sinful human nature deserted by God, now
taken upon the lips of Him who was bringing us near
to God ; He, the Christ, was not deserted {ov yap avTos
6yKaraAeAet7rrat, . . . iv iavTCy be TVirol to rjp^Tepov).

St. Basil considers the meaning of St. Mark xiii.
33 at length {Ep. 236), and while he prefers to in-
terpret ' No man knoweth, nor do the angels, nor did
the Son know except the Father, i. e. the cause of the
Son's knowing is from the Father ' (c. 2). he admits that
'one who refers the ignorance to Him who in His
incarnation took everything human upon Himself, and
advances in wisdom and favour with God and man,
will not fall outside the orthodox apprehension of the
matter ' [to r?/j ayvoia's eTrt tov oIkovop.lkG)s navTa kutu-
be^dp.evov koI irpoKoiTTovTa Trapa Oew /cat ai'6pa>7TOi9 o-o(f)ia Kal
yapLTi Xap.[3av(i)v rty, ovk e^cu t7]s evaelBovs ive\drjcreTaL
hiavoias) ^.

Among westerns St. Ambrose has been quoted as
admitting a real increase of knowledge in Christ as
man. Cf. de I near n. vii. 72 ^ lesiis pi'oficiebat aetate el
sapieniia et gratia apud Deiivi et homines. Ouomodo

' It should be noted that St. Bnsirs argument in part depends on the
position that St. Matthew, who says ' the Father oit!y knows ' {o Trarfjp /xuvos,
xxiv. 36 , does not admit the words 'neither the Son'; but according
to the true reading St. Matthew and St. Mark both have these latter
words.

128 Dissertations.

proficiebat Sapientia Dei? Doceat te ordo verborum.
Profectus est aetatis et profectus sapientiae, sed humanae
est. Ideo aetatem ante praemisit ut secundum hominem
crederes dictum, aetas enim non divinitatis sed corporis
est. Ergo si proficiebat aetate hominis, proficiebat sapi-
entia hominis: sapientia autem sensu proficit quia a sensu
sapientia.' He protests that to recognize real human
increase in Christ is not to divide the Christ but to dis-
tinguish the substance of the flesh (manhood) and of the
Godhead, cf. Expos, in Lite. ii. 6'^, 64 ^ On the other hand
St. Ambrose, when {de Fide, v. 16. 193) he comes to deal
with the words ' of that day and hour knoweth no man
. . . neither the Son,' after first suggesting that the words
ncc Filius, as not being represented in the old Greek codices,
are an interpolation^, and after, secondly, suggesting that
'the Son' means 'the Son of Man' or Christ in His
humanity, goes on finally to deny the ignorance of
Christ altogether, like all late westerns, and to make
the profession merely economic; see v. 17. 219 ' Ea est
in scripturis consuetude divinis, . . . ut Dcus dissimulet

' The distinction of the two natures is expressed in Expos, in Luc. x. 6i, as
if the humanity did not really belong to the person of the Son. Comment-
m^ on I'ristis est anhna mea, he writes ' Tristis autem est non ipse, sed
anima. Non est tristis sapientia, non divina substantia, sed anima.' Cf.
Hilary de Trin. ix. 5, where it is argued that the things said by Christ,
' secundum hominem,' are not to be taken as said ' de se ipso,' i. e. of the
divine nature.

^ It is often assumed, as by Dr. Liddon, Divinity of our Zi^n/ (Longmans,
ed. 12) p. 467, that St. Ambrose is here referiing to Mark xiii. 32. In this
case St. Ambrose's statement would be a simple mistake. But in fact, as
shown by the words nisi solus Pater, he is referring to St. Matt. xxiv. 36,
where many — though not the best — Greek codices do omit ohhl o vlw. The
reading is discussed by Jerome in a passage quoted p. 135. This fact how-
ever does not improve Ambrose's argument, for he has simply left Mark
xiii. 32, where the reading is undoubted, out of sight.

The Consciousness of our Lord. 129

se nescire quod novit^. Et in hoc ergo unitas divinitatis
et unitas dispositionis in Patre probatur et Filio, si
quemadmodum Deus Pater cognita dissimulat, ita Filius
etiam in hoc imago Dei quae sibi sunt nota dissimulet.'
Again, v. 18. 220 ' Mavult Dominus nimio in discipulos
amore propensus, petentibus his quae cognitu inutilia
iudicaret, videri ignorare quae noverat, quam negare :
plusque amat nostram utilitatem instruere quam suam
potentiam demonstrare.' He goes on however to mention
the interpretation of some ' less timid than himself who,
while denying that the Son of God in His divine nature
could be ignorant, afifirm that in respect of His assump-
tion of humanity He could both grow in knowledge and
be ignorant of the future. I may add that Ambrose
appears to deny that our Lord prayed for Himself:
' non utique propter suffragium,' he says, ' sed propter
exemplum ' [Expos, in Liic. v. 10). Cf. v. 42 'orat
Dominus non ut pro se obsecret sed ut pro me impetret.'
The above quotations show that St. Ambrose cannot
be reckoned with Athanasius as affirming the reality of
a human ignorance in our Lord. But perhaps he is
hardly consistent with himself.

' Ambrose is referring to passnges such as Gen. xi. 5, where God is
represented as coming down to earth to see, as if He did not know. Such
expressions belong, one can hardly doubt, originally to a period when God's
spiritual omnipresence was very imperfectly realized.

I30 Dissertations.

§ ^•
Anti- Avian writers especially of the west.

These admissions by anti-Arian writers of a real
human ignorance are, though valuable, still in a measure
unsatisfactory, and that for two reasons.

(i) The theologians who make these admissions do
not really face the question of the relation of the divine
person to the human conditions into which He entered.
What is meant when it is said, ' the Son was ignorant in
respect of His manhood' } Does this mean that within
the sphere of His incarnate life the Son Himself was
submitting to conditions of limitation? Or does it
mean that He simply annexed a human consciousness
to the divine, so that always, in every act He was con-
scious with the divine consciousness, whatever else He
may have been? This question, neither theologically
nor exegetically, is met full face.

(2) Anti-Arian theology shows a rapid tendency to
withdraw the admission of a human ignorance. Already,
as has been said, Basil and Gregory, even in a measure
Athanasius, lead the way in retiring upon a more or less
forced interpretation of our Lord's words. Ephraim
Syrus writes boldly — in his commentary upon Tatian's
Diatessaron — ' Christ, though He knew the moment of
His advent, yet that they might not ask Him any more
about it, said I knoiv it not'^ ! Didymus of Alexandria

' Evang. Concordant. Expos. (Aucher and Mocsinger, Venice, 1876) p. 16.

The Consciousness of our Lord. lar

introduces into a beautiful passage about the divine con-
descension the idea of the merely ' economic ' ignorance ^.
St. Cyril will be found on the whole to follow him ; and
St. Chrysostom, trained though he was in the literalism
of Antioch, adopts the same view ^.

This withdrawal is due in part no doubt to the fatal
tendency which haunts the Church to extreme reaction
from perilous error ; in part also it is to be accounted
for by the metaphysical tendency of the time to ascribe
to God not only unchangeableness of essential being,
purpose, and power, such as Scripture ascribes to Him,
but also unchangeableness in such rigid * metaphysical '
sense as would exclude all idea of self-accommodation,
and therefore all idea of real self-limitation, on God's
part to human conditions ^. The tendency to explain
away our Lord's express words, which those theologians
exhibit who are responsible for this withdrawal, meets
in the East with at least one vigorous protest from
Theodoretl

In a phrase which commends itself to modern con-
sciences he wrote : 'If He knew the day and. wishing to

' in Psalm. Ixviii. 6 {P. G. xxxix. p. 1453'! icai yip Si5do-«aXoj reXeiav
tx^JV (■niaT-qfXTjV 5id avyKara^aaicuv rots tlaayofxtvois lavra tpaivfrai yivw-
aiewv (i. e. appears to know those things o/ify) wv tlalv iKilvoi x<i'P'?''""^°''-

^ 171 Matt. horn. Ixxvii. i and 2. He argues at length in the usual strain
against the real ignorance.

^ See below, p. 173.

^ Kcpr. xii. Capp. Cyril, c. 4 {P. G. Ixxvi. 412 a) «t Se oFSe ttjv -qfiipav,
KpviTTttv 5i ^oyXopitvos ayvodv \eyfi, opas th iroiav ^Xaacprjfxiav x^^P*'
TO avvayofifvov rj yap dXijOfta ipfvSfTai. The passage is an argument for
the distinct reality of our Lord's manhood from the phrases in the Gospels
which attribute to Him prayer, ignorance, and the sense of being deserted
of God. Such expressions cannot be attributed to the Word, Theodoret
argues, but to the manhood which the Word assumed.

K 2

132 Dissertations.

conceal it, said He was ignorant, see what blasphemy is
the result of this conclusion. Truth tells a lie.'

But the protest fell flat. Neither the interest in
accurate exegesis, nor the enthusiasm for truth to fact
as distinct from truth which is edifying, was adequate
to sustain it. It is reheard in a remarkable phrase of
a writer reckoned as Leontius of Byzantium, to be
mentioned later, but the ' explanation ' protested against
prevailed, and in the end there is no protest.

Hilary, Ambrose^, and Jerome led the way in the west
with the doctrine of our Lord^s ' economic ' ignorance, the
doctrine, that is, that our Lord knew, but represented
Himself as ignorant for purposes of edification. Augus-
tine retains this way out of the difficulty caused by
St. Mark xiii. 32, but in interpreting our Lord's growth
in wisdom and His cry of desolation upon the Cross he
seems to regard Christ as spoken of or speaking in the
person of His Church, not for Himself, thus returning to
a mode of 'explanation ' with which Origen had already
made us familiar. Moreover St. Augustine seems to
have regarded any belief in our Lord's actual human
ignorance as heretical. When a monk from Gaul appeared
in Africa, named Leporius, accused of Pelagian and quasi-
Nestorian views, Augustine induced him to abandon his
error ; accordingly he is made to recant among other
things his previous assertion of a real ignorance in
Christ as man, and made to recant it as positively
heretical.

The following passages will be found to justify the
assertions of the above paragraph :

* As explained above, § 3.

The Consciousness of our Lord. 133

Hilary de Trinit. ix. 62 ' Xon patitur autem in nobis
doctor gentium Paulus banc impii erroris professionem,
ut ignorasse aliquid unigenitus Deus existimetur : ait
enim, institiLti in dilectione, in onines divitias adiniple-
tionis intellectiis^ in agnitionan sacramenti Dei CJirisii, in
quo sunt omnes thesauri sapientiae et scientiae absconsi.
Deus Christus sacramentum est, et omnes sapientiae et
scientiae in eo t]icsanri latent. Portioni vero et univer-
sitati non potest convenire : quia neque pars omnia
intelligitur, et omnia partem non patiuntur intelligi.
Filius enim si diem nescit, iam non omnes in eo
scientiae thesauri sunt : diem non ignorat, omnes in se
scientiae thesauros continens. Sed meminisse nos con-
venit, occultos in eo istos scientiae thesauros esse, neque
idcirco, quia occulti sint, non inesse : cum per id quod
Deus est, in eo insint ; per id vero quod sacramentum
est, occultentur. Non occultum autem neque ignoratum
est nobis sacramentum Dei Christi, in quo absconsi
omnes scientiae thesauri sunt. Et quia sacramentum
ipse est, videamus an in his, quae nescit, ignorans sit.
Si enim in ceteris professio ignorandi non habet nesciendi
intelligentiam ^ : ne nunc quidem quod nescit ignorat.
Nam cum ignoratio eius, secundum quod omnes thesauri
in eo scientiae latent, dispensatio ^ potius quam ignoratio
sit, habes causam ignorandi sine intclligentia nesciendi •^'

' i.e. is not to be understood as implying absence of knowledge; e.g.
God in the O. T. is often spoken of in terms suggesting partial ignorance.

^ i. e. an economy.

^ i. e. you have the reason of his (professed) ignorance, without having
to explain it as equivalent to absence of knowledge. Cf. ix. 71 'idcirco
nescire se dicat ne et alii sciant ' and x. 37 ' non ergo sibi tristis est neque
sibi orat, sed illis quos monet orare pervigiles.' It must be noted that in
fact St. Paul's expressions in Col. ii. 2, 3, and 9, 10, refer to our Lord in
the state of glory — ' the head of all principality and power.' We can-
not directly answer the question, \\ould St. Paul have applied these

134 DissertatwJis.

There is, it is true, one passage ^ of doubtful genuine-
ness in the de Triuitatc (ix. ^^) in which our Lord's
nescience is assimilated to His hunger and thirst, sad-
ness and fear, as an affection properly belonging to the
manhood which He assumed. But supposing the pas-
sage to be genuine, it must be remembered that Hilary,
unlike most other fathers, tends to explain away all our
Lord's human affections. He emphasizes that in Him
the Godhead was the centre of personality to both soul
and body (' ut corporis sui sic et animae suae princeps
Deus,' ' Deus Verbum consummavit hominem viventem,'
X. 15); he considers that in consequence even His
' human ' nature was superhuman (' natura quae supra
hominem est,' x. 44) ; he points as evidence of this
to His walking on the water, glorifying His body in the
transfiguration, passing through closed doors after the
resurrection (x. 23), and he draws the general conclusion
that though His human body was susceptible of physical
impressions of all sorts from without, yet He did not, in
and for Himself, feel physical pain or mental grief
or anxiety. He received the ' impetus passionis,' but
did not experience the ' dolor passionis.' ' Habens ad
patiendum quidem corpus et passus est, sed naturam
non habens ad dolcndum ' (x. 23). ' Non est itaque in ea
natura quae supra hominem est humanae trepidationis
anxietas ' (x. 44). ' Habens quidem in se sui corporis

expressions to our Lord in the state of Ills humiliation ? Hilary draws no
distinction between the state of Christ's body or soul before and alter the
resurrection.

' Another passage of similar import in x. 8 (Erasmus' text) is interesting,
but certaiidy not genuine. Hilary is again quoted on his general idea of
the Incarnation on p. 147.

The Consciousness of our Lord. 135

veritatem, sed non habens naturae infirmitatem ' (x. '3,^.
In dying His manhood was not overcome by death, but
He, the Lord of Hfe, who Hfted the human body which
He had assumed out of the power of death, Himself
'gave up' His human spirit and soul by His own act
into the Father's hands (x. 11).

Jerome writes thus in Matt. xxiv. '^f) (ed. Vallarsi,
vii. p. 199):

' De die aittem ilia et hora nemo scit, neque angcli
eaclornm, nisi solns Pater. In quibusdam latinis codi-
cibus additum est, neque Filins : cum in graecis, et
maxime Adamantii et Pierii exemplaribus, hoc non
habeatur adscriptum : sed quia in nonnullis legitur, dis-
serendum videtur. Gaudet Arius et Eunomius, quasi
ignorantia magistri gloria discipulorum sit, et dicunt :
non potest aequalis esse qui novit et qui ignorat. Contra
quos breviter ista dicenda sunt : cum omnia tempora
fecerit lesus, hoc est, Verbum Dei {omnia enim per
ipsum facta siint et sine ipso faetnm est nihil) in
omnibus autem temporibus etiam dies iudicii sit :
qua consequentia potest eius ignorare partem cuius
totum noverit? Hoc quoque dicendum est: quid est
mains, notitia Patris an iudicii? si mains novit,
quomodo ignorat quod minus est? Scriptum legimus
omnia quae Patris stint mihi tradiia sunt ; si omnia Patris
Filii sunt, qua ratione unius sibi diei notitiam reservavit,
et noluit cam communicare cum Filio ? Sed et hoc
inferendum : si novissimum diem temporum ignorat,
ignorat et pene ultimum^ et retrorsum omnes. Non enim
potest fieri ut qui primum ignorat sciat quid secundum
sit. Igitur quia putavimus non ignorare Filium con-
summationis diem, causa reddenda est cur ignorare
dicatur. Apostolus super Salvatore scribit : in quo sunt

^ i. e. the last day but one.

136 Dissertations.

omncs tJicsaitri sapientiae et scicntiac absconditi. Sunt
ergo omnes thesauri in Christo sapientiae et scientiae,
sed absconditi sunt. Ouare absconditi sunt ? Post
resurrectionem interrogatus ab apostolis de die mani-
festius respondit : iion est vcstrnm scire teinpora vcl
momenta quae Pater posuit in sua potestate. Ouando
dicit non est vesirnin scire ostendit quod ipse sciat, sed
non expediat nosse apostolis, ut semper incerti de
adventu iudicis sic quotidie vivant quasi die alia
iudicandi sunt. Denique et consequens cvangelii sermo
idipsum cogit intelligi, dicens quoque Patrem solum
nosse, in Patre comprehendit et Filium, omnis enim
pater filii nomen est.'

This passage is an excellent instance of the way in
which a priori reasoning was allowed to override real
exegesis.

St. Augustine's line may be illustrated by de Trin.
i. 12. 23, on St. Mark xiii. 32: ' hoc enim nescit quod
nescientes facit ^ id est, quod non ita sciebat ut tunc
discipulis indicaret ; sicut dictum est ad Abraham, mnic
cognovi qnod times De7im, id est, nunc feci ut cogno-
sceres.' Cf. Enarr. in Ps. vi. i ' ita dicatur nescire Filius
hunc diem, non quod ncsciat, sed quod nescire faciat cos,
quibus hoc non expedit scire, id est, non eis hoc
ostendat.'

In regard to St. Luke ii. 52 St. Augustine seems
to hesitate [de div. quaest. Ixxxiii, qu. 75. 2°), but to incline
to the position that ' pictas ' would not admit of a real
increase of knowledge in the ' homo dominicus,' and so
to ascribe it to His body the Church ^. This, however,

^ i. c. ' that He docs not know which lie makes others not to know.'
' An interpretation also to be found in rseudo-Hieronymus, Brcviariuin

The Consciousness of our Lord. 137

is only touched upon allusively. In de pecc. merit, ct
remiss, ii. 48 he speaks quite clearly against the attri-
bution to the infant Christ of an infant's ignorance :

' Ouam plane ignorantiam nullo modo crediderim
fuisse in infante illo^ in quo Verbum caro factum est ut
habitaret in nobis ; nee illam ipsius animi infirmitatem
in Christo parvulo fuerim suspicatus quam videmus in
parvulis. Per banc enim etiam cum motibus irrationa-
bilibus perturbantur nulla ratione, nullo imperio ; sed
dolore aliquando vel doloris terrore cohibentur ; ut
omnino videas illius inobedientiae filios.'

Here however St. Augustine plainly passes from
mere ignorance to what is in the germ a sinful
impatience. In de Triii. iv. 3. 6, like Gregory Nazianzen,
Hilary, and others, he interprets the cry ' My God, My
God, why hast thou forsaken me ? ' as the cry of the
' old Adam ' in the redeemed, expressed by Christ as
Head of the body : ' interioris enim hominis nostri
Sacramento data est ilia vox pertinens ad mortem
animae nostrae significandam.'

An account of Leporius will be found in the Diet, of
Christian Biography. His retractation, or Libelliis
Emendationis, is, so far as touches our present
question, as follows [Bibl. Max. Vctt. Pair. vii. p. 3) :

' Ut autem et hinc nihil cuiquam in suspicione dere-
linquam, tunc dixi, immo ad obiecta respondi, Dominum
nostrum lesum Christum secundum hominem ignorare.

'fc)'

in Psalm, xv. 7 (Vallars. vii. app. p. 34) Bcnedicam dominiim qui tri-
biiit iiiihi inteUeciicm — ' vox capitis cum membris,' i. e. the expressions
attribiating human conditions of knowledge to our Lord are true of Him,
taken as including His mystical body.

138 Dissertations.

Sed nunc non solum diccre non praesumo, verum etiam
priorem anathematize prolatam in hac parte sententiam;
quia dici non licet etiam secundum hominem ignorasse
Dominum prophetarum.'

St. Augustine, with other African bishops, signed
this retractation as an evidence of its genuineness, and
sent Leporius back to Gaul with a warm letter of
recommendation. Sec Aug. Ep. 219.

§5.

TJie Apollinarian controversy.

It might have been supposed that the controversy on
the question raised by ApoUinarius of Laodicea would
have counteracted the tendency just described, by empha-
sizing the complete rational and spiritual humanity of
Christ. In fact, however, its effect in this way was not
as great as might have been anticipated.

There is indeed no evidence of a divine providence
watchinfT over the fortunes of the Church more
marked than that which is to be found in the decisive
and reiterated refusals of the Church to admit any
opinion to be Christian which explained away the
reality, or the natural and spiritual completeness, of
our Lord's manhood. The divine providence is in this
especially manifest because current theological opinion
in its zeal against anything which seemed to imperil our
Lord's Godhead was continually running the risk of

The Consciousness of our Lord. 139

onesidedness ^ There was no equally strong zeal in
regard to the manhood or the verity of the human
picture in the Gospels. This is made evident by the
meagreness of the Catholic literature directed against
ApoUinarius as compared to that directed against Arius.
For in the nature of the case there is no justification
for this. Men were quite as liable to be misled in one
direction as in the other. ApoUinarius' doctrine was
markedly interesting and developed with the highest
ability. And if Churchmen had been at all deeply
occupied in the picture of Christ presented in the
Gospels, they would have found there a wealth of
argument with which to confront the new teaching. The
meagreness of the literature against ApoUinarius is due,
then, at least in some measure, to lack of strong interest
in the subject. Athanasius indeed never loses his
theological balance and impartiality. The small part
of his writings which is directed against Apollinarian
views shows him presenting as firm a front on this side
as on the other ^. But besides Athanasius the chief
opponent of ApoUinarius is Gregory of Nyssa. And
we feel how small a part of his interest and intellectual
power was really given to the task of vindicating the

' Thus ApoUinarius himself and Marcellus of Ancyra were ' extreme
Athanasians ' ; see also just below as to Gregory of Nyssa. On Hilary of
Poitiers see above, § 4.

"^ See Athan. con. Apoll. i. 16-1S, on the verity of our Lord's human soul.
The strongest passage is one in wliich he maintains the voluntary but real
and natural ' trouble ' in our Lord's mind (c. 16) 5ia tovto yap xal 6 tcvpios
iKtfiv vvv Tj ^pvxh l^ov TfTPpaKTai Kai KaidiSwos lariv. ru Se vvv, tovt effriv,
ore iiOiXTjaiv. opws ptvTOi to ov iTnbiLKVVTO' ov yap to prj of ws napov
wvopa^iv, cLs !)OK'f]afi Kfyopivoov tuju yiioptviuv tpiian yap ical d\r]6(ia to.
Travra iyirtTO.

I40 Dissertations.

completeness of our Lord's manhood in spirit as well as
body, and the real existence and action in Him, the
Word made flesh, of the human mind and spirit.

Some passages indeed from Gregory's writings are
valuable in this sense. For example he does contend
that the reality of our Lords assumption of manhood
involves His real assumption of the human mind
and spirit. He recognizes among the signs of His
true spiritual humanity the reality of His temptation,
of His growth in knowledge, and of His human
ignorance. Here he is a worthy and even more
decisive successor of Athanasius. He also points out
(what is very rarely noticed) that the miracles of our
Lord are not purely divine acts, but acts which at least
might have been wrought by a humanity empowered by
God. Finally, he recognizes at times that the Incarna-
tion involves on God's side a self-accommodation to alien
conditions; and he finds in this divine self-humiliation
the special evidence of the highest sort of power in that
God can accommodate Himself to conditions such as do
not belong to His own nature. We can only lament that
these great thoughts were so little developed and empha-
sized. The fact is that Gregory's chief interest was in
the other aspect of the Incarnation — that in which it is
an exaltation of the manhood in virtue of its union \vith
the divine nature. In this direction he constantl)- runs
to excess, speaking of the manhood, at least after the
resurrection, as transubstantiated into the Godhead and
lost in it. And on the other hand, with reference to the
period of our Lord's humiliation, in his zeal to maintain
the impassibility of the Godhead, his language has

The Consciousness of our Lord. 141

frequently a Nestorian sound, as if the passible man were
a different person from the impassible God.

The following- passages from Gregory of Nyssa will
prove the above statements.

That a real temptation argues a real human spirit —
a complete human nature — is asserted in adv. Apoll. 11
k%avayK^^ Kara ti]V tov airoaroXov cmo^auiv ^, tov Kara
TTavTa ireireipacriJLevov tov ijix^ripov ^iov Ka9' 6jLiotor?jra X'^pt?
ajjiapTLas (o be vovs ajj-aprCa ova eort) irpos Tiacrav ri\xG>v oiKetu>s
e'xety Ti]i> (f)V(nv. Cf. ad^K Ennoin. iii. 4, vi. 3 (P. G. xlv.

PP- 597> 721).

The reality in our Lord of natural, including mental,
growth asserted — adv. Apoll. 14 (fi-qalv 6 AoukS? 6tl
■n-poeKOTTTei/ 'Itjctous t^Xikio, Kai (ro^ia Kai )(dpiTi, TekeLovp-evos cos
CTTt TO pL€Tpov TTporjXde T7/S avOpoiTTOTTiTOS, oSw f3ahiC(ov bia Tijs
(f}va-eoi^. And 28 t')]v be evcoOelcrav Trj 6eia (TO(^ia ttjs aapKos
ijjxow polpav eK peT0)^rjs be^acrOai to ayaOov Tf]'i ao(f)ias
ovK ap(f)Lj3dkkGp.ep, TieidopevoL rw evayyekCio ovTcoal bie^tovTb
OTL \r](ToOs 8e irpoeKOTTTei' i^XiKia Kai C70(j)ia. Kai )(apiTi. oocTirep
ev rw (TcopaTL ?; kut oXiyov TTpoadijKrj TpocprjS avvepyia irpos
TO Tekeiov Tiji (pvo-eM<i Trpueicnv, ovtm^ koL ev tjj ^lfV)(ij i] eTii
TO TeXeiov ti'js rrocpias irpoobo^ bi acrKJ^creco? to'ls p.eTiovcn
irpoaTLOeTat.

The reality of human ignorance in our Lord — adv.
Apoll. 24 7TW? b\ Kai ayvoel 6 evcrapKos avTOv 6ebs'~ ti]v rjpiepav
Kol Ti]i' cupav eKeivrjv ; ttms be ovk eiTia-TaTaL tov t€)v avKcov
Katpov ; . . . TLS 6 ayvoQ>v, etTrarco ; rts 6 kvnovp.evos ; ris 6 ev
ap-riyavio. (JTevoyMpovpevos ; rt? o eyKaTakeke'icpdat irapa tov

^ Heb. iv. 15.

^ i. e. the God who, according to an opinion ascribed to Apollinarius,
was eternally ' in the flesh,' and never assumed a true human natu re.

142 Dissertations.

deov fSoi'ura'i ^ ; these things cannot belong to the eternal
Godhead : aWa kut ava.yKi]v ras ^iJLTraOels Tavras /cat
TairetvoTipas (jiMvds re koI bLad^crets t<2 avOpoiiTLVU) irpoaixap-
Tvpi](T€L ~, arpeTTTov re koI airadrj tov Oeov t-i]V (})VcrLV, Koi kv
Trj KOtvcoviq T(av avSpMirivoov Tra^rj/xarcof biafxeiKvrjKevai (tvv-
^7/o-erai (i. e. these utterances of humiliation are the real
expression of properly human experiences undergone by
the eternal Word, who yet remained unchanged in His
own essence).

That our Lord's miracles might have been done in
the power of a God-inspired humanity — adv. Apoll. 28,
Apollinarius had asked, ' Who but God is it who works
with power the things of God ? ' To this Gregory
replies that such a question derogates from the power
of God and is childish: to yap ev e^oucrta to. tov deov
Troulv Kal avOpcoTTCtiv iaTlv rj^icojx^vwv deta^ bwdpLcajs olos i]V
6 'IIAetas . . . wore ovbev VTiep avdpoiTTOv to kv e^ovcria tov
6eov TTOielv tl tQv 6av\xaT0iv eK Oeias bvi'dpLeoi^' dkKa to
avTov elvai ti]1' vmpiyovaav bvvap.iv '''. But cf. adv. Eiuioin.
V. 5 (p. 705), where the miracles of our Lord are ascribed
to His Godhead in the more usual way.

That the special marvel of divine power lies in the
self-accommodation of the Son of God to the conditions
alien to His own nature — adv. Eiinom. v. 3 (p. 693)
ovb\v KaTci TTjv kavTov (f)V(rLV KLVOvfJiivov ws' CTTt irapabo^u)
davpa^iTUL' dAAa oaa tovs opovs kK^aive.L Trj'i ({)vaeu>s, TavTa
fxdkLCTTa 7rdvTU)V (v Qavp.aTi yiv^Tai, . . . bib Kai iravTes ol
TOV koyov KTjpvan-ovTes, kv rovrw to Oavp.a Toi3 fjLVaTrjpCov

^ St. Mark xiii. 32, xi. 13, xv. 13.
^ i.e.' he must ascribe.'

' i.e. what is superhuman is not the working of tlie miracles, but the
being Himself the supreme power.

The Consciousness of our Lord. 143

KaTajXTji'vova-Lv otl ^eo? ((pavepcoOi] ev aapKi . . . utl ?/ (bj?;
Oavdrov iyevaaTo' kol -navra ra Totavra ^odaiv ol KrjpvKes,
bC S>v irXeovd^eTai to davixa tov bta tG>v efco tt/s ^vcreajs
TO TTepiov TTjs hvvdp.€.(jis eavTov (})av€p(i>(TavTos. And v. 5
(p. 705) KevovTai yap ?; ^coVt]? tva xwpjjr?/ Trj dv6poi-nlvr\ ^va^i
yivr]Tai. Cf. Orat. Cat. Mag. 24 -npuTov p-lv ovv to ti]v
TiavTohvvaixov (ftvcnv Trpo? to Ta-neivbv Til's avOpcairoTrjTOS Kara-
jirjvai layya-ai TiXdova ti]v cmohei^iv TVji hvvdixecos e'xet 7; to.
fxeydka re kol virepcpvi] tSiv Oavp-dToiv. to p.ei' yap p-eya tl
Kal v\}/riXbi' (^epyaa-drjvai -napd rj/s deias bvvdp.e(tis KaTO, (Pvctlv
TTOJS i(TTL Kal aKokovQov . . . 1] h\ TTpos TaiT€Cvdv Kddobo9
7T€i)invaLa rif errri ttJ? bvvdpiecos, ovbep iv rots- irapa cf)vaLV
KOikvop-evqi.

Cf. adv. Apoll. 20: In His divine nature Christ
was inaccessible to weak humanity and incompre-
hensible by it, but He became such that our perishable
humanity could possess and endure Him then, ot^
(Kevuxre, KaOca'S (pyicriv b dTTOcTToXo?, ti]V ^cppacrTov avTov r?]?
OeoTijTos ho^av kol t^ fipa^vTriTi rjpLuiv avyKaT€(rp.iKpvvev
(i.e. He narrowed His Godhead by accepting human
limitation).

On the other hand, for the transubstantiation of the
manhood into God, see adv. Apoll. 25, and 42 ad finem.
The human is swallowed up in the divine as a drop
of vinegar in the ocean and changed into the divine
substance ; there remains no physical property of body.
It is to this latter passage that Hooker refers {E. P.
V. 53. 2) as consisting of ' words so plain and direct for
Eutyches that I stand in doubt they are not his whose
name they carry.' So in adv. Eunoin. v. 4, 5 (pp. 697,
705-6) it is affirmed that Christ was always God, but

144 Dissertations.

was not man either before His virgin birth or after
His ascension.

For quasi-Nestorian language see especially adv.
Ewiom. V. 5 (p. 700 d, 705 — commenting on Acts ii. 36),
adv. Apoll. 54 ad fin., and Orat. Cat. Mag. He continu-
ally uses the word avvd({)eLa, which subsequently became
typical of Nestorianism to express the relation of the
humanity to the divinity in Christ. But th.is quasi-
Nestorian language does not express the main tendency
of Gregory's thought.

§6.

T/ie Nestoriaii controversy.

There was indeed one school of theology in which
opposition to Apollinarianism was hearty enough, and
associated with a literal interpretation of the New
Testament — the school of Antioch, of w^iich the most
prominent representative is Theodore of Mopsuestia.
He himself had nothing more at heart than the assertion
of the real moral freedom and spiritual humanity of
Christ — His real temptation, His real struggles. Natur-
ally therefore he was also ready to recognize the reality
of His limited knowledge as man. He seems, if we may
believe Leontius of Byzantium, to have gone to a length
which there is nothing in the Gospels to justify, and to
have asserted that our Lord in His temptation did not
know who was tempting Him^ But unhappily^ in

' Lcont. Byz. adv. Incorrupticolas et Nestor, iii. 32 (/'. G. Ixxxvi. p. 1373)
KoX TTdpa^uixevos oiiic i'^ivwaiav oans urj u ndpai^ajv aiiToy.

Tlie Consciousness of our Lord. 145

spite of the great theological reputation in the enjoyment
of which he lived and died, he was working, as afterwards
appeared more plainly, on a false line. He was — not
by a mere careless use of language but deliberately —
placing a centre of independent personality in the
humanity of Jesus and distinguishing the man Jesus
from the eternal Word who in a unique manner indwelt
him. Nestorius was only following out this line of
thought when he openly declared that the infant born
of Mary was not, personally, the Son of God ^.

The Church repudiated, with all haste and emphasis,
this disastrous, and also intensely unpopular, heresy.
Christ was personally God. In Him very God, re-
maining very God, had taken a human nature in its
completeness ; and He operated in the human nature,
appropriating and making His own the acts and sufferings
of the manhood from birth to death and through death
to glory. So had rung out the theology of Athana-
sius, especially in his later period as represented b}'
his letter to Epictetus of Corinth ; the note had been
sounded simultaneously by Hilary in the west, and
was taken up as by others so with pre-eminent power
by Cyril of Alexandria, the great opponent of Nes-
torianism. Here is the verity of the Incarnation at its
very heart. God, the very God, condescends to take
a human nature to live and to suffer in it. In Christ

' The real Nestorianism of Theodore appears nowhere more clearly
than in the extracts given by Justinian from his work against Apollinarius.
He there distinctly denies that the Word was made man, and affirms that
He assumed the man Jesus. He describes the man Jesus as declaring that
the Word, as well as the Father, indwells him — 6(os 5f \6-^os\v efiol 6 rod
9eov fiovoytpiji. See Justin. Epist. adv. Theod. in P. G. Ixxxvi. pp. 1050-1.

146 Dissertations.

Jesus then God is manifesting Himself under human
conditions. Does this involve a real self-limitation on
God's part ? Yes, is in some sense the repeated answer
of both Hilary and Cyril \ Hilary has striking passages
about the divine 'self-emptying' involved in the Incar-
nation ; and Cyril also has strong statements as that the
very God, in being made man, ' let Himself down to the
limit of the self-emptying' and 'suffered the measures
of the humanity to prevail in His own case-.'

But both Hilary and Cyril refuse to apply the idea
of the self-emptying so as to admit the reality of
intellectual growth or limitation of knowledge in the
incarnate Lord. This is certainly the case with Hilary,
as has already appeared, and on the whole must be
allowed in regard to Cyril. He too falls back upon
a merely ' economic ' ignorance. This particular ten-
dency was facilitated by a general tendency, which must
be admitted to exist in much of Cyril's writing, to allow
the apprehension of the real manhood of our Lord to be
weakened by the emphasis on His Godhead. ' Under
his treatment [of St. John's Gospel],' says Dr. West-
cott^, "the divine history seems to be dissolved into
a docetic drama.' This is a somewhat startling expres-
sion of opinion from one who is aj^t to measure his
words. But it can hardly be said to exceed the truth.

The following citations will be found to justify the
remarks just made :

' So also of Gregory of N\ssa, see above, § 5.

'^ See passages quoted below. One may notice also how Cyril, liice most
fathers, habitually recognizes that ignorance, as much as hunger ar.d thirst,
belongs to human nature: cf. Thesaur. 22 (/*. G. Ix.xv. p. 373).

* Speaker s Comtn. St. John, p. xcv.

The Consciousness of our Lord. 147

Hilary's doctrine of the self-emptying of the Incar-
nation is striking, but not easy to grasp.

(a) He maintains constantly that in becoming incar-
nate the eternal Son remains what He was before.

iii. 1 6 ' Non amiserat quod erat sed coeperat esse
quod non erat: non de suo destiterat sed quod nostrum
est acceperat : profectum ei [i e. naturae humanae] quod
accepit eius claritatis expostulat unde non destitit' (of
that glory whence He did not withdraw He asks advance
for that nature which He received, St. John xvii. 5).
ix. 66 ' Nee Deus destitit manere qui homo est.'
xii. 6 ' Neque enim defecit ex sese qui se evacuavit
in sese' : cf. v. 18, x. 66.

(/3) Nevertheless he postulates, though with some
inconsistency of language, a real self-emptying. Thus
at one time he declares the Son to have abandoned the
form of God, meaning by that equality with God : at
another he denies that He abandoned the form of God
(in the same sense) : at another he affirms the aban-
donment of the divine form, but identifies this with the
* glory ' or divine mode of existence [habitus). Generally
he may be said to affirm an abandonment of the divine
glory and a retention of the divine nature and power.

viii. 45 ' Ad susceptionem se formae servilis per
obedientiam exinanivit, exinanivit autem se ex forma
Dei, id est ex eo quod aequalis Deo erat.'

xi. 48 ' In forma enim Dei manens formam servi
assumpsit ' : cf. xii. 7.

ix. 14 ' Evacuatio formae non est abolitio naturae:
quia qui se evacuat non caret sese.'

ix. 5 1 ' Erat [in Christ incarnate] naturae proprietas,

L 2

148 Dissertations.

sed Dei forma iam non erat quia per eius exinanitionem
servi erat forma suscepta.'

ix. 4 ' Deo itaque proprium fuit contrahere se usque
ad conceptum et cunas et infantiam nee tamen Dei
potestate decedere.'

Cf ix. 38 'habitus demutatione' ; 39 ' se exinanierat
de forma gloriae.'

(y) He goes so far as to suggest a real ojfensio of
the divine unity between the Father and the Son.

ix. 38 ' Novitas temporah's, Hcet maneret in virtute
naturae, amiserat tamen cum forma Dei naturae Dei secun-
dum assumptum hominem unitatem. . . . Reddenda apud
se ipsum Patri erat unitas sua, ut naturae suae nativitas
in se rursum glorificanda resideret ; quia dispensationis
novitas ofTensionem unitatis intulerat, et unitas ut per-
fecta antea fuerat, nulla esse nunc poterat, nisi glorificata
apud se fuisset carnis assumptio.'

ix. 39 ' Ut in unitate sua maneret ut manserat, glorifi-
caturus eum apud se Pater erat ; quia gloriae suae unitas
\j.).l. unitatem] per obedientiam dispensationis excesserat.'

(8) He conceives this self-emptying as an act of
supreme self-restraint, and therefore as the fulness of
power.

xi. 48 ' In forma enim Dei mancns formam servi
assumpsit, non demutatus sed se ipsum exinaniens et
intra se latens et intra suam ipse vacuefactus potesta-
tcm : dum se usque ad formam temperat habitus humani,
ne potcntem immensamque naturam assumptae humili-
tatis non ferret infirmitas, sed in tantum sc virtus
incircumscripta moderaretur, in quantum oporterct eam
usque ad patientiam connexi sibi corporis obcdire.
Quod autem se ipsum intra se vacucfacicns continuit,

The Consciousness of our Lord. 149

detrimentum non attulit potestati, cum intra banc
exinanientis se humilitatem virtute tamen omnis ex-
inanitac intra se usus sit potestatis.' Cf. xii. 6.

Cyril's doctrine of the Kirooua and the Hmits he
assigns to it will appear in the following citations :

(a) As to St. Mark xiii. 32, (rdv. Anthropomorph. 14
[P. G. Ixxvi. pp. iioi, 1104).

' The only-begotten Word of God bore with the man-
hood all that appertains to it, except sin only. But
ignorance of the future properly suits the limits of
humanity. So then, so far as He is thought of as God,
He knows all that the Father knows ; but so far as He
is also man, He does not cast off even the appearance
of ignorance because it is suitable to humanity {ovk airo-
aeUrat to koI ayroij(raL boKe'iv bia to Tipi-neiv Tr\ ai'dpumoT^Ti).
Just as He received bodily sustenance, though He was
the life and power of all^ not despising the limit of
His self-emptying, and has been recorded to have slept
and been weary, so also, though He knew all things, He
does not blush to attribute to Himself the ignorance
Avhich is suitable to humanity. For everything that
belongs to humanity became His, except sin only.
Thus when His disciples would have learnt what was
above them, He pretends for their profit not to know,
inasmuch as He is man (o-zoj-nrerat XPV'^^I^^'^^ ™ M'? ^t-^^vcu
Kad' avOpcoHos), and He says that not the very angels
knew, that they may not be grieved at not being
entrusted with the mystery.'

Cf. Thesaurus, assert. 22 (P. G. Ixxv. p. 376) ojdTrep ovv
clKvvopiia^ Tivbi eveKev to p.i] dhirai tiov Ketrcu Aa^apoj
((pacTKev, ovTui Kol ■7T€pl T?]? ijixepu^ Koi T//J wpas, Kuv Aeyj; fxi]
elOivai, xpi'iaifjiov tl nal ayaddv olKovop.G>v tovto ttouI' olhi

15°

Dissertations.

yap coj dio^. Again, p. 377, oIkovoix^I yai rot Xptoro? /x//
elberai Aeycor t-S]1' ojpav (Keu't-jv koL ovk oAjy^aj? ayvo€i: and
cf. his reply to Theodoret's 'reprehension' mentioned
above, p. 131 {P. G. Ixxvi. p. 416), where he starts with
the fundamental proposition that as God He knows all.
but in His manhood only what the indwelling Godhead
revealed : and the conclusion is that He personally knew
the day of the end, because He was God, but assumes
the ignorance of manhood ' economically.' Other pas-
sages are collected by Dr. A. B. Bruce, Huiniliation of
Christ, pp. 366-372. Their drift is unmistakeable.

(/3) As to St. Luke ii. 52, Cyril appears at times to
recognize in our Lord a reality of human growth in
knowledge ; but when speaking exactly, tends to make it
only an increased manifestation of an already existing
knowledge. Cf Qnod unus sit Cliristus {P. G. Ixxv.
P- 1332):

' For the wise evangelist, when introducing the Word
made flesh, exhibits Him as economically letting His own
flesh have its way, so as to go through the laws of its
own nature [heiKwa-iv avrbv oIkovojjlckoos ((fyevra rfi Ihia
crapKi 6ia tcov r^s ibta? ^vrreoj? ih'at vopudr). It belongs to
humanity to advance in stature and wisdom, and. I ma\-
add, in grace, the understanding in each case keeping
pace ill a way with the measures of the bod\-. The
understanding of those who are already grown children
differing from that of infimts. and so on. It was not
impossible or unattainable for Ilini who was God,
the Word begotten of the Father, to raise the bod)'
united to Him to its full height even from its very
swaddling-clothes and to bring it to full devclopnicnt.
And in the same wa\- it would have been easy and

The Consciousness of our Lord.

isi

practicable for Him to exhibit a marvellous wisdom
even in the infant But this would have been akin to
mere wonder-working, and unsuitable to the conditions
of the economy. For the mystery was accomplished
noiselessly. Therefore economically He suffered the
measures of the humanity to prevail in His own case
(aAA' ?)i' TO yj)i]\xa TepaToirouas ov jxaKpav, kol rot? tt/s"
oiKovofxias Xoyots civ apjxoaTov' ereAetro yap a\l/ocj)i]Tl to
IxvaTrjpiov. i)(pUt hi] ovv oLKOVop.tKW'i To'i'i r?)? avdpooTTO-
TrjTos [xeTpois ec^' eauroi to Kpareiv).

I have left ' economy ' and ' economically ' untranslated,
because olKovo\j.ia, starting from meaning the process by
which God communicates and reveals Himself in such
a way as to be intelligible to man, passes imperceptibly
into meaning a process of divine reserve which is in
fact deception. It does not necessarily carry with it any
sense of unreality ; for Cyril says that the suffering of
Christ ' belongs to the economy " (to jxkv uddos eaTaL r?/?
olKoiopCas, scJiol. dc Iiicani. 13, t. Ixxv. p. I3'^^)- And in
the above paragraph it might seem to have the nobler
meaning. But the following passage is more explicit :

Thesaurus, assert. 28 (t. Ixxvi. p. 428) ' A certain law^ of
nature does not allow a man to have wisdom to a degree
which would be out of correspondence with his bodily
stature ; but our understanding keeps pace and advances
in a way with our bodily grovv'th. Now the Word made
flesh was man as has been written ; and He was perfect,
being the Wisdom and Power of God. And since it was
necessary in a way that He should accommodate Him-
self to the custom of our nature (rw Tri'i (pvaeuis i]ixGtv edei.
irapaxoopelv ttoj? (xPV^')' to avoid being thought a portent
by those who saw Him as man, while His bod}' was

i=;2

Dissertations.

gradually growing, therefore He concealed Himself and
kept daily appearing wiser to those who saw and heard
Him . . . But because He was ever wiser and more
gracious to those who saw Him, therefore He was said
to advance, the advance being in fact relative to those
who admired, rather than to Himself (cL? errevdei' i'jbi] ti]v
Tcoi' Oavixa^ovTcav TtpOKOTTTav 'i^iv ?) T'i]v avrov). Cf. p. 4^9
oTiirep Koi opyavov ehj [to avOpcoinvovj tt]S (v avTij 6euTi]Tos,
Kara j3pa)^v Trpos" ti]v €K(f)a(TLv avrijs bta rdv ipycov vTrriptrovv,
and scholia 13, t. Ixxv. p. i3<S(S.

In another passage, adv. Nestor, t. Ixxvi. p. 154, he
definitely distinguishes this view from that of a real
advance postulated by Nestorius. The above quotations
are mostly to be found in Bruce {I.e.), whose discussion
of the matter is. I think, exhaustive. He also (p. 425)
points out how Cyril had in view and repudiated (1) an
idea of the 'depotentiation ' of God incarnate, such as
some extreme Lutherans have held, and (2) the attempt
to distinguish the nature from the personality of the
Word, and to assert that in the Incarnation the nature
remained in the glory of God, but not the personality ;
see adv. Nest. i. 1, adv. AntJiroponiorpJi. i(S, t. Ixxvi.
pp. 1108 ff.

In general one must allow, I think, that there is in
St. Cyril, side by side with a real apprehension of our
Lord's manhood especially in its physical aspects — of
hunger, thirst, pain, &c. — a tendency to allow its spiritual
and intellectual reality to be merged in his emphasis on
the Godhead. He had no sympathy with ApoUinarius'
formal denial of the human spirit in Jesus, but his
language is sometimes markedly akin to ApoUinarius"
language when he speaks of the manhood as simply the

The Consciousness of our Lord. 153

instrument or veil, through which the Godhead com-
municates or discloses itself, and it is remarkable that
the phrase adopted by Cyril, which afterwards afforded an
excuse for Monophysitism — the juta (pvai^ rov d^ov Xoyov
aea-apKcoixepi] — is derived from a treatise dc I near n. Vcrbi
Dei, ascribed by Cyril to Athanasius ^, but which appears
in fact to have been written by Apollinarius ; see
Robertson, Athanasius [Nieene a7id Post-Nieene Fathers),
p. Ixv. There is no doubt that in the early part of the
fifth century the more moderate disciples of Apollinarius
succeeded in disseminating writings of their master
under the famous names of Athanasius, Julius, and
Gregory Thaumaturgus. This was disclosed first at
the Council of Chalcedon, and later, in the early part of
the sixth century, by Leontius of Byzantium, if indeed he
is the writer of the adversns Fraudes Apollinistaruni ^.
The tract from which Cyril derived his famous phrase
was one of these Apollinarian treatises ascribed to
Athanasius. The whole matter of Apollinarian propa-
ganda under assumed names has been the subject of
recent investigation by C. P. Caspari, Alte nnd nene
Quellen zur Gesehiehte dcs Taiifsymbols (Christiania,
1879); and by Draseke, Apollinarios von Laodieea {Fexte
und Unters?teh.\\\..'^,jf). The whole discussion is reviewed
in the Ch. Qnart. Revieiv (Oct. 1893, Apollinarius of

^ See Dict.-of Chr. Biography, i. p. 770.

^ Loofs {^Text u. Unt. iii. 1, 2), who has recently investigated Leontius of
Byzantium and his works, thinks that its author was an older contemporary
of Leontius, i. e. that it was written c. A. D. 512. But the grounds assigned
for this date are not over-convincing. It may well have been by
Leontius and written about 531. See the last investigator of the subject,
P. W. Riigamer (a Roman Catholic), Leontius von Byzanz (Wiirzburg,
1894), pp. 14 ff.

1.54 Dissertations.

Laodicea). I must add that Cardinal Newman's Tract
{Tracts TJicol. and Eccl.) on St. C^-ril's formula, in spite
of its interest and learning, is really in great part an
apology for minimizing the meaning of our Lord's
manhood.

§7'.
The Monophysite controversy.

The heresy of Eutyches was in part due to a mis-
understanding of Cyril's teaching, in part it was a revival
of a certain still current aspect of ApoUinarianism to
which some of Cyril's language had been too closely
akin. Speaking generally, Eutychianism, and the 'Mono-
physite ' doctrine which was a modification of it, postu-
lated, in varying degrees^, a transubstantiation in the
person of Christ of the manhood into God. As against
such teaching, the definition of Chalcedon secured
dogmatically the distinct and permanent reality of
our Lord's manhood, and the later decision of the
third council of Constantinople dogmatically secured the
presence in Him of a distinct human will and energy,
linked hypostatically to the divine will and energy, but
not swallowed up in it. B.it from the point of view
of our present inquiry it must be noticed

(i) that these definitions did not lead to any perma-

' In varying degrees: l)ecaiise some Monophysites, like the Agnoetae
or even the Severians, generally recognized the reality of the manhood
in the ' composite nature ' of Christ to a very great extent. See the
excellent account of the Severians in Dorner's Person of Christ, iv. ii.
vol. i. pp 133-143-

The Consciousness of our Lord.

^OD

ncnt reaction among catholic theologians in favour of
recognizing the reality of our Lord's mental growth or
limitation in knowledge as man :

(2) that there was no real help given by the orthodox
thought of the time towards solving the question of the
relation of the divine and human natures, which the
dogma of Chalcedon left simply juxtaposited in the
unity of Christ's person '.

(i) This is best shown by the attitude of the Church
towards the Agnoetae. This sect — which is also known
as the ' Themistians ' from its chief representative
Themistius — arose among the Monophysites on the
moderate or Severian wing, i. e. among those who
maintained the naturally corruptible nature of our Lord's
body, about A. D. 540 or somewhat later -. Its charac-
teristic tenet was the limitation of our Lord's human
knowledge, and its adherence to this was based upon
the natural interpretation of the often-discussed passages
of the Gospels, such as St. Mark xiii. 32, St. John xi. 34.
The Monophysite origin of the sect would countenance
the hypothesis (to which Dr. Liddon adheres ■■) that they
affirmed ignorance of our Lord in the only nature which
Monophysites could consistently recognize in Christ,
viz. the divine. But men are not always consistent, and

' So far, I ihiiik, Dorner is right. But not in his criticisms on the
Chalcedonian formula considered /er je, I.e. pp. 113-1 19. That was in no
contradiction to Ephesus and was a most necessary supplement to it.
Further the function of a dogmatic decision is not to supply the philosophy
of the subject : see Ba»ip/on Lectures, 1S91, p. 110.

'^ Leontius Byz. de .Sectis, v. 6 ' while Theodosius ^the Monophysite
patriarch of Alexandria) was living at Byzantium as a private person,' i.e.
after his banishment from Alexandria, c. 537.

^ Divinity of ciir Lord, p. 46^, quoting Suicer.

156 Dissertations.

moreover the Severian Monophysites in their view of
the ' composite nature ' of Christ allowed a great deal of
reality to the humanity. At any rate the evidence does
not seem to warrant this hypothesis. If the language
of Eulogius, the patriarch of Alexandria, who wrote
against the Agnoetae about A. D. 590, is ambiguous ^,
that of the treatise de Scctis, ascribed to Leontius of
Byzantium, is quite distinct — Xiyovcnv ayvoelv to avdpd)-
Tiivov Tov Xpiarov, ?/yroet 6 Xptcrro? ws avOpooiros ttov ^ : and

* See just below, p. 158. John of Damascus is also ambiguous in his
account of Themistius, see de Haer. 85.

" de Sectis, x. 3 (cited below). The Greek title of the work is Aeoi'r/(u
a)(o\aaTiKov ^v^avTiov axoXia dnu ipajv^s Qtoiidipov, tov 6(o<pi\eaTa.Tov dBBd
Kai aotpwTCLTtv (pi\oau(pov, k.t.X. That is to say it is a work compiled by
the Abbot Theodore from the scholia of Leontius. Theodore must have
written after the accession of Eulogius of Alexandria, which he mentions, in
579, and the scholia were probably compiled about the middle of the
century. See Loofs, /. c. and Riigamer, /. c. pp. 25 and 30.

The passage in question is probably due to Leontius (so Riigamer as
against Loofs) ; at least the passage in what is apparently Leontius' earliest
work (c. 531) — adv. Nesto7-iaiios et Eutycliianistcs, iii. 32 — directed against
a Nestorian view of Christ's ignorance, is no argument against it. For the
latter passage is directed against an extreme view of Christ's ' ignorance '
and one in which ignorance is identified with sin ; and is also separated by
perhaps nearly twenty years from the passage in the de Sectis. Even in
the earlier work Leontius is jealous for the verity of our Lord's manhood,
especially on its physical side — contending for instance that Kara, ^pa^ii tv
TJ7 TTapSfi'iKTJ fxijTpa TTpoiKonTt vo/xcp KvrjafwSj wj irpus rfjv d-nTjpTiapivrjv Toii
(ipupovs rtXdaiaiv \con. Nest, et Eut. ii. p. 1328 c). Hut on this subject
lie seems to have changed his mind, adv. Nestorian. iv. p. 1669, and his
later view was followed by orthodox divines, who jiostulated an instan-
taneous formation of the embryo, e. g. John Daniasc. oh rah KaTci puKpov
rpoffOrjicats dnapTi^ofifVov tov ffXJJ^aToy uW' v(j)' (v Te\(iw6ivT0i {lie l-'id.
Orthod. iii. 2). So St. Thomas Aquinas, Siiini/ia, ji. iii. qu. 33. art. i.

It is remarkable that a writer such as Leontius, of whom so much remains
of great interest, whom Cardinal Mai describes as ' in theologica scientia
aevi sui facile princeps,' and who has been the subject of so much recent
discussion in Germany, should be all but passed over in silence in the
flict. of Chr. Biograpliy.

The Consciousness of our Lord. 157

the words of Sophronius of Jerusalem are equally dis-
tinct ^. And like these easterns, so the western, Pope
Gregory, in his correspondence with Eulogius regards
the question at issue to be our Lord's ignorance as man.
This he, with Eulogius, is emphatic in denying. They
both admit that humanity as such, and therefore Christ's
humanity by itself, would be ignorant. But they say
that in fact, as united to the Godhead in one person,
its ignorance was removed. If He was ignorant ' ex
humanitate,' He was not so ' in humanitate.' If He
professes ignorance as man He is speaking as Head for
the members and economically.

It would appear that this particular matter was never
specifically considered by any oriental council. But
the Agnoetae certainly formed a sect of their own and
were reckoned as heretics, with the special characteristic
of affirming the limitation of knowledge in Christ. We
notice however that the orthodox Leontius emphatically
takes the side of the Agnoetae, and declares, with
an exaggeration which is no doubt somewhat strange,
that almost all the fathers held to our Lord's human
ignorance.

The following passages should be examined in this
connexion :

Leontius of Byzantium, de Sectis, act. x. 3 {P. G.
Ixxxvi. p. 1261) 'Now the Agnoetae believe just as
the Theodosians with this difference, that the Theodo-
sians deny that the humanity of Christ was ignorant
and the Agnoetae affirm it. For they say, '■ He was in

^ Epist. Syn. ad Sirghiiit {P. G. Ixxxvii. 3, p. 3192 d) a'ivoilv ihv Xpiaruv
oil Ka6u Oeus vir^pxc aidios, dWa kuOu ye-^oviv Kara, dKijOttav dvOpwnos.

158 Dissertations.

all points like us. And if we arc ignorant, it is plain
that He too was ignorant. And He Himself in the
Gospels says, no man Iznoweth the day nor the honr,
neitJier tJie Sen, bnt the FatJiei' only. And again,
zvJiere have ye laid Lazarns ? " All these utterances,
they say, are signs of ignorance. It is said in reply that
Christ spoke these things '" economically," to divert the
disciples from learning from Him the hour of the end.
Observe, they say, after the resurrection, when He is
again asked by them, He no longer says neither the So/i,
but no/ie of you ^. But we ^ say that we must not be too
exact on these matters [ov bel ttcu-v aKpijBoXoyelv irepl
Tovrcoz'). On this principle neither did the Synod •' busy
itself with this sort of opinion (oiiSe y mjvobo'i tolovto
€7To\v-iTpayix6vri(T€ boyjjia), but it must be known that most
of the Fathers, yes almost all, appear to say that He was
ignorant For if He is said to have been of one sub-
stance with us in all respects, and we are ignorant, it is
plain that He too was ignorant. And the Scripture says
about Him, /de advanced in stature and zvisdoni; that is
plainly, learning what He was ignorant of Cf. Act. v. 6.

EuLOGIUS, the patriarch of Alexandria, is quoted by
Photius. Bibliothcca, cod. 230 (P. G. ciii. pp. ic<So ff.), as
writing against the Agnoetae to the following effect.
He denies that Christ was ignorant cither in His
manhood or (still more) in His Godhead. He gives
' explanations ' of the texts cited for the opposite view.
Christ may have been speaking economically ; or, again,
nothing hinders us from interpreting His words KaT
ava(t)Of)di\ i. e. in such a w^ay as to refer them back from
the Head who spoke them to the members of the body

' Acts i. 7 ' it is not for you, &c.' ' i. e. Leontius.

•"• The reference appc.irs to be to Chalcedon.

The Consciousness of our Lord. 159

for whom He spoke. He cried out as deserted in our
name. So He may have professed ignorance in our
name. ' No man can, without recklessness, ascribe real
ignorance to Him either in His Godhead or in His man-
hood [ovre yap Kara r?V diOT-qra ovre Kara ti]V avOpocmoT-qTa
i-i]v ayvoiav kiyav (-n avTov dpdcrovs e-ncacpaXovs ijKevOe-
pooTai).' We may indeed ascribe ignorance ideally to
Christ's humanity, gua humanity considered by itself
(which it was not), like Gregory the theologian \ He
adds,

'If some of the fathers admitted the asserted ignorance
in the manhood of our Saviour, they did not advance
this as a positive opinion, but with a view to warding
off the madness of the Arians : for as the Arians ascribed
the human affections to the Godhead, they thought
it a better expedient to refer them to the manhood
than to allow them to divert them to the Godhead.
Not but what if any one were to say that they too spoke
anaphorically [i. e. of Christ for ns], he will be accepting
the safer explanation (d kul nves twv -naripMv ti]v ayvoiav
i-nl Trj? Kara rov ao)Tr]pa 7T"pe8efaz;ro avOpM-aoT-qros, ovx^ coS
boyjjLa TovTo Trpo-)]V€yKav, aXXa T'I]v tmv Wpaavuiv p.QVLuv
avTi^ip6p.eiOL. dl nal ra avOpwinva Ttavra i~l tyjv d^oTqra too
p.oroy(vovs pLeT^(f)epov, o)S av KTcafxa rbv aKTicrrov koyov tov
diov Tropa(TTi]cr(tiati', olKOvopuKWTepov eboKLixaaov ein ti]s
av6poiTr6Ti]Tos TO.VTa (pep€LV rj Tiapaxu>p{iv eKeivovi jXiOeXKHV
TavTci Kara rijf de6Ti]T09. et 8e Kara ava(f)opav Kaiceirovs hou]
TovTci TLi etTreir, tuv eva-ej^^crTepov Xoyov a7ro8e'ferut).'

Gregory the Great, IipisLK.^g {ad £u/oo^m7;i,Pa/r.

Lat. Ixxvii. p. 1097), says that the text St. Mark xiii. 32

' Is most certainly to be referred to the Son, not as

^ See passage quoted, p. 126.

i6o Dissertations.

He is Head, but as to His body which we are (non ad
eundem FiHum iuxta hoc quod caput est, sed iuxta
corpus eius quod sumus nos, est certissime referendum).'
He adds that Christ ' in natura quidem humanitatis novit
diem et horam iudicii, sed tamen hunc non ex natura
humanitatis novit : quod ergo in ipsa novit, non ex ipsa
novit, quia Deus homo factus diem et horam iudicii per
deitatis suae potentiam novit.'

Like Theodorets in earlier days, the protest of Leon-
tius against explaining away our Lord's words is isolated.
Thus, the great Greek schoolman, John of Damascus,
who in the eighth century formulated the theology of
the Greeks, repudiates as Nestorian any assertion of
real increase in our Lord's knowledge as man, or real
limitation in His knowledge of the future.

John Damascene, de Fide Orthod. iii. 12-23: His
human nature by its own essence does not possess
the knowledge of the future ; ' but the soul of the Lord,
because of its unity with the person of God the Word
and its h)^postatic identity, was enriched, as I said, as
with the other divine miracles, so with the knowledge of
the future (8ta t\v tt/jov avrdv tov deov \6yov €ViO(nv Kai ti]v
VTTO(TTaTtK-i]v TavTuTTjTa KaTe~\oi'Tr](T(v, ws «f/>?Ji', jJ-era tcov
Aot77(3r d€uai]ij.eLU)v Kai tijv Toiv fxeWuvruiV yvuxnv).^

He goes on to determine that it is Nestorian to call
Christ by the name ' servant [hovXos) of the Lord^' and

' St. Thomas {Summa, p. iii. qu. 20. art. l) allows the expression. So
Petaviiis {i/e Iiicarn. vii. 7-9) and others. Other western theologians
have agreed more or less decisively with John of Damaseus that our Lord,
as man, is not to be called sc7~i'its, chielly because the expression was
insisted upon by the Adoplionists and repudiated by Pope Hadrian I and
other opponents of this heresy : see de Lugo, dc Myst. Incarn. xxviii. 2.

The Consciousness of our Lord. i6i

that in spite of the frequent use of the similar phrase
-TTais KvpLov in the Acts of the Apostles, of which he takes
no notice ; and Nestorian, again, to attribute real intellec-
tual growth to our Lord in His manhood.

' He is said to advance in wisdom and stature and
grace, because He grows in fact in stature, and through
His growth in stature, brings out into exhibition the
wisdom which already existed in Him. . . . But those
who say that He grew in wisdom and grace, as (really)
receiving increase in these, deny (in fact) that the flesh
was united to the Word from the first moment of its
existence, nor do they allow the union to be hypostatic,
but assent to Nestorius, . . . For if the flesh from the
first moment of its existence was united to the Word
of God, or rather subsisted in Him, and possessed hypo-
static identity with Him, how could it have been other-
wise than perfectly enriched with all wisdom and grace?
[TrpoKOTTteLV 8e kiyeraL (TO(pia Kal 7/AtKta Kal ^(a/nrt, tii /xey
r]\iKiq av^cov, bia be rrjs av^i](Te(os tijs ?/AiKta? ttjz; kwirap-
yovaav ai^rw (TotpLav ets (fjavepuxTLv ayoov • . . ot 8e TrpoKOTiTeiv
avTov \4yovT€S aocfjia kol xaptrt oj? 'iTpo(Td'i]Krjv tovtcov 8ex^'"
fxevov ovK (^ uKpas virdp^ecas t^s aapKo^ yeyevricrOai ti]V
evooatv keyovcrLP, ovbe ti]V KaO^ viroaTaa-LV evuxriv TTp€(TJ3evov(TL,
Neo-rop('a) 8e rw fxaTaLocfipoi'L irnOopwoi, (T\eTLKi]v evcornv
Kcd \I/lXi]v ivoiijiv TeparevovTaL' el yap aXi]6o)S yrc^di] rw 6eov
Aoyw 7/ (rap^ ef uKpas virap^ecos p-aWov be ev avTio virrip^e Kal
TTjv VTToaTarLKi]v ea"x^e TavTOTrjTa, 7r<Ss ov TeXeCoos KaTiTiXovTrjcn
■naa-av <TO(f)iav Kal yjipiv ;) '

Here is abstract reasoning, as so often in theology
and philosophy, winning its triumph over facts. In the
west the Agnoetic view was revived by the Nestorianizing
Adoptionists, and treated therefore, in the west as in
the east, as simply a fragment of Nestorianism.

i62 Dissertations.

Agobard, bishop of Lyons, records ^ how Felix of
Urgel, the Adoptionist leader, ' began to teach certain
people to believe that our Lord Jesus Christ was, accord-
ing to the flesh, truly ignorant of where Lazarus lay and
of the day of judgement and of the subject of the con-
versation of the two disciples (on the road to P^^mmaus),
&c. When I heard this,' he adds,

' I approached him in the presence of those whom he
was seeking to convince and asked him whether this was
really his opinion. And when he sought to establish his
view I denounced him and expressed abhorrence of his
corrupt teaching and I showed the others, as best I could,
how anxiously they should repudiate such ideas, and
in what sense those passages of Scripture ought to be
understood : and I caused passages chosen from the
holy fathers to be read to Felix himself which con-
tradicted his blasphemies. And when they had been
read, he promised to apply himself with all diligence to
his own correction.'

(2) The definition of Chalcedon affirmed the juxta-
position of the divine and human natures in Christ
each with its separate and distinct operation, but con-
tributed nothing positive towards the solution of the
question : how is this duality of natures and operations
related to the unity of the person ? How, for example,
did the one person Christ, being God, exercise a human
consciousness, involving as it docs human limitations ?
The tendency was to regard the divine and human
natures simply as placed side by side ; to speak of Christ

* See Agobard adv. Fcliccm i'rgcl. c. 5, and the note in Patr. I. at.
civ. p. 37.

The Consciousness of our Lord. 163

as acting now in the one and now in the other — or, more
specifically, to attribute the powerful works and words
of the incarnate person to His Godhead and His suf-
ferings and 'humble' sayings to His manhood. The
following is a typical passage from the great Tome
of Leo ^ :

' The nativity of the flesh is a manifestation of human
nature : the birth from a virgin is an indication of
divine power ^ The infancy of the babe is exhibited
by the lowliness of the cradle : the greatness of the
Highest is declared by the voices of angels. He whom
Herod impiously designs to slay is like humanity in its
beginnings ; but He whom the Magi rejoice to adore
upon their knees is Lord of all. . . . To hunger, to
thirst, to be weary, and to sleep is evidently human.
But to satisfy five thousand men with five loaves, and to
give to the Samaritan woman living water, of which
whoso drinketh is secure from further thirst, to walk
on the surface of the sea with ftet not sinking, and to
allay the swelling waves by rebuking the tempest —
this without doubt is divine. As then (to omit not
a little), it belongs not to the same nature to weep
for a dead friend with the sensation of compassion, and

^ It should be noted that the dogmatic authority of a letter approved by
a Council as a whole is not identical with the dogmatic authority of the
actual formula decreed by the Council ; e. g. the letters of St. Cyril are not
dogmas in the sense in which it is a dogma that the term theolocus is
rightly applied to the Blessed Virgin. The letters were approved as
embodying the truth which the Council affirmed. Thus again St. Leo's tome
was accepted at Chalcedon as embodying the truth of the permanence and
distinct reality of Christ's human nature in the Godhead which assumed it.
But all the phrases and passages in it are no more of dogmatic authority
than the reading of i John iv. 3 qui solvit Icsum (o \vii rov 'Irjaovv)
adopted in the tome (c. 5).

^ i.e. an indication that Christ, the child, was God.

M 3

1 64 Dissertations.

to raise the same friend to life again at the authority
of a word ; ... or to hang upon the cross and to make
all the elements tremble, turning daylight into night ;
or to be pierced with nails, and to open the gates of
paradise to the faith of the thief; so it belongs not to
the same nature to say / and the FatJicr arc one, and to
say tJic Father is greater than I ^.'

In his notes on this passage Dr. Bright ^ quotes some
parallels (which, in fact, abound), e. g. St. Athanasius, adv.
Ariaii. iii. 32 ' In the case of Lazarus He uttered a human
voice, as man ; but divinely, as God, did He raise Lazarus
from the dead.' And St. Gregory Nazianzen, ' Orthodox
writers clearly make a distinction between the things
which belong to Christ — they assign to what is human
the facts that He was born, was tempted, hungered,
thirsted, w^as weary, and slept ; and they set down to
the Godhead the facts that He was glorified by angels,
that He overcame the tempter and fed the people in
the wilderness and walked on the surface of the sea.'
He quotes further the formula of reunion between
St. Cyril and the Easterns, ending with the words
' We know that theologians have treated some of
the expressions concerning our Lord as common, as
referring to one person, and have distinguished others as
referring to two natures, and have taught us to refer to
Christ's Godhead those which are appropriate to deity
{deoTTpards) and to the manhood those which imply

' I-l/). ad Flav. c. 4. This is a working out in example of the general
principle : ' Agit iitraque forma cum alterius communione quod proprium
est ; verbo scilicet operante quod verbi est et came exscqucnte quod carnis
est. Unum horum coruscat miraculis, aliud succumbit iniuiiis.'

' St. Leo on the Incarnation (Masters, 18S6) pp. 230 ff.

The Consciousness of our Lord. 165

humiliation,' and he proves that this practice was
endorsed by St. Cyril.

Now in regard to this tendency, to distribute to the
two natures the words and acts of Christ, we may
remark that up to a certain point it must be accepted
by all who believe in Christ's Godhead. Thus ' I and
my Father are one thing ' (St. John x. 30) is /3^/xa
^eoTrpe-TTes. It could only be spoken by one who, how-
ever truly incarnate, was Himself God. St. John viii. 40
' Me, a man who hath told you the truth which I have
heard from God,' is avOpcoTroTrpeiris. It could only be
spoken by one who, whatever else he was, was really
man. But beyond the rare words of our Lord about
His own essential being, such as the one just cited or
St. Matthew xi. 27 ' No one knoweth the Father save
the Son' — beyond such words and the accompanying
divine claim on men which such words are necessary
to interpret and justify, there is very little recorded in
our Lord's life — may I say nothing ? — which belongs to
the divine nature per se and not rather to the divine
nature acting under conditions of manhood. He had
come to reveal God and to make His claim felt not as
a messenger but as the Son. For this purpose He spoke
as what He was, the Son. But He came to reveal God
and make His claim felt, under conditions and limita-
tions of manhood, and His powerful works, no less than
His humiliations, are in the Gospels attributed to His
manhood. Thus His miracles in general, and in parti-
cular the raising of Lazarus, are attributed by our Lord
to the Father, as answering His own prayer, and to the
Holy Spirit as ' the finger of God,' and St. Luke

i66 Dissertations.

describes His miracles generally as the result of ' the
power of the Lord ' present with Him ^. TJiis is a point
on which — it imist be cmpJiatically said— accurate exegesis
renders impossible to 21s the phraseology of the Fathers
exactly as it stands. So Dr. Westcott remarks ' It is
unscriptural, though the practice is supported by strong
patristic authority, to regard the Lord during His historic
life, as acting now by His human and now by His divine
nature only. The two natures were inseparably combined
in the unity of His person. In all things He acts per-
sonally ; and, as far as it is revealed to us, His greatest
works during His earthly life are wrought by the help
of the Father through the energy of a humanity
enabled to do all things in fellowship with God (comp.
John xi. 41 f.) -.'

§ 8-

Mediaeval and scholastic t/ieology.

By the time of Augustine in the west, and by the time
of John of Damascus at least in the east, the theological
determination against the admission of a real growth in
our Lord's human knowledge or a real ignorance in His
human condition, such as the Gospel documents describe,
must be regarded as fixed''. I must however indicate

't>"

' St. John xi. 41, St. Mati. xii. 28, St. Luke v. 17 ; ami see above, p. So.
^ Ep. to the Hebrews, p. 66.

^ Apparent exceptions do not on examination seem to liold, e. g. .St.
Bernard, commenting on Maik xiii. 32 {(ic GraJ. Iliiin. cc. 3, 10), seeks to

Tlie Consciousness of our Lord. 167

a certain greater definiteness which was given to the
denial. In the earher mediaeval period writers speak of
Christ in general terms as possessing even in His human
soul the divine omniscience. Thus Fulgentius in the sixth
century asserts that Christ, in virtue of the hypostatic
union, certainly had in His human soul the full know-
ledge of the Godhead : He knows as man all that He
knows as God, though not in the same manner ; for as
God He knows naturally, as man He knows in such
a way as still to remain human ^. And Alcuin (c. 790)
asserts that ' the soul of Christ may not be held to have
lacked in any respect the full knowledge of the Godhead,
inasmuch as it formed one person with the Word ^.'
This however, as Cassiodorus pointed out ^, was clearly

avoid imputing mendacity to Christ by admitting a real ignorance of the
day and hour in respect of His human experience : ' etsi suae divinitatis
intuitu, aeque omnia praeterita scilicet praesentia atque futura perlustrando,
diem quoque ilium palam habebat, non tamen ullis carnis suae stnsibus
experiendo agnoverat.' But when commenting on Luke ii. 52 {liom. super
J\/issiis est ii. 10), he denies to our Lord, because He was God, all real
growth as in human knowledge : ' non secundum quod erat, sed secundum

quod apparebat intelligendum est constat ergo quia semper lesus virilem

animum habuit, etsi semper in corpore vir non apparuit.' Ch. 9 : ' vir [i. e.
a grown man] igitur erat lesus necdum etiam natus, sed sapientia non aetate,
animi vigore non viribus corporis, maturitate sensuum non corpulentia
niembrorum ; neque enim minus fuit sapientia lesus conceptus quam natus,
parvus quam magnus.' All that he would admit then of ignorance of the
day and hour is that He had not realized it in terms of human sensibility ;
or (like Gregory) that ignorant ex huntaiiitate, He knew in humanitate.

' Fulg. ad Ferrand. Ep. xiv. 26-32 {P. L. Ixv. p. 420) 'novit anima
Christi quantum ilia [deltas] sed non sicut ilia.' On the other hand, in the
ad Trasimitud. i. 8 (p. 231) he seems to admit a xq'sS. growlh in the know-
ledge of our Lord's human soul, according to Luke ii. 52.

^ de Fide S. Trin. ii. 11, 12 (jP. L. ci. p. 31) 'non aestimanduni est
animae Christi in aliquo plenam divinitatis deesse notitiam, cuius una est
persona cum Verbo.' He goes on to explain that Christ said that He did
not know what He causes others not to know (as Augustine).

^ Cassiod. in Psalm, cxxxviii. 5 (/*. Z. Ixx. p. 985, quoted by Peter

i68 Dissertations.

to Ignore the truth that the human faculty essentially
falls short of the divine. Thus Peter Lombard decides ^
that while Christ's human soul ' knew all things that
God knows,' it did not apprehend them so clearly and
perspicuously as God.

Later, again, St. Thomas Aquinas is found carrying
definition further, and laying it down that Christ pos-
sessed both divine and human knowledge ; and further,
the human soul of Christ possessed knowledge of three
kinds :

(i) scientia bcata, i. e. the perfect human participation
in the beatific vision, or the divine light by which Christ
as man knew things as they exist in the eternal Word ;
(ii) scientia indita vet infusa, by which Christ possessed
the perfect knowledge of things as they are relatively to
mankind ;

(iii) scientia acqiiisita, the knowledge of things derived
from experience. On this subject Aquinas professes
that he has changed his opinion, and decides that Christ,
though he already ab initio possessed perfect knowledge
in His human soul hy scientia infnsa without reference to
experience, also acquired that very same knowledge by
sensitive experience 2. This latter point remained in con-
troversy between Thomists and Scotists, but it is purely

Lombard) ' Veritas humanae conditionis ostenditur, quia assumptus homo
divinne substantiae non potest adacquari vel in scientia vol in alio.' There-
fore Christ in the person of the Psalmist cries "■ Alirabilis facta est scientia
tua ex me et non potero ad eani.''

' Petr. Lomb. Scnlent. iii. dist. 14. The opposite of Peter Lombard's
proposition was condemned at Pjasle, Sess. xxii. 'anima Chrisli videt Deum
tam clare et intense quantum clare et intense Deus videt se ipsum.'

' See Summa, p. iii. qu. ix. ff. We are inclined to ask with an
objector mentioned by de Lugo 'quid ergo multiplicandae sunt tot
scientiae in Christo circa eadem obiccta ? '

The Consciousness of our Lord. 169

academic. The subject is pursued with an infinite
intricacy in later scholastics such as Suarez or de Lugo.
But in the result it is affirmed in the strongest way and
with complete unanimity that Christ's human soul was
from the first moment of its creation what is commonly
meant by omniscient, so that no place is left in it for faith
or hope \ and the distinction of the divine and human
consciousnesses is safeguarded only by metaphysical
refinements : as by the affirmation that Christ knew in
His human soul at the first instant of its creation and
at every moment all reality or existence of every kind,
past, present and future, with all its latent possibilities,
but not the abstract possibilities of existence which He
knew only as God ^.

It must however be noticed (i) that there is a general
sense of doubt in all the scholastic literature as to how
much of all this ratiocination is de fide\ though Petavius
decides that the opinion of those who recognize actual
limitation of knowledge in the human soul of Christ,
' though formerly it received the countenance of some
men of highest eminence, was afterwards marked as
a heresy ^.'

(2) that many of the scholastic writers, such as de Lugo,

' Smnma, p. iii. qu. vii. art. 3, 4.

^ St. Thomas, /. c. qu. x. art. 2. de Lugo, de Myst. Incarn. disp. xix.
I. Cf. Petavius, de Incarn. xi. 3. § 6 ' The soul of Christ knew all things
that are, or ever will be, or ever have been, but not what are only in posse
not in fact'

^ de Incarn. xi. i. § 15. Among recent Roman Catholic writers,
Dr. Hermann Schell, KathoUsch Dogmatik (Paderborn, 1892), shows a
disposition to criticize the scholastic determinations, and to assert the
reality of the growth and limitations of our Lord's consciousness as man.
But he is, apparently, so hampered by decisions believed to be authoritative
that in the result his position is hardly intelligible.

lyO

Dissertations.

profess to be deciding only what was true as a viattcr of
fact about our Lord : it being admitted for instance that
in abstract possibility the human mind of Christ might
even have contracted actual error. This admission of
the scholastics is valuable for us who feel that what we
have gained from the more exact study of the Gospels
is a conviction different from theirs of what was true
in fact, so far as concerns the limitation of our Lord's
human knowledge. This changed conviction of what
was true in fact leads us to welcome their abstract
admissions as to what might have been true without
overthrowing the principle of the Incarnation \

By way of comment on these scholastic conclusions,
there are two points to which it is worth while calling
attention.

J. The earlier mediaeval and scholastic method appears
to put the dogmas of the Church in a wrong place -. The
dogmas are primarily intended as limits of ecclesiastical
thought rather than as its premises : they are the hedge
rather than the pasture-ground : they block us off from
lines of error rather than edify us in the truth. By
them we are warned that Christ is no inferior being but
very God ; and that He became at His Incarnation
completely man, not in body only but in mind and
.spirit; and that remaining the same one and divine
person He yet subsists henceforth in two distinct

' (le I.ugo, de Myst. /iicarn. disp. xxi. 3. The inquiry is Ait \_Christt]
cognitio fucrit vel potiterit esse falsa ? The answer is lo fuerit, no ; to
potiterit esse, yes; according to the communis and verior opinion. Such
fallibility, it is argued, need not have interfered with His teaching office ;
might have been allowed by the divine nature, &c.

''■ I have tried to express the point also at somewhat greater length, in
B. L. pp. 106, 108.

The Consciousness of our Lord.

171

natures. But thus warned off from cardinal errors, we
are sent back to the New Testament, especially to the
Gospels, to edify ourselves in the positive conception of
what the Incarnation really meant. To Irenaeus, to
Origen, to Athanasius, the New Testament is the real
pasture-ground of the soul, and the function of the Church
is conceived to be to keep men to it. But after a time
there comes a change. The dogmas are used as the posi-
tive premises of thought. The truth about Christ's person
is formed deductively and logically from the dogmas
— whether decrees of councils or popes, or sayings of
great fathers which are ranked as authoritative — and
the figure in the Gospels grows dim in the background.
Particular texts from the Gospels which seem contrary
to current ecclesiastical teaching are quoted and re-
quoted, but though, taken together, they might have
availed to restore a more historical image of the divine
person incarnate, in fact they are taken one by one and
explained away with an ingenuity which excites in
equal degrees our admiration of the logical skill of the
disputant and our sense of the lamentably low ebb at
which the true and continuous interpretation of the
Gospel documents obviously lies.

2. The view of the Incarnation current in the Middle
Ages, which, as has been said, tended to minimize the
real apprehension of our Lord's manhood, had its roots
not only in a one-sided zeal for the Godhead of Jesus,
but also in a certain metaphysical conception of God.

What I must call the biblical idea of the Incarnation
seems to postulate that we should conceive of God as
accommodating Himself to the conditions of human life

172 Dissertations.

in order to its development and recovery. God, the
Son of God, must be conceived to exist not only-
according to His own natural mode of being, but also
really and personally under the limitations of manhood.
From this point of view the Incarnation might seem
to be the supreme and intensified example of that
general divine sympathy, by which God lives not only
in His own life but also in the life of His creatures,
and (in a sense) might fall in with a general doctrine
of the divine immanence. Such an idea of divine
sympathy and love is to be found in Christian theology
even where we should least expect it, as in the Pseudo-
Dionysius^ where he describes God as carried out of
Himself by His love for His creatures, and it is akin
to Old Testament language about God. For in the Old
Testament, if God is represented as wholly and person-
ally distinct from His creatures, yet He is constantly
represented also as following along with the fortunes of
His people, collectively and individually, with an active
and vigorous sympathy; or in other words He is con-
ceived of morally rather than metaphysically.

* de Div. Nom. iv. 13 (P. 6^. iii. p. 712) iariv koi hcaTaTiKos 6 Oeios (pojs,
ovK (wu (avTujy (Tvai Toiis fpaards, dWa Tuiv fpoj/xivcov . . . ToXixrjTfov 5«
Kal TovTo vntp uKijOda^ elneiv on Kai avTus u Trdurcov airios rcfi KaXai Kai
dyadai Twv irdvTCtiv tpaiTi Si' vnep0oKT)v rijs kpcoriKfji d-yaOuTTjros «^a) tavTov
yivtrai, rati eis rd oura irdvTa TTpovoiais Kal oiov dyaOorrjTi Kai ayanrjaei Kai
fpaiTi 6iKj(Tai.

Cf. the later (fourteenth century) mystic Nicolas Cabasilas de Vita in
Christo 6 {P. G . cl. p. 644) naOdvfp -yap ruiv dvOpinrcav rovs (p-livras i^'iOT-qai
TO ipiKrpov, orav vnfpPdWT) Kal KpuJaov yiv-qrai jwv df^afxtraiv, tuv 'iaov
rpuirov 6 v(pl Tovs dvOpcjuovs tpojs Tof Otiiv fKevwafv. I feel gratitude to
Dorner {Person of Christ, div. ii. vol. i. pp. 240 ff.), for calling attention
to this interesting author. But I cannot but think he overstates his doctrine
in this respect.

The Consciousness of our Lord. 173

On the other hand Greek philosophy was primarily
concerned to conceive of God metaphysically. He was
the One in opposition to the many objects of sense, and
the Absolute and Unchangeable in opposition to the
relative and mutable. In particular the divine immuta-
bility had a meaning assigned to it very different from that
which belongs to it in the Bible, a meaning determined
by contrast, not to the changeableness of human purpose,
but to the very idea of ' motion ' which, as belonging to
the material, was also supposed to be of the nature of
the evil. There is no doubt that this Greek meta-
physical conception of God influenced Christian theology
largely and not only for good I In particular, through
the medium of Neo-Platonism, it deeply coloured the
thought of that remarkable and anonymous author who,
writing about A.D. 500, passed himself off, probably
without any intention to deceive, as Dionysius the
Areopagite, the convert of St. Paul. With him the
metaphysical conceptions of the transcendence, incom-
prehensibility, absolute unity and immutability of God
are a master passion ^. In his general philosophy the
result of his zeal for the One is to lead him to ascribe
to the manifold life of the universe only a precarious
reality. In his view of the Incarnation it produces at
least a monophysite tendency.

Jesus, even by His human name, is regarded as
imparting illumination according to His super-essential
Godhead", or He is spoken of as by His Incarnation

' See Hatch's Hibbert Lectures 1888 (Williams & Norgate) pp. 239 iT.
^ See esp. de Div. Nom. c. xiii, and cf. Dr. Westcott's Religious Thought
in the West (Macmillan, 1891) pp. 182-5.
' de Gael. Hier, i. 2.

174 Dissertations.

bringing us back into the unity of the divine Hfe ^.
But Dionysius markedly shrinks from asserting a
really human activity of the Incarnate ; and, while
accepting the real Incarnation as delivered in tradition,
he is at pains to assert that not only did the Godhead
suffer no alteration and confusion in this unutterable
self-humiliation, but also that in respect of His
humanity Jesus was still supernatural and supersub-
stantial-; He performed human acts in a superhuman
manner ; it is hardly safe to say that he existed
or acted as man, but He must be described as ex-
hibitinfT in our manhood a new mode of ' theandric '
activity^. On the whole we feel that the humanity
of Jesus is. in the Areopagite, little but the veil for
that divine self-disclosure which is at the same time
a self-concealment^. The Incarnation becomes a partial
theophany.

Now the influence of this writer — presumed to be of
almost apostolic authority — became exceedingly great
in the west when he first appeared in the translation
by Scotus Erigena^. Erigena himself was profoundly

* dc Eccl. Il'ier. iii. 13, iv. 10.

* de Div. Nom. ii. 10. Here however he is quoting Hierotheus.

^ Ep. ad Caium Monach. 4. This word QiavZpiK^ ivkp-^tia became the
molto of the Monothehtes. Cf. de Div. Nom. ii. 9, where Christ's human
acts are said to belong to a ' supernatural physiology.'

* Ep. ad Caium, 3.

' For his influence on Thomas Aquinas see the remark of his editor,
Corderius, Ohs. xii. {P. G. iii. pp. 90 ff.), ' Facile p.atct,' he concludes,
' angclicum doctorem totam feic doctrinam thcologicam c.k purissimis
Dionysii fontibus hausisse, cum vix ullasit periodus e qua non ipse tanquam
apis argiimentosa theologicum succum extraxerit ct in Summam, veluti quod-
dam alveare, pluribus quaeslioiiibus aiticulisque, ecu cellulis, theologico
melle [? mellij servando distlnctum, redegerit.'

77?^ Consciousness of our Lord. 175

affected b}- him \ and he in turn diffused in a later age
the influence he had received ^. Thus early scholastic
philosophy is largely dominated by a neo-platonic
rather than Christian idea of the Incarnation, — that
the incomprehensible God partially manifests Himself
under a human veil : the manhood is but the tempo-
rary or permanent robe^ of Godhead. In an extreme
form this idea came to be known as Nihilianism.

The eternal Son, it was said, became, in becoming
incarnate, nothing He was not before. The humanity
is no addition to His person : it is but the robe of
Godhead, and the robe is no addition to the wearer's
person, but simply gives appropriateness to His ap-
pearance. This view is stated, among others, by Peter
Lombard '^.

' Sunt etiam alii qui in incarnatione Verbi non solum
personam ex naturis compositam negant, verum etiam
hominem aliquem sive etiam aliquam substantiam ibi
ex anima et carne compositam vel factam diffitentur.
Sed sic ilia duo, scilicet animam et carnem, Verbi per-
sonae vel naturae unita esse aiunt, ut non ex illis duo-
bus vel ex his tribus aliqua natura vel persona fieret
sive componeretur, sed illis duobus velut indumento
Verbum Dei vestiretur ut mortalium oculis concrruenter

'tj'

' His view of the Incarnation is best seen in dc Div. Nat. v. 25 27 : and
see further, pp. 240 n. a, 281.

- Not to any great extent at once or in his own lifetime. The influence
of Scotus and Dionysius becomes more apparent in the twelfth century.

' Apparently the phraseolcigy of the 'robe' was first brought into
prominence in the school of Apollinarius of Laodicea. His moderate
disciple Jovius spoke of the flesh of Christ as the (ttoXt) Kal iripiliuXaiov nal
irpoKaKv/xpia {xvai-qpiov KpviTTOfifvov (in Leontius Lyz. P.O. Ixx.wi. pp. 1956 b,
i960 a).

* Sentt. lib. iii. dist. 6 f. Cf. dist. 10.

176 Dissertations.

appareret. . . . Ipsa persona Verbi quae prius erat sine
indumento, assumptione indumenti non est divisa vel
mutata, sed una eademque immutata permansit.' Among
the authorities for this position St. Augustine is quoted,
commenting on the Latin version of PhiHppians ii. 7
Jiabitu inventus est nt homo \ Habitus, Augustine says,
always means something which is an unessential accident
or appendage of something else : ' manifestum est in ea
re dici habitum quae accidit vel accedit alicui, ita ut earn
possit etiam non habere.' But different sorts of habitus
may be distinguished according as the accession of the
habitus produces or does not produce a change in the
possessor of it, or in the habitus itself. The humanity of
Christ, he decides, belongs to the class of habitus which
do not change their possessors but are themselves
changed, as for example is the case with a robe. And
he continues, ' Deus enim filius semetipsum exinanivit,
non formam suam mutans, sed formam servi accipiens . . .
verum hominem suscipiendo habitu inventus est tit homo,
id est habendo hominem inventus est ut homo, non sibi,
sed eis quibus in homine apparuit.'

Peter Lombard does not in this passage decide in
favour of this view, but in fact he appears to have held
it as his opinion, without positively asserting it-. This

^ de div. quacst. Ixxxiii. qn. 73.

2 John of Cornwall (c. i i7o\ Peter Lombard's pupil and in this respect
opponent, is explicit on this point See Eulogiiun ad Alex. Hi. in P. L.
cxcix. pp. 1052-3 'Quod vcro a magistro Petro Abaelardo hanc opinionem
suam magister Pctrus Lombardus accepit, eo magis suspicatus sum, quia
librum ilium frequenter prae manibus habebat . , . Opinionem suam dixi.
Quod enim fuerit haec eius opinio certum est. Quod vcro non fuerit
eius assertio haec, ipse testatur in capitulo suo. . . . Practcrea, paulo
antequam clectus csset in episcopum parisiensem, mihi et omnibus auditori-
bus eius qui tunc aderant protestatus est, quod haec non esset assertio sua,
sed opinio sola quam a magi.-tro acccpcrat. Haec enim verba subiecit :

The Consciousness of oitr Lord. 177

theory that God in becoming incarnate did not become
aliqiiid or nihil /actus est qiiod 11011 fuer it ante is what
is called Nihilianism, and becoming widely diffused
created such scandal that it was condemned by Alex-
ander III in 1177^ In f^ict, such a plainly monophysite
position could not but be condemned, but the ideas
which prompted it were neither condemned nor dis-
carded. In spite of the fact that a suspicion of heresy
attached itself to the phraseology of the vestis or
habitus, as applied to the humanity of our Lord, it
was still employed^; and the metaphysical conception
of the immutability of God, in a sense different to the
scriptural, still held ground. The fact was not really
faced that God in becoming man really submitted
Himself to the conditions of human life. Just as in the
theology of nature all the emphasis was (if I may so
express it) on the fact that nature is in God and little
on the fact that God is in nature, so in regard to the

ncc tinqnam Deo volente erit asscrtio mca, nisi qtiae fuerit fides catholica.
Postea vero per quondam homines loquaces magis quam perspicaces quae
nee in cubilibus essent audienda usque hodie praedicantur super tecta.'

' The chief theologian of the controversy was John of Cornwall. His
conclusion (in the Eulogiiim, c. 20) is that ' Christus est aliquis homo et
utique sanctissimus et beatissimus hominum ; et quod Christus secundum
humanitatem est aliquid, et utique verus homo animalis, verum corpus,
nalura, substantia, unum totum.' The Pope (see Mansi, Concil. xxi. p. 1081)
bids the archbishop of Rheims to summon the magistri of Paris and Rheims
and neighbouring towns to condemn the proposition ' quod Christus non sit
aliquid secundum quod est homo.' I do not think it has been noticed that
there is an apparent connexion between the doctrine of nihilianism in
reference to Christ and that of transubstantiation in regard to the eucharist.
This is pointed out in the next dissertation.

''■ See quotations in Landriot, Le Christ de la Tradition (Paris, 1888)
i. p. 84 and note i, esp. St. Thom. Aquinas ' sicut vestis formatur secundum
formam vestientis et non mutat vestientem, inde antiqui dixerunt quod vergit
in accidens.'

178 Dissertations.

Incarnation all the emphasis is on the fact that behind
the veil of the humanity is God, not on the fact that
God was really made man.

It is significant of the same tendency of thought
that the theological speculatiim of the time tended
more and more to deprive of relationship^ of movement
and life, the conception of the divine nature in itself.
So immutably one was it necessary to conceive the
Godhead to be, that Peter Lombard denied that the
divine nature, as distinguished from the divine
persons, can be described as either ' generating ' or
' generated ' or ' proceeding.' Such a doctrine, which
repudiates a mode of expression familiar in the fathers,
produced a strenuous protest from Richard of St Victor^
with others. He defied its maintainers to produce
even a single father as authorizing such a denial. The
challenge was perhaps impossible to meet, but, none
the less, the fourth Lateran Council in 1215 — the same
which affirmed transubstantiation — defended the Master
of the Sentences and gave his opinion dogmatic authority ^.
Anglican writers — such as Bull and Bingham" — have

' de Trin. vi. 22 (/*. L. cxcvi. p. 986) ' Prociil diibio nihil aliud est
Patris persona quam substantia ingenita, nihil aliud Filii persona quam
substantia genita. Sed niulti temporibus nostris sune.xere qui non audent
hoc dicere, quin potius, quod multo periculosius est, contra sanctorum
patrum auctoritatem . . . audent negare ct omniljus modis conantur refellere,
nullo niodo coneedunl quod substantia gignat substantiam . . . AflVrant,
si possunt, auctoritatem, non dicam plures sed saltern unam, quae neget
substantiam gignere sub-tantiam.'

* Mansi, Concil. xxii. p. 983 ' Ilia res [divina natura] non est generans
neque genita nee jirocedens : sed est Pater qui general, Filius qui gignitur, et
Spiritus sanctus qui procedit : ut distiiictiones siiit in pcrsonis ct unitas in
natura.'

^ See Bull, Dcf. Fid. Nic. iv. i . 9 {Library of Anglo -Cath. Thcol ii. p. 568) :

The Consciousness of oitr Lord. 179

treated the decision with little respect, and indeed it
appears not only highly precarious in itself but also to
have its origin in a false metaphysical conception of
unity and immutability.

§ 9.
Tlie theology of t/ie Reformation \

How the scholastic theology was presenting itself to
thoughtful minds at the beginning of the sixteenth
century, we may judge from the attitude towards it of
Erasmus^ and Colet. Erasmus is, of course, violent in
the expression of his antipathy. But that antipathy
itself he had in part imbibed from Colet, or at the
least Colet had confirmed it. He tells us how in the
course of conversation he had at last extracted from

he describes Petavius as unable to ' whitewash ' this view, which is a piece
of ' scholastic trifling.' And Bingham's Ser/non on the Trinity ( IVorks,
X. 377, Oxford, 1S55), who quotes the fathers more or less at length.

' In this section I have depended mucli upon Doiner (^Doctrine of the
Person of Christ) and Bruce \^The Humiliation of Christ) for the history
of opinion.

^ Nowhere does Erasmus' attitude towards current theology appear more
strikingly than in the Amiotations appended to his edition of the New
Testament in Greek (1516^ e.g. on i Tim. i. 4 ^ a-ntpavToi's, cuiusmodi fere
nunc sunt vulgarium theologorutn quodlibeta. Nam quo plus est eiusmodi
quaestiuncularum hoc plus etiam subscatet.' Again on i Tim. i. 6
' fj.aTaioKo'^ia. Quantum ad pronunciationem attinet mataeologia non
multum abest a theologia, cum res inter se plurimum discrepent. Proinde
nobis quoque cavendum est ne sic sectemur theologiam ut in mataeologiam
incidaraus,de frivolis nugis sine fine digladiantes, ea potius tractemus quae
nos transforment in Christum et caelo dignos reddant.'

N 2

i8o Dissertations.

Colet, who showed great unwilh'ngness to speak on the
subject, a condemnation even of Aquinas ^. Erasmus
had been excepting Aquinas from a general condemna-
tion of scholastics. ' Colet turned his full eye upon him
in order to learn whether he really was speaking in
earnest ; and concluding that it was so, " What," he
said, with a sort of inspired force {taiiquam afflatus
spiritu quodajn), '' do you extol to me such a man as
Aquinas? If he had not been possessed with arrogance,
he would not have defined everything with so much
temerity and pride ; and if he had not had something
of the worldly spirit he would not have corrupted the
whole doctrine of Christ with his profane philosophy." '
This is no doubt a hard unsympathetic judgement on
Aquinas personally, but coming from a man like Colet
it is an important judgement on the method which he
represents. The experience of the scholastic system
inspired in Colet's mind a passionate desire to return
to simplicity — to the Bible and the Apostles' Creed ^.
And no one can interpret the Reformation rightly, on its

* Erasmus, Ep. 435, Opei-a (Lyons, 1703) iii. p. 458 and cf. Seebohm,
Oxford Kef orme7-s (Longmans, 1S69) pp. 102 flf. Froude, Life and Letters
of Erasmus (Longmans, 1894) pp. 106, &c.

^ Seebohm, /. c. p. 106. See Erasmus, Ep. 207 ' Optarim frigidns
istas argutias ant amputari prorsus aut ccrte solas non esse tlieologis, et
Christum ilium simplicem ac purum penitus inseri mentibus hominum : id
quod hac potissinium via fieri posse cxistimo si linguaium adminiculis adiuti
in ijjsis fontibus pliilosnphcmur.' Ep. 329 ' Quae jiertincnt ad fidem quam
paucissimis articulis absolvantur.' Ep. 613 (to Archbp. of Palermo) ' Ea
[pax] vix constare poterit, nisi de quam potest paucissimis dcfiniamus et in
multis liberum relinquamus suum cuique iudicium, propterea quod ingens
sit rcrum plurimarum obscuritas, et hoc morbi fere innatum sit hominum
ingeniis ut cedeie nesciant simul atque res in contentionem vocata est ; quae
postquam incaluit, hoc cuique videtur verissimum quod tcmere tucndum
susceperit.' The whole of this letter is of the greatest interest.

The Consciousness of our Lord. i8i

religious side, who does not bear in mind the existence
of a wide-spread and passionate desire to get back to
the Christ of the Gospels and the primitive Church.

In the case of Luther, this return to the Christ of the
Gospels at once produced a belief in properly human
limitations of knowledge in our Lord's manhood. ' Ac-
cording to the plain sense of Luke's words (ii. 52), in
the simplest manner possible, it really took place that
the older Christ grew, the greater He grew : the greater,
the more rational ; the more rational, the stronger in
spirit and the fuller of wisdom before God, in Himself
and before the people. These words need no gloss.
Such a view too is attended with no danger and is
Christian ; whether it contradicts the articles of faith
imagined by scholastics or not is of no consequence ^.'
So he emphasizes tlie human reality of our Lord's
temptation and desolation. This ethical reality of our
Lord's manhood he interpreted, not by any theory of
the divine self-emptying — for he made the already
Imman Christ the nominative to eKevMaev in Phil. ii. 6 —
but by a view which tends in the Nestorian direction.
His language seems to postulate a separate personality
for the human nature of Christ, and though he believes
the man Jesus to have been indissolubly united to the
Godhead from the first, yet he conceives the effects of
the union to have been only gradually imparted to him^.
This quasi-Nestorian tendency, however, was checked in

* Luther's Opera, ' KiixhoipostiUe' (Walch, xi. pp. 389-90). See Domer,
I.e. div. ii. vol. ii. pp. 91 ff.

^ See Dorner, I.e. pp. 95-100, and note S, p. 391. In the above passage
I have adopted Dorner s view of Luther's early theory, which his references
seem to me to justify. But see Bruce, I.e. lect. iii. note A, p. 373.

i82 Dissertations.

Luther by the sacramental controversy. Driven to defend
the doctrine of the real presence of our Lord's body and
blood in the sacrament of the eucharist by a theory of
the ubiquity of our Lord even in His humanity, he was
led to speak of this ubiquity as resulting from the union
of the divine and human natures, and of the covnminicatio
idioviaiuni from one to the other as existing from the
beginning of the Incarnation ^ This led to a develop-
ment of thought in a Monophysite rather than a Nesto-
rian direction and this rival tendency, which renders
Luther's Christology very difficult to understand as
a whole, became dominant in the Lutheran schools.
It resulted in the formation of a Christology based on
ubiquitarianism, which Dr. A. B. ]3ruce, without undue
severity, pronounces to be, to an amazing extent, 'arti-
ficial, unnatural, and incredibleV

Meanwhile the Reformed (Zvvinglian) theologians, in
strong opposition to the Lutheran interpretation of the
cominunicatio idiomatiLvi '^, were emphasizing the distinct

^ Dorner, /. c. pp. 127, 132-4, 13S-9.

* Bruce, I.e. p. 83.

- To the doctiirie they held, sec Niemeycr, Collcctio CoiifessiomiTH Leip-
zig, 1840), pp.485 {Coufcssio Helvetica posterior), 632 {Kepetitio Anhaltina).
but in its original sense. The phrase di'TiSoeris l5iajfj.dTaii' was originally used
— first apparently by Leontius of Byzantium — to express the transference, not
so much of qualities, as of names appropriate to one of our Lord's natures
to the other in virtue of the unity of His person. See Leoiit. Byz. eon.
Nestor, et Etityeh. i (/'. G. Ixxxvi. p. 1289 c) oQiv r]\xih Kara ras Odas
ypatpai nal toj -nar ponapaSuTovs Ofojpias woWoKts ru oXou he jxipovs Koi to.
/J-fprj rfi Toii o\ov icXijad -rrpoaayoptvofXfv, v'luv uvOpwirov tov \6yov vvofia-
foi'Tfs Koi Kvpiov TTJi So^Tjs ((TTavpwaOat u/JoXoyovvTfs, d\A' ov uapa tovto tT;
dvTiSuOfi Twv l!)ioJi.i(iTa'y avaipov^fv tuv 'iTnov Xiynv rrji Oarfpov tr ravTw
iSLoTTjTOi. Trpif 5f Kal dia Kvpiajv tjixii' lavTa tCjv uvofiarajv yicDp't^frai, tt)v
fitv dfTiSoatv Toif iStaj/j.a.TCJi' fv rjj fiia vnoaTaaet Otaipovcn, t^v dk Idtorr/Ta rr^i'
(If rrj KOivoTqri iv tt) Sta(]>npf twv (pvcrtoju iTTtyivwaicovaiv. Cf. adv. y4r!^.
Sever, p. 1941 a ov yap dvTtSoais 6.v tHiv iSicofirWaii' iyivtro (I /xrj h' kicaripo)

TJie Consciousness of our Lord. 183

existence in Christ incarnate both of the human nature
and of its properly human attributes, inckiding the
limitation of knowledge. This limitation of knowledge
was believed to have been made possible by a ' self-
emptying' on the part of the eternal Word, by which
the divines of this school appear to have meant a hiding
or withholding of the divine attributes (omniscience, &c.)
from the human mind. But not much was done to
elucidate the conception or to reconcile the dual con-
sciousness of Christ — the gemina mens — with the unity
of His person. Later writers have indeed suggested
that the doctrine of a ' double life' of the Word was in
the minds of some of these teachers — a distinction
between the Logos toliis extra Jesinn, living His own
proper life in the Godhead, and the Logos totns in Jesu,
that is the same divine Word living another self-limited
life as the incarnate Christ. This suggestion, however, is
not based on very clear evidence. Of the idea itself we
shall hear again in connexion with Martensen.

Subsequently to the reunion of German Lutherans
and Reformed in the Evangelical Church (i 817), 'kenotic'
views, extreme and moderate, have prevailed among

efieivi KOI kv tt) kvwan fj IStorrji aKiv-qTos. Cf. John Damasc. de Fid. Ortho-
dox, iii. c. 4, and note of P. M. Lequien. The same idea was expressed
by Gregory Naz. as t) twv ovofjiaTajv erri^ev^is, (iraKKaTTOfievwv tuiv ovo-
fxcLTtuv 5id t)]v av-yKpaaiv, by Gregory Nyss. in the phrase avTifXiOiaTavTai
ra dvo/xaTa, and it became the commonplace of Chalcedonian theology.
St. Thomas Aquinas also in later days expresses the same idea, but does
not use the phrase (see Summa, p. iii. qu. xvi. art. 4 and 5"). In this sense
then — of names, not of qualities — the phrase was used by the Reformed ;
see Kcpctit. Anhalt. (as above) ' est enim coinmunicatio \dXovi\'x\.\\xa pracdicatio
seu forma loquendi (]ua . . . (rihuitur. etc.' But, as would be supposed,
theologians of all schools continually tend to pass, like Luther, from names
to qualities.

i84 Dissertations.

Protestant theologians in Germany and in Switzerland
and there has been also a recurrence (on Dorner s part)
to Luther's earlier view. Of these various doctrines I will
describe in outline four typical specimens^

I. The absolute kenotic view, advocated in Germany
by Gess -, shall be represented by the great Neuchatel
theologian, M. GODET. Commenting on St. John i. I4^
he says,

' The proposition, -'The Word became flesh," can only,
as it seems to me, signify one thing, viz. that the divine
subject entered into the human mode of being at the cost
of renouncing His divine mode of being . , . — incarna-
tion by deprivation (KeVcoin?).' The idea is further
elaborated later on*.

' Does Scripture, while clearly teaching the eternal
existence of the Word, teach at the same time the
presence of the divine state and attributes in Jesus
during the course of His life on earth? We have seen
that the formula of John i. 14 is incompatible with such
an idea. The expression. " The Word was made flesh''
speaks certainly of a divine subject, but as reduced to
the state of man, which, as we have seen, does not at all
suppose the two states, the divine and the human, as
co-existing in it. Such a notion is set aside by exegesis
as well as by logic. The impoverishment of Christ, of
which Paul speaks 2 Cor. viii. 9, His voluntary self-
abasement, described Phil. ii. 6, 7, equally imply His
renunciation of the divine state at the moment when He
entered upon human existence. The facts of the Gospel

' For fuller informatio:i see Bruce, /. c. lect. iv.

* Bruce, /. c. i>p. I44fr.

3 Gospel of St. John '.Engl, trans. Clark) i. p. 362. Godct intimates
(p. 401) th.Tt he is ill substantial, but not complete, agreement with (less.

* pp. 396 ff-

The Consciousness of our Lord. 185

history are at one with those apostoHc declarations,
. . . Jesus no longer possesses on earth the attributes
which constitute the divine state. Omniscience He has
not, for He asks questions, and Himself declares His
ignorance on one point (Mark xiii. 32). He possesses
a pre-eminent prophetic vision (John iv, 17, 18), but
this vision is not omniscience. No more does He possess
omnipotence, for He prays and is heard ; as to His
miracles, it is the Father who works them in His favour
(xi. 42, V. 36). He is equally destitute of omnipresence.
His love even, perfect as it is, is not divine love. This
is immutable. But who will assert that Jesus in His
cradle loved as He did at the age of twelve, or at the age
of twelve as He did on the cross ? Perfect relatively, at
every given moment, His love grew from day to day,
both in regard to the intensity of His voluntary self-
sacrifice, and as to the extent of the circle which it
embraced. It was thus a truly human love. " The grace
which is by one viau, Jesus Christ," says St. Paul for this
reason (Rom. v. 15). His holiness is also a human holi-
ness, for it is realized every moment only at the cost
of struggle, through the renunciation of legitimate enjoy-
ment and victory over the natural fear of pain (xii. 25,
27, xvii. 19 a). It is so human that it is to pass over
into us and become ours (xvii. 19 b). All those texts
clearly prove that Jesus while on the earth, did not
possess the attributes which constitute the divine state,
and hence He can terminate His earthly career by
claiming back again the glory which He had before His
incarnation (xvii. 5).

How is such a self-deprivation on the part of
a divine being conceivable? It was necessary, first
of all, that He should consent to lose for a time His
self-consciousness as a divine subject. The memory
of a divine life anterior to His eartidy existence would

i86 Dissertations.

have been incompatible with the state of a true child
and a really human development. And in fact the
Gospel texts nowhere ascribe to Jesus a self-conscious-
ness as Logos before the time of His baptism. The
word which He uttered at the age of twelve (Luke ii. 49)
simply expresses the feeling of an intimate relation to
God and of a filial consecration to His service. With
a moral fidelity like His, and in the permanent enjoy-
ment of a communion with God which sin did not alter,
the child could call God His Father in a purely religious
sense, and apart from any consciousness of a divine prc-
existence. The feeling of His redemptive mission must
have been developed in His earliest years, especially
through His experience of tlie continual contrast between
His moral purity and the sin which He saw staining all
those who surrounded Him. . . . According to the
biblical account, the Logos, in becoming incarnate, did
therefore really put off His consciousness of His divine
being, and of the state corresponding to it. This self-
deprivation was the negative condition of the Incarna-
tion. . . .

Up to the age of thirty Jesus fulfils this task [of redemp-
tion]. By His perfect obedience and constant sacrifice of
self He raises humanity in His person from innocence to
holiness. He does not yet know Himself; perhaps in
the light of Scripture He begins dimly to forecast what
He is in relation to God. But the distinct consciousness
of His dignity as Logos would not be compatible with
the reality of His human development and the accom-
ph'shment of the task assigned to this first period of His
life. This task once fulfilled, the conditions of His
existence change. A new work opens up to Him, and
the consciousness of His dignity as the well-beloved
Son. far from being incompatible with the work which
He has still to carry out, becomes its indispensable basis.

The Consciousness of our Lord. 187

To testify of God as the FatJicr, He must necessarily
know Himself as tJic Son. The baptism is the decisive
event which begins this new phase. . . . Henceforward
He will be able to say what He could not say before :
^'' Before AbraJiain was 1 aniT . . . Yet His baptism, while
restoring to Jesus His consciousness of sonship, did not
restore Him to His filial state, the divine form of God
belonging to Him. There is an immense disproportion
between what He knows Himself to be and what He is
really. Therein there will be for Him the possibility of
temptation ' ; therein the work of patience. Master of
all, He possesses nothing. No doubt He lays out on
His work treasures of wisdom and power which are in
God, but solely because His believing and filial heart is
constantly appealing to the fatherly heart of God.

It was by His ascension that His return to the divine
state was accomplished, and that His position was at
last raised to the level of the se\^-conscio?isness which He
had from His baptism. From that time He was clothed
with all the attributes of the divine state which He
possessed before His incarnation; but He was clothed
with them as tJic Son of Man, All the ftdness of the
Godhead henceforth dwells in Him, but humanly, and
even as Paul says, BODILY (Col. ii. 9).'

' We do not think it necessary to treat here the ques-
tions which are raised as to the internal relations of the
Divine Persons, by the view which we have been explain-
ing regarding the dogma of the Incarnation, For the
very reason that we hold the divine existence of the
Son to be a matter of love [the bosom of the Father) and
not of necessity as with Philo, we think that, when the
Word descends into the world there to become Himself

' In his note on the temptation (St. Luke iv) M. Godet says, 'The Son
was capable of sin, because He had renounced the divine mode ot
existence.'

i88 Dissertations.

one of the beings of the universe, the Father can enter
into direct relation to the world, and Himself exercise
the functions of Creator and Preserver which He com-
monly exercises through the mediation of the Word ^'

Accordine to this view the Son in becoming incarnate
ceases to live the life of Godhead altogether or to exercise
His cosmic functions. Gess specifies further that the
eternal generation of the Son and the procession of the
Holy Spirit through the Son, were suspended from the
time of the incarnation to that of the glorification of
Christ: and further maintains that the Word, thus
depotentiated, took the place of the human soul in Jesus,
as actually having become a human soul ^.

I hope in what was said in the first part of this essay
I have saved myself from the imputation of underrating
the laree element of truth there is in such views as these.
But they are open to two main objections. First, they
are based on an exaggerated and one-sided view of the
phenomena of the Gospel. There are no facts justifying
any theory at all as to the loss by our Lord during the
period of childhood and growth of the consciousness of
His eternal son.ship and its gradual recovery. One may
speculate, but there are no facts. Again, our Lord's
attitude towards sin never exhibits any trace of pecca-
bility. Nor can the doctrine that the love of Jesus
Christ was not strictly divine love be fairly reconciled
with such language as 'He that hath seen me hath seen
the Father •'.' Secondly, so far as this view postulates an

' p. 403 note : cf. also the statement of M. Godct's view in Defence of
the Christian Faith (Clark, Edinburgh) pp. 300-1.

^ Bruce, I.e. pp. 14S-50. ^ St. Jolin xiv. 9.

The Consciousness of our Lord. 189

absolute abandonment by the Son during the period of
His humiliation of His position and function in the
Blessed Trinity and in the universe, it has against it the
strongest considerations. To begin with, it must reckon
with a weight of Church judgement such as no thought-
ful Christian, Catholic or Protestant, can underrate.
But more than this : it is opposed to the fairly plain im-
plications of the very apostolic writers who impress upon
us the reality of the kcnosis, St. Paul and the author
of the Epistle to the Hebrews'; while, on the ground of
reason, the assumption of the surrender on the part of
the Son of such a divine function as that of mediating
the procession of the Holy Ghost, or such a cosmic
function as maintaining the universe in being and
unity, is in itself so tremendous that nothing short of
a positive apostolic statement could drive one to con-
template it.

2. The partial kenotic vieiv, maintained first in
Germany by Thomasius ^ and later, though with great
obscurity and ambiguity, by Prof. Franz Delitzsch ^, shall
be represented here by its recent representative in
England, Dr. Fairbairn ^

' But what to the Evangelists did incarnation mean ?
It meant the coming to be, not of a Godhead, but of
a manhood. Its specific result was a human, not
a divine, person, whose humanity was all the more real
that it was voluntary or spontaneous, all the more
natural that God, rather than man, had to do with its
making. To the Evangelists the most miraculous thing

^ See above, pp. 91-3. ^ Bruce, I.e. pp. 138 ff.

' Biblical Psychology (Eng. tians. Clark 1 pp. 3S2 ff.

* Christ iti ModevJi Theology ^Hodder & Stoughton, 1S93) pp. 354, 476.

igo Dissertations.

in Christ was His determination not to be miraculous,
but to live our ordinary life amidst struggles and in the
face of temptations that never ceased. One principle
ruled throughout : the motives that governed the divine
conduct governed also the human. This principle and
these motives may be described as the law of sacrifice.
The Father denied Himself in giving the Son ; the Son
denied Himself in becoming man and in living as the
man He had become. Looking up from below, it was
all one infinite kcnosis : looking down from above, it
was all one infinite sacrifice. But kenosis and sacrifice
alike meant that, while He assumed the fashion of the
man and the form of the servant, both the manhood and
the servitude, in order to cither having any significance,
had to be as real as the Godhead and the sovereignty. . . .
This act is described as a kenosis, an emptying of
Himself. Now, this is precisely the kind of term we
should expect to be used if the Incarnation was a reality.
It must have involved surrender, humiliation ; there
could be no real assumption of the nature, the form, and
the status of the created Son, if those of the uncreated
were in all their integrity retained. These two things,
the surrender and the assumption, are equal and coinci-
dent ; but it is through the former that the latter must
be understood. VVe may express what it means by
saying that the Incarnation, while it was not of the whole
Godhead, only of the Son, yet concerned the Godhead
as a whole. And this carries with it an important con-
sequence. Physical attributes are essential to God, but
ethical terms and relations to the Godhead. In other
words, the external attributes of God are omnipotence,
omniscience, omnipresence ; but the internal are truth
and love. But the external are under the command of
the internal ; God acts as the Godhead Is. The external
alone might constitute a creator, but not a deity ; the

The Consciousness of our Lord. 191

internal would make out of a deity the creator. What-
ever then could be surrendered, the ethical attributes
and qualities could not ; but God may only seem the
more Godlike if, in obedience to the ethical, He limit or
restrain or veil the physical. We reverence Him the
more that we think the annihilation so easy to His
omnipotence is made impossible by His love. No such
impossibilities would be known to an almighty devil; he
would glory in destruction as much as God glories in
salvation. We may say then that what marks the
whole life of Deity is the regulation of His physical by
His ethical attributes, or the limitation of God by the
Godhead. But this same principle supplies us with
a factor for the solution of our problem. The salvation
of the sinner was a moral necessity to the Godhead ; but
no such necessity demanded that each of the Divine
Persons should every moment exercise all the physical
attributes of God. And this surrender the Son made
when He emptied Himself and assumed the form of
a servant, and was made in the likeness of man. The
determinative divine qualities were obeyed, and the
determined limited : yet it was, as it were, the renuncia-
tion of the less in order to the realization of the more
Godlike qualities. " The Word became flesh, and dwelt
among us ; " but we only the more " beheld his glory,
glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of
grace and truth '' ' (John i. 14).

Now this view differs from the view of M. Godet, as
making plainer the real continuity of divine life in the
Incarnation. It maintains a real continuity of conscious
life so far as the ethical qualities of the Son of God are
concerned. But it distinguishes His ethical from His
physical attributes, and conceives Him as abandoning
the latter absolutely in becoming incarnate. Thus, as

192 Dissertations.

much as M. Godet, Dr. Fairbairn postulates that Christ
did absolutely abandon His relation of equality with God
and His functions in the universe. But it is chiefly from
this point of view that the view of M. Godet was criti-
cized, and the same considerations apply to this more
moderate but hardly, I think, more tenable view.

3. The theory of tJie double life of the JVord. This
view, which has found incidental expression by
Mr. R. H. Hutton in England \ is expressed most
formally by the Danish Bishop Martensen ^.

' In that He thus lived as a man, and as " the Son of
Man" possessed His Deity solely under the conditions
imposed by a human individuality in the limited forms
of a human consciousness, we may undoubtedly say of
Him that He lived in humiliation and poverty, because
He had renounced that majestic glory by which, as the
omnipresent Logos, He irradiates the entire creation. . . .

We are to see in Christ, not the naked God, but ///e
fulness of Deity framed in the ring of hnmajiity ; not
the attributes of the divine nature in their unbounded
infinitude, but the divine attributes embodied in the
attributes of human nature {communicatio idiomatiini).
Instead of the omnipresence we have that blessed pre-
sence, concerning which the God-man testifies, " He that
seeth me seeth the Father" (John xiv. c;)'': in the place
of omniscience comes the divinely human wisdom which
reveals to babes the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven;
in the place of the world-creating omnipotence enters
the world-vanquishing and world-completing power, the
infinite power and fulness of love and holiness in virtue

' Thcol. Essays (Macmillan, 1888) p. 269.

* Christian Dogmatics (Clark's Foreign Thcol. Libr.) pp. 266-7.

' See also MaU. .xxviii. 20.

The Consciousness of otir Lord. 193

of which the God-man was able to testify '' All power is
given to me in heaven and on earth " (Matt, xxviii. 18).
Still, there are not two Sons of God, but one Son ;
Christ did not add a new second Son to the Trinity;
the entire movement takes place within the circle of the
Trinity itself. At the same time, it must be allowed
that the Son of God leads in the economy of the Father
a twofold existence ; that He lives a double life in His
world-creating and in His world-completing activity.
As the pure Logos of Deity, He works through the king-
dom of nature by His all-pervading presence, creates the
pre-suppositions and conditions of the revelation of His
all-completing love. As the Christ, He works through
the kingdom of grace, of redemption, and perfection,
and points back to His pre-existence (John viii. 58,
xvii. 5).'

To this view — perhaps I should rather say to this
attempt to adumbrate a line of thought — there is, I think,
no objection except the difficulty of conceiving it. It
accounts for all the scriptural language on both sides,
and it is reconcilable with the authoritative decisions of
the Church. As to its being rationally conceivable or
suggestive something will be said later on ^

4. In opposition to kenotic theories DoRNER's view^
may be described as that of a gradual incarnation.
He repudiates the idea of 'a lessening or reduction of
the Logos Himself : he prefers to speak of ' a limitation
of the self-communication of the Logos to humanity.'
But how does this help us then to understand the

* See § 3, p. 215 f.

^ See System of Christian Doctrine (Clark's Foreign Theol. Libr.) iii.
pp. 308 ff. ; Doctr. of the Person of Christ, div. ii. vol. iii. p. 250.

194 Dissertations.

limitation of our Lords consciousness in the flesh, if
He personally is the omniscient Logos? Dorner would
meet this difficulty by repudiating the doctrine of the
impersonal manhood and postulating, within the life
of the divine personality of the Word, a complete and
therefore personal humanity as assumed by Him. Jesus
was a human person — ' this man ' — whom the Word had
from the first personally assumed into Himself and with
whom He was inseparably united, but who none the
less retained the personal independence of his manhood
sufficiently to make possible the development of a pro-
perly human consciousness and the gradual communica-
tion to him of the divine consciousness, till at last there
resulted the development of one perfect divine-human
person and the Incarnation was complete and absolute.
' This incarnation,' he says, 'may be termed an increasing
one in so far as through it, on the one hand, an ever
higher and richer fulness becomes actually the property
of the man Jesus, and he, on the other hand, becomes
ever more completely the mundane expression of the
eternal Son the Image of God.'

Dorner's exposition of his idea is diffuse and difficult
to state, nor is it easy to make c|uotations that are
intelligible and of reasonable length. In the above
explanation of his view it has become, I fear, a little too
pronounced — too Nestorian in sound. Dorner empha-
sizes that the Man is really, personally and inseparably
united to the Word from the first : that the humanity is
not more separately personal than is involved in being
(according to Boetius' definition of personality) animae
rationalis individiia substantia: he regards the real

The Consciousness of our Lord. 195

personality of the Christ as a divine-human personality
gradually perfected through the unity of the natures.

But however much modified — however much it has
its sharp edges taken off — this view appears to me to
be still at the bottom Nestorian and unscriptural. The
person Jesus Christ when He was on earth remembered
His eternal past. ' Before Abraham was,' He says/ 1 am';
He recalls the glory which He had with the Father
before the world was. His ' ego.' therefore, is the eternal
Ego. Or again, ' No one knoweth the day and hour,
not the angels, neither the Son." Here the speaker is
the super-angelic, supra-mundane Son. He, that person,
had come down from heaven and went back to heaven.
There is (as far as human thought or language can take
us) only one person, one ego, and that ego the eternal
Son, who for us men and our salvation assumed a human
nature in its completeness, and willed to live and think
and pray and work and speak under its limitations. In
a word we do not think Dorner's view is reconcilable
fundamentally either with the dogma of Ephesus (or
indeed the Nicene Creed) or with the theology of the
New Testament. It has also the defect that it does not
interpret but confuses the theological language to which
it yet professes to hold fast. Any Catholic profession
of faith is, we feel sure, bound to generate in the minds
of thoughtful persons reading Scripture in its light
a conception of Christ's person which Dorner's view will
not illuminate or tend to make rationally consistent,
but will only throw into confusion.

With the more markedly and confessedly unorthodox
German views we are not here concerned.

O 1

196 Dissertations.

§ 10.
The Anglican theology.

The characteristic of the Anghcan Church has been
from the first that of combining steadfast adherence to
the structure and chief formulas of the Church Catholic
with the ' return to Scripture ' which was the central
religious motive of the Reformation. This has resulted
in a theology of the Incarnation from Hooker down-
wards, which has been catholic, scriptural, rich in
expression and application, but reserved and unscholastic
in character. On the subject of our Lord's human con-
sciousness there has been a marked unwillingness to
theorize or even to speak ^. Perhaps among the classical
Anglican divines Hooker, as he is little occupied with
Scripture in detail but more with the fathers, comes
nearest to the later patristic and mediaeval view.

Thus ^, speaking of the unction of our Lord's manhood
by His Godhead, he says :

' For as the parts, degrees, and offices of that mystical
administration did require which He voluntarily under-
took, the beams of Deity did in operation always accord-
ingly either restrain or enlarge themselves. From hence
we may somewhat conjecture how the powers of that
soul are illuminated, which being so inward unto God

' Pearson, for example, says nothing (as far as I can discover) on the
liubjcct. ^ Eccl. Pol. V. 54. 6, 7.

The Consciousness of our Lord. 197

cannot choose but be privy unto all things which God
worketh, and must therefore of necessity be endued with
knowledge so far forth universal, though not with infinite
knowledge peculiar to Deity itself ^ The soul of Christ
that saw in this life the face of God was here through so
visible presence of Deity filled with all manner graces
and virtues in that unmatchable degree of perfection,
for which of Him we read it written that " God with the
oil of gladness anointed Him above His fellows."'

Bp. Andrewes expresses not much more than an
unwillingness to speculate on the subject " :

' For derelinqui a Deo — the body cannot feel it. or
tell what it meaneth. It is the soul's complaint, and
therefore without all doubt His soul within Him was
pierced and suffered, though not that which — except
charity be allowed to expound it — cannot be spoken
without blasphemy. Not so much, God forbid ! yet
much, and very much, and much more than others seem
to allow ; or how much, it is dangerous to define.'

Again, after quoting and dwelling upon the words of
St. Leo, noil solvit tinionein sed sidyfraxit visionem, he
continues : " And though to draw it so far as some do
is little better than blasphemy, yet on the other side to
shrink it so short as other some do, cannot be but with
derogation to His love.'

Jeremy Taylor^ puts aside the question whether
Christ did in reality or only in appearance increase in
knowledge as one of those disputes which belong to
men who ' love to serve God in hard questions.'

> It is not plain whether these words are meant to apply to our Lord's
human intellect only in its glorified state.

* Sermons {Library of Anglo-Calk. Theol.) ii. 124, 147.

^ Life of Chrisl, pt. i. § 7. 5 (Heber and Eden's ed. 1850, ii. p. 158).

198 Disseiiations.

But mostly Anglican divines have assumed as a matter
indubitable that there was in our Lord's humanity a real
growth and limitation of knowledge, according to the
plain sense of Scripture. So

Bull, in his Defence of the Niceiie Creed ^, when he
is vindicating the language of Irenaeus to this effect,
remarks that ' the reformed are strangely attacked by
the Papists for this opinion.'

Beveridge 2 : ' Our Saviour having taken our nature
into His person, with all its frailties and infirmities, as
it is a created being, He did not in that nature presently
know all things which were to be known. It is true
as God He then knew all things, as well as He had from
all eternity : but we are now speaking of Him as a man.
like one of us in all things, except sin.' And ' The Son
Himself as man knew not ' the day and hour of the end.

Waterland against the Arians ^ : ' There was no
equivocation in [Christ] saying what was literally true
that the Son, as Son of man. did not know the day and
hour of the last judgment. The context itself sufficiently
limits His denial to His human nature.'

But I do not think these divines give us any help in
relating this ignorance of Christ in His humanity to
Himself, the one divine person. I'Jic person in Holy
Scripture is said to have grown in knowledge, and
declared Himself the Son to be ignorant of the day and
hour.

Of recent years in the English Church there have been

' {Libr. of Anglo-Calh. Theol.) i. p. 176.
^ Works (Parker, Oxford, 1S46) viii. p. 423.

' Works (ed. Van Mildcrt, Oxford Univ. Press, 1843) •'• PP- '^^ f.,
iii. 281 f.

Tlie Consciousness of our Lord. 199

representatives of almost all schools of thought on this
subject — of the scholastic theology, of the kenotic views,
as well as of the more usual reserved Anglican line.
But it is worth while calling special attention to the
language of three men whose authority carries special
weight — the late Dean Church, Dr. Westcott, and Dr.
Bright.

The late Dean Church writes in one sermon ^ :

' Think of Him drawing human breath, fed by human
food, speaking human words like yourself, being Him
who at the very same moment keeps all these worlds in
being.'

In another sermon thus ^ : * When we think of His
humility, we think at once of His coming among us at all.
He the everlasting God coming from heaven to narrow
Himself to the conditions of a creature ; to give up what
He was with the Father, that He might live with men.'

'&*

This writer measured his words even, we may be sure,
in ' village sermons.' These passages are not a mere
contradiction. But they are the words of a man who
was more careful to be true to all the facts than to
present a perfectly harmonized theory.

'I shrink much,' he writes elsewhere'', 'from specu-
lating on the human knowledge of our blessed Lord,
or the limitations — and they may have been great —
which He was pleased to impose on Himself, when He
" emptied Himself" and became as one of us. I have
never been satisfied with the ordinary explanations of
the text you quote, St. Matt. xxiv. 36. They seem

1 Village Sermons (Macmillan, 1892) p. 20. ^ p. 79.

' Life attd Letters of Dean Church (Macmillan, 1894) p. 267 ; cf.
p. 274 f.

200

Dissertations.

simply to explain it away as much as any Unitarian
gloss on St. John i. i. To me it means that He who
was to judge the world, who knew what was in man,
and more, who alone knew the Father, was at that time
content to have that hour hidden from Him — did not
choose to be above the angels in knowing it — as He
was afterwards content to be forsaken of the Father.
But the whole is perfectly inconceivable to my mind,
and I could not base any general theory of His know-
ledge on it. I think it is very likely that we do not
understand the meaning of much that is said in Scrip-
ture — its sense, and the end and purport for which at
the time it was said. But it would perplex me much to
think that He was imperfect or ignorant in what He did
say, whether we understood Him or not.'

Dr. Westcott is emphatic that ' this [creative and
sustaining] work [of Christ] was in no way interrupted
by the Incarnation^ ' ; but in dealing with the Incar-
nation he affirms" :

' The mode of our Lord's existence on earth was truly
human, and subject to all the conditions of human
existence. . . • How this " becoming [flesh] " was accom-
plished we cannot clearly grasp. St. Paul describes it as
an " emptying of Himself" by the Son of God (Phil,
ii. 6 f.), a laying aside of the mode of divine existence
(ro €ivai Icra ^ew) ; and this declaration carries us as far
as we can go in defining the mystery.'

Dr. Bright writes thus ^ :

' In regard to the kaiosis, if it is once granted that
during Christ's ministry among men, even at the " lowest
points of self-abasement, He was still, as God, upholding

* Ep- to the Ilcbreios, p. 426. - Gospel 0/ St. John, pp. 10 11.

^ Waytnarks in Ch. Hist. '^Longman?, 1894) appendix G, pp. 392-3.

The Consciousness of our Lord. 201

all things by the word of His power," this is enough
to carry the principle of the interpretation of Phil. ii. 6,
which confines the kenosis to the sphere of His
humanity. For, outside those limits, if He acted as
God at all. He must act so altogether. Within those
limits, He dispensed with manifestations of His divine
majesty, except on occasions and for special ends. As
a rule, He held in reserve, by a continuous self-restraint,
the exercise of divine powers, and accepted the con-
ditions of human life with all its sinless infirmities. He
willed to think and feel humanly through organs of
thought and feeling which, being human, were limited,
and on which He did not ordinarily shed the transfigur-
ing power of what Cyril called His " proper " or original
0j;o-ts, although whenever he taught, He spoke as the
absolute " Light of men." '

In this passage Dr. Bright seems to me to go beyond
the language of mere juxtaposition of the human and
divine consciousnesses. ' He was truly limited in know-
ledge witJiiu the sphere of His hwnaiiity ' is, it seems
to me, a more valuable and suggestive phrase, more true
to the New Testament picture, than ' He was truly
limited in respect of His human nature ' and ' He knew
as God, He did not know as man.'

Here then we conclude our review of theological
opinions on the subject of our Lord's human conscious-
ness.

202 Dissertations.

III.

The co^xLUSION of this inquiry : the relation

OF THIS CONCLUSION TO CHURCH AUTHORITY :
ITS RATIONALITY.

§ 1-

Conclusion from our inquiry.

The conclusions arrived at as the result of our whole
inquiry can consist in nothing else than a reaffirmation
of the provisional conclusions to which we were led
by our examination of the language of the New
Testament ^. The great bulk of the language of
ecclesiastical writers is, it is true, against us. As a
matter of authority this will come up for consideration
in the next section. But as a matter of argument,
the theologians who refuse to recognize the real human
limitations in the consciousness of the incarnate Son,
from Clement of Alexandria down to our own day, have
said nothing which can alter our judgement. They have
hardly attempted to examine continuously the intel-
lectual phenomena of our Lord's human life during the
period of His humiliation : they have at best but taken
particular texts and explained them away in the light
of an <7/r/c'r/ assumption as to the effect of the Godhead
on the manhood, and they have unwarrantably applied
cxi)ressions written of our Lord in glory to our Lord in

' See above, pp. 94 ft".

The Consciousness of our Lord. 203

His mortal state. In our own day it is still far too
much the habit to treat the inquiry as a matter of one
or two texts. It cannot be too much emphasized that
it is very far from being this. What is told us of our
Lord's intellectual growth in childhood, of His relation
to the Holy Spirit as man both in teaching and work-
ing miracles, of His progressive 'learning' from the
Father, of His asking questions and expressing sur-
prise, of His ignorance of the day and hour of the end,
of His prayers, of His dismay and agony, of His
feeling Himself 'forsaken' by the Father: all that
St. Paul and St. John tell us, to account for these facts,
about His having ' come down ' from heaven and left
' the glory,' and after His resurrection returning whence
He had come — of His ' emptying Himself,' ' beggaring
Himself to take the real characteristics of humanity,
and of His being, in that humanity, subsequently
exalted : all this (and there is nothing which disagrees
with it) forces upon us, with a consistent pressure of
evidence, the conclusion that a real self-emptying was
involved in the Incarnation. Nor will it suffice to say
that the Son was limited in knowledge, etc., in respect
of His manJiood, so long as we so juxta-posit the omni-
scient Godhead with the limited manhood as to destroy
the impression that He, the Christ, the Son of God, was
personally living, praying, thinking, .speaking, and acting
— even working miracles — under the limitations of
manhood. It may well be that the absolute truth is
incomprehensible by us and does not admit of being
fully interpreted by human words : but the words in
which we express the mystery — from speaking about

204 Dissertations.

which we cannot in any case refrain — must be words
which are really faithful to the revealed facts and the
language of the inspired interpreters of the facts : that
is to say, they must be words which express a real
abandonment, on the part of the eternal Son in becom-
ing incarnate, of divine prerogatives inconsistent with
a proper human experience: they must be words which
express the fact that, within the period and sphere of
His incarnate and mortal life, He the eternal Son was,
doubtless by His own act and will, submitting Himself
to the limitations proper to manhood. The real Incar-
nation involves a real self-impoverishment, a real self-
emptying, a real self-limitation on the part of the
eternal Word of God.

It is useless to put in the plea of reverence to bar
inquiry or exact statement on this subject. The facts
of the Gospel narrative and the apostolic interpretations
bearing on this point are too many and have been too
much neglected to enable one to shrink back from
examining them. Nor is such candid examination of
what is revealed at all incompatible with an adoring
reverence towards the Divine Person who is revealing
Himself, or towards that tremendous mystery which
accompanies and half shrouds His redemptive action.

The conclusion then originally stated I do emphatically
reassert with the profoundest conviction that it is not
indeed the whole truth — the whole truth about God or
the acts of God we cannot know — but the truth as far
as human mind can receive it and human words express
it : and I venture to make a fourfold appeal to the
opponents of this position :

The Consciousness of our Lord. 20^

1. That they will seriously attempt to grapple with
the positive evidence for it as a whole and in its con-
tinuity. This, as far as I can ascertain, they have
hitherto left undone, and have contented themselves
with dealing with this or that disconnected 'text,' or
with abstract argument and appeals to consequences.

2. That they will (so far as they are Anglicans) bear
in mind that the whole historical position and justi-
fication of that specific form of Christianity called
Anglicanism is bound up with its strenuous appeal to
Scripture. In that appeal we must be sincere and
thorough.

3. That they will not forget that, so far as scientific
theology has in and for this age a special intellectual
responsibility, it is to be true to facts. Theology —
Christian theology — may be said to be as really inductive
as physical science: that is to say it draws conclusions
from facts of revelation. These facts are utterances of
prophets and inspired men, but most of all the deeds and
words of the incarnate Son. As truly as the facts of
physical nature both justify and limit the conclusions
of physical science, do these facts of revelation justify
and limit the conclusions of theology ; and where the
facts cease to support theory, theory is, in theology as
elsewhere, groundless and misleading.

4. The real recognition of the suggestions of Scripture
about our Lord's human state will give to the Church's
teaching a great enrichment. There is no doubt,
I think, that the general teaching of the Catholic
Church for many centuries about our Lord has removed
Him very far from human sympathies, very much

2o6 Dissertations.

further than the Christ of the New Testament. The
minimizing of the meaning of His manhood is (among
other things) largely accountable for the development
of an exaggerated devotion to His Mother and the
Saints. In proportion as the real human experiences,
sufferings, and limitations of Christ during the period of
His humiliation are forgotten and ignored, in that pro-
portion men will go to seek human sympathy from on
high in some other quasi-deified being. We must
recover the strength which the Christian creed is meant
to derive from a Christ made in all points like unto His
brethren, apart from sin.

The reality of the Incarnation and of its accompanying
self-limitation must be put in the forefront of Catholic
theology, popular and scientific. It means — so far as
human thought can grasp or words express it — a real
abandonment of divine prerogative and attributes by
the eternal Son within a certain sphere.

But are we to posit this abandonment as absolute?
Did the Son actually cease to mediate the procession of
the Holy Ghost in the divine being and to uphold the
worlds in being? Such a position, I repeat, could
not be maintained unless the divine revelation posi-
tively and expressly forced it upon us. But it does not ;
on the contrary there is reason to believe that the
apostolic writers contemplated the continuance of the
divine and cosmic functions through the Incarnation.
We must not then disturb or destroy the picture of the
incarnate state which they give us in Gospels and
Epistles by bringing the absolute divine state of the
Son side by side with the picture of His humiliation :

The Consciousness of our Lord. 207

for this is exactly what the apostolic writers do not do.
We must hold to the reality of the humiliation, and,
if we can see no further, we must be content to hold
that, even in a way we cannot conceive, this state of
limitation within the sphere of the humanity must have
been compatible with the exercise in another sphere, by
the same divine person, of the fulness of divine power.
But the rationality of such a combination is a question
which must be reserved till we have dealt with the
standing in regard to ecclesiastical authority of our
present conclusion.

§ 2.

The relation of our conclusion to ecclesiastical

authority.

We need have no hesitation in claiming that the
theological conclusion we have arrived at is wholly con-
sistent with the actual dogmatic decisions of ecumenical
councils, which are the only ecclesiastical decisions
bearing on the present subject, the acceptance of which
can fairly be said to be required for the ministry in the
Anglican Church.

That Christ is God, consubstantial with the Father
in His divine nature : that He is completely man,
in mind and spirit as well as body, in His human
nature : that He is one only person, and that person
divine, who for us men and for our salvation assumed
our manhood : that the manhood as assumed remains

2o8 Dissertations.

proper manhood and retains its proper energy and
attributes unabsorbed into the Godhead — these ^ are the
central Church dogmas in regard to the person of
Christ, and it will not take long to show that nothing
said above is in any conflict with any of them. In fact
it could not be suggested that any heretical tendency
has been exhibited except in regard to the first and last
of the above-mentioned decisions.

The first — the decree of Nicaea — asserts the Son
consubstantial and coequal with the Father : it goes on
by way of appendix to deny Him to be changeable or
alterable-. Can it be said that this decree condemns
any view which speaks of the Son as becoming subject
to limitation, or that postulates in the Incarnation any
change in the mode of being of the eternal Son ?

To this question we answer, first, that the fathers of
the Council had only moral alterability in view in their
ecclesiastical decision, as it was only moral alterability
which the Arians asserted of Christ''^, and any idea of
moral alterability has in this discussion been expressly
repudiated *. Rut further, even in regard to meta-
physical alteration, it must be remembered that in the
view here presented the limitation of which the incarnate
Son is the subject is regarded (i) as not affecting His

' See further, for an explanation of them, B. L. lect. iv.

^ See Heurtley's dc Fide ct Symbolo, p. 6 roty Tt\ Kkfovra^ . . . rj Tpenruv
^ aWoiixiTov Tuv viov tov Ofov rovrovs avaOijiarl^ii 17 KaOoXiKr^ Kai diroaruKiKT)
(KKKrjaia.

' See Gwatkin, Sltidies of Arianism (Cambridfre, iSSj^i p. 25 ' He
[the Son according to the Arians] must have free will like us and a nature
capable like ours of moral change, whether for evil or for good.' Cf. Bright,
Wayinarks, p. 387.

* Sec above, p 96.

The Consciousness of our Lord. 209

essential being or operation in the universe, (2) as not
imposed from without but an act of His own power —
that divine power which declares itself ' most chiefly ' in
such self-renouncing 'pity' and love^ All that is asked
then is that the Son should be regarded as exhibiting
a divine capacity for self-accommodation within a certain
sphere in carrying out His unchanging redemptive pur-
pose. With such a view the fathers of Nicaea were
not in any way concerned. Such self-accommodation is
not ' mutability,' but the self-adaptiveness, the move-
ment, of real spiritual life. As far as any charge of
attributing 'mutability' to the Son in this metaphysical
sense was made in the Arian controversy it was made
mostly on the Arian side against the orthodox. 'All
generation,' the Arians said, 'is a sort of change; but
God is immutable : therefore God cannot be either
generating or generated.' To which there is no better
expressed reply than that of Victorinus Afer^, where he
refuses to identify the movement of divine life with
change. Eternal life in God means eternal movement.
It is only such eternal movement of life as makes in-
telligible such subsequent temporal ' changes ' as are
involved in the divine acts of creation or redemption.

Nor should it be left out of sight that, so far as the
self-limitation of the Son even within a certain sphere
of operation may be supposed to affect His essential

' See above, pp. 142, 148, for phrases qnoted from Gregory of Nyssa
and Hilary.

'^ The argument here is quoted from Candidus the Arian to whom
Victorinus Afer replied. But the argument was a commonplace of discus-
sion : see Gwatkin, /. c. p. 24^ ; and on Candidus and Victorinus see s. v.
Victorinus in Diet, of Chr. Biog. iv. pp. 1130 ff. with reff.

2IO Dissertations.

consubstantiality with the Father, it is relative to that no
less mysterious but also no less real act of self-denial
on the part of the Father which the New Testament
describes as His ' giving up ' or 'giving' the Son. There
is reciprocal self-sacrifice postulated alike in the Father
and the Son ^.

As regards the last of the decisions summarized above,
which is contained in the decrees of the fourth and sixth
Councils, it may be said that as they assert the complete-
ness in our Lord of both the divine and human natures
and activities — the fulness of both natures being in-
separably but unconfusedly united in the one person —
so any position which involves incompleteness of divine
activity or knowledge in the Incarnation is as much
opposed to these decisions as one which involves
a similar human incompleteness.

To this I should reply, primarily and to secure my
ground, that the view expressed above involves no limita-
tion of the divine activity of the Word absolutely in
Himself or in the world, but only within a certain area.
1 can, therefore, affirm without any hesitation with the
fourth Council that the ' one and the same Son, our
Lord Jesus Christ, is both perfect in Godhead and perfect
in manhood, truly God and truly man, . . . consubstantial
with the Father according to His Godhead, and with us
according to His manhood " in all points like us, apart
from sin," begotten of the Father before all ages, accord-
ing to His Godhead, and in these last days, the same
person, for us and for our salvation, born of Mary the
Virgin, the Theotokos, according to His manhood ; one

' St. Jolin iii. iG ; i St. John iv. 9 ; Rom. viii. 32.

The Consciousness of our Lord. 211

and the same person made known as Christ, Son, Lord,
Only- Begotten, in two natures, unconfusedly, unchange-
ably, indissolubly, inseparably ; the distinction of the
natures being in no wise destroyed on account of the
union, but each nature rather preserving its own special
characteristic, and combining to form one person ^.' Or
with the sixth Council, that ' We glorify in our Lord Jesus
Christ, our true God, two natural energies indissolubly,
unalterably, indivisibly, unconfusedly, that is the divine
energy and the human energy ; as Leo the theologian
most clearly says, '' Either form energizes in fellowship
with the other as is proper to itself, the Word working
what belongs to the Word, and the body accomplishing
what belongs to the body -." '

Such decisions are in no way dissonant with a view
which, maintaining the integrity and distinctness of the
Godhead and of the manhood in the one person of the
Son of God, maintains also, as the language of the New
Testament demands, that the activity (and consciousness)
of the Godhead was, by His own will, restrained and
limited within the sphej-e of the Incarnation, to allow the
real action of the manhood and its own proper ' energy^;
and it needs to be pointed out that the special view
here maintained was not at all before the mind of these
councils — which were intent upon a quite different task,
with which the present writer cannot be accused of
lack of sympathy, that of securing against monophysite
tendencies the permanence and real action of the man-
hood and of its faculties in our Lord's person.

' The Definition of Chalcedon {Je Fide et Sytnb. p. 27).

^ The decision of Constantinople III (Gieseler, Eccl. JJisl. ii. p. i76\

P %

213 Dissertations.

Indeed, it seems to me that a candid review of the
theological tendencies of the fourth and fifth centuries
leads a student even to an increased respect for the
ecumenical councils, and an increased belief in the
divine providence which superintended their decisions.
For, while the theological tendencies of the time were
seriously one-sided and set to emphasize the divine
at the expense of the human, the conciliar decisions are
deliberately and perfectly balanced. They can only be-
come a source of peril if their true nature, as primarily
negative and wholly relative to Scripture, is forgotten —
if they are used, in place of the historical figure of
Christ, as positive data or materials from which to
obtain by abstract deduction a conception of what the
Christ ought to have been. The churchman who makes
a right use of the Church's decisions — who, that is, accept-
ing the Church's creed in Christ as Son of God made
man, perfect God and perfect man, goes back to the
reverent but also candid study of the figure in the Gospels,
will not be in any peril of finding this his central faith
contradicted in the New Testament ; he will but find it
enriched and deepened. If he pursues his theological
studies he will, I believe, find that a great deal of the
'theological comment' upon the creed, a great deal of the
theology of approved Catholic writers, needs revising or
moderating. But as far as the tradition expressed in the
creeds is concerned — that he will find to need no revision;
that, with the sacramental system and the structure of the
visible Church, he will with continually increasing clear-
ness perceive to belong to that essential permanent Chris-
tianity which is truly catholic, apostolic and scriptural.

The Consciousness of our Lord. 213

With such a result the present writer has already else-
where expressed himself more than satisfied ^ : and he
must claim that he has with him in this satisfaction the
tradition of Anglicanism. It is a note of Anglicanism to
be satisfied with a very moderate amount of dogmatic
requirement. A thoroughly faithful Anglican may
believe that, as in civil government a certain amount of
legislation is essential, but over-legislation, the over-
regulation of life, is practically an evil, so in eccle-
siastical government a certain amount of doctrinal
requirement is necessary to protect the essence of the
Church as a society based on a revelation, but that
dogmatic requirement may easily outrun what the New
Testament justifies and what is healthy for ecclesiastical
development. The Church in each age should be free
to return upon its central creed, structure, and worship,
and without loss of continuity re-express its theological
mind, as it has so often already done, in view of the fresh
developments of the intellectual, moral, and social life
of man.

The defectiveness of the theology of fathers and schooK
men on the subject which we have had under review was
due to causes which belonged to their periods.

1. Accurate interpretation of the text, whether of New
Testament authors or of others, is in the main a growth
of modern times. The fathers and schoolmen were often
in advance of us in theological branches of speculation,
but generally behind us in ' exegesis.'

2. Again, their philosophical categories as applied to
God were abstract and a priori. They did not recognize

» See B. L. pp. 108-9,

214 Dissertations.

as much as we have been taught to do that if the action
of reason is impHed in the very beginnings of observation
and is thus logically ' prior ' to experience, yet human
reason has no actual contents, it contains no 'synthetic
propositions,' except such as are gained through experi-
ence : that is to say as the reason is gradually awakened
by experience to the perception of what is implied in the
world and in itself. An a priori philosophy of nature or
of history is sure to be at fault, and still more surely an
a priori philosophy of God. Most certainly our human
knowledge of what God is, what His omnipotence, im-
mutability, omniscience mean, is limited strictly by what
God is found to have disclosed of Himself in nature and
humanity, by experience, through inspired prophets and
Jesus Christ His Son.

3. No heresies excited so much antagonism as those
which impugned our Lord's Godhead. By none, then,
did the Church run so much risk of being driven into
opposite extremes. Into such extremes she was not
driven so far as her dogmatic decisions were concerned,
but the effect of undue reaction is traceable in many
even of her greatest schools of theology.

I should be utterly misrepresenting my own feeling if
I allowed myself to be understood as disparaging in any
way the fathers as theologians. In the special subject
of this inquiry we do not, for the reasons just explained,
see them at their best. But I do not believe that, taken
on the whole, so much whether of theological or moral
illumination is to be gained from any study, outside Holy
Scripture, as is to be gained from the great theologians
who are called, and legitimately called, • the fathers.'

The Consciousness of our Lord. 215

§ 3.
The rationality of our conclusion.

The conception at which we have arrived from the
examination of the New Testament, and which we have
found to be at least in no opposition to the authoritative
dogmas of the Church CathoHc, seems to involve us in
thinking of the Incarnation somewhat after the manner
of Bishop Martensen ^ An old writer said of our Lord
that within His humanity He ' withdrew from operation
both His power and His majesty".' To this, as we
have seen, we must add — His omniscience. But with-
drawing these from operation within the sphere of
the humanity He yet Himself lived under human con-
ditions. And this seems to postulate that the personal
life of the Word should have been lived as it were from
more than one centre — that He who knows and does all
things in the Father and in the universe should (reverently
be it said) have begun to live from a new centre when
He assumed manhood, and under new and restricted
conditions of power and knowledge. Is this conceivable,
or is there even any line of thought which tends in the
direction of making it conceivable ? Especially in regard
to knowledge, does it mean anything to suggest that

' See above, pp. 192-3.

* Potentiam suam et maiestatem ab opcre retraxit : the words are
ascribed to Ambrose, but I cannot find them in his works.

2i6 Dissertations,

He, the same eternal Son, should in one sphere not know
what in another, and that His own proper sphere, He
essentially knows?

There are some considerations which may assist us in
this difficulty.

1. First, let us remember that supposing we can get
no help towards the conceiving (or imagining) of this
situation, the case is not by any means either desperate
or unique. Nothing that is a fact can be irrational,
but many things that are facts are beyond the power of
Juiman conception. Certainly in the region of science what
is strictly inconceivable by human reason is taken for
fact. Nothing, to take a now familiar example, can be
more inconceivable than the properties of the ether which
physicists find themselves obliged to postulate to explain
the phenomena of light. On this subject, however, let
me quote the words of an acknowledged authority.

• The assumption,' says Prof. Sir George Stokes ^, ' that
all space, or all at least of which we have any cognizance,
must be imagined to be completely filled with a supposed
medium of which our senses give us no information,
already makes, we might reasonably say, a severe demand
upon our credulity ; and indeed there are, or at least
have been, minds to which the demand appeared to be
so great as to cause the rejection of that theory of light.
And when we provisionally assume the existence of an
ether, and use it as a working hypothesis in our further
investigations, we find ourselves obliged to admit pro-
perties of this supposed ether so utterly different from

' Natural Theology (GifTord Lectures, 1893I pp. 21 and 19. Cf. \Vri{,'ht's
Light (Macmillaii, 1^92) pp. 380 i ; and Eticycl. Brilann. art. ETHER.

The Consciousness of our Lord. 217

what we should have imagined beforehand, through our
previous experience, that we are half staggered.' ' How
the ether can at the same time behave like an elastic
solid in resisting the gliding of one portion over another,
and yet like a fluid in letting bodies freely pass through
it, is a mystery which we do not understand. Never-
theless, we are obliged to suppose that so it is.' The
Professor goes on to point out that the properties of the
supposed ether appeared both so inconceivable and so in-
compatible with British common sense that our country-
men were deterred from pursuing their investigations
into what is now acknowledged to be one of the most
important factors of the universe : ' A slashing article in
an old number of the Edinburgh Review, ridiculing the
supposed vagaries of an undulationist, had probably the
effect of diminishing the share which our own country
took in the great revival of physical optics in the present
century.'

No wonder Professor Huxley can allow himself an
inexact expression and say that 'the mysteries of the
Church are child's play compared with the mysteries of
nature^.' It is an inexact expression, because in fact
the life that is above us is, as we should anticipate, more
mysterious than the life that is below us. Even less in
what is above than in what is below us can we identify the
rational with what we can imagine. And thus, in fact, the
last thing which we could hope to imagine or, in this
sensCj to conceive would be the absolute and eternal
consciousness of God, either in itself or in relation to the
succession of moments in time or in relation to the lower

' Quoted by permission from a private letter in B. L. p. 247.

2i8 Dissertations.

human consciousness which He vouchsafed to assume.
We shall then be in no irrational position if we are
obliged to confess that our imagination is absolutely
baffled by the condition of things which the facts of the
Incarnation seem to postulate. At least we shall not,
in the interest of an easier conception, abandon the facts.
The facts as we can no longer doubt — the same facts
which force upon us the conclusion that our Lord was
the incarnate Son of God — force us to conclude that the
incarnate Son was leading for the sake of real sympathy
with men a life of limitation in knowledge as well as
power. But here perhaps we have mentioned a word
which offers us at least some help toivards a rational
conception of this mystery.

2. Sympathy, love — this is the keynote of the
Incarnation. It is along this line that we can best hope
to understand it. And surely here — in the region of
love and sympathy — we have something analogous to
a double life, and a double life which affects the intellect
as much as any of our powers. To sympathize is to put
oneself in another's place. Redemptive sympathy is
the act of the greater and better putting himself at the
point of view of the lower and the worse. He must not
abandon his own higher standing-ground if he is to
benefit the object of his compassion ; but remaining
essentially what he was he must also find himself in the
place of the lower ; he must come to look at things as
he looks at them ; he must learn things over again from
his point of view. This is, as we saw before, how Origen
would have us understand the mystery of the divine con-
descension. It is the grown one learning to speak as

The Consciousness of our Lord. 219

a child : it is the Divine putting Himself at the point of
view of the human.

Now no one who has had the privileges of education
can attempt to be sympathetic (in a sense worthy of the
name) with those who have not without finding that his
superior culture is, if in one way an advantage, in
another way a marked hindrance. He would give any-
thing to be able for the time to forget : to retain
indeed his ideal of knowing, but to get outside all that
he actually knows ; to leave it behind in order that he
may really and not in mere effort of imagination look
at things from the uninstructed point of view. The
natures most gifted with sympathy seem actually for the
moment to accomplish this. They do seem to abandon
their own normal platform of knowledge and to trans-
late themselves into alien conditions. Now we have no
better guide to the methods of God than the best
human sympathy and love. Only the acts of God are
infinitely more perfect than our best acts, more continuous
and more thorough. May not then the sympathetic
entrance of God into human life have carried with it —
not because it was weak but because it was powerful —
something which can only be imagined or expressed
by us as a real ' forgetting ' or abandoning within the
human sphere of His own divine point of view and
mode of cons(iiousness ? And are we not helped towards
some such supposition by reflecting that the attributes
of God, on account of the perfection of His personal
unity, are not (so to speak) separable from one another
or from His personality but are identically one ? May it
not be that our knowledge can be at times a hindrance

220 Dissertations.

to us, a hindrance that we would gladly for the time
fling away and be by far more powerful for having lost,
because it is imperfectly assimilated into our personality
— because it is an attribute which has not wholly become
our self? May it not be that because God is perfect and
His attributes inseparable from His person, therefore
His knowledge is, far more than can be the case with
us, under the control of His personal, essential will of
love? And is not this a line of thought along which
we gain real help in conceiving how the Son of God
can have so loved mankind as by an act of power to
enter into humanity and, remaining Himself, to live a
human life from a human point of view, unembarrassed
in His act of love by any impotence to control His
own knowledge?

Nor, when we are discussing the conceivableness of
such an act of divine sympathy, can we omit to notice
that (apart from recognition of the Incarnation) it is
very difficult to us to give reality to all that body of
scriptural language which attributes to the absolute,
omniscient God sympathy with men, sympathy of an
anthropomorphic kind. It is fair to say that, if the self-
limitation of the Incarnation is in itself difficult to con-
ceive, on the other hand it reflects light upon the whole
body of language which inspired men, almost iii proportion
to their inspiration, have found it necessary to use about
God. All real sympathy of the unconditioned for the
conditioned demands, as far as we can see, real self-
limitation.

3. Again, may we not advance one step more in
the direction of conceiving the mystery when we set

The Consciousness of our Lord. 221

ourselves to think how utterly different from the divine
consciousness must be the human. A thoughtful writer
has recently bidden us reflect how all human knowledge
(i) is at least conditioned by the senses through which
alone the suggestions are presented which make thought
possible ; (2) is discursive gathered laboriously piece by
piece and with difficulty attaining to any comprehensive
grasp which is at the same time accurate and real :
(3) can never really anive at apprehending the inner-
most essence of things. But the knowledge of God,
though it is the ground and source of human knowledge,
is as distinct in kind from it as is the divine personality
distinct from the human which yet is based upon it.
So far as we can conceive, the divine knowledge must
be (i) an absolute intuition, and therefore (2) infinitely
comprehensive, and (3) infallibly penetrative of the inner-
most essence of things. Let us but ponder for a little
while on the infinite gulf which lies, in these ways,
between the knowledge of God and that of man, and we
shall feel how almost mutually exclusive the divine and
human modes of knowing must be. We shall understand
why St. Paul represents to us that there is a break
between the 'knowledge' we now have and the diviner
knowledge we shall have beyond the veil — a break which
there is not between the love, or even the faith and hope,
of now and hereafter ^. The more we ponder on this the
more it seems to mc we can realize how that ' birth ' by
which God became man, to enter into man's experience,
for the sake of man's redemption, must have involved
within the sphere of the humanity something which in

' I Cor. .\iii. S-13.

222 Dissertations.

human language can only be expressed as * a sleep and
a forgetting,' so strangely exclusive (as it would seem)
is the human mode of consciousness of the divine^.

4. Lastly, we are beyond question helped in the
consideration of this mystery by the tendency of the
deepest modern thought in regard to God's relation to
nature and man as a whole. The older and more
pantheistic way of regarding the immanence of God in
nature ran the risk of losing the distinctive being of the
creatures in the abyss of the being of God. But more
exact knowledge forces us to realize more thoroughly
the distinctive existence and quality of natural objects.
Nature is for us infinitely more complex, more full,
more real than for the ancients : so that in our age it has
been easy for some even to forget God in nature. It is
right neither to forget nature in God nor God in nature,
but to learn from nature right notions about the method
of God. God realizes His will in nature by an infinite
variety of distinctive forms of life. And He loves to see
each form of life realize itself in its own way. He
respects the nature of each thing. ' He tastes an infinite
joy in infinite ways,' by, as it were, living not only in
Himself but in the separate life of each of the creatures.
Nor do we realize this less if we look away from nature
as it is at any moment in its infinite complexity of

' The thoughtful writer to whom I allude is the author of an article
in the Chunk Quarterly (Oct. 1S91), on ' Our Lord's knowledge as man.'
I cannot however exactly accept his conclusions. He seems to me to fall
back too much upon considerations of logic as opposed to considerations of
sympathy. Thus he acquiesces in the mere juxtaposition of the two con-
sciousnesses in our Lord ; supposing e. g. that when He said He did not know,
what is meant is only that the knowledge which He had as God, He had
not 'translated' into the human mode.

The Consciousness of our Lord. 223

manifold forms of life and begin to contemplate the
history of its development. Still we are struck by the
extent to which (to express the facts roughly) God leaves
things to work out their own perfection by the slow, as
it were tentative, method of ' natural selection,' through
which advance has in fact been made.

And this respect of God for His creatures is seen
most of all in His relation to man. He never indeed
allows human freedom to disturb the main course of
the world's development ; to tolerate that would be to
abandon the providential government of the world ^
But within such an area as allows man to exercise
a real, though limited, freedom — to such a degree as at
least may involve considerable disturbance in the divine
order for the sake of the value of free, as distinct from
mechanical, service — God stands aloof and respects that
free nature which He has created, that image of His
own freedom which He has, as it were, planted out in
the heart of the physical creation. God respects His
creature man. His power refrains itself. But is there,
in order to leave room for man's freedom of choice,
a limitation, not only of God's power, but of His fore-
knowledge ? Is the old controversy as regards human
freedom and divine foreknowledge to be solved in part
by the suggestion that a limitation of divine foreknowing
accompanies the very act of creating free agents ? The
idea has commended itself to some very thoughtful minds :

' Lotze, Jllicrocosiniis (Eng. trans. Clark, 1887) i. pp. 258 f. 'Do we
not as we actually are, free or not, as a matter of fact interfere — to disturb
or destroy — with the nature around us, leaving behind many distinct traces
of our wayward energy, while yet we cannot on a large scale shake the order
of things? '

224 Dissertations.

to Origen. as has already incidentally appeared in this
discussion, and to Dr. Martineau in modern times ^
The accurate examination of the meaning assigned to
divine 'foreknowledge' in the Bible tends to shake the
traditional belief that God is there revealed as knowing;
absolutely beforehand how each individual will act.
Nevertheless, it is at least as difficult to reject this
belief as to admit it. But, whatever be our relation to
it, at least we must admit that the method of God in
history. like the method of God in nature, is to an
astonishing degree self-restraining, gradual, we are almost
driven to say, tentative. And all this line of thought —
all this way of conceiving of God's self-restraining power
and wisdom — at least prepares our mind for that supreme
act of respect and love for His creatures by which the
Son of God took into Himself human nature to redeem
it, and in taking it limited both His power and His
knowledge so that He could verily live through all the
stages of a perfectly human experience and restore our
nature from within by a contact so gentle that it gave life
to every faculty without paralyzing or destroying any.

Such considerations as these prevent our reason, or
even — what is so different — our imagination, from falling
back simply baffled before the facts, in the way of
limitation of divine knowledge, presented by the Incar-
nation of the Son of God. But the main purpose of this
dissertation has been simply to establish the facts and

' P'or Origen see above, \). ii6. I*"or Dr. Martineau see A Study of
Religion, bk. iii. ch. ii. § 4 (Oxford, 1888, ii. pp. 278 f.). The Rev. T. B.
Strong \Manual of Tlieology , Black, 1892, pp. 235-6) contemplates the idea
as just pos;-ible

The Consciousness of our Lord. 225

to show cause for believing that, in spite of the somewhat
scanty recognition which they have hitherto obtained
from orthodox theologians, we have to-day both liberty
as Catholics, and positive obligation as interpreters of
Scripture, to give them a franker and more full-faced
acknowledgement.

DISSERTATION III

Q 2

TRANSUBSTANTIATION AND
NIHILIANISM.

The object of this paper is —

I. To describe the theological process by which
Transubstantiation became a dogma of the Roman
Church.

II. To indicate the metaphysical difficulties in which
the dogma is involved ; and to show how it violates the
accepted analogy of the Incarnation, and the philo-
sophical principle which is involved in the Incarnation,
viz. that the supernatural and divine does not annihilate
the natural and material substance in which it manifests
and communicates itself.

III. To answer the question — Why then did not the
analogy of the Incarnation doctrine, dogmatically ex-
pressed as it was in the decrees which emphasized the
permanent reality of our Lord's manhood, bar the way
to the dogma of transubstantiation ?

230 Dissertations.

The growth of the doctrine of transuhstantiation.

In the theological period, which is measured by the
Council of Chalcedon on one side and on the other by
the second Council of Nicaea in the east and the age of
Charles the Great in the west — roughly A. D, 450-800,
we find two tendencies in eucharistic doctrine.

There is the tendency from the doctrine of a real
presence of the flesh and blood of Christ in and with
the elements of bread and wine towards a doctrine of
transuhstantiation, i. e. a doctrine which regards the
supernatural presence as annihilating its natural vehicle
except in mere appearance. This tendency is more
apparent during this period in the east than in the
west, and it reaches distinct expression (c. A. D. 750) in
John of Damascus' systematized treatise de Fide OrtJio-
doxa (iv. 10^). John's theory may fairly be called a theory
of transuhstantiation, not because he uses the word
' transform ' of the action of the Holy Spirit upon the
elements, for that expression is used by writers who
certainly do not hold any doctrine of transuhstantiation ',

' e. fj. hy the author of the de Sacranientis, ascribed to St. Ambrose,
who freely uses the phrases convertcre, miiiare, and asserts, as stronglv as
possible, the real presence of the flesh and blood of Christ in the euchar-
istic elements in virtue of consecration, but still writes (iv. 4) ' Si ergo tanta
vis est in scrmone domini lesu ut inciperent esse quae non erant [i. c. in the
original creation of the world], quanto magis operatorius est [i. e. in the
eucharistic elements] ut sint quae erant et in aliud comrautcntur.' In some
of the copies of this work in Lanfranc's time this reading had been altered

Transiihstantiation and NiJiilianism. 231

but because (i) adopting a suggestion of Gregory of Nyssa,
he expressly speaks of the consecrated bread as by the
supernatural and incomprehensible power of the Spirit
transformed into the holy body, just as by the natural
process of digestion bread is transformed, losing of
course its own nature, into the substance of our bodies :
and because (2) he accordingly repudiates the phrase
' symbols ' [avTiTv-a] as applied to the elements of
bread and wine after consecration — a phrase which his
predecessors, believing that these elements remained in
existence after consecration and retained with their
nature their natural symbolism, had not shrunk from
using^.

(see his de Corp. et Sang. Dom. 9), but it is undoubtedly original. The
author goes on to compare the change in the elements to that in the
regenerate person.

Gregory of Nyssa in the same way describes the man who is ordained
priest as fxeTa/xopipwdeh -npos to pe\Ttoi' {in Bapt. Christi, P. G. xlvi. p. 584 a);
of. also his language about the ' transmutation ' in the regenerate {Oral. Cat.
c. 40, P. G. xlv. p. loi b, c), where it is carefully explained that the essence
of manhood is unchanged by the transforming gift, and only its bad qualities
obliterated. The argument from Gregory's laxer use of these expressions,
f^eraaTaats, fiera^ohrj, /xfTaaTotXfiaxns, avaaroixiioioi^, HiTairotTjais, fiera-
HuprpQjaii, is unaffected by the fact that Gregory appears to suggest a doc-
trine of real transubstantiation in regard to the eucharist.

St. Cyril of Alexandria {in loann. ii. i,P. G. Ixxiii. p. 245, quoted by
Mason, Pelation of Conjii-mation to Baptism, p. 299) applies the term
'transelementation ' {avaaroixfi-ovTai') with apparent exactness to the water
of baptism under the influence of consecration by the Spirit. Cf. also
Cyril of Jerusalem's language {Cat Myst. iii. 3^ about the chrism. Yet
these elements were not believed by these writers to cease to exist.

' Thus the phrase is used as late as after the middle of the sixth century
by Eutychius of Constantinople {Sermo de Paschateet S. Euch. P. G. Ixxxvi.
p. 2391) (fj-fii^as iavTuv ra> avrnv-nw ... to rruifia kol atfxa rov Kvptov toTs
dvTiTVTTois (vTiOiiJievov Sio Tuiv Upovp-fiwv. Epiphanius the deacon repeats
John's repudiation of the phrase at the second council of Nicaea (act. 6,
torn. 3 ad fin.) and, like John, denies that apostles or fathers ever used
it of the elements after consecration — irpb tov ayiaffOfjvat (k\t)9t] avTirinra,

232 Dissertations.

There are not wanting traces of a similar mode of
explaining the real presence of Christ in the holy
sacramicnt also in the west ; but there the influence of
Augustine was dominant, and, somewhat obscure as his
view of the eucharist undoubtedly is, it is at any rate
certain that he did not believe in transubstantiation.
This is certain for two reasons, (i) He speaks of the
consecrated elements in the eucharist as in themselves
only ' signs ' of the body and blood of Christ : signs
which, if they are themselves called the body and blood
of Christ, are so called only on the principle that signs
are called by the name of the things they signify.
(2) He draws a marked distinction between the physical
manducation of the sacrament which is possible to all
and the manducation of the flesh and blood of Christ
which he sometimes plainly declares to be possible only
to the believing and spiritually minded, or to those who
hold the unity of the Church, ' the body of Christ,' in
love. Augustine's language is certainly as a whole
susceptible of being interpreted in the sense of an
' objective ' spiritual presence in the elements, after such
a manner as does not interfere with the permanence of
the bread and wine, such a presence as faith only can
either recognize or appropriate ; or it may fairly be
interpreted on a receptionist theory like Hooker's — it is
in fact probably somewhat inconsistent — but it is not
susceptible of an interpretation in accordance with the
doctrine of transubstantiation. And so Ion"- as Aueus-
tine's influence was dominant in eucharistic doctrine,

\iija 5« rliv ayiaa^uv awfxa Kvpicvi Kal ajf^a Xptarov Kfjovrai Ka'i (Iffiv Kal
iriTTivovTai. This, however, docs not truly represent the facts.

Transiihstantiation and NiJiilianism. 233

the language of western writers is mostly anti-transub-
stantiationist \

' Augustine's doctrine of the eucharist may be summarized under three
heads: (i) The consecrated elements are signs of the body and blood, and not in
themselves the things they signify. See Ep. 98. 9 ad Bonifaciion 'Si autem
sacramenta quandam similitudinem earum rerum quarum sacramenta sunt
non haberent, omnino sacramenta non essent. Ex hac autem similitudine
plerumque etiam ipsarum rerum nomina accipiunt. Sicut ergo secundum
quendam modum sacramentum corporis Christi corpus Christi est, sacia-
mentum sangiiinis Christi sanguis Christi est ; ita sacramentum fidei fides
est ' (i. e. baptism which represents the faith of the infant who is baptized
is that faith) ; cf. ' non enim Dominus dubitavit dicere hoc est corpus meum
cum signum daret corporis sui ' {con. Adim. Munich. 12). This passage, with
others, must interpret his words when he comments thus iji Psalm, xxxiii
(title) Enarr. 1. 10: ^ E'erebatur enim Christus in nianibus suis quando
commendans ipsum corpus suum ait hoc est corpus meum. Ferebat enim
illud corpus in manibus suis.' . . . ' accepit in manus suas quod norunt
fideles et ipse se portabat quodam modo cum diceret hoc est corpus 7)icu>n
(ii. 2).' Roman Catholic controversialists generally omit to notice the
quodam viodo which corresponds to the sectmdum quendam rnodum above.
The bread and wine then considered in themselves represent, and are not,
the body and blood of Christ. In the same way the bread, because
composed of many grains, represents the 'mystical body' of Christ, the
Church, and this mystical body is sometimes spoken of as the 7-cs sacra-
menti, e.g. Ep. 185. 50 ad Bonifacium 'rem ipsam non tenent intus
[Donatistae] cuius est illud sacramentum ' (i. e. ecclesiamj ; cf. in loan.
Tract, xxvi. 17.

(2) But the spiritual gift of the eucharist is really the flesh and blood of
Christ ; the same flesh and blood iti which He lived oti earth, but raised
to a neui spiritual power, become '■spirit and life.' See in Ps. xcviii. 9 ' In
ipsa came hie ambulavit et ipsam carnem nobis manducandam ad salutem
dedit, nemo autem illam carnem manducat nisi prius adoraverit.' This
' flesh ' in its glorified condition has become ' spirit ' and ' life ' ; so Augus-
tine interprets St. John vi. 63, see Tract, xxvii. 5 and app. note C. He appears
sometimes to distinguish the ' flesh ' and the ' body,' e. g. in Ps. xcviii after
saying that the flesh of the eucharist is the same as the flesh of our Lord's
mortal life, he goes on to say the body is not the same : ' Non hoc corpus
quod videtis manducaturi estis et bibituri ilium sanguinem quem fusuri sunt
qui me crucifigent. Sacramentum aliquod vobis commendavi, spiritualiter
intellcctum vivilicabit vos. Etsi necesse est visibiliter celebrari, oportet
tamen invisibiliter intelligi.' Perhaps at times he thought of the spiritual
essence of Christ's humanity, the ' flesh,' as receiving a new symbolical
' body ' in the bread and wine ; this spiritual essence of Christ's humanity

234 Dissertations.

In the great theological revival which marked the
empire of Charles the Great and his first successors, the
doctrine of the holy eucharist became for the first time
an explicit subject of controversy. The theologians of
the beginning of this period mostly follow Augustine on
the subject. Thus Alcuin (Albinus Flaccus) repeats in
his commentary on St. John, the ' receptionist ' language
of Augustine ^ So Amalarius of Metz (c. A. D. 820), while

becoming also the spiritual essence of the Church ; so that the sacramental
' body' represents equally Christ and the Church.

(3) This gift of the flesh and blood of Christ Augustine sometimes
speaks of as given to all, good and had, alike. See de Baft. con. Donat.
V. 9 ' Sicut cnim ludas cui buccellam [i.e. the 'sop'] tradidit Dominus
non malum accipiendo sed male accipiendo locum in se diabolo praebitit,
sic indigne quisque sumens dominicum sacramentum non efficit ut quia ipse
malus est malum sit, aut quia non ad salutcm accipit nihil acceperit. Corpus
enim Domini et sanguis Domini nihilominus erat etiam illis quibus dicebat
apostolus, qui manducat indigne indicium sibi manducat et bibit.' Ct.
Serm. 71. 17 {de verbis Matt. xii. 32) where he distinguishes the different
modes in which the good and bad eat the flesh of Christ and drink His
blood. But at other times he identifies '■eating the flesh of Christ'' quite
explicitly with '■abiding in Christ' and zvith a living faith. See asp. in
loan. Tract, xxvi and xxvii, e. g. xxvii. 18 ' Per hoc qui non manet in Christo
et in quo non manet Christus procul dubio nee manducat [spiritualiter]
camem eius nee bibit eius sanguinem [licet cnrnaliter et visibiliter premat
dentibus sacramentum corporis et sanguinis Christi] ; sed magis tantae rei
sacramentum ad indicium sibi manducat et bibit [quia immundus praesumpsit
ad Christi accedere sacramenta].' (The words in brackets are an interpola-
tion.^) Cf. de Civit. xxi. 25. There is a great deal of this sort of language
which makes it impossible to deny a strongly 'receptionist' view in Augustine.
He does not seem to distinguish the res from the virtus in the eucharist.

The above of course does not profess to be a complete treatment of
St. Augustine's eucharistic doctrine in any respect, nor even to touch upon
his views of the sacrifice.

' lit), iii. 15, 16 {P. L. c. p. 832). The de Divinis Offciis is acknow-
ledged to be not by Alcuin. It is, I think, not less plain that tlie Confessio
Fidei P. L. ci. pp. 1027 fT.) is not his. But even here occurs the sentencr.
' tanta est virtus huius sacrificii ut solis iustis [non] peccatoribus corpus sit
et sanguis Christi.'

I say that the Confessio Fidei is, in spite of Mabillon's argument, plainly

Transiihstantiation and Nihilianism. 235

he asserts a real spiritual change in the elements in virtue
of consecration, interprets the language of St. John vi,
about ' eating the flesh ' of Christ, of belief in His death
and fellowship in His passion ^.

Again Florus the deacon, who wrote in an exceedingly
edifying manner de Expositione Missae (c. A. D. H40),
uses language which certainly implies the permanence
after consecration of the outward elements ^.

not by Alcuin. Mabillon has not noticed that part iv. 1-7 is a patchwork
made up from the de Expositione Alissae of Floras of Lyons [^P. L. cxix.
p. 15 : see cc. 6, 17, 58-60, 62-3, 66-7). It appears plainly that Floras'
work is the original, and not vice versa. Also it will be noticed that Florus
gives his authorities (c. i) and Alcuin is not among them, while the author
of the Confessio does not give his. The Confessio further shows acquaintance
with the hymn Pange lingua (p. iii. c. 19), and the second half of part iii
(cc. 23-42) is largely based upon [Boetius'] de Fide Catholica, incorporating
lines 1-12, 24-30, 51-61, 84-90, 224-230, 244-252.

^ See de Eccl. Off. iii. 24, 25 {P. L. cv. pp. 1141-2) ' Hie [at the conse-
cration] credimus naturam simplicem panis et vini mixti verti in naturam
rationabilem [spiritual], scilicet corporis et sanguinis Christi.' 'Credit
[ecclesia] namque corpus et sanguinem Domini esse ac hoc morsu caelesti
benedictione impleri animas sumentium.' Ep. 4 ad Rantgar. (p. 1334)
'Nisi niandiicaveritis carnem Jilii hominis, etc., hoc est, nisi participes
fueritis meae passionis et credideritis me mortuum pro vestra salute, non
habebitis vitam in vobis.' On the precedents for such an interpretation
(not Augustine's) see appended note C.

^ For his de Expos. Missae see also Hurter's SS. Pair. Optisc. Selecta, vol.
xxxix. His doctrine of the real presence in virtue of the invocation of the
Holy Ghost on the elements and the use of the words of Christ's institution
(§§ 81-84) is very clear. In his Opuscula adv. Amalaritim i. 9 {P. L. cxix.
pp. 77, 78) he writes ' Prorsus panis ille sacrosanctae oblationis corpus est
Christi, non materie vel specie visibili sed virtute et potentia spiritual!. . . .
Simplex e frugibus panis conficitur, simplex e botris vinum liquatur, accedit
ad haec offerentis ecclesiae fides, accedit mysticae precis consecratio, accedit
divinae virtutis infusio ; sicque mire et ineffabili modo, quod est naturaliter
ex germine terreno panis et vinum. efficitur spiritualiter corpus Christi, id
est vitae et salutis nostrae mysterium, in quo aliud oculis corporis, aliud fidei
videmus obtentu : nee id tantum quod ore percipimus, sed quod mente
credimus, libamus. . . . Mentis ergo est cibus ille, non ventris ; non cor-
rumpitur, sed manet in vitam aeternam, quoniam pie sumentibus confert

236 Dissertations.

A landmark in the history of eucharistic doctrine is
the work of Paschasius Radbert \ de Corpore et Sanguine
Domini, vjr\i\.&\-\ about A.D. .S^i when he was a simple
monk of the older monastery of Corbey, and later, when
he had become abbot of Corbey, about A. D. (S44, pre-
sented by him to Charles the Bald. Paschasius appears
beyond all reasonable question to teach a doctrine of
transubstantiation— that is, he teaches that the elements
of bread and wine in the eucharist are at the moment
when the priest pronounces the words of institution, by
the power of Jesus Christ Himself and the operation of
His Spirit, wholly and substantially converted into the
true body and blood of Christ ; so that what exists upon
the altar is henceforth only the body and blood though
it remains under the ' figure,' appearance, and sensible
attributes of bread and wine. This appearance and these
attributes remain to test faith and to avoid the scandal
and horror which would result from the consecrated
elements appearing what they are. The conversion of
the elements is thus not an open one : it is a mystery,
not a manifest miracle. But the body is the very same
as was born of Mary and was crucified and buried : and
the truth of this is driven home by the record of a number

vitam aeternam. Pie autcm sumit qui spiritu fidti illuminatns in illo cibo
et potu visibili virtutem intelligibilis gratiae esurit ac sitit. . . . Corpus
igitur Chrisli, ut praedictum est, non est in specie visibili sed in virtute
spiritual], ncc inquiaari potest faece corporea quod et animarum et corpo-
rum vitia muntlaic consuevit.'

' There is, I think, some evidence for an influence of John of Damascus'
theology of the eucharist de Fide Orlhodoxa iv. i^, Lequien i. p. 368)
both upon the Ambrosian treatise dc Sacramentis and upon Paschasius'
worlv. But the matter is complicated by the relation of the dc Sacramenlis
to the de li/ysteriis also ascribed to St. Ambrose.

Transiihstantiation and Nihilianism. 237

of materialistic miracles, in which the hidden reality was
made to appear in the form of the divine infant or as
a bleeding limb of flesh. As against all rationalistic ob-
jections Paschasius exults in the divine power which can
do all it will, the originative power which can produce
this new creation, according to the plain word and promise
of the very Truth Himself, Jesus Christ. So far Paschasius
speaks the language of transubstantiation in its full force,
but he still regards the body and blood of the eucharist
as purely spiritual, and thus — .unlike the later opponents
of Berengar and some of his own contemporaries ^ —
repudiates any attempt to bring it into connexion with
the physical process of digestion, though it is uncertain
whether he regards the bread and wine as retaining
enough physical reality to admit of their being digested :
moreover, he is still so far under the influence of
Augustine as to use hesitating language on the question
whether the wicked receive the spiritual realities in the
holy communion.

The following passages will illustrate the above state-
ment {de Corp. et Sang. Doniijii, Pair. Lat. cxx. p. 1269) :

' Patet igitur quod nihil extra vel contra Dei voluntatem
potest, sed cedunt illi omnia omnino. Et ideo nullus move-
atur de hoc corpore Christi et sanguine, quod in mysterio
vera sit caro et verus sit sanguis, dum sic voluit ille qui
creavit ; omnia enim qnaccnnqne volnit fecit in caelo et

' P^. f;. Rabanus Maurus {Ep. ad Herihald. Episc. Antissiodor. 37, apud
Mabillon, Vetera Anakcla, Paris 1 723, p. 1 7, P. L. ex. p. 192 ; Gieseler, /. c. ii.
p. 2S5 n. 5) replies to the inquiry, ' utrum eucharistia, postqnam consumitur
et in secessum emitlitur more aliorum ciborum, iterum redeat in naturam
pribtinam quam habuerat antequam in altari consecraretur ? ' Cf. Paschasius'
own reference to the ' apocryphal book ' quoted above.

238 Dissertations.

in terra ; et quia voluit, licet in figura panis et vini
maneat, haec sic esse omnino nihilque aliud quam caro
Christ! et sanguis post consecrationem credenda sunt ;
unde ipsa Veritas ad discipulos, haec, inquit, caro est
mea pro miindi vita, et, ut mirabilius loquar, non alia
plane quam quae nata est de Maria et passa in cruce et
resurrexit de sepulchro.' ....

' Veritas autem Deus est, et si Deus Veritas est, quicquid
Christus promisit in hoc mysterio utique verum est.
Et ideo vera Christi caro et sanguis, quam qui manducat
et bibit digne habet vitam aeternam in se manentem ;
sed visu corporeo et gustu propterea non demutantur,
quatenus fides exerceatur ad iustitiam et ob meritum
fidei merces in eo iustitiae consequatur ' (i. 2, 5).

That after consecration there is ' nihil aliud quam
corpus et sanguis Domini ' is often repeated \ and
expressions are used such as ' corpus Christi et sanguis
virtute Spiritus in verbo ipsius ex panis vinique sub-
stantia efficitur' (iv. i). After consecration the bread
and wine may only typically be so called as Christ is
the Bread of Life (xvi). The act of consecration is
regarded as a new creative act of God (xv. 1), of which
the priest is only the minister. The reasons for the
'figura' of bread and wine remaining are stated as
above, and also (x. 1) because otherwise 'durius esset
contra consuetudinem humanam licet carnem salutis
tamen carnem hominis Christi in spcciem ct colorcm
ipsius mutatam et vinum in cruorcm convcrsum accipere' ;
cf. xiii. 2 'si cainis species in his visibilis appareret, iam
non fides essct aut mystcrium scd fieret miraculum; quo
aut fides nobis daretur, aut a perfidis exsecratio communi-

' Sue ii. 6, viii. 2, xi. 2, xii. i, xvi, xx. 3.

Transiihstantiation and Nihilianisin. 239

cantibus importunior grassaretur.' The record of miracles
follows in ch. xiv. Of Paschasius' more spiritual lan-
guage the following is an example : ' Frivolum est ergo,
sicut in eodem apocrypho libro legitur, in hoc mysterio
cogitare de stercore, ne commisceatur in digestione alte-
rius cibi. Denique ubi spiritualis esca et potus sumitur . . .
quid commistionis habere poterit ' (xx. 3). On the recep-
tion by the wicked see vi. 2 ^

But Paschasius' doctrine met with decided opposition.
Rabanus Maurus, writing in 853, emphatically denies
that the body of the eucharist is the same body as that
in which Christ lived and died ^. He himself asserts an
objective spiritual transformation ^ in the elements in

' Paschasius' language about the relation of the eucharistic act to Christ's
sacrifice is well worth study, cap. xi. But we are not here concerned with
the doctrine of the eucharistic sacrifice.

^ Ep. ad He7-ibald. I.e. 'Nam quidam nuper de ipso sacramento corporis
et sanguinis Domini non rite sentientes dixerunt, hoc ipsum esse corpus et
sanguinem Domini quod de Maria virgine natum est et in quo ipse Dominus
passus est in cruce et resurrexit de sepulchro. Cui errori quantum potuimus
ad Eigilum abbatem scribentes, de corpora ipso quid vere credendum sit
aperuimus.' (This letter is possibly that in Migne, P. L. cxii. p. 1510 ; see
c. 2.) The opinion that the ' body ' of the eucharist is different from Christ's
mortal body we shall see to have been held by Ratramn also.

Among older fathers cf. the language of Clem. Alex. Paed. ii. 2. 19
^iiTToj' 5€ TO ai^xa tov KvpioV to /xiV yap hariv aiirov aapKcKov a> ttjs (p9opas
\t\vTpLufi(6a, TO hi ■nvfVfj.aTiKuv, TOVTfCTTtv ct) /cexpicr^f^ci' Kol tout tan nieiv
TO alfia TOV 'Irjaov ttjs KvpiaKrjs fUTaXa^uv dcpOapaiar iax^^ Se to5 \6yov
TO wdp-a, ujs alpLa aapKus. Jerome itt Ephes. i. 7 (ed. Vallars. vii. p. 553)
' Dupliciter vero sanguis Christi et caro intelligitur : vel spiritualis ilia atque
divina de qua ipse dixit caro mea vcre est eibits et sanguis ineiis vere est
potus, et nisi manducaveritis carnein nieani el sangiiinevi inea/n btheritis
non habebitis vitam aeternam ; vel caro et sanguis quae ciucifixa est et
qui militis effusus est lancea. luxta banc divisioneni et in Sanctis eius
diversitas sangumis et carnis accipitur ; ut alia sit caro quae visura est
salulare Dei, alia caro et sanguis quae regnum Dei non queant possidere.'

' Liber de Saeris Ordinibus etc. {P. L. cxii. p. 11 85) 'Quis unquam
crederet quod panis in carnem potuisset converti vel vinum in sanguinem.

240 Dissertations.

virtue of consecration, so that they become the body and
blood of Christ in a true and real sense : but he does not
appear to distinguish between the ;rjand the virtus sacra-
inenti'^\ and, in a word, he is still under the dominant
influence of Augustine, whose words he repeats.

But the main opponent of Paschasius' doctrine was
Ratramn, a monk of his own convent. The emperor
Charles had addressed two questions to Ratramn, pre-
sumably in common with other theologians-: (i) Whether

nisi ipse Snlvator diceret, qui panem et vinum creavit et omnia ex nihilo
fecit.' Dr. Hebert in his Lord's Stipper : uninspired teachifig [Steity 8c Co..
1879) i. p. 614, quotes from Rabanus as follows — ' panem commiinem
accepit [Christus], sed benedicendo in longe aliud quam fuerat transmutat
ut veraciter diceret sic, hoc est corptcs meum : ' but his reference is, as so
often, wrong and I cannot discover the passage.

^ De Instit. Cler. i. 31 (/* Z. evii. p. 317) ' Huius rei sacramentum, id
est Veritas corporis et sanguinis Christi, de mensa dominica assumitur qui-
busdam ad vitam, quibusdam ad exitium : res vero ipsa omni homini ad
vilam, nuUi ad exitium : quia aliud est sacramentum, aliud virtus sacra-
menti.' Again Dr. Herbert quotes ' neque indigtiitas [indigne sumentis]
dignitatem tantae consecrationis evacuare poterit : sed rem sacramenti non
attingit [indignus] . . . idcirco nee effectus consequitur eiusdem sacramenti.'
But I cannot verify the reference.

^ It has been supposed that John Scotus Erigena was consulted and
wrote a work on the eucharist. But this does not appear to be the case.
Tiie work ascribed to him by Berengar and the men of his period is in fact
Ratramn's work : see Praefatio of H. J. Floss in P. L. cxxii. p. xxi.
Adrevaldus indeed, a contemporary, wrote a treatise (of which a fragment
remains) de Corpore et Sanguine Christi contra inettias loannis Scoti ; but
this is sufficiently accounted for by what is still to be found in Erigena's
writings and what must have been found in the commentary on Si. John vi,
when it was entire.

Erigena held that Christ in heaven was still man, in the sense that
in His one substance lie still possessed the natm-a and ratio of humanity,
but transmuted into the Godhead and with it ubiquitous. Under these
circumstances he might have anticipated the Lutheran doctrine of the
eucharist and held that, in whatever sense He has a body at all. He i:;
l>rcsent with the same body in the eucharist. But in fact he held a very
' symbolical ' view of the eucharist, cf. Expos, super Hierarch. Cael S.
Dionys. i. 3, where he inveighs against those 'qui visibilem eucharisiiam

Transiibstantiation and NiJiilianisui. 241

tlic body and blood are present in the eucharist in
veritate or in mysterio7 that is, as Ratramn ex-
plains it, whether there is in the eucharist a reality
apparent only to faith, hidden under earthly veils, or
whether the divine reality is there without veils ?
(2) Whether the sacramental body is the very body born
of Mary and now in heaven ? It does not appear
whether these questions were addressed to theologians
as a result of the presentation of Paschasius' treatise
or no. Certainly the first question is not suggested by
his position. But Ratramn's own view, as distinct from
Paschasius', becomes quite plain in the process of his
answer to both questions. He replies, like Paschasius,
that the body and blood of Christ are present in the
sacrament 'in mystery,' not 'in truth,' i.e. under veils
of sense, not in unveiled manifestation. But, un-
like Paschasius, he argues from this in a sense opposed
to transubstantiation. The elements by consecration
are 'changed for the better'; they become what they
were not, the veils of the body and blood. But this
spiritual transformation does not affect their physical
reality. In that respect they are not changed ; they
remain what they were. They symbolize in their natural
reality the heavenly gift which they contain. The same

nihil aliud significare praeter se ipsam volunt assereie [i. e presumably
those who said the consecrated elements were really the body and blood
in themselves and not typical of something else] dum clarissime praefata
tuba [sc. Dionysius] clamat non ilia sacramenta visibilia colenda neque
pro veritate amplexanda quia significativa veritatis sunt.'

His doctrine of Christ's humanity can be found stated with great clearness
in de Div. A'at. ii. ii, v. 38. He held that there underlies each man's
earthly body a secret ratio (or essence) of his corporeity which is to be his
' spiritual body ' like that of the angels.

242 Dissertations,

object or substance {i-es) is both physically one thing
and spiritually another. The following citations from
his Liber dc Corporc et Sang2iine Domini^ will make
his position apparent :

c. 9 ' Ille panis qui per sacerdotis ministerium Christi
corpus conficitur aliud exterius humanis sensibus ostendit
et aliud interius fidelium mentibus clamat. Exterius
quidem panis quod ante fuerat forma praetenditur, color
ostenditur, sapor accipitur : sed interius longe aliud multo
pretiosius multoque excellentius intimatur, quia caeleste,
quia divinum, id est Christi corpus, ostenditur quod non
sensibus carnis sed animi fidelis contuitu vel aspicitur
vel accipitur vel comeditur.'

But this involves no kind of change in what appears
to the senses, no kind of physical change at all.

cc. 12-15 ' Nulla permutatio facta esse cognoscitur.' i.e.
' secundum veritatem species creaturae quae fuerat ante
permansisse cognoscitur . . . nihil est hie permutatum
... si nihil permutationis pertulerint nihil aliud exsistunt
quam quod prius fucrc . . . corporaliter namque nihil
in eis cernitur esse permutatum. Fatebuntur igitur
necesse est aut mutata esse secundum aliud quam
secundum corpus . . . aut si hoc profiteri noluerint, com-
pelluntur negare corpus esse sanguinemquc Christi [i. e.
that any change has been made at all] quod ncfas est
non solum diccre verum etiam cogitare'-.'

Then comes the conclusion :

c. 16 ' At quia confitentur ct corpus ct sanguinem Dei

' r. L. cxxi. p. 126 f.

^ Katramu clearly draws no distinction between accidents apparent to
the senses and substance : not to be changed sensibly is not to be changed
corporally or in reality at all.

Transubstantiation and NiJiilianism.

243

esse, nee hoc esse potuisse nisi facta in melius commuta-
tione, neque iste commutatio corporaliter sed spiritualiter
facta sit. necesse est iam ut figurate facta esse dicatur :
quoniam sub velamento corporei panis corporeique vini
spirituale corpus spiritualisque sanguis exsistit : non
quod duarum sint exsistentiae rerum inter sediversarum,
corporis videlicet et spiritus, verum una eademque res
secundum aliud species panis et vini consistit, secundum
aliud autem corpus est et sanguis Christi.'

Ratramn (like earlier writers) compares what occurs
to the eucharistic elements with what occurs to the
element of water in baptism in virtue of the con-
secration of the priest (c. 17) ' Accessit sancti Spiritus
per sacerdotis consccrationem virtus et efficax facta est
non solum corpora verum etiam animas diluere et
spirituales sordes spirituali potentia dimovere.'

He goes on to make a stronger comparison. Feeling
forced by St. Paul "s words (i Cor. x. 1-4) to suppose
that the Jews had sacraments as full of spiritual reality
as the Christians, he ascribes to the sea and the
cloud, to the water from the rock and the manna, a real
spiritual potency^. He even declares that the Jews in
the wilderness ate the flesh of Christ and drank His
blood, and that Christ by His divine power changed
the manna into His body and the water into His blood
with the same reality as in the eucharist of the Church,
and he sees in this an anticipation only earlier than that
which occurred when our Lord, before His actual sacri-
fice, ' w^as able to turn the substance of bread and
the creature of wine into the body and blood ' of His

^ Paschasius argues to the contrary effect (c. v.;
R 2

244 Dissertations.

sacrifice (21-28). Curiously enough, it is at this point
where the analogy of baptism and the Jewish sacraments
might suggest that the only change in the eucharistic
elements consists in their being endued with a spiritual
significance and power, that Ratramn (for once) uses
language suggestive of transubstantiation. By spiritual
power and in a mystery we are to ' understand that the
bread and wine are reallv converted into the substance
of Christ's body and blood, to be received by the be-
lievers ' (30). But this language is shown to go beyond
his real mind by superabundant explanations under two
heads :

(i) That there is no change in the elements: 'nam
secundum creaturarum substantiam quod fuerunt ante
consecrationem hoc et postea consistunt ' (54) ; ' in illo
vel potu vel pane nihil corporaliter opinari sed totum
spiritualiter sentire' (58). The truth is not ' ille panis et
illud vinum Christusest,'but ' in illo sacramento Christus
est' (59). The wine is no more changed into the blood
of Christ corporally than the mingled water which repre-
sents the people is changed into the people : ' at videmus
in aqua secundum corpus nihil esse conversum ' (75).

(2) He distinguishes between the historical actual
visible body of Christ, which is now in heaven — the
'Veritas carnis quam sumpserat dc virgine' — and the
sacramental body — the 'sacramentum carnis' — and that
in the most emphatic w-ay (57). In this connexion he
seems to speak as if the presence in the sacrament
were only a presence of the divine Spirit, or the Word
of God : and as if the sacrament were only called
the body of Christ because the bread and wine make

Transubsfautiatiou and Ni/iilianism. 245

a new body for the divine Spirit or Word to operate
through. ' Corpus Christi corpus est divini Spiritus.'
' Patenter ostendit [Ambrosius] secundum quod habeatur
corpus Christi, videlicet secundum id quod sit in eo
Spiritus Christi, i. e. divini potentia Verbi, quae non
sokim animam pascit verum etiam purgat ^ ' (61, 64,
72). Again he speaks as if the bread were in no
other sense Christ's natural heavenly body than it is
the mystical body, that is the Christian people, which
it also represents (73-74).

This is the only really doubtful question in Ratramn's
doctrine: Is the unseen part in the sacrament merely
the presence of the pure Spirit of God, or Word of
God, as it were incarnating Himself in the bread to
impart spiritual life to His people ? or is it a presence
of the incarnate and glorified Christ after a spiritual
and heavenly manner ? On this point St. Augustine
leaves us in no doubt ". The ' inner part ' of the sacra-
ment is the flesh and blood \\hich have become 'spirit '
and ' life.' But Ratramns language leaves us in doubt
as to what he held and taught on this point. He
ends his treatise however with language stronger than
that of the sections w^e have just been discussing, for
he quotes and comments on words of the liturgy which

' There would be some support for this view in the language of Tertullian,
see appended note D ; in that of Clement (above, p. 2 ^^9 n. 2) and Macarius
Magnes (below, p. 304). It is generally associated with the misunderstand-
ing of St. John vi. 63, as if that were intended to explain away what Christ had
been saying just before, and to imply that ' eating the flesh ' of Christ and
• drinking His blood ' was only a metaphor for receiving His words, or that
only His spirit, not His humanity, could be communicated to men. On
the patristic interpretation of this passage see appended note C.

^ See above, p. 233 n.

246 Dissertations.

seem to assume that what we receive in the sacra-
ment is the same as what we shall enjoy in heaven,
only now under a veil and in a mystery, then unveiled
and in manifest participation — ' pigmis actcrnae vitae
capientes Jnimiliter imploravuis nt qtiod in imagine con-
tinginins sacravicnti vianifcsta participatione sninamus '
(85 f.), and he concludes with the language of a true
faith—

' Nee ideo, quoniam ista dicimus, putetur in mysterio
sacramenti corpus Domini vel sanguinem ipsius non a
fidelibus sumi quando fides non quod oculus videt sed
quod credit accipit : quoniam spiritualis est esca et
spiritualis potus, spiritualiter animam pascens et aeternae
satietatis vitam tribuens ; sicut ipse Salvator mysterium
hoc commendans loquitur : Spiritns est qni vivijicat, nam
caro nihil prodest.'

Paschasius Radbert was at pains to insist upon the
identity of the sacramental and the real body of Christ,
against those who, like Ratramn, would ' weaken the
force of Christ's own words \' and his side of the con-
troversy was taken by Hincmar of Rheims - and Haimo,
bishop of Halberstadt •'. The statement of transubstan-
tiation by the latter is very explicit. He denies that the
consecrated elements can be called siirns of the natural

'<b '

* See Expos, in Matt, xii, in xxvi. 26 [^P. L. cxx. p. 890) ' Audiant qui
volunt extenuare hoc verbum corporis.'

- de Cav. Vitiis et I'irt. Exerc. ad Carol. Calv. c. 10 (^P. L. cxxv. p. 926).
It is worth notice that he retains a doctrine of Fulgentius (/'. /.. l\v. p. 391)
and declares it to be beyond question that there is a participation of Christ's
body and blood in baptism also— 'nulli est aliquatenus ambigendum'; so
that baptized infants who die do not fall into the condemnation of John vi

;p- 925)-

' P. L. cxviii. p. 817.

Transuhstaiitiation and Nihilianisni. 247

body of Christ, though they are signs of the mystical
body ; and he writes thus of the consecration :

' Substantiam ergo panis et vini, quae super altare
ponitur, fieri corpus Christi et sanguinem per myste-
rium sacerdotis et gratiarum actionem, Deo hoc operante
divina gratia secreta potestate, nefandissimae demen-
tiae est fideHbus mentibus dubitare. . . . Commutat ergo
invisibihs sacerdos suas visibiles creaturas in substan-
tiam suae carnis et sanguinis secreta potestate. In quo
quidem Christi corpore et sanguine propter sumentium
horrorem sapor panis et vini remanet et figura, sub-
stantiarum natura in corpus Christi et sanguinem omnino
conversa ; sed aliud renuntiant sensus carnis, aliud re-
nuntiat fides mentis. Sensus carnis nihil aliud renuntiare
possunt quam sentiunt ; intellectus autem mentis et fides
veram Christi carnem et sanguinem renuntiat et con-
fitetur, ut tanto magis coronam suae fidei recipiat et
meritum, quanto magis credit ex integro quod omnino
remotum est a sensibus carnis .... Nullum signum est
illud cuius est signum ; nee res aliqua sui ipsius dicitur
sicfnum sed alterius.'

*&'

And at this point the controversy remained till it was
rekindled two centuries later in connexion with Berengar.
We need not concern ourselves with the somewhat in-
tricate details of the Berengarian controversy in the
eleventh century. It is enough for us to know that
Berengar's teaching and ' the book of John Scotus ' on
which it was based — i.e. in fact Ratramn's work, which
was both by Berengar and his opponents ascribed to
Scotus — were repeatedly condemned, and that the doctrine
of transubstantiation became accepted as a dogma of the
Church which it was heresy to deny, though the actual

248 Dissertations.

word transubstantiation does not occur in any ecclesi-
astical decision till it was decreed by the Lateran Council

in 1215.

Nor again are we concerned with the task of passing
moral judgements on the actors in the controversy.
Berengar was not of the stuff of which martyrs are
made, and more than once sought safety from his
ecclesiastical opponents by repudiating his own beliefs.
On the first of these occasions he accepted, if he did
not subscribe to^ a horribly materialistic formula of
Cardinal Humbert's, which will be noticed later on ^
On the other hand, it must be admitted that he met
with nothing like fair treatment from his opponents.
This at least we may safely say ; and without entering
further into the moral question, we may pass on to attempt
to describe exactly what Berengar's position was — judging
of this chiefly from the recovered portion of his treatise
de Sacra Coena - — and what the position of his opponents.
On the whole Berengar reproduces, and with conscious-
ness of his obligation'"', the view of the book which he
ascribed to John the Scot, and which was in fact the

1 Lanfranc says that he subscribeil to it {de Corp. et Sang. Doiiiini 2,
F. L. cl) ' Tu vero acqiiiescens acccpisli, Icgisti, confessus te ita credere
iiireiurando confirmasti, tandem maiiu propria subscripsisti.' He himself
denies that he subscribed to it or assented positively to it; but admits that
he accepted it in silence {de S. Coena, pp. 25-6) ' Manu quod mendaciter ad
te pervenit non subscripsi nam ut de consensu pronuntiarem mto nullus
exe"it ; tantum timore praesentis iam mortis scriptiim illud absque ulla
conscientia mca iam factum nianibus acccpi ' ; cf. p. 74 ' a protestatione
veritatis et defensione mea obmutui.'

^ My references are to the edition of A. F. and F. Th. Vischer, Berlin 1S34.
In this book we have Berengar's mature view, which as he says (p. 44)
was only gradually reached, through the discipline of persecution and pro-
longed study. " de S. Coena, p. 36.

Transiibstantiation and NiJiilianisni. 249

work of Ratramn. But his work differs markedly from
Ratramn's. He is much more controversial — being
mainly occupied in repudiating transubstantiation rather
than in elaborating a positive theory; and he is a thorough
scholastic, full of the methods and termsof the new dialectic.
His book indeed is important, as for other reasons, so for
its place in scholasticism. The Church had not yet made
up its mind to adopt the rising philosophy of the time.
There was a great tendency on the part of ecclesiastics
to glorify simple belief and to deprecate the attempt to
understand Christian doctrines, or to meet all mental
difficulties with a simple appeal to divine omnipotence ^
Berengar contends then against his opponent Lanfranc
for the legitimacy of dialectic. He had been accused of
' deserting authorities and taking refuge in dialectic"^ ' ;
and he is not slow to reply that ' to take refuge in
dialectic through all obstacles is the mark of the best
judgement ; because to take refuge in dialectic is to take
refuge in reason, and he who does not take refuge there,
seeing that it is in virtue of the possession of reason that
man is made in the image of God, has deserted his own
honour and cannot be renewed from day to day in the
image of God,' And he justifies this appeal to logic by
the example of Augustine^.

Connected with the appeal to logic, as against authority
pure and simple, is Berengar's depreciation of majorities.

' See Hugh of Langres, de Coi-p. et Sang. Chrisli contra Berengar. (/". L.
cxlii) at the beginning, and Witmund (below, pp. 261-2), and relerences to
Lanfranc in the following note.

^ p. 99, cf. p. 164 'Et primo illud non tacendum quod persuadere
conaris quod ad mensam domiiiicam pertineat posse utiliter credi, non
posse utiliter inquiri.' " p. loi.

250 Dissertations.

He loves to recall the fact that in the African controversy
about re-baptism in the third century \ and in the Arian
controversy in the fourth ^, the majority went wrong
and the maintainers of what proved to be the truth
were but the few. Thus when he is confronted with
the argument that the great majority held against him
on the matter of the sacrament, and that this was
a sign that he was in error, he replies that exactly the
same argument from common belief would substantiate
the doctrine that man is in the image of God in virtue
of his physical shape, ' because all but a very few Chris-
tians both hold this and have no doubt that it is to be
held as a matter of Christian faith.' Indeed, he confi-
dently maintains that the people who hold with him
about the eucharist are not fewer than those who hold
the truth against Anthropomorphism ^.

Berengar then stands stiffly for the right of reason and
against the mere force of majorities in religion ; but he
certainly is not behindhand in his appeal to ' authentic
scriptures ' — a phrase which in those days covered all
authoritative writings, both the bible and the fathers *.
On the whole he is critical and successful in his treat-
ment of authorities : notably he argues with very
damaging force against the doctrine of transubstantia-
tion from the language of the Canon of the Mass and
other ancient prayers to be found in his day in what

' pp- 27, 34. 39. 44. 58- ' p. .^5-

^ pj). 54, 55. On the current Anthropomorpliism see 1 eferences in Clieseler,
Eccl. Hist. ii. p. 391 ; especially the report which Ratherius, bishop of
Verona, gives of its prevalence in the dioceses of Vicenza and Verona.

* p. 277. The appeal behind fathers to Scripture as the uliimate
criterion seems not at this period to have occurred to any one.

Transuhstantiation and Niliilianism. 251

he calls the ' book of the Lord's table' {liber viensalisY .
In his discussion of the meaning of patristic passages,
there is one specially interesting passage in which he
calls attention to a use of negatives which prevails not
only in the fathers, but in Scripture and common speech".
A thing is said absolutely not to be that which from the
present point of view is not of importance in comparison
with something else of much more importance which it is
or has become and which it is desirable to emphasize.
A certain Gerald, he instances, has become a bishop,
and is yet conducting himself improperly. What
could be more in accordance with custom than to repri-
mand him by reminding him that he is ' no longer
Gerald, but a bishop ' ? He multiplies instances of
a similar mode of speech from the bible and the
fathers, on other topics than the eucharist. ' I am
a worm and no man ' ; ' my doctrine is not mine ' ; ' who
were born not of blood, nor of the will of man ' ; ' it is
no longer I that live'; 'he is not a Jew, which is one

^ See p. 277. He quotes, p. 2S3, a collect for Christmas Day (still in
use in the Roman Mass) Mtinera nostra nativitatis hodieniae t?iis/eriis
apta proveniant ; ztt, sicut homo geiiilus idem rejnhit Dens, sic nobis haec
terroia stihstautia confcrat quod diviniim est ; a collect which certainly
suggests that the tcrrena siibstatitia in the eucharist is as real as the
Jionio in the Incarnation. P. 285, he quotes another prayer, the force of
which is still more immistakeable, and which is not, as far as I know, in
present use : Gratias exhibemtis tibi, Dot>ii?ie, quod etiam tci?iporalci?i ac
mutabikm creatiiram, paitein a/que vinum, quae de moisa tua saundum
corpus accipimus, ad salutcm nobis animac valere instiltiisti ; praesta til qui
sacraTnenta accipimus , quod minus est {^minus est enini signato signum omne),
beneficia potiora, sacramentorum res, in homine interiore sumatnus ; qui per
sacramenla., quod minus est, in co)pcre rejicittiur, per res sacramentorum,
quod potius est, tnente rcjieiamur.

' p. 177 ' Non desunt in communi oratione, non desunt in scripturis dicta
quae merito conferantur istis beati Ambrosii dictis.'

252 Dissertations.

outwardly.' It is not then, he argues, fair to conclude
that whenever a father says ' the bread and wine after
consecration are not bread and wine, but the body and
blood of Christ,' he is maintaining the doctrine of tran-
substantiation : — the less fair when similar phrases are
used about the \\'ater in baptism which no one supposes
to cease to exist, and when there are other passages
where the permanence of the bread and wine are plainly
stated ^ This argument really shows a thorough grasp
of the situation.

Philosophically Berengar's denial of transubstantiation
is a denial that accidents can subsist apart from their
substance or subject, or attributes apart from that of
which they are attributes. Nothing can be this or that
(^just' or 'white') when it has ceased itself to be.
Logically indeed we distinguish substances from attributes
or accidents, but this is merely notional. We can have
no reason to believe that there is a substance which is
separable from the qualities in which it consists -.
You say, he argues, that after consecration the subject or
substance of bread is annihilated and another subject
' pp. 177 ff-. P- 172.

"^ p. 81 'nullo modo Socrates iustus erit, si Socratem esse non contingeret; '
9^! 93, 171 'const.it r.ulla ratioiie colorcm vidcri, nisi contingat etiam col-
oratum [a coloured substance] videri ; ' 1S2 ' causa videndi coloris vel cuius-
cunque quod in subiecto est, subiecti ipsius visio est, apud ipsam, cjuae
Deus est, veritatem suljiecli et cius quod in subiecto est, non .sensu sed
intellectu solo separabilium compactricem ;' 195 'impossibile est secundum
banc ut dixi mutationem, corrupto subiecto, non corrumpi quod erat in
subiecto ;' 211 ' quod secundum subiectum non sit, minime posse secundum
accidcns esse.'

The commentary of .Mexander of Hales on this argumentation is curious,
see pars iv. qu. x. memb. v. art. iii. dc coiisecralioiie § i 'minuit utilitntcm
meriti quia ponendo quod accidentia non possunt esse sine subiecto,
innitendo rationibus humanis, meritum fidei minuitur.'

Transuhstantiation and Nihilianism. 253

generated, viz. the body of Christ ; but that this is
invisible, so that you cannot see the body of Christ.
Yes, he replies, you can, if the substance is that. You
can see it as much as you could ever see the old substance.
What could you ever see of the bread except its visible
qualities : and if }'ou say the body of Christ now subsists
under visible qualities, it is present, like the bread,
visibly, tangibly, &c.^ It is just as visible as a white
man would be were he to paint his face like a negro".

From this point of view, he presses his opponents with
the materialism of their doctrine. ' While you think
to thrust me,' he says to Lanfranc, ' into the Mincio
(of heresy) ; }'ou yourself are rushing into the Po (of
materialism) ^.' If the body of Christ is, as you affirm,
— and as he himself had been made to declare by
Cardinal Humbert — corporally present in the eucharist,
what must be there is not the whole body, but a portion
of the body. For what is corporally present is locally
present ; and if the body is locally present, whole and
undivided, and is so consumed, on one altar, it cannot
be locally present on a million other altars and in
heaven ^. (Indeed he again and again affirms what, as
we shall see, is not antecedently improbable — that
Cardinal Humbert, and even Lanfranc, held the view
that what was present in the sacrament was a por~
tiunciila cai'iiis^.) But such a view is untenable: for

' pp- 127, ^34-53 202.

- p. 127 'quia si supervestiatur facies tiia colore Aethiopis necesse est
faciem tuain videri, si colorem constiteiic videri.'

•"• p. 119; cf. p 43. * p. 198 f.

' p. Si ' Humbertus ille tuus . . . qui in sicrificio ecclesiae niliil aliud quam
portiunculam carnis sensualiter et sanguinis post consecrationem superesse

254 Dissertations,

the body of Christ is indivisible and does not admit of
partition^. Nor is it conceivable that (as Humbert's
formula expressly asserted) the body of Christ, incor-
ruptible and immortal, can be broken by the hand of the
priest or pressed by the teeth of the communicants ^.
Once more, he inveighs against the idea that in the
consecration of the eucharist there is a production of
a substance {generatio siibiccti), i. e. of the body of Christ.
For that body already exists, one and indivisible, and
how can what already exists be produced ^ ?

On the whole, in view of the then current doctrine of
transubstantiation, Berengar's logic is, if pitiless^ morally
as justifiable and successful as his appeal to authority.

As has been said, Berengar is mainly occupied; in

confirmat ' ; cf. p. 200 ' scribis [i. e. Lanfranc] fieri in altari portiunculam
carnis per generationem subiecti.'

^ pp. 118, 199 'Constabit nihilominua eum qui opinetiir Christi corpus
cnelo devocatum adesse sensualiter in altari ipsum se deicere quod vecor-
dium est, dum confirmat se manu frangere, dente atterere Christi corpus,
quod tamen ipsum negare non possit impassibile esse et incorruptibile.'

^ p. 163 ' Non quia corpus Christi et sanguis possint vel in toto vel in
parte nunc esse incipere secundum generationem subiecti, quia Christi corpus
per mille annos iam exsistens nullo mode nunc esse incipere, nullo mode
potest nunc generari.' This ' creationist ' language about the miracle of
transubstantiation is still used by Alger, de Sacr. Corp. et Sang. Doin. i. 16.
112, and others. There is, however, another kind of language by which the
bread and wine are said to be ' transposed into ' or ' pass into ' the body of
Christ. Thus ' si creaturas quas de nihilo potuit creare, has ipsas multo
magis valent in cxcellentioris naturae dignitatem convcrtere et in sui corjioiis
substantiam traiisjundcie ' (I' ulbcrt of Charti cs, P. L. cxli. p. 204). A later
scholastic controversy arose, and still subsists, as between these theories
of an actio productiva and an actio addiictiva, see Lessius de Perfect.
Divin. xii. 16. §§ 114-119. He decides for the former, 'verius igitur mihi
semper visum, Christi corpus poni sub speciebus ])er actionem productivam,
quam replicationem vel reproductionem vel coUationem eiusdem esse sub-
stantialis appellare possumus.'

Transiihstantiation and Niliilianism. 255

the portion of his late controversial work which remains
to us, in controversial negations. His own positive view
is not elaborated. Certainly however he appears — like
Ratramn — to have held to the doctrine of a real objec-
tive, but spiritual, presence in the elements in virtue
of consecration. Thus he distinguishes different kinds
of ' conversion ' or change, and affirms of the elements
a conversion Vv'hich while it leaves them what they were
makes them something they were not^. This he con-
stantly affirms is the character of divine benediction —
not to destroy but to raise to a higher power ^. Again,
if he asserts that the bread and wine after consecration
are still signs, he expressly distinguishes kinds of signs ^
The bread and wine, he says, are signs of an existing
reality, and not only existing but actually present with
the signs, for the res sacramenti necessarily attends
the sacraincntinn '^. Like others however he certainly
denies that the wicked receive the body and blood of
Christ- ; he assimilates, again like others, the eucharistic
gift to that of baptism ^ ; and at times he seems to
pass from a ' spiritual ' to a merely ' memorial ' view of
' p. 161.

^ p. 163 ' per consecrationem, inquam, quod nemo interpretari poterit
per subiecti corrnptionem ; ' p. Ii6 ' omne quod sacretur necessario in
melius provehi, minima absumi per corruptionem subiecti.'

^ p. 43 ' Non interesse nihil inter figuram vel signum rei quae nunquam
fuit, rei nondum exhibitae pronunciatoriam, et figuram vel signum rei
exsistentis, rei iam exhibitae commonefactoriam.'

* p. 43 ' Constat enim, ubi fit sacramcntum, nulla posse non esse ratione
rem quoque sacramenti.'

^ p. 89 : thus he glosses i Cor. xi. 29 'not discerning the body ' as ' not
discerning the sacrament of the body' ; and (p. 278) he lays stress on the
phrase of the invocation — that the bread and wine may become ' to us^ the
body and the blood of Christ.

^ p. 128 'per omnia comparabili.'

256 Dissertations.

the eucharistic elements^ It must be remembered that
in the language of the day intellectiialis and spiriiiialis
were synonyms. A 'spiritual' presence would also be
called ' intellectual ' ; and that could easily mean a pre-
sence only in the intelligence or memory^.

On the whole however, I repeat, his language is plain
for the real presence ; for example :

'Hie ego inquio : certissimum habete dicere me,
panem atque vinum altaris post consecrationem Christi
esse revera corpus et sanguinem •\'

' Panis autem et vinum, attestante hoc onmi scriptura,
per consecrationem convertuntur in Christi carnem et
sanguinem, constatque omne quod consecretur, omne
cui a Deo benedicatur, non absumi^ non auferri, non
destrui, sed manerc et in melius quam erat necessario
provehi *.'

But Berengar's opponents would not be conciliated by
any belief in the real presence, however distinct, that was
combined with a belief in the permanence of the out-
ward substances of bread and wine. Transubstantiation
was held at that time in the Church both fanatically

' p. 222 ' Exigit ut ipsum eundcm Christi sanguinem semper in memoria
habens in eo, quasi in viatico ad conficiendum vitae hiiius iter, interioris
tni vitam constituas sicut exterioris Uii vitam in exterioribus constituis cibis
et potibus.'

■■' See for this transition of tliought one of Berengar's earliest opponents,
Hugh of Langres, de Corp. et Sang. Chr. con. Berengar. {P. L. cxlii. p. 1327)
' Corpus quod dixcras crucifixum intellectuale constituis. In quo evident-
issime patet quod incorporeum contiteris. Qua in re uiiiversalem ecclesiam
scandalizas ... si quod adiunctum est sola fit intellectus potontia. revera
non capitur quomodo, vel unde, vel idem sit quod ad hue non subsisiit. Est
cnim intellectus esscntiarum discussor non opifex, iudex non institutor. Et
quamvis rerum vel n.onstrel vel figuret imagines, nullum corpus materiali
jiroducit exordio.'

^ p. 51. * p. 24S ; cf. below, p. 259 n 2.

Transubstantiation and NiJiilianism. 257

and materialistically. The plainest witness to this is the
confession of faith already referred to, which was drawn
up by Cardinal Humbert and forced upon Berengar
at Rome, in the presence of Pope Nicholas and other
bishops, in the year T059. This, first negatively by way
of recantation and then positively by way of affirma-
tion, asserts under anathema that ' The bread and wine
after consecration are not only a sacrament but also the
true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ and are
sensibly, not only in a sacrament but in truth, touched
and broken by the hands of the priests and pressed by
the teeth of the faithful.' The sense of the passage as
a whole leaves no doubt that it is the body and bJood
which are declared to be the subject of the physical acts
mentioned.

This appalling decree is as follows ^ :

' Ego Berengarius, indignus diaconus ecclesiae sancti
Mauricii Andegavensis, cognoscens veram catholicam
et apostolicam fidem, anathematizo omnem haeresim,
praecipue eam de qua hactenus infamatus sum, quae
astruere conatur panem et vinum, quae in altari ponun-
tur, post consecrationem solummodo sacramentum et
non verum corpus et sanguinem domini nostri lesu
Christi esse, nee posse sensualiter nisi in solo sacramento
manibus sacerdotum tractari vel frano-i aut fidelium
dentibus atteri. Consentio autem sanctae Romanae et
apostolicae sedi, et ore et corde profiteor de sacra-
mento dominicae mensae eam fidcm tenere, quam

' See Lanfranc, de Corp. et Sang. Do»i. 2. Mansi, Concil. xix. p. roo.
At a later date (1078) Berengar signed a profession which went no further
than affirming the substantial conveision of the elements into the true flesh
and blood. But this was when Hildebrand (Gregory VII) was pope, who,
first as papal legate at Tours (1054) and all along, had gone as far as he
could venture in support of Berengar.

258 Dissertations.

dominus et venerabilis papa Nicolaus et haec sancta
synodus auctoritate evangelica et apostolica tenendam
tradidit mihique firmavit : scilicet panem et vinum, quae
in altari ponuntur, post consecrationem non solum sacra-
mentum sed etiam verum corpus et sanguinem domini
nostri lesu Christi esse, et sensualiter non solum Sacra-
mento sed in veritate manibus sacerdotum tractari et
frangi et fidelium dentibus atteri : iurans per sanctam
et homoousion Trinitatem et per haec sacrosancta
Christi evangelia. Eos vero qui contra hanc fidem
venerint cum dogmatibus et sectatoribus suis aeterno
anathemate dignos esse pronuntio. Quod si ego ipse
aliquando aliquid contra haec sentire ac praedicare
praesumpsero, subiaceam canonum severitati. Lecto
et perlecto sponte subscripsi.'

It is very noticeable that both Lanfranc and Hugh of
Langres, who wrote against Berengar, while on the one
hand they misinterpret Berengar as asserting a bare
memorial of Christ in the holy eucharist \ on the
other defend implicitly such language as that of the
decree, affirming that the body and blood of Christ
are physically eaten by the communicant, though they
are not thereby subject to corruption and diminution-.

The most considerable theological effort against
Berengar is the treatise dc Corporis ct Sanguinis Christi

' See Lanfranc, /. c. cap. 22, and Hu^h, as cited above.

* Hugh, /. c. ' putas non bene intelligens attrita quaeque consequenter cor-
nimpi.' Lanfranc (/. c. c. 2) quotes with the higliest expression of approval
Humbert's decree; cf. also c. 17: the announced faith and teaching of
the Church is ' carnem et sanguinf;m domini nostri lesu Christi et ore
corporis et ore cordis, hoc est corporaliter ac spiiitualiter manducari et
bibi.' Both Hugh and Lanfranc meet the argument that what is contin-
ually eaten must diminish by an appeal to the pliysical miracle of the
widow of Zarephath's oil ; and demand an act of faith, without reasoning,
in the inscrutable action of divine power.

Transiihstantiation and Niliilianism. 259

Veritate, by Witmund (Guitmundus) a Norman, who,
after declining to accept an English bishopric under
William the Conqueror, was afterwards made archbishop
of Aversa in Italy. This treatise, written apparently in
Normandy between the years 1060 and io7(S, is our
fullest source of information for the theological feeling of
the majority of the Church during the Berengarian con-
troversy ^. Witmund begins by recognizing two distinct
beliefs among the Berengarians - : some of them hold-
ing a merely symbolical view of the eucharist, others
a doctrine of the real presence of the body and blood
in the substances of bread and wine — which latter view
he calls iinpanatio and invinatio. Both views alike how-
ever fall under condemnation for denying the doctrine of
transubstantiation, and to this therefore he first applies
himself. He conceives the change in the elements to
be such as causes them to become in physical reality
the body and blood of Christ, only under the remaining
accidents of bread and wine. He does not shrink from
the idea that Christ's body is pressed by the teeth of
communicants^, or even of animals'*, for it lay in the

' It has been recently reprii^ted (with approbation) in SS. Pair. Opusc. Sel.
vol. xxxviii, from which I quote it.

^ i. S ' Berengariani omnes in hoc conveniunt quia panis et viniim essen-
tinliter non mutantur, sed ut extorquere a qiiibusdam potui multum in hoc
diffenint, quod alii nihil omnino de corpore et sanguine Domini sacramentis
istis inesse, sed tantummodo umbras haec et figuras esse dicunt. Alii vero
rectis ecclesiae rationibus cedentes, nee tamen a stultitia recedentes, ut quasi
aliquo modo nobiscum esse videantur, dicunt ibi corpus et sanguincm
Domini revera sed latenter contineri et ut sumi possint quodammodo, ut ita
dixerim, impanari. Et hanc ipsius Berengarii subtiliorem esse sententiam
aiunt.'

^ i. 10 'Quare non possit dentibus premi, qui manibus Thomae et post
resurrectionem potuit attrectari?'

* ii. 7, 8. Or (as a prior alternative) angels may have carried off the

S 2

26o Dissertations.

tomb and after the resurrection it both trode the earth and
was touched by the hand of Thomas. Indeed nothing
physical can defile it. Nor does he shrink from holding
it possible that Christ may divide His body and blood
in portions to the faithful ^, though it may also remain
undivided and entire in every particle of every host^.
But he does deny that the flesh and blood of Christ
are liable to violence or corruption ^ : that is (so physical
is his conception of transubstantiation) he denies that
the consecrated elements are liable to natural putrefac-
tion ^. They may seem so to the eye of the disobedient
and unbelieving, who have misused them for purposes
of incredulous inquiry ; but the senses are delusive, and
allowed to be delusive for the punishment of presump-
tion, unless indeed they can be turned to account to
win the merit of a faith contrary to their evidence^. He
denies that the elements are the subjects of the ordinary

sacramental realities, and they may have been only in appearance devoured
by animals, ' a muribus corrodi vel consumi.' This appears to have been
a frequent occurrence, see Abelard, P. L. clxxviii. pp. 1743-4 ' De hoc
quod negligentia ministrorum evenire solet, quod scilicet mures videntur
rodere et in ore portare corpus illud, quaeri solet: sed dicimus quod Deus
illud non diniittit ibi ut a tarn turpi animali tractetur, sed tamen remanet
ibi forma ad negligentiam ministrorum corrigendam.' Cf. Peter Lombard,
quoted below, p. 268 n. i. Cf. among the Greeks, Pseudo-John Damasc.
de Corp. et Sang. Chr. cap. 5 (Lequien, i. p. 659).

' i. 15 'Ut corpus suum per partes ipse dividere possit, . . . quis impossibile
hoc audeat aestimare ? '

•^ i. 16-18. ' i. 15.

' ii. 2 'Nobis enim panis ille Dei caelestis, ilia eucharistia, divinum
illud manna, quijd immaculati agni carncm impassibilem factam de sacris
altaribus sumimus, per quod et vivimus et a corruptione sanamur, nunquam
putrescit.'

* ii. 3 ' Aut certe fidci eius soliditas copiosius remuneranda comprobetur,
quod contra id etiam quod oculus cemit de rebus ac potentia Domini sui et
communi ecclesiae fide non dubitarit.'

Transiihstantiation and Nihilianism. 2ib\

processes of digestion: 'cibum incorruptibilem, quod
est corpus Domini, cum a mortalibus editur, secessus
necessitateni pati, nefas est arbitrari^.' If any priest has
been so wicked or simple as to consecrate bread in
quantities to allow of its relation to nourishment and
digestion being tested, either his unbelief may have
made his consecration invalid ^, or some other food
may have been substituted at the moment of reception,
whether by angels to protect the sacred things or by
devils to deceive the sinner ^.

Again if it is said that according to some ecclesiastical
canons the consecrated hosts are in certain cases to be
committed to the flames — if this be done in fact, we
must believe that they are allowed to appear to be con-
sumed as far as the remaining accidents of the previous
substance are concerned, while the thing itself is only
' committed to the pure element to be concealed and
straightway restored to the heavenly seats *.'

Witmund seeks physical analogies for the miracle of
transubstantiation so far as to suggest that bread and
wine become our own flesh and blood ^ ; that our voice,
the vesture of our thought, imparts itself undivided to
all hearers ; that our ' anima ' is undivided in all parts
of our body ^. But he dwells more on the obligation
to believe mysteries. All creatures of God are in fact
inexplicable miracles'; the senses are fallible, and

1 ii. 13-

■^ ii. 1 8 ' Non enim nisi apud eos, qui verba Christi per virtutem divinam
tantae rei operatoria esse credunt, panem et vinum in camera et sanguinem
Domini transire necessario credimus.' In this belief, however, Witmund
stands alone.

' ii. 18. * ii. 10. M. 9. ^ i. 19.

^ i, 20 'omnes creaturae Dei miracula nobis inexplicabilia sunt'; ill. 21

262 Dissertations.

simple faith in the omnipotence and word of God is
a duty ^.

Then he proceeds to argue with the mnbj-atici — so
he calls the Berengarians — on the matter of authority.
Doing violence to manifold statements of the fathers he
is inclined to deny that the consecrated elements are ever
called the ' sacraments^ ' [signa) of the body and blood,
though, if they are, he insists that a sign can be also
that of which it is a sign. But on the whole he is very
unsatisfactory in this part of his subject ^. Nor is he more
satisfactory when he proceeds to discuss the theory which
he calls impanatio and invinatio'^. He explains away what
is against him or ignores it — for instance the statement of
Ambrose ' ut sint quae erant et in aliud commutentur '''•,
and he makes much of the catholic character of his
doctrine as against the local character of the Berengarian
view ''. The Catholic Church is the kingdom of heaven
which has succeeded to the empire of Rome, according
to Daniel's prophecy, — for a visible proof of which the
Church of the Lateran has taken the place of the palace
of the Caesars — and this Church with its pontiffs has
condemned Berengar "^ . He ends up his treatise with a
discussion of two curious views which he had mentioned
at the beginning as existing among opponents of
Berengar, who still found offence in the doctrine that the
wicked receive the body and blood of Christ ^. The
first view is that by divine providence it is secured that

'nulla omnino res sine miraculo fit.' Tliis fact (by a va{;ue use of the word
miracle) is used to justify belief in ' miracles of the host.'

' i. 9, 2 2, 28, &c. ^ ii. 37. ' ii. 22 ff.

* iii. 27. ^ iii. 32. « i,j_ ^q_

' iii. 42. » i. 8.

Transiibstantiation and Nihih'am'sm. 263

those hosts which the wicked are to receive shall not
be transubstantiated ; the second, that when unworthy
communicants approach the altar, the hosts they are to
receive are re-transubstantiated into bread and wine.
Against both these theories Witmund holds decisively
that the wicked do eat corporally, though not spiritually,
the body and blood of Christ ^

Opinions similar to those of Witmund appear in
the contemporary — perhaps slightly earlier — tract of
DuranduSjthe first abbot of the monastery of St. Martin
of Troarn in the diocese of Bayeux. Writing against
the Berengarians ^ — whom he calls the ' moderni dogma-
tistae responsalesque Satanae ' — he regards the belief in
the physical corruption and digestion of the sacramental
elements as a mere result of their heresy ^. He himself
argues from the language of our Lord — ' He that eateth
my flesh and drinketh my blood dwelletJi in mc and
I in him ' — that the sacramental gift is permanent and
not transitoiy; and this means to his mind that the
sacramental elements cease at their consecration to
retain their material properties and at their reception
also their material appearances: ' ubi,' he says (i.e. in
the words of Christ just referred to), ' ut cunctis sanum
sapientibus patenter liquet, non digestionis obscenitas
sed divinae per sacramentum mansionis repromittitur
negotium fidelibus : ac proinde divinum mysterium

' iii. 49 ff.

- Lil't'i- dc Corp. et Sang. Christ i, P. L. cxlix. p. 1375. Durandus does
not exhibit so accurate a knowledge of the opinions of the Berengarians as
Witmund. He regards them as simply affirming a figurative interpretation
of the eucharist.

•" /.r. p. 1377 c 'quodque consequitureoMimdemsacramentoruni corruptela.'

264 Dissertations.

fideliter atque competenter acceptum, et in id quod
iam ex parte erat ab eo quod adhuc visui subiacebat
exteriori divinitus ex toto transformatum, sumentium
quoque animas mentesque sanctificat^.'

These discussions are very disagreeable ; but I have
thought it worth while to describe these tracts at some
length, because, taken with the other writings against
Berengar which remain to us from the eleventh century,
they force us to bear in mind that, however much later
scholastics may have refined the doctrine of transub-
stantiation, in its original form as held and pressed upon
the 'heretics' it was of a plainly materialistic and super-
stitious character.

The influence of Berengar's teaching did not rapidly
pass away^. The writers of the earlier part of the twelfth
century are still occupying themselves with the doctrine
of transubstantiation. Thus Alger, a canon and scholastic
of Liege who died about 11 30, wrote a work de Sacra-
mejiiis Corporis ct Sanguinis Dominici ^, which obtained
so great a reputation that it was said by Peter the Vener-
able 'to leave nothing for even the most scrupulous reader
even to desire.' It is closely akin to Witmund's work.
The doctrine of transubstantiation is so fully held as a
physical miracle'', producing a local ^ presence of Christ,
that that which is on the altar can only be called d^sacra-

' I.e. p. 1379 b; cf. 13S2 a ' nimis videtur absurdum et a re ipsa
decernitur alienum lit, iibi Christus percipitur, de stercore cogitetur.'

''■ See the quotation from Zacharias, perhaps of Besaiifon, c. 1157, in
Gieseler, Eccl. Hist. iii. p. 313.

^ Recently reprinted in SS. Pair. Opusc. Sel. vol. xxiii ; see p. 55.

* i. 8 (50) ' non solum pro sacramenlo sed et pro miraculo.'

* Proi. (31.

Transiibstantiation and Nihilianism. 265

ment ^/Christ, in the sense that Christ there hidden under
the accidents of a vanished substance is a sacrament of
Christ unveiled in heaven \ Like Witmund, he denies
that the consecrated species are corruptible or the subjects
of digestion, and thinks that the consideration that only
moral evil is in God's sight impure, coupled with the
consideration of possible angelic interpositions, prevents
a Catholic from feeling a difficulty about the accidents
which may befal the sacred species in being devoured
by animals ^.

Perhaps a few years later Gregory of Bergamo, under
the stress of a revival of Berengarianism, wrote his
Tractatns de Veritate Corpoj'is CJiristi ^. This little book
is interesting because in it we have what appears to be
the first explicit enumeration of the sacraments as seven.
Hitherto the sacraments had been commonly reckoned
as three, viz. baptism, chrism, and the eucharist. These
now rank as chief, and among them baptism and the
eucharist are pre-eminent as ordained by Christ Himself,

' i. 18 (122-6).

^ See ii. i (4) ' Sed et cum de ceteris sacramentalibus speciebus, columba
scilicet et igne in quibiis sanctus Spiritus apparuit, Augustinns contra
Maximinum dicat quia corporales illae species, peractosigniticationis officio,
transierunt et esse ulterius destiternnt, nihil indignius de his corporalibus
speciebus quae Christi contegunt corpus est sentiendum.' (.14) ' Non solum
corpori Christi sed et ipsi sacramento visibili eadem causa mucorem
negamus et putredinem, qua superius digestionem, quia cum illae species
sine panis et vini substantia sint, quomodo mucescere et putrescere magis
quam digeri possint, non facilis patet causa.' (15) ' Cum enim praeter
peccatum creator], qui ubique est, omnia munda sint, quomodo videtur
immundius esse in ventre muris quam in ventre adulter! impoenitentis?'
(13) 'Sic est alia multa in hoc spirituali sacramento invisibiliter fieri
credenda sunt angelico ministerio.'

^ This tract, printed for the first time in 1877, is to be found in SS. Pair.
Of use. Sel. xxxix.

266 Dissertations.

while four other ' older ' sacraments are added to the list,
viz. ordination, marriage, holy Scripture, and the taking
an oath ^ Again Gregory emphasizes the distinc-
tion of the 7'es from the virtus sacranienti in baptism
no less than in the eucharist, the 7'cs being the ' thing
signified,' i.e. in baptism the deaths burial, and resurrec-
tion of Jesus Christ. When he comes to apply this
to the eucharist, significantly enough he makes the out-
ward part, or sacrmnentmn, to be the body and blood of
Christ present in virtue of transubstantiation and the res
to be the mystical body the Church ". In the Brevis
Tractatns of Hildebert (finally Metropolitan of Tours)
de Sacramento Altaris"^ of about the same date the
doctrine of transubstantiation is scholastically defined,
but — possibly because he had been at one time Berengar's
pupil — the effort after spirituality of conception is much
more noticeable. The eucharist is said to be ' the food
of the inner man ; not human, but divine, entering
spiritually and divinely into the spirit ; not converting

' c. 13 ' haec numero adimplentur septenario.' 14 ' Tria siquidem in
ecclcsia gerimus sacramenta quae sacramentis aliis putanlur non immerito
digniora, scilicet baptismum, chrisma, corpus et sanguis Domini. Quorum
trium primum et ultimum ex ipsius Redemptoris institutione percepimus, ex
apostolica vero traditione illud quod medium posuimus. Sunt praeterea
quaedam alia quae videntur velut antiquiora sacramenta, videlicet sacerdotis
ordinalio, legitimum coniugium, sacramenta quandoque dicuntur scrip-
turarum et iusiurandi sacramentum.'

^ c. 18 ' Apparet ergo corpus et sanguinem Salvatoris sacramentum rite
e.xsistere, non tantum per id solum quod interius veraciter esse creditur,
sed per exleriorem panis vinique speeiem quae cernentium oculis rejirae-
sentantur.'

' .S'^". Fatr. Opusc. Sel. xxxix. p. 274 f. He is perhaps the first to
affirm that the entire Christ is in cither species taken by itself: de Coena
Dom. P. L. clxxi. p. 535 'in acceptione sanguinis totum Christum, verum
Deum et hominem, et in acceptione corporis similiter totum.' Cf. Anselm,
Epp. iv. 107, /'. L. clix. p. 255.

Transubstantiation and NiJiilianisui. 267

itself into spirit, but feeding the spirit in a spiritual and
divine manner, entering spiritually, operating spiritually,
coming by a spiritual way from heaven and by a spiritual
way returning thither ^.' The body of Christ is ' in one
place only after a bodily manner, in many places after
a spiritual manner. For it is not of a body to be in
many places at once -.'

The same tendency to shrink from the more material-
istic statement of transubstantiation is apparent in the
great work — the Books of tJic Sente7ices of Peter Lombard,
dating from about the middle of the twelfth century.
He repudiates the actual fraction of the body of Christ
in the sacrament, as asserted in Berengar's confession
and admitted by Witmund and other opponents of his
doctrine. Nor will he admit, with Abelard, a fraction
which is in appearance only and not in reality. He
decides that the more probable opinion is that there is
a real fraction of the species of bread, i.e. in other
words, he attributes more reality to the bread, at least
so much substantiality as admits of its being broken
without the heavenly substance being involved in it ■'.
This is the doctrine which prevails in later theology '^.
Again, Peter Lombard refuses to decide whether the

' C. I. - C. 2.

^ lib. iv. dist. 12. So St. Anselm before him had said (I. c. p. 256)
' Secundum speciem remanentem quaedam ibi fiunt quae nullo modo secun-
dum hoc quod est possunt fieri, scilicet quod atteritur, quod uno loco
concluditur et a soricibus roditur et in ventrem traicitur.'

■* See St. Thomas Aquinas, Snmnia, p. iii. qu. 77. art. 7. He also holds
that the species can be corrupted (art. 4), and can nourish (art. 6) : and
this is the Tridentine doctrine. See the Catechism of the Council, part ii,
de Eucharislia, qu. 64, where one reason given for withholding the chalice
from the laity is that the species of wine, if reserved for the sick, might
go sour.

268 Dissertations.

conversion of the elements into the body and blood of
Christ is ' substantial ' or of some other kind ^. In both
these respects and in his avoidance of other disagree-
able decisions ^ he exhibits an appreciable withdrawal
from the extreme materialism of the older writers.

Beyond this point the matter shall not be pursued.
The fourth Lateran Council of 1215 — reckoned the
twelfth ecumenical — defined the dogma in regard to
the eucharist as follows :

' Una vero est fidelium universalis ecclesia, extra quam
nullus omnino salvatur. In qua idem ipse sacerdos et
sacrificium lesus Christus : cuius corpus et sanguis in
Sacramento altaris sub speciebus panis et vini veraciter
continentur; transubstantiatis^ pane in corpus et vino in
sanguinem potestate divina, ut ad perficiendum myste-
rium unitatis accipiamus ipsi de suo quod accipit ipse
de nostro. Et hoc utique sacramentum nemo potest
conficere nisi sacerdos, qui rite fuerit ordinatus secundum
claves ecclesiae, quas ipse concessit apostolis et eorum
successoribus lesus Christus ^.'

' /. c. dist. II.

^ ' Illud etiam sane dici potest quod a brutis animalibus corpus Christi
noil sumilur, etsi videatur. Quid ergo sumit mus vel quid manducat?
Deus novit hoc ' (dist. 13).

' The word ' transubstantiare ' is first, apparently, found in .Stephen of
Autun(c. A.i). 1112-1 139) Tract.de Sacr. Altaris, c. 14 (/".Z. clxxii. p. 1293).

* Mansi, Concil. xxii. p. 982.

Transiibstantiation and Nihilianisni. 269

II.

The metaphysical theory and philosophical
principle involved.

We have traced the history of the development of the
dogma of transubstantiation. Taking it in its more
refined form as now accepted in the Roman Church, it
is open to three overwhehning objections :

1. There is nothing to justify it, as distinguished from
any other doctrine of the real presence, in the original
Christian tradition or in the New Testament.

2. It is involved in tremendous metaphysical diffi-
culties.

3. It is contrary to the principle of the Incarnation —
that is, to the principle of Christian theology.

I. The first objection is supremely important. To
state the case mildly— there is no idea or doctrine of
the New Testament or of original Christianity, which
requires the dogma of the annihilation of the natural
specks in the eucharist in order to protect it. And this
fact at once distinguishes this dogma from such a dogma
as that of the homoousion. On the other hand there is
language in the New Testament— such as the repeated
use of the term ' bread ' of the consecrated element in
I Cor. xi. 26-28 — which is repugnant to it. But without

270

Dissertations.

here trespassing further upon the consideration of New
Testament doctrine, I propose somewhat to develop
the two last specified objections to the dogma of tran-
substantiation.

2. Metaphysically it is involved in tremendous diffi-
culties. Let us take it as it is stated bv a Roman writer
of deserved repute in his own communion, the Jesuit
Lessius, in his celebrated work de Perfcctionibns Moribus-
qiie Divinis ^. He finds that it involves twelve special
' miracles,' using the word in its proper sense, for he
says ' quantum fieri potest, Deus causis utitur iam con-
stitutis et ad miracula quasi invitus descendit.' Of these
the first is the destruction of the natural substances of
bread and wine : the second is the reproduction and
restoration of the same substances at the moment when,
the process of digestion beginning, the divine presence is
withdrawn and the former substances recur, though now in
a condition of being digested : the third is the existence,
in the interval during which the divine presence exists,
of accidents inhering in no substance. Other miracles
are found in the fact that these substance-less accidents
can be acted upon and act physically as if they were
really existent bread and wine. Enough : what an
appalHng burden of irrational metaphysics to lay upon
the Christian conscience !

Lessius glories in these miracles ; other Roman
Catholic writers may withdraw them into the back-
ground. But none can get rid of the fact that the
doctrine of transubstantiation (i) postulates the existence
of a ' substance ' in each object distinct from all the

' lib. xii. c. i6.

Transuhstantiation and Niliilianisin.

271

qualities by which it can make itself known — an hypo-
thesis of which there could be no proof short of divine
revelation, and which human thought has quite out-
grown : (ii) postulates the annihilation of these unknow-
able substances of bread and wine at a specified moment
— again altogether without evidence as the annihilation
is not supposed to make any ascertainable difference in
the objects : (iii) granted the existence of substances as
distinct from attributes, postulates a series of gratuitous
miracles in the relations of the one to the other.

And I must notice in passing that the materiahstic
conception of the sacrament, involved at best in the
transuhstantiation idea, has resulted in the doctrine,
mentioned by Lessius and apparently universally
accepted in the Roman Church \ that the divine gift
given in this sacrament is only teiuporary. It is with-
drawn as soon as the species begins to be digested.
It is not a gift of permanent and spiritual divine in-
habitation but a brief divine visit. ' This day ' (so it is
expressed devotionally) my Lord

' Came to my lowly tenement
And stayed a while with me.'

This doctrine is the direct result of the materialism
involved in transuhstantiation, and is contrary to the
original and Christian idea that he that eateth Christ's
flesh and drinketh His blood has iife in himself,' ' eternal

' Cf. J. Perrone, S. J., Praelectiones Theologicae (Turin, 1S66), de
Euchar. § 151, vol. viii. p. 14O ' Etenim cum species eo devenerint ut corpus
sive materia dissolvi sen corrumpi deberet, cessante renli corporis Christi
praesentia, Deus omnipotentia sua iterum producit materialem panis aut
vini substantiam in eo statu quo naturaliter inveniretur si conversio nulla
praecessisset.'

272 Dissertations.

life,' 'abides ' in Christ and Christ in him, ' Hves for ever'
on account of the life of Christ the ' living bread ^.'

Moreover, it cannot be too emphatically stated that
the dogma of transubstantiation involves the Church in
the acceptance of a particular metaphysical theory in
a sense in which the homooiision dogma does not. The
word oJtsia (' substance,' ' essence,' or ' being ') may be
said to be metaphysical, but it represents an idea
necessarily common to all metaphysical, and indeed to
all human, thought. You must have some word to
express that in virtue of which anything is called what
it is called, or is what it is — its ' being.' And the
homooiision dogma says no more than that the ' being '
of the Son is identical with the being of the Father, that
in whatever sense the Father is God the Son is also
God. We could not express it better to-day. Such
phrases as ' being ' and ' person ' may be called meta-
physical, but they belong to universal metaphysics. On
the other hand, when you distinguish 'substance' or
'being' from 'accidents' or 'qualities' in each object,
and postulate a separation of the two elements, you
are using the terms of a particular metaphysical theory
alien to common thought and transitory even in the
metaphysical schools. All men at all times recognize
the fact of grades and kinds of being. Only a few
philosophers at special periods have imagined that the
being of a thing is something distinct from the sum
of its qualities, and they could hardly get a hearing in
the philosophical world to-day.

3. But it is an even more important objection that

' St. John vi. 53-59 [K. V.].

Transiihstantiation and Nihilianism. 273

this theory violates a central principle of Christian
theology, viz. that the supernatural does not annihilate
the natural.

This principle received full attention when Gnosti-
cism, in different forms, frankly repudiated it. Gnostic
teachers could accept no incarnation, because they could
not allow the thought that the Supreme could actually
be united to a material and natural body. In different
ways, for a similar reason, they repudiated the material
ordinances of Christianity as vehicles of grace. Irenaeus
says of some of them ^ that ' in deprecation of all these
[sacramental ordinances] they say that the mystery of
the ineffable and invisible power ought not to be accom-
plished through visible and corruptible creatures and
(the mystery) of the inconceivable and incorporeal
through sensible and corporeal things ; but that perfect
redemption is simply the knowledge of the ineffable
Greatness.'

In opposition to Gnosticism Irenaeus emphasizes the
Christian principle that all things are of one substance :
that there is no antagonism between the spiritual and
the material or ' the supernatural ' (as we call it) and the
natural. Christ took a real human body just as He gives
us His grace through real material substances.

' Our opinion is consonant with the eucharist and the
eucharist confirms our opinion. For we oft'er to Him
what are His own creatures, announcing harmoniously

* con. Hacr. i. 2I. 4 dXXot Se ravra iravra TrapaiTrjaayLivoi (pdffKovai fifj
Seiv TO T^s dpprjTov Kal dopdrov Swdfiew} /j.vffTrjpiov Si oparuiv Kai (pOapraiv
eniTtXftaOai KTiOfidrcuv, Kal tCjv dvevvo-qrcov Kol dacunaTcup bi' aiadrjTijJV Koi
awp-aTiKiliv eivai 5e TeXeiav dnoXvTpaKjiv avTTjV ttiv (iriyvaiatv tov dpprjTov
/xfyiOovs.

274 Dissertations.

the fellowship and unity, and confessing [as a con-
sequence] the resurrection, of flesh and of spirit. For
as bread of the earth receiving upon it the evocation
of God is no longer common bread but eucharist, made
up of two things, an earthly and a heavenly ; so also our
bodies receiving the eucharist are no longer corruptible,
having the hope of the eternal resurrection ^'

The same principle was again in evidence at the period
of controversy with the different forms of Monophy-
sitism from Chalcedon downwards. Again and again
in that controversy the doctrine of the Incarnation,
the doctrine that the divine (or supernatural) does
not destroy or absorb the human (or natural), was,
so to speak, proved by the eucharist, the earthly
elements of bread and wine being dignified, but not
annihilated, by the spiritual presence of which they are
made the vehicle. This argument is used by the author,
said to be St. Chrysostom, of the letter to Caesarius ^,

* con. Hacr. iv. 18. 5 irpoacpepo^fv be aiiTw rd "ibia, efXfifXais Koivwviav Kot
(vaicriv dnayfe\\oPT(^ Kal dfJ.o\oyouvTfs crapKus Kai irvevpaToi ijepatv.
(lis yap dnu yfjs dpros irpoaKafipavuptvos tt)v iKKXrjcriv rov 6fov oiiKtri
Koivds dpros lartv, aA\' ivxcpiCTia, etc 8vo npaypdrajv avvearTjKvta, iiriydov
re Kai ovpaviov o'vtojs icai rd aaifxara r/fxiuv p.ira\ap.[idvovra t^s ii)\apLarLa'i,
HrjKfTi (ivai <])9apTd, rijv (kniSa r^s (h alwvas dvaardatais ixovra. The same
principle was, as is well known, emphasized by Tertullian both as regards
Christ's person and the sacraments : cf. appended note D.

^ ap. Routh, Script. Eccl. Opusc. (Oxford, 185S) ii. p. 127 ' Unus Filius,
nnus Dominus; idem ipse proculdubio unitarum naturarum unam domina-
tionem, unam potestatem possidens, etiamsi non consubstantiales exsistunt,
et unaquaeque incommixtam [incommixta Pctrtis Martyr] proprietatis con-
servat agnitioncm, propter hoc quod inconfusa sunt duo. Sicut cnim
antequam sanctificetur panis, panem nominamus, divina autem ilium
sanctificante gratia mediante saccrdote liberatus est quidem appellatioiie
panis, dignus autem habitus est dominici corporis appellatione, etiamsi
natura panis in ipso permansit, et non duo corpora, sed uuum corpus Filii
praedicatur.' The fragment (the history of which is given in Diet, of Chr.

Transubstantiation and Nihilianism. 275

by Theodoret ^, by Gelasius ^ by Augustine as repre-
sented ill a 'sentence' of Prosper^, by Ephraim, bishop

Biog. s.v. Caesarius) belongs, we can hardly doubt, to the Epistle to
Caesarms (^of uncertain authorship) of which another part is given in
Migne, Chrysost. Opera, P. G. Ixiv. p. 494. There can be little doubt that
the reason why some strong patristic passages against transubstantiation
have but little ms. evidence for their genuineness is because mediaeval
copyists did their best to obliterate them. As we have seen an Ambrosian
passage had been altered before Lanfranc's time (see p. 230 n.). Such
passages are not at all likely to have been forged in mediaeval times.

' Dial, ii Incoiifusus, p. 1 26 (ed. Schultze, see also in Routh, /. c.
p. 132) Eranistes : iuanep rolvvv to. avfj.l3o\a tov SeoTTOTiKov aw^arCs
Ti Kai al/xuTos, dWa fj.iv (iffi irpu rfjs UpaTLKfji (TTiKXrjaecjs, yuerci Se -ye rrjv
iTTLKX-qaiv niTapakKeTaL kol trepa yiverar ovrai to SeanoriKuv auipa pird
rfjv dvdKij^iv els ttjv ovaiav ptTe^X-qOr] ttjv Ouav. OrtHODOXUS : idXais ah
vcfirjvfs dpKvaiv ou5e -yap pird juv d-yiaapov rd pvariKd avpPoXa ttjs oiKiias
e^KTrarai tpvatoor phti yap ent jfjs vporipas ovaias Kai rod axvpaTOS Kal
TOV e'iSovs, Kat opard koTi Kal d-nrd, oia Kal -upurtpov ^v, voiiTai Sk arrcp
i-fiviTO Kal mffTevfTat Kal npoaKWiiTai, ws iKUva ovTa dntp martveTai.
TtapdOts To'ivvv Tw apxervirq) rrju uKura, Kal oifd ttjv ojxoiuTriTa' XPI y^P
eoLKtvai Ty d\r]9(ia tov tvttov. kol yap hcetyo to acjpia to piv Ttporepov
fidos ix^'- ""' "'XW" Kal Trepiypa<l)fjV Kai, dtra^airKus dnetv, tt^v tov cdipaTos
ovaiav dOdvaTov 5e p-nd rijv dvdaTaaiv yiyovf Kal KpuTTOv (j>6opds Kal Trjs
iK Se^twu yj^iiLOT] KaOidpas Kal vapd -ndarjs irpoaKweiTaL t^j KTiaecus, an hf]
aaipa x/"?/^aT/^of tov SeanoTov ttjs <pvaews.

^ Gelasius, cle Diiah. A«/. in Chr. adv. Eiitych. et Nest. ' Certe sacramenta
quae sumimus corporis et sanguinis Christi divina res est, propter quod et
per eadem divinae efficimur consortes naturae ; et tamen esse non desinit
substantia vel natura panis et vini. Et certe imago et similitude corporis
et sanguinis Christi in actione mysteriorum celebrantur. Satis ergo nobis
evidenter ostenditur, hoc nobis in ipso Christo domino sentiendum quod in
eius imagine profitemur, celebramus, et sumimus, ut, sicut in hanc scilicet
in divinam transeunt sancto Spiritu perficiente substantiam, permanente
[?permanentia] tamen in suae proprietate naturae, sic illud ipsum mysterium
principale, cuius nobis efiicientiam virtutemque veraciter repraesentant ex
[ ? his ex] quibus constat proprie permanentibus, unum Christum, quia
integrum verumque, permanere demonstrant' (Routh, I.e. p. 139^ On the
authenticity of this passage see Diet, of Ch. Biog. ii. p. 620, s.v. Gelasius.

^ Quoted in Alger, de Saer. Corp. et Sang. Doniiniei (see above, p. 264)
i. 6 as a 'similitudo beati Augustini in libro senlentiarum Prosperi':
' sacrificium ecclesiae duobus confici duobusque constare, sicut persona
Christi constat et conficitur ex Deo et homine.' It does not exist in our
copies of Prosper's sentences, but may well be genuine,

T 2

276 Dissertations.

of ' Theopolis ' (Antioch) \ and as nearly as he dared
— so nearly that Bellarmine called him heretical — by
Rupert of Deutz ^. These writers (with the possible
exception of the last) unmistakeably declare that the
' nature ' or ' substance ' of the bread and wine remain
after consecration.

The principle which this theology both of the
Incarnation and of the eucharist illustrates is admirably
stated by the best theologian of the sixth century,
Leontius of Byzantium •''.

^ Quoted in Photius, Bibliotheca. cod. 229 {P. G. ciii. p. 980), from
his work against Nestorius and Eutyches. He argues for the uncon-
fused reality of Christ's manhood and continues : ovtoi kol to napa tuiv
TUffTWf \ap.i3av6fj.(i'ov aujfia Xpiarov Kat t^s alaOrjTTji ovaias ovk f^'iaraTai
Knl r^s vorjTTjs abiaipirov fxh'fi xapiros' Kal to ^airTiaixa hi TTVfvfMTiKov, 6\ov
yevo^fvov Kal (i> iirrdp^oi', Kal to iStov Tiji alaGrjTrj^ ova'ia's, tov vSaTOi Kiyoi,
Siaaoj^ii, Kal o yiyovfy, ovk dnuiXtaev. See also in Routh, I.e. p. 143.

^ Quoted in Gieseler, £cc/. Hist. iii. 314 • Totum attribuetis operation!
Spiritus sancti, cuius effectus non est destruere vel corrumpere substantiam,
quamcunque suos in usus assumit, sed substantiae bono permanent! quod
erat invisibiliter adicere quod non erat. Sicut naturam humanam non
destruxit, cum illam operatione sua ex utero virginis Ueus Verbo in uni-
tatem personae coniunxit : sic substantiam panis et vini, secundum exterio-
rem speciem quinque sensibus subiectam, non mutat aut destruit, cum
eidem Verbo in unitatem corporis eiusdem, quod in cruce pependit, et
sanguinis eiusdem, quem de latere suo fudit, ista coniungit. Item quomodo
Verbum a summo demissum caro factum est, non niutatum in carncm, sed
assumendo carnem : sic panis et vinuni, utrumque ab imo sublevalum, fit
corpus Christi et sanguis, non mutatum in carnis saporem sive in sani^uinis
horrorem. sed assumendo invisibiliter utriusque, divinae scilicet et humanae,
quae in Christo est immortalis substantiae veritatem ' {P.L. clxvii. p. 617-8).

' con. Nest, et Eut. ii. {P. G. Ixxxvi. p. 1333) km tovto 5e pit) KaTaXuipcopLfv
airapaaiipavTOv, '6ti rpiuiv alTiuiv Oiwpovpiivcav, f^ wv iraaa airoTiXtlrai
(vepyeta' j) ptif yap (Otiv (k (.pvaiKxps hwapaws, tj Si tK vapaTponTJ^ ttjs Kara
<pvaiv f^tais. Tj di ertpa BtaipfiTai kutcL tt^v npos to KptiTTOV avd^aaiv re Kal
vp6ohov TovTojv 77 plv (pvauci], 77 Se irapa (pvmi'j y Se vnlp <pvaiv (otI ual
ivopd^erai. 7) pLtv ovv Trapi ({>vniv, Kar' avTo yt to ovopia, dnoTTTMai-i tis oiiaa
tSjv <pvaiKwv 'i^twv Kal Swapfoov, XvpLaivfrat tj) Te oiiaia aiirjj Kal toTs TavTTjs
(pvaiKah evfpyeiais. i) 6« <pvaiK^ Ik t^s uirapairobiaTov Kal KaTO. (pvtriv

Transiibstantiation and Nihilianism. 277

' Let us not,' he says, ' leave it unnoticed that every
sort of energ}^ results from one of three distinguish-
able causes : one sort of energy proceeds from natural
power ; another from the perversion of the natural
habit ; the third represents an elevation or advance
of the nature towards what is higher. Of these the
first is and is called natural ; the second unnatural ;
the third supernatural. Now the unnatural, as its
name implies, being a falling away from natural
habits and powers, injures both the substance itself
and its natural energies. The natural proceeds from
the unimpeded and naturally cogent cause. But the
supernatural leads up and elevates the natural energy
and empowers it for actions of a more perfect order,
which it would not have been able to accomplish
so long as it remained within the limits of its own
nature. The supernatural therefore does not destroy the
natural, but educes and stimulates it both to do its own
business and to acquire the power for what is above it.'
He exemplifies this principle by the way in which art,
without destroying its natural material, elevates it,
whether in music or mechanics, to higher ' supernatural '
uses. And he applies it to our Lord's humanity to
emphasize that its natural laws remained unimpeded
and unaltered by its supernatural union with the God-
head. 'The supernatural,' he concludes, 'implies the
permanence of the natural. The very possibility of
a miracle is gone if the natural is overthrown by what

(pr)petfff:tevr]s dnoTeXfiTai alrias. fj Se virlp cpvaiv avarfd re Kai Ixpoi Kal irpos
ra TfXfLuTfpa 5vi'ap.oi koI anep ovk av laxvaiv ivtpyuv rots Kara (pvoLV
ivanoixavaffa. ovk 'ianv ovv to. vnip (f^vaiv tuju Kara <pvaiv avaiptTLKa, aWd
irapayajya Kal trapopprfTiKO., fis to KaKcTva Tf SwrjO^vai Kat t^i/ irpos to. iinip
ravTa Svvaptv TrpoaXafiuv, . . . ovSt yap to. vntp (pvaiv €Xf' X'^P^^' A"^ '''V^
<pv(T€a}S ex'^^'^V^ Kara cpvaiv. atpriprjTai 5e Kal t6 tlvct 6avp.a, rcu inrep (pvaiv
T-ijs (fivofws peTaaTdarjS, Kal yivtiai v^pis i) (piXoTi/xia rvpavurjaaaa rfjv
d\r]6eiav.

278 Dissertations.

is supernatural, and pride when it tyrannizes over the
truth of nature deserves the name of insolence.'

This great Christian principle the transubstantiation
dogma fundamentally violates. Its supporters have (as
has appeared above) often exulted in declaring that the
eucharistic miracle is against nature ; and, both in ancient
and modern times, they have been driven to admit
implicitly or explicitl}', that the analogy of the Incarna-
tion and the sacrament in one important respect — that
in which the fathers of Chalcedon made so much of
it — fails to maintain itself^. Thus Lessius", for example,
in drawing out seven analogies of the eucharist with the
Incarnation, significantly leaves out that one of which
the fathers made chief mention. But the sacraments
are the ' extension of the Incarnation ' : they exhibit the
same principles of divine action. And it is an argument
of the most serious weight against a theory which is
intended to explain one of the sacraments, that it has
against it all the analogy of its great prototype.

' Thus in mediaeval limes Geoigius Scholariiis (quoted in Lcquien's
edition of John of Damascus, i. p. 270) says that the eucharist is the
greatest of all miracles, because while in Christ's person the higher nature
does not destroy the lower, here it does. Hugo a S. Victore, de
Sacr. ii. 8, 9 (^P. L. clxxvi. p. 46S), writes ' conversio ipsa non secundum
unionem sed secundum transitionem credenda est.'

^ l.c.% 129. Perrone also deals most unsatisfactorily with the matter :
see I.e. §§ 1 4.'-?.

Transubstantiation and Nihilianism. 279

III.

Nihilianism the background of the theory
of transubstantiation.

We now approach the question why the analogy of
the incarnation doctrine — embodied as it was in dogmas
which guarded the substantial reality and permanence
of our Lord s manhood — did not prove a bar to the
development and establishment of the doctrine of tran-
substantiation. The answer to the question is not far to
seek. Throughout the period during which the doctrine
of transubstantiation was in controver.s}^ the reality of
our Lord's manhood, and the principle of the Incarnation
which its reality expresses, were very inadequately held.
The dogmas were indeed retained but their meaning was
little considered. What has been already described as
nihilianism was the current mode of conceiving the
Incarnation : that is to say, the manhood of Christ was
regarded almost exclusively as the veil of Godhead or
as the channel of its communication. These are indeed
the only points of view from which the Incarnation need
be regarded in order to supply a background for the
authority of revealed doctrine and the reality of sacra-
mental grace. But the aspect of the manhood of Christ
on which stress is laid in the Gospels — the reality of His
human example, human temptation, human struggles,
human limitations- — this was very little considered.

28o Dissertations.

As a consequence, the principle which this aspect of the
Incarnation brings into reHef — the principle that the
divine and the supernatural does not overthrow or
obliterate the human and the natural — was little em-
phasized, and it failed accordingly to present the
obstacle which it should have presented to the develop-
ment of the dogma of transubstantiation.

The prevalence of nihilianism (as explained above)
in the early mediaeval period is not disputable. We
have already^ traced its influence in the west from
its source in Apollinarius' teaching through the quasi-
monophysitism of ' Dionysius ' and his translator, Scotus
Erigena. It unfortunately found support in a passage
of Augustine himself, who was the accepted standard
of orthodoxy. Augustine, commenting on the Latin of
Phil. ii. 7 habitii hiventiis est tit homo, had, as has
already appeared, glossed the passage with the words
' habendo hominem inventus est ut homo non sibi sed eis
quibus in homine apparuit' — thus apparently making the
humanity not something into the experience of which
the Son really entered, but a mere mode of manifesta-
tion. This quotation from Augustine became a common-
place and coalesced with Monophysite influences. Thus
it appears in Albinus Flaccus - and Rabanus Maurus ^,
and we have already seen how it was quoted by the
Master of the Sentences. To appreciate the extent to

' See above, pp. 171 9.

- adv. l-cliccni, ii. 12 (/^. Z. ci. p. 156). Alcuiii is nlso responsible for such
perilous phrases as ' homo traiisivit in Deuin ' [de fid. S. Trin. iii. 9,
p. 44), ' persona peril hominis non natura ' {adv. Felic. ii. 12, p. 156).

^ P. L. cxii. p. 489. It is a stock quotation in commentaries on the
Philippians.

Transuhstantiation and NiJiilianism. 281

which nihilianism prevailed, it is necessary to look
through the theology of the period more or less in bulk.
Such a simple phrase as this of Gregory of Bergamo —
true but manifestly one-sided — expresses the current
way of thinking about Christ, ' Caro videbatur et Deus
credebatur ^'

The connexion of this phase of thought with tran-
suhstantiation is not hard to see. Apollinarius' doctrine
was in fact transuhstantiation in regard to the manhood
of Christ. He loved to speak not of the ' hypostatic '
but of the 'substantial ' unity of the humanity with the
Godhead, that is, its unity in one substance or nature '.
Scotus Erigena protests against the phraseology of
popular orthodoxy in speaking of ' two substances ' in
Christ. He is two natures, no doubt, but in one sub-
stance'-'' : ' Christus in unitate humanae et divinae sub-

' l.C.% II.

^ See quotations in Leontius, /. c. P. G. Ixxxvi. 1964 d ('cuojroier Se ))/ias
T] oapl avTov dia ttjv avvovaiooyLtvqv avTrj OeuTijra' to St ^ojottoiuv Ohkuv OeiKrj
apa ffopf, oTi Otw avvrjtpOr] . . . ofioovaiov avTw . . . ovk dpa up-oovatov
avOpamh'cu to 6hov. p. 1957 a (jjvaii yap Koi ovaia ravrov igtiv. Cf. the
famous phrase adopted by Cyril from Apollinarius p.ia ipvais tov Otov \uyou
aiaapKQ)p.ivri (vid. supr. p. 153).

^ Joh. Scotus, de Div. Nat. P. L. cxxii. p. 1018. Commenting on St. Matt.
vii. 21-2 Do7nine,Domine,\\& suggests that this 'geminatio dominicinominis'
may be intended to represent the state of the indolently orthodox who speak
of ' two substances ' in Christ : ' vel certo simplicium fidelium minus
catholicae fidei altitudinem considerantium ignaviam significat, putantes
Dominum nostrum lesum Christum duabus substantiis esse compositum,
dum sit una substantia in duabus naturis. . . . Quanti sunt qui Dominum
lesum Christum ita segregant, ut neque divinitateiii illius humanitati neque
humanitatem divinitati in unitatem substantiae, sen ut latini usitatius
dicunt in unitatem personae adunatam vel credant vel intelligant, cum ipsius
humanitas et divinitas unum et inseparabile unum sint, salva utriusque
natuiae ipsius ratione.' The 'ratio' of the humanity remains though the
humanity itself is frequently spoken of as ' translata ' or ' transmutata in
Deum'; cf. pp. 539 b, c, and 1015 c, d.

282 Dissertations.

stantiae ultra omne quod sensu sentitur corporeo super
omne quod virtute percipitur intelligentiae Deus invisi-
bilis in utraque sua natura.' Phrases of a Monophysite
colour, like the ' divine and human substance' or the
' divine humanity and human divinity,' appear also in
Florus and Witmund ^ Paschasius Radbert, even when
retaining the orthodox language of two substances,
speaks of the humanity of Christ (misinterpreting Heb. 1.3
figiira, vel character, siibstantiae eiiis) as the figure or the
character, that is letter of the alphabet, significative of
the divine substance ; and justifies thereby the position
that the eucharistic bread may be called a figure of
a divine reality and yet be itself really that of which
it is a figure, as the manhood is no other thing than
the divine person who assumed it^.

Some of the writers who use this language are not
adherents of transubstantiation. But in Paschasius Rad-
bert, in Witmund, in Gregory of Bergamo, this way of
regarding the Incarnation is in definite connexion with
the theory of transubstantiation. Later on the affinity
of the two theories is apparent in the pages of scholastic
commentaries on the Soitenccs of Peter Lombard.
Nihilianism, as stated by Peter, had been already

^ See Witmund, /. c. ii. 32 {P. L. cxlix. p. 145S) 'ex divina consistens et
humana substantia.' (I am not sure that he does not mean ' consist of the
divine substance and of the human.' But the subsequent sections are nihilianist
in tone. See especially cc. 38, 39.) Flurus de Expos. Aliss. 34 (A Z. cxix.
p. 33) ' sed inter solam divinitatem et humanitatem solam mediatrix est
humana divinitas et divina humanitas Christi.'

2 /. c. iv. 2 (/". L. cxx. p. 1279) 'sic ex humanitatc Christi ad divinitatem
I'atris pervenitur : et ideo iure figura vel character substniitiae illius vocatur
. . . verumtamen neque Christus homo falsitas dici potest ncque aliud quam
Deus licet fi-rura id est character substantiae diviiiitatis iure dicatur.'

Transiihstantiation and Nihilianism. 283

condemned^, but it is none the less commented upon,
and it is treated as a view according to which the
humanity is reduced to an accident of the divine sub-
stance. Thus Thomas Aquinas describes it in these
words: ' Tertia opinio dicit animam et carnem acci-
dentaliter personae Verbi advenire ut homini ves-
timentum.' Again, ' [Tertia opinio ponit quod homo]
praedicatur de Christo accidentaliter . . . cum habitus
sit genus accidentis, videtur quod Deus fuerit homini
accidentahter unitus.' This opinion is rejected on
grounds of authority — Pope Alexander's condemnation
— and of reason, but it is allowed, on the ground of the
supposed comparison of the humanity to a robe in
Phil. ii. 7, that it ' habet aliquam similitudinem cum
accidente . . . unde antiqui dixerunt quod vergit in
accidens ; et quidam propter hoc addiderunt quod dege-
nerat in accidens, quod tamen non ita proprie dicitur,
quia natura humana in Christo non degenerat, imo
masis nobilitatur -.' A later Dominican schoolman,
Durandus a S. Portiano (c. 131 8), concludes against
nihilianism in these words : ' Relinquitur ergo quod sicut
natura humana non transit in naturam accidentis sic non
advenit accidentaliter per inhaerentiam personae divinae^.'
It may now be said to have been sufficiently shown
that transubstantiation in eucharistic doctrine is the
analogue of nihilianism with regard to the Incarnation.
The existing dogmas, so strongly guarding the substan-
tiality of the manhood, stopped the progress of the

^ See above, p. 177.

^ See Thorn. Aquin. in Qttat. Libr. Sententt. lib. iii. dist. vi. exposition,
and art. 4.

^ in Qiiat. Libr. Sententt. lib. iii. dist. vi. art. 4.

284 Dissertations.

latter view, but there were no similar dogmas in the case
of the former. Even before nihilianism was condemned
the theory of transubstantiation had reached a position
of acceptance, and it became a dogmatically required
term very shortly after the condemnation of the theory
which may be described as its elder sister.

But it may be said : Granted all this, yet if tran-
substantiation is a dogmatic term of the Latin Church,
which has also been accepted by the Orthodox and
Russian Churches of the east ^, and if the Latin school-
men have abandoned the grossness of its original use,
may we not in the interests of unity accept the
phrase ? To this pleading I should reply that it is
quite true that it is possible to minimize the meaning
of transubstantiation till it becomes practically com-
patible with an acceptance of the permanence of the
natural elements in the ordinary sense of these terms,
coupled with a denial of their permanence in a laboured
metaphysical sense which is no longer in use among
philosophical writers other than Roman Catholics. Thus
Cardinal Franzelin says: 'It is demonstrable, as well
from the reason of the sacrament as from the clear
teaching of the fathers, that that which in the most
holy sacrament is the immediate object of the senses is
something objectively real - : ' and this sort of language
may be pressed till transubstantiation is made to

* Macarius, ThMogie Dogmatiqtie Orthodoxe (Paris, i860) §§ 215, 216.
Cf. Transubstaiitiation and the Chinch of England, by J. V>. Wainewriyht
(Mowbray, 1895), pp. 22 ff. Denny and Lacey, de Hicrarchia Anglicana
(Cambridge, 1895) §§ 185-6.

" Trad, de SS. Eiich. Sacram. ei Sacrif., thesis xvi. 1 1. 9. i, p. 273, as
(juotcd by Wainewright, /. c. Cf. Kinig, I'ract. de SS. Jiuch. I\Iyst. (Tiier,

Transiibstantiation and Nihilianisni. 28

mean almost practically nothing. But as was indicated
above, the mere fact that it must be concluded from the
doctrine that the heavenly substances vanish when diges-
tion begins and the old substances recur, is a sign that
the real force of the doctrine cannot be finally evaded.
Further, it can never be a satisfactory settlement to
accept a phrase in a sense so unreal that you are not
prepared to apply it anywhere else. Finally, to accept
the phrase in regard to the eucharist is to abandon
a great principle which runs through all theology — the
principle that the supernatural does not annihilate and
supersede the natural. This, as has been shown at
length, is the principle of the Incarnation, and it was
only the weakened hold of the principle in the sphere of
Christology which accounts for its being denied in the
sphere of the sacrament. This is the principle which the
development of biblical criticism is forcing us to reassert
in the region of the doctrine of inspiration, where it
means that the supernatural action of the Holy Ghost
does not destroy the natural action of human faculties
or overthrow the natural processes of literary develop-
ment. In the application again of Christianity to the
sanctifying of human character we are for ever bound to
insist that the human character in its most fundamental
nature is meant to be developed, not overthrown, by
supernatural grace. Finally, all that science has gone to
teach us about the divine action in creation compels us
to emphasize the same principle : the respect which God

1S88) p. 47 ' species panis et vini sunt aliqiiid obiectiviim reale.' This
appears to go even beyond the languaije of Anselm, see p. 267 n. 3. for he
continues after the passage there quoted ' ideo autem quod non est apparet
et quod est cclatur, quia si quod est videretur animus humanus abhorreret.'

286 Dissertations.

pays to the natural substances which express His own
will in creation and are sustained by His own imma-
nence. In every department of inquiry we are bound
to use the phraseology which best expresses the principle
which Leontius asserts for us, that ' the supernatural
does not destroy the natural ^'

' See above, p. 277.

ADDENDA

To pp. 19-21. When these pages were written I was
ignorant of a paper by Dr. Theo. Zahn on die Synsche Statt-
haltersdiaft und die Schdlziaig des Quiriiiius {Neiie kirchliche
Zeitschrifl, 1893, 8, pp. 633-654). It is now too late to dis-
cuss its somewhat surprising results. But it is desirable to call
the attention of scholars to it. Dr. Zahn impugns the trust-
worthiness of Josephus ; denies the later governorship of
Quirinius; asserts that he was governor of Syria only b.c. 4 (3)
to 2 (i), and at the beginning of this period, after not before
the death of Herod, took the only census that was taken ; and
maintains that this census is referred to by St. Luke both in
Luke ii. 2, and Acts v. 37, though he antedates it by about a year.

To Dissertation II. At the last moment I cannot resist the
temptation to insert the following illustration of the contrast
between Origen's doctrine and Augustine's with regard to the
reality of the kenosis. Both waiters are, in view of St. Paul's
language in Eph. v. 22-23, interpreting of Christ's incarnation
the words, 'A man shall leave his father and moiher, &c.'
Origen writes thus [in Matth. tom. xv. 17): Kat KaraXiXoiivi ye
Sia TTjv lKKXy)(TLav KvpLO<; 6 dvrjp Trarepa ov etuptt ore iv fxnpcfjrj Oeov
vTn'ipx'^v. Augustine writes (see Prosper, Sen/en/. lid. 330;
P. L. li. p. 478) ' Reliquit Christus Patrem . . . non quia
deseruit et recessil a Patre, sed quia non in ea forma apparuit
hominibus in quo aequalis est Patri.'

APPENDED NOTES

Appended Notes, A. 289

Supposed Jewish expectation of the
virgin birth.

It was stated above (p. 35) that it does not appear that there
was an\' Jewish expectation that Christ should be born of
a virgin. Tliis has been for many }ears an accepted position
among scholars (see Stanton's Jeivish and Christian Messiah,
p. 377), butin theyiraa'ifwy of June 8, 1895, Mr. Badham attempts
to traverse it. He gives a list of Rabbinical passages in which
this expectation is supposed to appear. But his quotations have
a history. All those which have any real bearing on the subject
are from INIartini's Pugio Fidei (c. a. d. 1280) or from Vincenti's
Messia Vemito (a. D. 1659). ^^ ^^^ have not read these works
we have read the quotations, or the most important of them,
in the notes to Pearson On the Creed (Oxford 1877, p. 306)
and elsewhere. They surprised us no doubt when we first
read them, but we soon learnt, perhaps from a more recent
editor of Pearson's work, that there is nothing corresponding
to them in any existing printed texts or mss. of the Talmud.
This ]Mr. Badham admits in his letter. But what then is
the use of quoting them ? They may or may not be for-
geries, but at least they cannot be quoted, for they are con-
trary to all that we know from other sources about Jewish
beliefs. The passages to be quoted or referred to immediately
from Justin, Tertullian and Jerome prove that the contemporary
Jews interpreted 'almah in Isaiah vii. 14 as 'young woman,'
that there was no existing expectation among them that the
Christ should be born of a virgin, and no evidence of their ever
having thought differently. Had there been any such evidence

293 Dissertations.

the Christians Avould have been eager to charge the Jews with
having changed their minds. The Ixx translates ' almah as
■rapOei'o'; in Isaiah vii as in Genesis xxiv. 43 \ but the word
does not appear to have made any impression till it was read
in the light of events by the early Christians.

The passages referred to are as follows. Justin Martyr, D/a/.
43, after citing Is. vii continues: on fx-lv ovv iv rw yeVei t(3 Kara.
adpKa Tov 'A^paa/M ovSei? ovSeTrore aiTO TrapOcvov yeya^vrjrat oroe
XeXcKTai ycycvvrjixivo'; aXX rj oSros 6 rjfxeTepo<; Xptcrros, Tvaat <pavc-
pov ecTTti'. cVet Se vp.el<i koL ol SiSdcrKaXoi vfjiuiv roX[xu.T€ Aeyetv
/AvySe elpijcrOaL iv rfj it po<^y]T (.ta tov 'Hcratoi; 'l8ou i^ irapSecos i.v
yao-Tpl e^ei, uAX' 'l8ou i^ i/eavis iv yao-Tpl Xr)v(/€Tai Kal re^erai uloc,
Koi i^-qyelcrOe T7]v Trpo(f>r}reLay ojs €(s 'E^eKiav, tov yev6p.evov ii/xaJv
(SacrtXia, Tretpacro/xai koL iv rovro) Ka^' v/xojv Ppa)(ea i^Tqy rja-a(r6 at
KoX aTToSei^at et? rouroj/ eiprjcrOai tov ofioXoyov/Jievov vcfi rjixwv
Xpia-Tov. This is repeated in cc. 66-7. Similar statements as to
Jewish interpretation are to be found in TertuUian, adv. Jud. 9
' mentiri audetis, quasi non virginem sed iuvenculam conceptu-
ram et parituram scriptura contineat,' cp. adv. Marcioii. iii. 1 3 ;
and Jerome, adv. Helvid. 5, ii. p. 209 (ed. Vallarsi).

Mr. F. C. Conybeare does not appear to have read INIr. Bad-
ham's letter with much care. Writing in the Academy of
June 15 he describes it as a 'letter on the prevalence among
the ancient Jews of the belief that the Messiah was to be born
of a virgin,' and alludes to the ' Rabbinic analogies' to pagan
beliefs ' brought to light by INIr. Eadham.' He clearly has noL
realized the antecedents of Mr. Badham's quotations. Otherwise
it is not the orthodox Christians whom he would have impugned
so vigorously for ' special pleading' and refusal ' to look facts in
the face.' As it is he suggests that the belief among the Jews
came ' through the Greeks and Egyptians,' and specially insists
upon the parallel to the virgin birth of our Lord afforded by
the Greek legend of the birth of Plato. I have alluded to
a similar belief in the case of Augustus (p. 55). It is to

' In two places in the Song of Solovion it is translated rtai'iy.

Appended Notes. A. 291

be noted, however, that none of the pagan authors cited by
I\Ir. Conybeare refers to Plato as born of a virgin. It is only
Jerome who does this as in the similar case of the Buddha (see
above, p. 58, note 2). The Greek legend represents Plato as
born of the union of his mother Perictione with the phantasm
of the god Apollo, the god appearing in a vision and a voice
forbidding Ariston, her husband, to exercise his marital rights
till the child was born. The following are the versions
of Diogenes Laertius, Apuleius, and Jerome, referred to by
Mr. Conybeare :

Diogenes Laertius : ^TrewiTTTros 8' Iv toJ i-n-LypacfiOfjiivco likd-
Twvo? Trepi SetTTvov Koi KAeap_^os ev tw IIAaTwvos cyKw/At'o) /cat
Ava^iA.to7^§ ev to! SevTipu) ircpl cfiLXoa6(f>wv ^acrtV, ws ' AOym^mv ■^v
Xoyos wpatav ovcrav rrjv TiepiKTLUvrjv /Sta^ecr^at rov 'Apicrrowa, /cat
firj Tvy)(a.i'eii'. Travofxevov re tt^s /3t'as iSetv ttjv tov 'AttoAAojvos
oij/Lv. oOev KaOapav yajjiov (jivXdiaL, etos t'^s aTTOKV^crew^ \de vit.
phil. iii. 2, p. 164, ed. 1692).

Apuleius : ' Sunt qui Platonem augustiore conceptu prosatum,
dicunt, cum quaedam Apollinis figuratio Perictione se miscuisset'
{de dogm. Plat. i. i, ed. Hildebrand ii. p. 173).

Jerome: 'Speusippus quoque sororis Platonis filius et Clearchus
in laude Platonis et Anaxilides in secundo libro philosophiae
Perictionem, matrem Platonis, phantasmate Apollinis oppressam
ferunt, et sapientiae principem non aliter arbitrantur nisi de
partu virginis editum ' {adv. Jovw. i. 42, Vail. ii. p. 309).

I am sure that this conception of heroes as born from the
union of gods and women is wholly alien to Jewish beliefs ; and
that there is no reason to believe that it exercised any influence
on the Jews. Such a legendary conception had been introduced
into Jewish literature only to be once for all put to death, see
Gen. vi. 1-8.

That Jerome and Origen (see coft. Ccls. i. 37) should have
used these legends as an argumetilum ad homviem with the
heathen, and have even assimilated them to the Christian history,
is by no means surprising.

U 2

1^2 Dissertations.

The readings of codex sinaiticus.

The Codex Sinaiticus referred to on p. 6i is the Syiiac
palimpsest of the four Gospels discovered by Mrs. Lewis in the
Convent of St. Catharine on Mount Sinai in February, 1892',
and which has excited so much interest as giving us another
and almost complete text of the Syr. Vet., which had hitherto
lain before us only in the Curetonian fragments. The new
Syriac text was published in Oct. 1894 by the Cambridge
University Press ^, and was followed in December of the same
year by 'A Translation of the Four Gospels froin the Syriac of the
Sinaitic Palimpsest., by Agnes Smith Lewis, M.R.A.S.'

This Codex is connected with the subject of Dissertation I by
its new and interesting readings in St. Matt, i, as will appear if
we extract the passage from Mrs. Lewis' translation.

St. Matt. i. 1 6 Jacob begat Joseph : Joseph., to who77i was betrothed
Illary the Virgin, begat Jesus, who is called the Christ. . .

18 And the birth oj the Christ was on this wise : Whefi illary
his mother was espoused to Joseph, when they had not coine near
one to the other, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.

19 Then Joseph her husband, because he was Just, did not wish to

20 expose Mary, and zvas minded quietly to repudiate her. But
while he thought on these things, the angel of the Lord appeared

* See How the Codex was found, by Margaret Dunlop Gibson (Macmillan,
1S93).

'■* T/ie Four Gospels in Syriac. Transcribed from the Syriac palimjjsest
by the late Robert L. Bensly, M.A., and by J. Rendel Harris, M.A., and
by F. Crawford Kurkitt, M.A. ^Vitll an introduction by Agnes Smith
Lewis. Cambridge, at the University I'ress, 1894.

Appended Notes. B,

293

lo him in a vision and said unto him, Joseph, son of David,

fear not to take Mary thy ivif e : for that which is beg oiteti from

2 1 her is of the Holy Ghost. A 7id she shall bear to thee a son,

and thou^ shall call his name Testis : for he shall save his people ' Ur slie

If 71 f

2 2 from their sins. A'ow this which happened was that it might
be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by Isaia the prophet,

23 who said, Behold a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring
forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being

24 interpreted is, God with us. Wheft foseph arose from his
sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him, aiid

25 took his ivife : and she bore to him a son, and he called his
name Jesus.

For the sake of fuller illustration it will be useful to subjoin
the more significant variations of the Peshitta and Curetonian
Syriac : —

Cur.
ver. 1 6 Joseph, he to ivltom was
espoused Jllary the Virgin,
she who bare Jesus the
Christ

19 Joseph (om. her husband)

20 Maty thy espoused

2 1 shall bear to thee
and his name shall be called
and his natne shall be called
ajui took his ivfe
and lived purely with her
until she bare the son
and she called

23
24

Pesh.
foseph the husbaiid of Mary
from whom was begotten
fesus, who is called the
Christ

foseph her husband
Mary thy wife
shall bear a son
atul thou shall call his name
and they shall call his name
and took Mary
and knew her not
till she bare her firstborn son
and she called.

The Greek text (W. H. and Tisch.) agrees with Pesh. except in
ver. 24 his wife (cur.) and 25 a son (for her firstborn son) : c/cdAecrti/
in ver. 25 might possibly be ambiguous.

In this passage the statements which arrest our attention, and
which have in fact alreadv given rise to a controversv in the

294 Dissertations.

Academy \ are these -.Joseph begat Jesus, she shall bear to thee a son,
and he took his wife and she bore to him a son. What are we to
say of them ? In endeavouring to discuss their meaning it will
be very essential to distinguish between two questions :

(i) What is their meaning in relation to our Lord's virgin
birth, taken as they stand ? and (ii) — a question really prior in
fact— What is the value of the text of Cod. Sin., and of these
readings in particular?

At the first sight, the readings in question seem to give a
naturalistic account of our Lord's birth, as if Joseph had been
His father after the ordinary manner. But the scribe of Cod.
Sin. certainly did not hold such a view himself. For these
readings are in juxtaposition with, or rather embedded in,
a miraculous account of the birth, which agrees in all respects
with the text we are familiar with. Joseph begat Jesus, but it was
in an unusual sense, which the writer goes on to explain — And
{z=iBut, hi) the birth of the Christ was on this wise. In St. Luke i
there is a lacuna where the account of the annunciation should
occur, and several words are obliterated at the beginning of the
second chapter, but enough remains to show that there also the
account of the birth is in practical agreement wiih the Greek
text. Further, significant phrases such as the child with Mary
his mother (St. Matt. ii. ii, no mention being made of the
father), and take the child and his mother (St. INTatt. ii. 13, 20,
said to Joseph'^) are left unaltered : while in St. Luke iii. 23 we
read And Jesus, when he was about thirty years old, as he was
called the S07i of Joseph.

1 The letters began with one from Mr. F. C. Conybeare on N'ov. 17, 1S94.
^ Not take thy child, or thy wife and'jhild.

Appended Notes. B. 295

In fact, apart from categoric statements about our Lord's birth,
there are not wanting indications that our scribe held virginity
in high esteem, and would lay proportionate stress on Mary's
virginity. So

(a) He speaks of her as Mary the Virgin. He does not
write to whom was betrothed a virgin, Mary (like our Bible in
St. Luke i. 2"], to a virgin betrothed to a man . . . and the virgin s
name was Mary), but Mary the Virgin, ' the Virgin ' as it were Acar'
l^oxrjv. Mr. Conybeare \ recognizing the expression as a kind
of permanent title, supposes it to = ' the widow '; but a much
more obvious explanation is to see in it the hand of one who
held that Mary remained ever a virgin.

[p) The same theory, of belief in the perpetual virginity of
INIary, also accounts most naturally for the omission of knew her
not until in ver. 25 — the scribe shrinking from the ambiguity of
the until.

(y) He gives a solution of a difficulty which the fact of the
virgin birth might raise : If our Lord was not literally begotten
of Joseph, and it is Joseph's genealogy which is given in Matt, i,
how do we know that our Lord was in fact descended from
David .' Our scribe answers by writing in Luke ii. 5 because
they were both [i. e. Mary as well as Joseph] 0/ the house of
David"^.

' In the Academy of Nov. 17, p. 401.

=* According to Mr. Burkitt (in the G'wan/zaw, Oct. 31, 1894, p. 1707) this
reading is also that of Tatian's Dialessaron, it being one of the ' remarkable
coincidences ' between it and Cod. Sin. But it is not the reading of the Arabic
version f Hamlyn Hill's trans., p. 47). Ephraim, it is true, writes alio loco
eadetn scriptiira dixit utrninquc, losephtim et ]\]aria)n, esse ex donio David
{Evang. Concord. Expos, td Moesinger, p. 16), but as it occurs in his com-
ments on the annunciation, the eadem may justify Moesinger in referring it to
i. 27, instead of ii. 4. It might indeed be Ephraim's own inference from the
different utterances of scripture, as he is occupied in meeting the difficulty
mentioned above. It is at times hard to know what is Tatian and what is
Ephraim. Thus on p. 170S Mr. Burkitt assumes that Tatian read and cast
him down in St. Luke iv. 29. Ephraim certainly believed that the men of
Nazareth did cast him down, for insiirrexcrttn! contra eum et appreJicn-

296 Dissertations.

(8) In St. Luke ii. 33 where he follows the Greek text he also
has his father and his mother, but in ver. 39 where he paraphrases
they, he says Joseph and Mary.

(e) His high estimalion of virginity is shown by the substitu-
tion o{ days {ox years in the description oi Hanna the prophetess,
who was \aged^ many days, and seven days only zvas she with her
husband after her virginity (St. Luke ii. 36).

The result however of this juxtaposition of phrases is to leave
us with an inconsistency. But is it not an inconsistency with
which we are familiar and which is indeed inevitable } It has
been shown in Dissertation I (§ 2) — and proof is hardly needed
— that the fact of the virgin birth must have remained a secret,
' kept and pondered on ' in the hearts of Joseph and Mary alone,
certainly during our Lord's own life. Jesus must have passed
among his fellow-countrymen for the son of Joseph; Joseph
must have been reckoned his father. This must have led to
a use of language, which could not have been wholly discarded,
even when the narrative of the virgin birth itself was made
public in the Gospels. Thus on the pages of our English bibles
still remain expressions such as these — Joseph the husband of
Mary, foseph her husband, Mary thy wife, his ivife (St. INIatt.
i. 16, 19, 20, 24), the parents, his parents, thy fattier and I
(St. Luke ii. 27, 41, 48, also his father and his mother, ver. 33
R.V.), Is not this the carpenter s son ? Is not this fesus the son
of foseph ? (St. Matt. xiii. 55, St. John vi. ^2), fesus of Nazareth,
the son of foseph ' (St. John i. 45). These readings present
no difficulty to us because of our familiarity with them, and
the new readings of Cod. Sin. may well be but an extension of
the same phenomenon. They all occur in that part of the
Gospel which is evidendy based on Aramaic documents, docu-
ments, that is, written for a Jewish public. But it was just to the

denies eduxcrunt ct dctruserunl cui/i (Moes. pp. 130-1) ; but it may have
been his own inference or exegesis, as in the Arabic version we re.id t/tal
they miglit cast Jiimjroiit its summit (H. Hill, p. 1 13).

' These are the words of Philip of Bethsaida, as the preceding questions
■were asked by the Jews and (jalilacans.

Appended Notes. B. 297

Jews that at the beginning our Lord would pass, externally, as
the son of Joseph. The most decisive expression is found at the
end of the genealogy. But again it was just the contemporary
lews who would require genealogical proof that our Lord was
of ' the house of David.' Thus we could readily imagine that the
earliest genealogies o{ Jesus the C/zrz>/, whether drawn up for
public evidence of His Davidic descent or for the private satisfac-
tion of his relatives, would very likely end with the words and
Joseph begat Jesus the Christ : and remembering the putative use
allowed by the Jews in genealogical reckonings, according to
which under certain circumstances a man would be reckoned
the 'son' of his father's brother \ one who does believe in the
virgin birth need not find in such an expression a harder saying
than, e.g. the y<oxdi%Joram begat Ozias (ver. 8). But later, when
the immediate need of proof of the Davidic descent passed away^
and Gentile converts not familiar with Jewish genealogizing
might mistake the meaning of the phrase, the Evangelist would
naturally recast it. And that the form of the text in Cod. Sin.
is not that in which it left the Evangelist's hands we shall have
reason to see from our examination of the prior problem — What
is the value of the new text }

11.

At first sight the peculiar readings of Cod. Sin. seem to be
relics or survivals of the primitive or original history of the
nativity, which as presenting a simply naturalistic account has
on dogmatic grounds been so altered that it would have wholly
disappeared, but for the discovery of these as it were ' fragments
of an earlier world' in Cod. Sin., which thus reveals a stage in
the process of correction. But on an examination of the read-
ings in detail they lose their primitive character. We have seen

' Cf. .St. Matt. xxii. 23-28.

298 Dissertations.

that original documents of the genealogy may well have ended
with some such phrase Z's, Joseph begat Jesus : but that the read-
ings of Cod. Sin. represent the original text of the Gospel seems
highly improbable.

Taking them in the reverse order (i) the omission of knew her
not utiiil in ver. 25 is without support, if we accept cod. bob-
iensis {k). But this agreement, if not accidental, is to be ascribed
to the same, and most obvious, juolij in each case, viz. a desire
of the scribe to safeguard the (perpetual) virginity of Mary as
mentioned above. On this ground, and still more on external
grounds (the Philonian use of the phrase), Mr. Conybeare^ thinks
the omission is not original. Indeed it would be hard to find
a reason for the interpolation of the missing phrase, if not
original.

(2) The next variation to consider would be the datives
to thee, to him in vers. 21, 25. Cur. has to thee in ver. 21, other-
wise they are also without support, and the addition of such
datives seems to be a characteristic of the version, at least in the
next two chapters we have to them (ii. 7), to them (12), unto him
(13), to him (16), to him (20), his [garner, iii. 12) unto him (14),
to him (17). In relation to the virgin birth they are not really
significant : for such ethical datives would be amply satisfied by
the position of Joseph as foster-father.

(3) The case seems different with ver. 16. The Greek text of
Tischendorf and Westcott and Hort runs thus : 'Iukw^ 8e eyiwrjo-ev
Tov 'l(a(Tr](f) Tov avSpa Mapta?, i^ Tys iyevvrjOr] 'Irycroi'S 6 Acyo/Aci/os
X/Dt<TTos, but Cod. Sin. has and Joseph to zahom was betrothed
Mary the Virgin begat Jesus zvho is called the Christ, and for
this reading there is a certain amount of attestation - ; viz.
among the versions (a) and Greek cursives of the Ferrar
group (b).

' Academy, Dec. 8, 1894, p. 474. For the question about Philo, see
Diss. I, pp. 61-63.

' For the Latin readings I am indebted to the conspectus of Rev. W. C.
Allen in Academy, Dec. 15; his account of the Greek cursives must be
corrected by Dr. Kahlfs' information, given in Academy, Jan. 26, 1S95.

Appended Notes. B. 299

(a)

S}'r. Cur. he to whom ivas espoused Mary ike Virgin, she who

bare Jesus the Messiah.

Lat. vet.

a (cod. vercell. s. iv) cui desponsata virgo Maria genuit

lesuni qui dicitur Christus.
b (cod. veron. s. v) cui desponsata era/ virgo Maria,

virgo autevi Maria genuit Iesu7n

Christum,
c (cod. Colbert, s. xii) cxii desponsata virgo Maria, Maria

autem genuit Lesum qui dicitur

Christus.
d (cod. bezae s. vi) cui desponsata virgo Maria peperit

Christum lesum.
g^ (cod. sangerm. i. s. viii) cui desponsata virgo Maria genuit

lesum qui vocatur Christus.
X- (cod. bobiens. p. v) cui despofisata virgo Maria geiiuit

lesum Christum,
q (cod. monac. s. vi) cui desponsata Maria genuit lesum

qui vocatur Christus.

Arm. '■ cui desponsata virgo Maria genuit, similiter . . . arm '

(Tisch. ed. viii^a).

(b)

codd. 346, 556 scr ( = 543 greg) ' w /xvrja-TevOrja-a [sic] Trap^eVos
Mapia/A iyivvT](rev Irjaovu tov Xeyofievov Xpicrroi'.

Here there is some attestation, but we see at once that the
support is given, not to the part of the reading which bears the
appearance of originality (as shown above), Joseph begat Jesus
— but to that part which makes us suspect its secondary
character, to whom ivas espoused Mary the virgin. Why was

1 The beginning of St. Matthew iswantingin codd. 13, 69, while 124 has
the usual reading (Rahlfs;.

300 Dissertations.

espoused here — especially when in Luke ii. 5 against the Greek
mss. {Jiis espoused) our writer has Mary his wife ? Compared
with ivas espoused {^IjxvqcrTivOy]) the Greek reading t6v avSpa
Mapias is much more primidve from its very boldness. It would
have been difficult to find a scribe to substitute the latter, had
he found iixvrjaTevOr) in his text. Again why i/ie virgin .? In
the Greek Gospels Mary is only spoken of as a virgin, referring
to her condiuon at the time; nowhere does she bear the name
of the virgin as a title. Taken with the omission of Imew her
not (ver. 25), it can but be ascribed to the tendency mentioned
above — the high emphasis on virginity and a fortiori of Mary's
virginity.

On the other hand the internal evidence really supports
the priority of the Greek reading. The symmetry of the three-
fold division of the genealogy leads us to expect an expansion or
fuller phrase at the end of the third as at the end of the first and
second divisions, while in particular tov 'Iwo-^t^ tov ai/Spa Mapi'as
is quite analogous to tov AaveiS rov /^acriAea. Again the mention
of Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, leads the way for the men-
tion of IMary. But why should Mary be mentioned unless there
was something special in her case as in theirs } and if she was to
be mentioned and it was an ordinary case of paternity, as we

had lyivvrj(Te.v ck r^s ®dfxap, ck ttJs 'Pa^ayS, €/< Ttj^ 'PovO, eK tt^s
TOV OvpLov, why did our scribe not give the Syriac for 'Iwo-^^
iyevvrjcrev 'Irjcrovv €k rrj^ Mapta? ? Instead he interpolates a phrase
which verbally stands in no connexion with the birth — to whom
was espoused Mary the virgin, while the Greek text retains the
Ik which we expected, and the connexion of Mary with the
child — e| y]<i iyevin'jO-q. We must remember the freedom of
translation in the early versions \ and the particular phrase we

' In the case both of Cur. and Cod. Sin. this character of the translation
is well brought out by Fr. M.-J. Lagrange in the Kevue Biblique of July,
1895. ' Cur. et Sin. traduisent par a peu pres, ne se souciant que du sens
qu'ils atteignent en general directement, sans cherchcr le moins du monde a
serrer le texte. ... II en resulte qu'ils ne s'efforcent point de rendre un passif
par un passif, de traduire les mots qui n'importent pas au sens, lors meme

Appended Notes. B. 301

are discussing is found also in the Cur. Syr. and early Lat.
versions without, as far as I know, any special claim for it to be
original having hitherto been made. To repeat, as it stands in
Cod. Sin., the sentence to tvhom ivas espoused Mary the Virgin,
without the supposition that Mary fulfilled some special or
unique role in relation to the birth, is quite meaningless.

On these grounds then, internal as well as external, we feel
no hesitation in accepting the Greek as the original text and
that of Cod. Sin. as secondary. And to this conclusion
Dr. Sanday apparently inclines : at the end of an investigation
he writes ^ : ' But having got back so near to the text of the
Greek mss., it would be natural to ask whether we ought ever
to have left them. As a rule, where there is paraphrase it is
the western text which paraphrases. So that at the present
moment I lean to the opinion that the traditional text need not
be altered.'

This examination of the readings in detail has rendered
unnecessary a discussion of what is really the first question of
all — What is the value of the version given by Cod. Sin. and of
its text as a whole 1 But indeed such discussion must be left to
Syriac specialists, and it is altogether too premature to look for
any certain or unanimous conclusions at present. We must be
content to wait.

There is however a point on which something can be said
at once. It has been suggested that the codex was written by
a scribe who was a heretic or at least of heretical tendencies.
The argument has been roost fully put together in an article in
the Church Quarterly Review of April, 1895 (pp. 113, 114),
but the writer cannot be considered to have proved his point. It
is true that the ms. has undergone violent treatment. It was

que la tournure est plus semitique que grecque. // rcpondit (prit la parole)
et dit, est simplement rendu : // dit. A ]ilus forte raison ne ticnnent-ils
pas des particules grecques. comme 5e, qui est, ou passe sous silence, ou
traduit jiar la copule. . . Liberte, negligence, vulgarite du style sent des
caracteres tiop accuses pour laisser place au doute' (pp. 402, 3).
^ Academy, Jan. 5, 1895.

302 Dissertations.

' pulled to pieces ^ ' : in one place there are signs of erasure by
a knife-; and seventeen leaves are missing^. But the treatment
does not suggest anything more than would have been suffered
by any ms. in the course of being used for a palimpsest : and
the fact that the version was rough and free, and had for some
centuries been superseded by an exacter version (the Peshitta)
— in a word the fact that it was not ' a work of high repute,'
would have been a sufficient excuse for John the Recluse to make
use of it for his own literary purposes in a. d. 778. It is however
in the presentation of the internal evidence that the reviewer is
most inconclusive. One of his instances, St. Luke ix. 35 ??iy son
the chosen, occurs in the text of our R.V. ; and can there be any
difference between the son of Joseph and the carpenter s son
(St. Malt. xiii. 55), between as he was called and as was supposed
(St. Luke iii. 23), between my Son and my beloved and my beloved
Son (St. Matt. iii. 17, St. Luke iii. 22, St. Mark ix. 7) .? Some of
his omissions are mentioned in the margin of the R.V. as having
authority, e.g. in St. Luke xxiv. 51, St. Mark xvi. 9-20, and
St. j\Iatt. xxiv. 36. Li the last instance not only was the absence
of neither the Son a reading favoured by certain catholic fathers*,
but it is neutralized by the presence of the words in St. Mark
xiii. 32. Oiher readings have support in the old Latin versions
— St. Luke ii. 5, St. John i. 34, or in the Curetonian — St. John
vi. 47. That after our Lord's baptism the Holy Spirit abode
upon him (St. Matt. iii. 16) is surely orthodox doctrine, being
that of St. John (i. 32). The only passages left are St. John iii.
13 which is from heaven, viii. 58 / haze been, iii. 18 only S07i
(omitting only begotten), and St. INIatt. xxvii. 50 his spirit ivent up.
From this evidence it is surely not possible to find our scribe
guilty of ' heresy.'

' Mrs. Lewis, Translation, introd. p. xix. ^ lb. p. 13.

* In fact 1 1 sheets ( = 22 leaves) arc missing, but as 2 sheets were taken
from the beginning and 3 from the end of the Gospel, 5 leaves would be
without any of the Gospel text. This looks as if the objectionable matter
(if such there was) was outside the Gospels. But would it not have seemed
the most obvious way to get rid of such matter by writing over it ?

* See pp. 128, 135.

Appended Notes. C. 303

On the patristic interpretation of st. john
vi. 63 TO nNeywA eQxiN to zooonoiofM, h QAp? oyK wcj^eAe?

OyAeN' TA pHMATA A efOO AeAAAHKA YmIn HNefMA IqTIN KAI

zooH eQTiN" aAAa eiQiN eE yiuoiN tin6c o'i oy niQieyoyQiN.

It is possible to interpret these words as explaining away
the previous discourse — as meaning that what is to profit is not
really the flesh and blood of our Lord but simply His spiritual,
life-giving utterances received and interpreted by faith. The
following patristic passages appear to favour this view :

Tertullian, de Ecs. Cam. 37. He is arguing against gnostics
who pleaded the words ' the flesh profiteth nothing ' as a ground
for disparaging the flesh of Christ. The flesh, replies Tertul-
lian, is only disparaged from one point of view, that is as
a source of life. It is spirit, says our Lord, not flesh, that gives
life. 'Exsequiluretiam, quid velit intelligi spiritum : verba, quae
locuius sum vohis, spiritus sunt; sicut et supra: qui audit
sermones vicos, et credit iu cum qui me misit, hahet vitam aeternatn
et in iudicium non veniet, scd transiet de morte ad vitam. Itaque
sermonem constiiuens vivificatorem, quia spiritus et vita sermo,
eundem etiam carnem suam dixit, quia et sermo caro erat factus,
proinde in causam vitae appetendus et devorandus auditu et
ruminandus intellectu et fide digerendus.'

304 Dissertations.

Eusebius of Caesarea, de Eccl. Theol. iii. 12. He is arguing
against Marcellus who urged tlie passage of St. John as carrying
with it the conclusion that the ' unprofitable ' flesh of Christ
would not be eternally permanent, and he interprets thus : 8t'
wv CTratoevev aiTOi'S TTi'ev/xaTt/cws d/coi'eiv Twi/ Trepi ttJs aap/cos Koi
rov at/xaros avrov AcAey/xeVwj/ ' yur; yap T^r crapKa rjv TrepLKeifxai
vo/jLLarjTe fxe Xeyety, w<; oeov aiVr/i' ea-Ouw, fjiijBe to alaOqrov kol
(TiD/JiaTLKOv aijxa TrtVetv VTroAa/x/Jaj'eTe p.e TrpocrrdTreiv, aXX' ev Icrre
oTL TO. pi^fiard fiou d X€Xd\r]Ka ujaic TTt'eup.d ecrri Kal ^oji] eariv
wfTTC avTa elvai ra prjfjiaTa Kat tovs Aoyors avTOV ttjv crdpKa Kat to
alfjia, (III' o p,eT€^a)v det, wcrai'et aprw ovpai'tw Tp6<^op,ei'09, ttJs
ovpai'LOV fxcOi^et ^w^s.

Macarius Magnes, Apocriiicus iii. 23 (p. 105) a-dpKi.% ovv kol
a'l/xa Tov XptrrTo? vyroi t^s (jo^t'a? (ravTov yap Koi 6 X.pLcrT6<; kol
7] (ro(f)La) ol TTjs KaLvrj<; kol TraAata? SiaO-^KT]'; dXXrjyopLKw<s XeXaXr]-
fjL^voL Aoyot, obs XP^/ ■'■pwyfti' fMeXe-nj kol TrerreLV iv rrj yvtafXTf
8Lafxvr]iJLOvevovTa<; Kat ^cur/i' i$ avTwv ov Trpoa-Kaipov dXX e^^^''
alwviov. ouTws IepeiXLa<; et? to crropia toi'9 Aoyov? €K Tvys ;^eipos
ttJs o-o^t'as Sefdyaei'os e^aye Kat (f)aywv eV^e C^rjV ovtcos 'le^CKi'^A
K€(^aAtSa Adyojv <^ayojj' lyXvKaivcTO kol to TTLKpov tt^s Trapovarjs
t,(orj^ aTre/SdXXeTO' ovtu)^ o xaa eva twv aytojv Kat Trore Kat TrdAai
Kat av6i<; Kat /xeTeVctTa tt/v crdpKa Tr)s o-o</)tas Tpojyojv Kat to at/xa
Kat TTLViov, TOVTeaTL Tiji' yvuxjLV avTTJs KOL rr]v diroKdXvvl/iv Iv €avT(2
Se^o/xevos, et,7]ae tov atoiva Kat ^wv ow Ar^fct ttotc. ov yap p,ovots
rot? /xa^r^Tat? iStSov tt]v crdpKa <f)ay€iv Trjv olKCLav iavTov Kal ineiv
6/xota)S TO atp,a (ry yap aj' -tj^LKCL tovto ttolwv Katptws Tto^t /xei' Trap-
c^wv, Tirrt 8c ov TrpvTavevwv Ttp' atwvtoi' t,(j)7]v) dXXd Trdcriv opotCDS
6o-tots dj/Spcto-t Kat Trpo<J3y]TiKol<; bfxov TavTrp' dXXrjyopiKd}^ Tyv
(TLTap)(Lav eoioKev .

Amalarius of Mctz has been cited above p. 235. n. i, as inter-
preting the eating Christ's flesh and drinking His blood to mean

* It may be mentioned (ns this author is not easily accessible, not being
included in Migne's Patrology) that the whole of the passage from which
the above is quoted is paraphrased in Diet, of Chr. Biog. iii. 77c, s. v.
Mac.\rius.

Appended Notes. C. 305

believing in His passion. This probably implies that he inter-
preted St. John vi. 63 to mean : ' what will profit you is not to
eat my flesh but to believe my words.'

11.

On the other hand the words may be interpreted in such
a way as not to practically overthrow the whole previous dis-
course : they may be interpreted to mean that mere flesh profits
nothing, but that ' the things of which I (Jesus) have been
speaking' — the flesh and blood of the Son of INIan, ascended
and glorified (see ver. 62) — are not mere flesh, but spirit and
(therefore) life. So St. Paul calls the ascended Christ ' life-
giving spirit ' in a passage where the permanence of His human
body is strongly implied, i Cor. xv. 45-50. This interpreta-
tion is illustrated by ths following passages :

Athanasius, Ep. iv ad Serapmi. 19 {P. G. xxvi. p. 665) koI
IvravOa yap afx^or^pa irept kavTov etprjKe, (rdpKa Koi Trvevfia' kol
TO TTvevfxa Trpos to Kara adpKa SteCTxetXcj', Tva /j.r] jxovov to (f>atv6-
fievov, dAAo. Ktti TO doparov avrov TrL(TT€V(ravTe<; fidOuicrn', on kol a
Aeyei ovk £0"ti aapKiKa, aXXa irvevfxaTiKa ' 7ro(TOL<; yap rjpK^i to
(Tuijxa Trpos jSpwcriv, iva Kai tov Koap.ov Trai'Tos tovto rpocfjrj yivrjrai ;
otAXa. Ota ToCiro t^s ci§ ovpavots dva/Sdaeu)'; ijxvijfxovevcre tov vlov
TOV dvOpu)Trov, iVa r^s cr(DjJiaTLKrj<; cvvotas avTovs d<fieXKV(n] /cat
AotTTOV T7)v elpr]p.evr]v crdpKa /jpwaiv dvioOev ovpdviov Kal Trvev/xaTi-
KTjv Tpo(f>i]v Trap avTov BiSofxev-qv /xdOoio-iv. a yap XeXdXrjKa, <f}r)(riv,
up.ii' ■^•^'Cu|Ad eaxi Kai t,(^r\. taov tw ctTrcti'' to fxkv 8eLKvvp.evov koi
cioop.evov VTrep t^s tov Koa/xov croiTrjpLa^ Icttlv yj crdp^ rjv cyo) cjiopw '
dAA' avTT] vfjuv Kai to TavTrj'i alp.a Trap' i/xov TTvev/jiaTLKwi; ^oOijcreTai
T/30(^7/' wcTTe TTvevfxaTLKixis ev eKdcTTii) TavTTjv dvaStSoaOai Kal
ytveaOaL irda-L f^vXaKTTjpLOV ets dvacrTao-ti/ ^ojij? alwviov.

Apollinarius quoted by Leontius Byzant, adv. Fratid. Apol-
Unaristariwi {P. G. Ixxxvi. p. 1964) {woTrotet 8e 17/Aas r} crdp^

3o6 Dissertations.

avTov, 8ta T7]v (rvvovaniip.ivqv avrfj Oeor-qra' to 8e ^ojoTroiov Oe'iKov'
OeiKT] apa crdp^, otl $€(2 crvvT](fi9y] ' kol avrrj jxev cw^et, •j^/acis Se
crw^o/X€^a yaere^^oi/res aiirr/? wcTTrcpet Tpo<^rj<;.

Cyril of Alexandria, /« 7(9(7;?. vi. 64 (/*. G^. Ixxiii. p. 601)
ov a<f)6Spa, (jyrjaiv, d(Tvv€TO)<; to jxr] BvvacrOat ^cooTroieiv TrepLTeOeiKare
Tjj aapKL. orav yap ixovrj voriTai KaO' iavTrjv 7] ttJs (rapKos ^vcris
TTw?, ov/c €(TTat Sr/XovoTt ^ojoTTOtc)?" t,woyovr](rei [xkv yap n twv
ovTwv ovSafxu)<;, SeiraL 8e /xdXXoi' avrr] tot) ^ojoyoveLv icr^^i'oi/TO?. . . .
cTretSr) yap rjvoyrai t(3 ^coottoiovvti A.oyw, yeyovei/ oAt^ ^wottoio? Trpos
T^v Tou /JcAtioi'os dvaSpa/Aoiicra 8wap,tv, ou/c avT^ 7rpo5 t^j/ tStav
^Laaafxevrj (jivcTLV rov ovhafxoOtv yjTTWfievov. kolv dcruevrj roiyapovv
Tj ttJs crapKo^ cfivcrLs, oaov rjKev eh eavryv, els to SyvaaOat ^(uoTroieii/,
dXX oi'i' evepyrjcrei tovto tuv t,o}OTroLov e^^ovcra Xoyov Kai 6Xr]v
avTov Trjv ivepyeiav ihSivovaa. crco/xa yap ecTTt t^s Kara (jivcnv ^w^s
Kol ov^ ev6<s Ttvos tC)V diro rys yrj'i, c</>' ovirep av Kal l(7)(y(jaL St^atcos
TO 1^ CTCip^ ouK aK(>eXeL ouSeV. ov yap rj HavXov rvy^ov, dXX ovSe rj
Tlerpov, yjyovv erepov Tti'os tovto iv r/puv ipydaeTaL' p.6vq 8e koI
c^atpeTOJS t} toS a(iL)Trjpo<s rjfiuyv Xpt(JTov, ev w KaTWKiycrc Trdv to ttXtj -
pu>fJLa TT^s OeoTrjTos o'w/xaTtKto?. kol yap av eltj Twv a.TOTrcoTaTOJi' to
jnei' fxeXi Tols ovK e^ovcn KaTa ^vaiv to yXvKv ttjv Ihiav eirLTLOevai
TTOLOTTjTa Kai CIS cauTo p.eTa(rKevdt,eLV to oiTrcp du dvafitcryrjTai, ttjv
Be tov Oeov Xoyov ^wottolov (fivcTLV fxr] dvaKop.iC,eLV oleaOai Trpos to
lSlov dyaOov to ev ^^T^ep evioKyjcre cw/xa. ovkovv eTrl fxev Twv dXXoiV
aTrdvTiDV dXr]6ys eaTai Xoyos otl rj crdp^ ovk dxjieXel ovSev, aTOvrjo'ei
Be eTTL fxovov tov XpLCTTOv, Slvl to iv avTrj KaTOLKyjcrai T7jv t,(t)'^v, tovt
eo-Tt TOV fxovoyei'TJ.

Cyril's language in this passage appears to be influenced by
that of Apollinarius.

Hilary, de Trin. viii. 14 'De veritate carnis et sanguinis non
relictus est ambigendi locus. Nunc enim et ipsius Domini
professione et fide nostra vere caro est et vere sanguis est. Et
haec accepta atque hausta id efificiunt, ut et nos in Christo et
Christus in nobis sit. Anne hoc Veritas non est.? '

Augustine, in loannis Evang. TracL xxvii. 5 ' Quid est ergo
quod adiungit : Spiritus est qui vivificat, caro non prodest quid-

Appended Notes. C. 307

quam ? Dicamus ei (j atitur enim nos non contradicentes, sed
nosse cupientes) : O Domine, magister bone, quomodo caro
non prodesl quidquatn, cum tu dixeris : iii'si quis manducaverit
carneni meam, et hiberit sangm'nem nicinn, non habebit in se vitaml
An vita non prodest quidquam ? et propter quid sumus quod
sumus, nisi ut habeamus vitam aeternam, quam tua carne
promittis ? Quid est ergo, non prodest quidquam caro ? Non
prodest quidquam, sed quomodo illi intellexerunt : carnem
quippe sic intellexerunt, quomodo in cadavere dilaniatur aut in
macello venditur, non quomodo spiritu vegetatur. Proinde sic
dictum est caro Jion prodest quidquam, quomodo dictum est
scientia inflat. lam ergo debemus odisse scienliam ? absit, Et
quid est, scientia inflat ? sola, sine charitate. Ideo adiunxit :
charitas vera aedificai. Adde ergo scientiae charitatem, et utilis
erit scientia : non per se, sed per charitatem. Sic etiam nunc,
caro non prodest quidquam sed sola caro : accedat spiritus ad
carnem, quomodo accedit charitas ad scientiam, et prodest
plurimum. Nam si caro nihil prodesset, Yerbum caro non
fieret, ut inhabitaret in nobis. Si per carnem nobis muUum
profuit Christus, quomodo caro nihil prodest.? Sed per carnem
Spiritus aliquid pro salute nostra egit. Caro vas fuit : quod
habebat attende, non quod erat. Apostoli missi sunt, numquid
caro ipsorum nobis nihil profuit ? Si caro apostolorum nobis
profuit, caro Domini potuit nihil prodesse ? Unde enim ad nos
sonus verbi, nisi per vocem carnis ? unde stylus, unde con-
scriptio ? Ista omnia opera carnis sunt, sed agitante spiritu
tanquam organum suum. Spiritus ergo est qui viviflcat, caro
autein non prodest quidquam : sicut illi intellexerunt carnem, non
sic ego do ad manducandum carnem meam.'

But he goes on (after an interval) ' Verba quae ego locutus
sum vobis, spiritus et vita sunt. Quid est, spiritus et vita sunt?
Spiritualiter intelligenda sunt. Intellexisti spiritualiter ? Spiritus
et vita sunt. Intellexisti carnaliter? Etiam sic ilia spiritus et
vita sunt, sed tibi non sunt.'

X 2

3^8 Dissertations.

TERTULLIAN'S doctrine of the EUCHARIST.

The above dissertation is only intended to cover a certain
period of the history of euchaiistic doctrine with which Ter-
tullian has nothing to do. But there is so Httle that appears to
be trustworthy written about Tertullian's eucharistic doctrine,
and it is at the same time so often controversially referred to,
that I have thought I might be forgiven in summarizing his
teaching.

Four preliminary propositions may be safely made as regards
the teaching of Tertullian. He contends strongly —

(i) That Christ as He is now in heavenly glory is still in the
flesh : see de Cai-ne Christ i 24 ' et videbunt et agnoscent qui
cum confixerunt utique ipsam carnem in quam saevierunt, sine
qua nee ipse esse poterit nee agnosci.'

(2) That it is to the still human Christ thus glorified in the
flesh that we Christians are united by His Spirit. Christ dwells
in each individual Christian, and the Church as a whole is
Christ: see de Fuga 10 'Christum indutus es siquidem in
Christum tinctus es : [Christus] in te est.' de Poc7iit. 10 ' in uno
et altero ecclesia est : ccclesia vero Christus. ergo cum te ad
fratrum genua protendis, Christum contrectas, Christum exoras.'
de Oral. 6 ' perpetuitatem postulamus in Christo ct individui-
tatem a corpore eius.'

(3) That the link between Christ and his people is a bodily
link (see de Pudici/. 6 corporis nexus). It is this because of the
sacramental principle. A sacrament is a physical means of
spiritual grace : because it is physical, it appeals to us through
our bodies (and in this Tertullian finds a pledge for our bodily

Appended Notes. D. 309

resurrection) : cp. de Res. Carm's 8 'cum anima [in Christo] Deo
allegitur ipsa [caro] est quae efficit ut anima allegi possit.
Scilicet caro abluilur ut anima emaculetur: caro ungilur ut
anima consecretur : caro signatur ut et anima muniatur : caro
manus impositione adumbratur ut et anima spiritu illuminetur :
caro corpore et sanguine Cliristi ves-citur ut et anima de Deo
sagineiur.' In this sacramental principle and its accompanying
obligation Tertullian sees one special outcome of the Incarnation,
' vestimenlum quodammodo fidei quae retro nuda erat. . . . ob-
strinxit fidem ad baptismi necessitatem ' {de Bapt. 13). And in
the simplicity of the sacramental rites, which contrasts with the
imposing apparatus of pagan mysteries, he sees a special evidence
of the divine attributes of simplicity and power {de Bapt. 2).

(4) That the sacraments of the Church are thus outward
channels of spiritual grace, the spiritual grace of the risen and
glorified Christ; see de Bapt. 11, where it is stated that the
baptism of Christ was only like John the Baptist's till after the
resurrection — 'nondum adimpleta gloria Domini nee instructa
efficacia lavacri per passionem et resurrectionem.'

Coming now to the eucharist in particular, it is quite certain
that Tertullian believed the consecrated bread and wine to be
both channels and veils of a divine gift and presence ; channels
through which we are ' fed with the fatness of God ' (cf. de Res.
8 cited above), and also veils of the divine gift thus communi-
cated to us. Thus the bread is the body of Christ, see de Orat.
14 ' accepto corpore Domini et reservato,' It is believed by
Christians to be something which the heathen do not believe it to
be : ad Uxor. ii. 5 ' non sciet maritus quid secreto ante omnem
cibum gustes ? et si sciverit panem non ilium credit esse qui
dicitur.' Thus they show great anxiety to prevent a crumb or
drop of the sacred bread and wine falling to the ground, de Cor.
Militis 3 ' calicis aut panis etiam nostri aliquid decuti in terram
anxie patimur.' The body of Christ is ' given ' and ' taken ' as
well as ' eaten,' see de Idol. 7 ' manus admovere corpori Domini,'
Thus inconsistent Christians still 'quotidie corpus eius lacessunt.'

3IO Dissertations.

But in what sense are the bread and wine the body and blood
of Christ? or in other words, what is the exact nature of the
unseen spiritual presence in the eucharist ? The obvious
answer in accordance with Christian belief is that it is the body
(or flesh) and blood of Christ, present after a spiritual and
heavenly manner. So Tertullian speaks of our being fed
'opimitate dominici corporis, eucharistia scilicet' {de Pudicit. 9).
Again he says {adv. Marcioji. i. 14) that Christ 'makes his
body present by means of bread (panem quo ipsum corpus
suum repraesentat)/ Repraesentare in Tertullian continually and
constantly means io make actually present over again (on the
force of re- see adv. Marcion. v, 9). Thus adv. Marcion. v. 1 2
' repraesentatio corporum ' is used of the last judgement ; iii. 7
Christ's second advent is the ' secunda repraesentatio ' ; when
on earth He effected a cure, He is said ' repraesentare curatio-
nem ' (iv. 9). Cf. adv. Praxeaii 24 : the Son strictly cannot be
said ' repraesentare Patrem,' i, e. to make the Father actually
present, for He is personally distinct from the Father : but He
' representat Deum,' i.e. makes God actually present, because He
is God and is the ' vicarius' (or representative) of the Father.
Cf. also adv. Marcion. iii. 10, 24, iv. 6, 13, 22, 23, 25.

On the other hand in de Res. Carnis 8 (already quoted), the
body and blood of Christ were put in line with the outward parts
in the other sacraments, while the inward gift was described as
the 'fatness of God,' i.e. the divine life. The question arises
then : Does Tertullian regard the inward gift and presence of
the eucharist as purely the gift and presence of the divine
Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus finding Himself a new symbolical
' embodiment ' in the bread and wine, which are hence called
His body and blood } This would be borne out by a curious
passage, adv. Marcion. iv. 4a. IMarcion had apparently argued
against the material reality of Christ's human body from the fact
that He could call bread His body. No, replies Tertullian, the
cucharistic body only witnesses to the real body as figure to
substance — ' acceplum panem et distributum discipulis corpus

Appended Notes. D. 311

suum ilium fecit, hoc est corpus meian dicendo, id est, figura cor-
poris mei : figura autem non fuisset nisi veritatis esset corpus.'
He goes on to say that there is analogy for Christ calling bread
His body in the fact that Jeremiah (according to the old Latin
reading of Jer. xi. 19) had prophesied of His body under the
term bread, ' coniciamus lignum in panem eius, scilicet crucem in
corpus eius.' Then he proves the carnal reality of Christ's body
from the fact that it is accompanied with blood, This is my
body is followed by This is my blood. ' Consistit probatio
corporis de testimonio carnis, probatio carnis de testimonio
sanguinis.' But again he seems to give a figurative meaning to
the eucharistic blood, pointing out how wine in the Old Testa-
ment is several times called blood — ' the blood of the grape,'
&c. There is a similar but briefer passage earlier in the same
work, adv. Marcion. iii. 19.

These passages certainly suggest not that TertuUian believed
in no real presence in the sacramental elements, for that would
be contrary to so much that he says elsewhere, but that he
believed the bread to be symbolically called the body of Christ
because it ' embodied ' a presence and gift of His Spirit. And
this view is not decisively contradicted by anything else in his
wridngs\ In a somewhat different way the wine would be
called symbolically Christ's blood, because it embodies a spiri-
tual gift of divine life from Christ. But it may still be said : the
spiritual gift thus conveyed is not merely a gift consisting in the
spirit of Christ, but a gift of Christ's spiritualized fiesh and
blood, that is a gift of His manhood and not barely of His God-
head. In this case the outward vehicles would still remain
what they were, symbols of the inward reality which they con-
vey. It is in this sense that the outward sacramental elements

^ No argument, one way or another, can be founded on the expression,
de Oral. 6 'corpus eius in pane censetur : hoc est corpus meimi.^ Ceiiseri
has at least no necessary idea of symbolism attaching to it : cp. de Bapt. 5
' similitudo [Dei] in aeternitate [hominis] censetur,' i. e. the divine similitude
is found (really existing) in man's immortality.

312 Dissertations.

are continually called ' symbols ' or ' signs ' or ' figures ' in
Catholic theology — i.e. efficacta signa, which effect or convey
what they symbolize. The bread would symbolize Christ's
body, because it ' embodies' the flesh or spiritual essence of His
manhood, and the wine would embody, as well as symbolize,
the spiritual blood, the ' blood which is the life.' We cannot
bring ourselves to doubt that Tertullian, if confronted with this
question, must have accepted it and not regarded the gifts of the
eucharist as gifts independent of Christ's abiding manhood.
But it has to be remembered on the other hand that he appears
(as cited in app. note C, p. 303) to believe that in St. John vi
Christ's ' flesh and blood ' means no more than His life-giving
words to be received in faith.

It is perhaps safest to assume that Tertullian was uncertain
in his own mind as to the exact meaning: which he assis;ned to
the eucharistic language of the Church and the exact nature
which he attributed to the eucharistic gifts. The tradition of the
Church taught that the consecrated bread and wine are the body
and blood of Christ : and different Church teachers did their
best to interpret this doctrine.

INDICES

HOLY SCRIPTURE

Acts of the Apostles 14, 15, 52,
76, 161 (jraii Kvpiov)
Acts i. 7 84, 1 1 5-6, 136

angelic appearances 21-27

Apocalypse 9, 54

Apocryphal Gospels 56, 60

apostolic preaching 6, 11, 13

baptism of Christ 78, 113,

187, of 309
body of Christ

mystical 117, 132, 127,

136, 158) 23311, 245, 266

sacramental 233n, 239n,

241, 244-5, 310-1

brethren (and relatives) of Christ

13, 29, 38

David, davidic 20, 34, 38, 78 n

diabolic agency 24-26

faith in Christ

82-3, 169

Chagigah
Colossians i. 17

ii- 3
ii. 9
conversion

40 n

90, i33> 136

90, 187

1 Corinthians x. 1-4 243

xi. 26-28 269
xi. 29 2 34 n, 255 n

XV. 2S 117, 126-7

XV. 47 II n

2 Corinthians viii. 9 89-90, 184

xii. 2 125

Cyrenius 1 9

the FATHER giving the son

Galatians i v. 22, 29 62

Genesis xi. 5 129 n

xxi. I, XXV. 21, xxix. 31 62

Ep. to the Hebrews 53, 79,
82-3, 91-2, 102, 189

Hebrews i. 3 91

iv. 15 79, 141

Heli 39

Herod 10, 20, 29-30

Hosca xi. I 33

infallibility (and impeccability) of

Christ 73, So, 96, 187, 20S-9

Isaiah vii. 14 35, 289-90

vii. 15, 16 118

Ix. 3 34

St. James

Jereiniali i. 6
iii. 4
xi. 19
xxxi. 15

ir? 54

II 8-9

3"
33

Jewish Christianity 49, 51, 53-4

3i6

Index.

St. John Baptist 4, i 7, 58,

60, 7S-9, 309

St. John Evangelist 7-1°) J 7)

76-7, 79, 84-87,

91, 102, 146, 203

St. John i. 14 iS^, 191

iii. 3 66

iii. 13 85 n, 91, 302

iii. 34 85 n

vi- 53 f 235, 239 n, 246 n

vi. 56 263, 271-2

vi. 63 233 n, 245-6, 303 f

vi. 64 8 1 n

viii. 40 165

viii. 58 1 87, 193, 302

X. 30 164-5

xi. 14 80

xi. 34 82, 176, 1^9,

155, 158, 162, 164, 165

xii. 27 13911

xiv. 28 III, 164

xvii. 5 85, 147-8,

185, 193, 195

xxi. 22 84 n

Joseph 6 n, 13, 20, 22,

28, 39» 77, 292-302

kenosis (see P/iil. ii. 5-11) 108,

I 18-9, 146, 147-9,
i83f, 189, 190, 200-1

Lightfoot, Hor. Hcbr. 39 n

St. Liilce 13-18, 35, 37 n, 82

St. Luke's genealogy 39

St. Luke i, ii 16-18, 52, 63, 294
i. 41 f (Elisabetli) 22

ii. 2 (census) 19-21

ii- 5 295

ii- 31-35 (Simeon) 17

ii. 36 296

ii. 40 78

ii. 48 7 n, 296

ii- 49 57, 77-8, 81, 186

St. Luke ii. 52 78, 115, 118, 120,
123-4, 127-9, 1.^6-7, 141,
150-2, 161, 167 n, 181

Magi 30-1, 34

St. Mark 7

St. Mark vi. 3 (and ||') 7

ix. 21 82

x, 18 96 n, 114

B. V. Mary 6 n, 9,

13, 18, 20, 22, 28, 39,

48, 61, 77, 292-301

massacre of innocents 29-30, 55 n

St. Matthew's genealogy 37-39

use of prophecy 31 f

St. Matt. i. ii 29, 37, 63, 292 f

xi. 27 115, 165

xviii. 3 66

xxiv. 36 (St. Mark xiii.

32) S3-4,

III, 115-118, 123-133, 135-6,

141, 149-150, 155, 158-9- 162,

166 n, 1S5, 195, 198-200, 203

xxvi. 26 [see ' body ')

233 n, 246, 311

xxvi. 38 i2Sn, I33n, 141

xxvii. 46 (St. Mark xv.

34) 83, 105, 127, 132,

137, 141,159.197. 203
xxviii. 18 192 n

xxviii. 20 193

Messiah, messianic 15-18, 31,

52-54, 76-7, 78 n

Alicah v. 2 34-5

miracles of Christ 57, 79-So,

140, 142, 165-6, 185, 203

Moses 61

negatives in Scripture, a use of 251

O. T. language about God 172, 220

St. Paul 10-11, 17, 53,

62, 76, 8S-90, 91-2,
102, 189, 203, 305

//. Names and Terms.

317

St. Peter

7j 17. 54> 79 Satan

Philippians ii. 5-1 1 (see kenosis') ' Second Adam '

88-9, 143, 181, Synoptists

184, 199, 200, 203

ii. 7 176, 2S0

prayers of Christ 80, 82, 129,

133", 165, 185, 203

prophecy 31-6, 57-8, 60

prophetic attributes of Christ 80-1,

84, 185

24-26, 79, 144

".65-7

77-79

39. 2S9

Talmud

temptation of Christ 79, 109-10,

140, 141, 144, 187

tradition in Scripture 42

Samuel

Zacharias
60, 78 Zechariah

22, 58
32

NAMES AND TERMS

Abelard (1079-1 142) 176 n,

26on, 267
Academy 61 n, 289, 290, 294, 298 n
actio additctiva, productiva 2 54 n
adoptionists 160 n, 161

Adievaldus (c. 818-878, monk of

Fleury) 240 n

Africanus, Julius (of Emmaus, s. iii

init.) 29, 3Sn

Agnoetae 154-158, 161

Agobard (779-840, abp of Lyons

813) 162

Alcuin, Albinus Flaccus (c. 735-804,

at Charlemagne's court 7S2)
102 n, 167, 234, 235 n, 280
Alexander III (pope 1159-iiSj)

I76n, 177, 283
Alexander of Hales (doctor at Paris

ti245) 252 n

Alger (canon of Liege c. iioi, f c.

1 1 31) 254 n, 264-5, 275"

Allen, Rev. W. C. 298 n

Amalarius of Metz (f c. 837)

234-5, 304

Ambrose (bp of Milan 374, +397)
127-9, 132, 215 n,
230 n, 236n, 245, 262
de Sacramentis 230 n, 236 n
de My sterns 2 36 n

Anastasius 104

Andrewes (i 555-1626, bp of Win-
chester 1618) 197
Anglicanism 196^ 205, 213
Anselm (1033-1109, abp of Canter-
bury 1093) 266n, 267 n, 285 n
anthropomorphism 250
avTiboais idtwy.aT(ov 182-3
dvTiTvna 231
Apollinarius (bp of Laodicea, Syria,

t c. 390) 138-9.

I4in, 142, 145 n, 152-4,

175 n, 280-1, 305-6

Apuleius (fl. 173) 291

Aquinas, Thomas (1225-1274, do-

minican 1243) I56n, 160 n,

16S, 169 n, 174 n, 1770,

i8o, i83n, 267 n, 283

Aristides (of Athens, s. ii init.) 46

3i8

Index.

Arius (c. 256-336), Arianism 122-3,
i39> 159. 208-9, 250
Arnold, Sir Edwin 59

Asclepiades 55

Asita 56, 58

Atlianasins (c. 296-373, bp of Alex-
andria 326) 103-4)
123-6, 129, 130, 139, 140,
145, I53> 164, 171, 305
Atia 55
Augustine (354-430, bp of Hippo
395) 132, 136-8, 166, 176,
232, 233 n, 234, 237, 240,
249, 265 n, 275, 280, 306-7
Augustus (B. c. 63 — A. D. 14) 4,
20-1, 55-6, 290

Eadham, Mr F. P. 289-290

Bar-cochba 4 r > 4^ n

Basil (c. 329-379, abp of Caesarea

370) 123, 127, 130

Beal, Rev. S. 58 n

Bellarmine, Cardinal (i 542-1621,

Italian Jesuit) 276

Berengar (998-1088, archdeacon of

Angers) 240 n,

247-258, 259, 262-5, 267

Bergmann 19

Bernard ( 1 091-1 153, founded Clair-

vaux 1 1 1 5) 1 66 n

Beveridge (1638-1708, bp of St.

Asaph 1704) 198

Bingham (1668-1723) 178

Boetius (c. 470-524, consul 510)

111 n, 194, 235 n

Bright, Dr W. I04n, 164,

199-201, 208 n

Bruce, Dr A. B. 4 n, 89 n,

150, 152, 179 n, 181 n,

1S2, i84n, i88n, iS9n

Buddha 4, 56-58, 291

Bull '1634-1 710, bp of St. Davids

1705) ii2n, 178, 198

Burkitt, Mr F. C. 292 n, 295 n

Cabasilas, Nicolas (ti37i) hp of

Thessalonica) 172

Candidus 209 n

Carlyle 65

Carpenter, Dr E. 55 n, 56 n

Caspari, Dr C. P. 153

Cassian, John (c. 360-c. 450) 98
Cassiodorus (c. 480-c. 575, consul

514, monk c. 550) 115 n, 167
Cerinthus (s. i) 8, 49-51

Charles the Bald (823-877, k. of

France 840) 236, 240

Charles the Great (742-814, king

768, emperor 800) 230

Chrysostom, John (c 347-407, bp

of CP 39S) 31 n,

102 n, 131, 274

Church, Dean 199, 200

Clmrch Quarterly Reviczu 48 n,

153, 222 n, 301

Clement of Alexandria (c. 160 —

c. 220) 47»ii3-4,

121, 202, 239n, 245 n

Clement of Rome (s. i) 106-7

Codex Sinaiticiis 61 n, 84 n,

85 n, 292-302

Colet (+1519, dean of St. Paul's

1505) 179, 180

coinnnmicatio idioniatiim 182-3

Conybeare, Mr Y. C. 48 n, 55 n,
61 n, 290-1, 294 n, 295, 298
Copleston, Bp 56 n, 58, 59 n

Corderius, B. (Jesuit, s. xvii) i74n
Councils —

Xicaea (325) 42 n, 195, 208-9
Ephesus(43i) 155 n, 195

Chalcedon (451) I53> 154-5.

162-3, 210-1, 230, 27S
Constantinople III (680) 154,211
Nicaea II (7S7) 230, 231 n

Lateran IV (1215) 178, 248, 268
Basle (1431-1438) i68n

Trent (1545-1563) 2670

creationist language • 254 n

//. Names and Terms.

319

creeds, confessions

42-47

107-8, 170-1, 1S2 n, 212

Cyril of Alexandria (c. 376-444, bp

of A. 412) 131,145-6,

149-154- 163 n, 164-5,

201, 231 n, 2S1 n, 306

Cyril of Jerusalem (c. 315-386, bp

of J. 350) 23in

Dale, Dr R. W.

23 n

Delitzsch, Dr F.

38 n, 1S9

Denny and Lacey

284 n

depotentiation

152, 188

Didachc

42 n, 53

Didymus of Alexandria (c. 309-

c. 394) 1 30-1

Diogenes Laertius 291

Dionysius of Alexandria (t265, bp

of A. 247) 122

Dionysius the Areopagite (s. v-vi)

172-174, 175 n, 241 n, 2S0
divinity of Christ assumed 106-7
docetism 114, 146

dogma 1 7°

Domitian (emp. 8 1-96) 30 n, 38 n
Dorner, Dr J. A. ii2n, i54n,

I55n, I72n, 179 n,
i8in, 184, 193-5
double life of Christ 183, 192, 215
SouXoj Kvp'iov 1 60-1

Drasel<e, Dr J. 153

Durandns of St. Portian (ti334>

domin. bp of Meaux 1326) 283
Durandus of Troam (tio89, abbot

of St. Martin, T. 1059) 263

Ebionism 51-54

Edersheim, Dr A. 19 n, 22 n, 35 n
Einig, Dr P. 2840

Eleutherus (pope between 170 and

190) 43

Enoch. Book of 17 n, 26 n

Ephraim of Antioch (t545> bp of A.

527) 275-6

Ephraim Syrus (t373, deacon of

Edessa). 130, 29511

Epiphanius, deacon 2310

Erasmus (1467-1536^ 179-180

Erigena, John Scotus (Irish monlc,

in France S46, f c. 877) 174-5,

240 n, 247-8, 2S0-1

ilulogius (t607, bp of Alexandria

579) 126 n, 156-7, 158-9

Eusebius (c. 260-339, bp of Caesarea

c. 313) 29 n, 38 n, 41 n,

430, 54 n, 100-103, 104, 304

Eutyches (c. 378 — c. 454, abbot in

CP) 143, 154

Eutychius (512-582, bp of CP 552)

231 n

Fairbaim, Dr A. M. 4n, 60,

189-192
Farrar, Dr F. W. 19 n

Fathers, the 213-4, 250

Felix of Urgel (bp of U. c. 7S3,

deposed 799) 162

Florus Diaconus (of Lyons, -f-c 860)

235, 2S2
Floss, H. J. 240 n

Franzelin, Cardinal 284

Fulbert of Chartres (ti029, bp of

C. 1007) 254 n

Fulgentius (468-533, bp of Ruspe

508) 167, 246 n

Geikie, Dr C. 19 n, 35 n

Gelasius (pope 492-496) 275

Georgius Scholarius ( = Gennadius,

bpofCP. 1453-145S) 27Sn

Gess, W. F. 1 84, 1 88

Gibson, Miss M. D. 292 n

Gieseler, Dr J. C. L. 211 n, 237 n,

250 n, 264n, 276 n

gnosticism 8, 50, 109, 1 1 1 , 1 13, 273

Godet, Dr F. I4n, i9n,

39, 184-8, 191-2

320

Index.

Gregory of Bergamo (bp of B. 1 1 34)

265-6, 281, 2S2

Gregory the Great (pope 590-604)

157, 159» 167 n

Gregory Nazianzen (c. 325-3S9, bp

of Sasima 373, CP 379-3S1)

123, 126-7, 130,

137> i59. 18311

Gregory Nyssen (c. 331-394, bp of

Nyssa 372) 127, 139-44,

I46n, 18311, 209 n, 231

Gregory Thaumaturgus (bp of Neo-

caesarea c. 240) 153

Gtiardian 295 n

Guitmnndus, see Witmund

Gwatkin, Dr H. M. 122 n.

208 n, 2090

Hadrian I (pope 772-795) 160 n
Haimo (778-853, bp of Halber-
stadt 840) 246-7

riamack, Dr A. 3 n, 12211

Harris, Mr Kendel 7 n. 46 n, 292 n
Hatch, Dr E. 173 n

Hebert, Dr C. 240 n

Hegesippus (s. ii fin.) 38 n,

41 n, 54
Hennas (s. ii med.) 48 n, 107 n

Heurtley, Dr 42 n, 208

Hilary of Poitiers (t368, bp of P.

c. 353) 72, 74-5'

I04n, iiin, I28n, 132-5,

137. H5-9. 20911, 306

Ilildebert (1057-1133, abp of Tours

1 1 25) 266-7

Hildebrand ( = Gregory VII, pope

1073-1085) 25711

Hill, Rev. J. Hamlyn 295 n

HiUel 38

Hincmar (t882, abp of Reims 845)

246
Hippolytus (of Rome, s. iii init.) 52 n
Holland, Rev. H. S. 25 n

homo J 1 1 n, 1 1 5 n

homoonsion 269, 272

Hooker, Richard (1553-1600)

143, 196-7
Huet, P. D. (1630-172 1, bp of

Avranches 1689) ii5n, i2on
Hugh of Langres (ti05i, bp of

L. 1031) 249 n, 256 n, 258

Hugh of St. Victor (fi 141) 2780
Humbert, Cardinal (tio63, card.

1051) 248, 253-4, 257, 258 n
Hutton, Mr R. H. 192

Huxley, Prof. T. H. 217

Ignatius (f c. 115, bp of Antioch)

8, 34 n, 46, 48 n, 106-7

iinpanatio, invinatio 259, 262

iiitellecHialis 256

Irenaeus (bp of Lyons 177) 8, 4in,

43-4. 49> 5o> 52, 93, 98-100,

107-112, 121, 171, 19S, 273

Jerome(c.346-420,at Bethlehem 387)
58 n, 120, i28n, 132,
135-6, 239n, 289-291
Pseudo-Jerome 1 36 n

/ezvish Quarterly Review 48 n

John Cassian, see Cassian
John Chrysostom, see Chrysostom
John of Cornwall (c. 1170)

i76n, i77n

John Damascene (c. 676 — c. 760,

monk of S Saba) I02n, i26n,

156 n, 160-1, 166,

lS3n, 230-1, 236 n

Pseudo-John 260 n

John Scotus Erigena, see Erigena

Josephus (37 — c. 100) 19, 2011,

26 n, 29 n, 30, 31 n, 38 n

Jovius i 75 n

Julius (poi)e 337-352) 153

Julius Marathus 55

Justin Martyr (t c. 163) 45,

51, 289-290

Justinian (emperor 527-565) 145 n

//. Names and Terms.

321

Keim 19^,35

Kernel and the Husk, the 3 n,

58, 61, 6311
Kohler, Dr 48 n

Lagrange, Fr M.-J. 300 n

Landriot, Mgr i77 n

Lanfranc (c. 1005-1089, abp of
Canterbury 1070) 230n, 248n,
249. 253, 257 n, 258, 275n
Leo (pope 440-461) 163, 197, 211
Leontius of Byzantium (s. vi) 132,

144. I53> 155". 156.
157-8, 160, I75n, 182 n,
276-8, 281 n, 286, 305
Leporius 132, 137-8

Lequien (dominican, s. xvii-xviii)
183 n, 278 n
Lessius (1554-1623, Jesuit of Lou-
vain) 254 n, 270, 278
Lewis, Mrs. 292, 302
Liddon, Dr H. P. 128 n, 155
Lightfoot, Bp 36 n, 88n, 92, 106 n
Loisy, M. I'Abbe 35 n, 39 n
Lombard, Peter, see Peter L.
Loofs, Prof. F. 153 Dj 156 n
Lotze, Hermann 223 n
de Lugo, Cardinal (i 583-1 660,
Jesuit) 168 n, 169, 170 n
Luther (14S3-1546) 181-2, 184
Lutheran 182-3, 240 n
Lux Mundi 57 n

Martini (dominican, s. xiii) 289

Mason, Dr A. J. 231 n

Maurice, F. D. 24 n

Meyer, Dr H. A. W. 3n

miracles 236, 249, 258 n,

261, 264, 270-1, 278n
Missal 246, 250-1

Moesinger, Dr G. i3on, 295 n

Mommsen, Dr Th. 19, 21 n

monophysitism 153, 154-6,

182, 274, 280-2
Morin, Dom G. 106 n

Nazarenes 52 n

neo-platonism 173

Nestorius (bp of CP 428-431),

104, 145

Nestorianism 121 n, 144,

156 n, 160 I, 181-2, 194-5

Newman, Card. 102 n, i2on, 154

Nicolas II (pope 1059-1061)

257-8
Nicolas Cabasilas, see Cabasilas
Niemeyer, Dr H. A. 182 n

nihilianism i75-7r279i

otKovofiia 151

Oldenberg, Piof. 56 n

Origen (c. 1S5-C. 253) 45 n,

47, 48, 52 n, 100, 108,

114-121, 122, 132,

171, 218, 224, 291

Mabillon (1632-1707, benedict, of

St. Maur) 234-5 n, 237 n

Macarius Magnes (c. 350) 245 n,

304

Macarius, Bp 284 n

Mai, Cardinal 156 n

Mansi, J. D. (abp of Lucca, s. xviii)
177 n, 178 n, 257n, 268
Marcellus of Ancyra (s. iv) 13911
Martensen, Bp 192-3, 215

Martineau, Dr J. 224

Pauge lingua 235 n

Panthera 6 n

Paschasius Radbert (t865, abbot of

Corbey 844) 236-241,

243 n, 246, 282

Pearson (1613-16S6, bp of Chester

1673) 196 n, 289

Perrone, F. (S. J.) 271 n, 278 n

Petavius (1583-1652, French Jesuit^

160 n, 169, 179 n

Peter, Gospel of 48, 50

322

Index.

Peter Lombard (tii6o, abp of Paris

1158) 16711, 168, 175-6,

178, 2600, 267, 280, 282

Peter the Venerable (+1156, abbot

of Cluny 1 122) 264

Philo (+ c. 45) 50, 61-3, 298

Photius (c. 815-891, bp of CP 857)

158, 27611
Plato 65, 290-1

Polycarp (f c. 155, bp of Smyrna)

8,44
Proclus of Cyzicus (f 446, bp of CP

434) 104

Prosper of Aquitaine (c. 403-c. 463)

275
Psalms of Solomon 1 4 Hj i 7 n

Quadratus (s. ii) 46

Qnirinius, Publins Sulpicius 19

Rabanus Maurns (c. 776-856, abp

of Mainz 847) 237 n

239-40, 280

Rahlfs, Dr 298 n, 299 n

Ramsay, Prof. W. M. 15, 30 n

Ratherius of Liege (t974, bp of

Verona 932) 250

Ratramn (c. 868, monk of Corbey)

239 n, 240-246, 247, 249, 255

reception by the wicked, receptionist

232, 234, 237, 239, 262-3

Reformed, the 182-3

Renan, E. 3n, 6n, 29 n,

35> 38 n, 55". 61 n
repraesentare 3 1 o

res and virtus scuramenti 234 n,
240, 255, 266
Rhys Davids, Prof. 58, 59

Richard of St. Victor (tii73, prior
of St. V. 1 162) 178

Robertson, Rev. A. I22n, 153

Robinson, Rev. J. A. 50

Routh, Dr M. J. 274 n, 275 n

Riigamer, P. W, I53n, I56n

Rupert of Deutz (tii35, abbot

of D. c. 1120) 276

Ryle and James 14 n

Sabellianism 122

Sanday, Dr W. 14, 15 n,

22, 76 n, 301
Schell, DrH. 1690

science, physical 216-7, 222, 285
scientia bcaia, indita, acquisita 168
Sentius Satnrninns 21

seven sacraments, the 265-6

Severians i54n> 155

signa (of sacraments) 232, 246-7,
255, 262, 282, 312
Simcox, Rev. W. H. 54 n

Simeon, bp of Jerusalem (s. ii) 54
Socrates (of CP, c. 439) 42 n

Solomon, Psalms of, see Psalms
Sophronius (t638, bp of Jerusalem

634) 157

species, Christ entire in each 266 n

Stanley, Dean 290

Stanton, Prof. V. . i8n,

52 n, 289
Stephen of Bange (tii39) ^>V of
Autun I II 2) 268 n

Stokes, Prof. Sir G. G. 216-7

Strauss 35

Strong, Rev. T. B. 224 n

Suarez (1548-1617, Spanish Jesuit)

169
'substance' 123,194,281

substance and accidents 242 n,

252, 272, 283
Suetonius 2on, 31 n, 55

awd({>eia 144

supernatural and natural, the 109
273-4, 277-8, 280, 285-6

Tacitus 20, 31 n

Tatian the Syrian (s. ii) 130, 295 n

Taylor, Jeremy (1613-1667, bp of

Down and Connor 1660) 197

//. Names and Terms.

323

Taylor, Dr C. 48 n

Tertiillian (fl. c. 200) 21,

41 n, 44, 49, 109, 245 n,
289-290, 303, 308-312
Testament of the xii Patriarchs 48
QiavZpiKT} (vipyeia 174

Themistius (of Alexandria, s. vi

init.) 155,1560

Theodore of Mopsuestia (c. 350-428,

bpofM. 392) 144-5

Theodore (s. vi, abbot CP) 156 n
Theodoret (c. 393-c. 457, bp of

Cyrrhus 423) 131-2, 160, 275
Theodosiiis (bp of Alexandria 536).

Theodosians

155 n, 157

Thomasins

189

Toiit, Book of

26 n

tradition

41, 106, 121

transiihstantiare

268 n

Trench, Abp

24 n

Trypho

45> 5^

ubiquity, doctrine of 182, 240 q

Victorinus Afer (fl. 360) 209

Vincenti 289

Vischer, A. F. & F. Th. 348 n

Wainewright, Mr J. B. 2840

Waterland (1683-1740) 198

Weiss, Dr B. 7 n, 140

Westcott, Bp 82 n, 85 n, 89, 93,
146, 166, 1730, 199, 200
Witmund (bp of Aversa 1088)

2^9 n, 259-263,

264-5, 267, 282

Wright, Mr L. 216 n

Zacharias (at Besan9on 1131, pre-

munst. at Lacn it 57) 2640

Zoroaster 4

THE END.

HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY

Albemarle Street,

luly, 1895.

MR. MURRAY'S

LIST OF

NEW AND RECENT WORKS.

Colonel Sir Robert Sandeman :

HIS LIFE AND WORK ON OUR INDIAN FRONTIER.

A MEMOIR, WITH SELECTIONS FROM HIS CORRESPONDENCE AND OFFICIAL WRITINGS.

By THOMAS HENRY THORNTON, C.S.I. , D.C.L.,

Formerly Secretary to the Punjab Government, & sometime Foreign Secretary to the Government of India.

With Map, Portrait, and Illustrations. 8vo. l^s.

"We have read every word of it attentively, and we 'can unhesitatingly accord it the

highest praise Few records of Imperial service are so entertaining, and every page

is charged with instruction The reader rises from its perusal, loving Sandeman

himself, deeply grateful to him for his hfelong services, proud to be'his'countryman. " — Daily
Chronicle.

-♦-♦-

The Life and Correspondence of
Sir Bartle Frere, Bart., G.C.B., F.R.S., &c.

DERIVED FROM HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED DOCUMENTS.

By JOHN MARTINEAU.

Second Edition. Portraits and Illustratiotis. 2 Vols. %vo. yis.

"Few members of the British public service, which has given England many of her
greatest names in peace and war, have been connected with a larger variety of affairs than
Sir Bartle Frere, and his association with them will be matter fof history as long as this
Empire lasts or affords a theme for comment and admiration." — Times.

"Through prosperity and adversity the charm of his personal character remamed
unbroken, and to this he owed much of the respect and affection with which he was regarded
by those who had the advantage of his acquaintance." — Athenceuni.

"A fine life and a worthy biography is the verdict the critic will fgladly record. " — St.
James's Gazette.

2 Mr. Murray s List of Nezu and Recent Works.

The Crimean War, from First to Last.

EXTRACTS FROM THE PRIVATE LETTERS AND JOURNALS OF
General Sir DANIEL LYSONS, G.C.B.,

Constable of theTower.
With Illustrations from the Author's own Draivings and Plans. Crown 8vo, I2s.

"The narrative is artless but vivid in its simplicity, and the letters are full of interest, as
all faithful representations of stirring episodes must be." — Times.

" A simple and stirring account of battle and adventure." — Spectator.

" Sir Daniel Lysons, who was the first soldier of the British force to set foot on Crimean
soil, and one of the last to leave it, has ' done ' the Crimean war ' from first to last ' in a little
book of less than three hundred pages, as interesting as it is modest." — Fall Mall Gazette.

-♦-♦-

A Vagabond in Spain.

AN ACCOUNT OF A JOURNEY ON FOOT,

Chiefly with the purpose of Studying the Habits and Customs
AND THE Agriculture of the People.

By C. B. LUFFMANN.

Crown Sz'o. 6s.

" Enamoured of a vagrant life, and desirous of getting a practical knowledge of the condi-
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common people, Mr. C. Boyne Luffmann shouldered his wallet at Biarritz, and walked as a
tramp for one thousand five hundred miles across Spain, from the Pyrenees to the Mediterra-
nean The present volume is the record of his experiences and adventures, and it is

full of interest from the first page to the last."— Times.

" One of the freshest, brightest, and most original volumes of travels it has been our
pleasant task to read for many days." — Glasgow Herald.

-♦-♦-

The Evil Eye.

AN ACCOUNT OF THIS ANCIENT AND WIDESPREAD

SUPERSTITION.
By FREDERICK THOMAS ELWORTHY.

With many Illustrations. 8vo. 21 s.

" A book teeming with curious and valuable information As Mr. El worthy justly

observes, the origin of the belief in the evil eye is lost in the obscurity of prehistoric ages, and
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admirable work on the subject, the interest of which is enhanced by nearly 200 excellent engra-
vings, should figure in every public and private library in the three kingdoms." — Daily
Telegraph.

" Here is an abundant, an inexhaustible magazine of illustrations an astonishing

volume. He is copious, accurate, entertaining ; a travelled man .... a reader of tomes
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in the West." — Speaker.

Mr. Murray's List of New and Recent Works. 3

Day-Dreams.

BEING THOUGHTS FROM THE NOTE-BOOK OF A CRIPPLE.

Major GAMBIER-PARRY,

Author of " Reynell Taylor : a Biography," &c. &c.
Crown 8z>o. "js. 6d.

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" Major Gambier-Parry's themes are well-worn, as the titles 'Work,' ' Truth,' &c. , suffi-
ciently indicate ; but he seldom fails out of the storehouse of his reading or observation, to
bring forth treasures new and old." — Athcncrum.

-♦-♦-

THE RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, M.P.

The Psalter : According to the
Prayer Book Version.

WITH A CONCORDANCE AND OTHER MATTER COMPILED BY
The Bight Hon. W. E. GLADSTONE, M.P.

Fifth Thousand.
Imperial 2,2mo, roan, t,s, 6d. Morocco, $s.

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and a curious bond between the veteran statesman and a multitude of tliose otherwise excel-
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has prepared is very full, and will meet all requirements." — GMe.

"Altogether the arrangement and get-up of the little book is excellent, and it will be
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contains of loving work by its venerable and venerated editor."— Westtninster Gazette.

The Odes of Horace and the
Carmen Saeculare.

TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH VERSE
By the Bight Hon. W. E. GLADSTONE, M.P.

Large Crown Svo, 6s. Also Avw and Popular Edition, Fcap. Sw, 3J. (>d.

* :^* A few Copies, printed on best hand-made paper, rubricated, at 2\s. each net,

aie still to be had.

"This little book must be pronounced one of the literary miracles of the \sox\A."— Daily
News.

4 Mr. Murray's List of New and Recent Works.

Progressive Revelation.

OR THROUGH NATURE TO GOD.
By Miss E. M. CAILLARD,

Author of "Electricity: the Science of the Nineteenth Century," "The Invisible Powers of

Nature," &c.

Crozun Svo. 6s.

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of principles, the striking and original ideas, which impart a unique force and interest to every
chapter. We have perused no recent work, in its department of literature, so freshly thought-
ful and attractively suggestive." — National Observer.

-M-

History of Religion.

A SKETCH OF PRIMITIVE RELIGIOUS BELIEFS AND PRACTICES, &
OF THE ORIGIN AND CHARACTER OF THE GREAT SYSTEMS.

By ALLAN MENZIES, D.D.

Crown Svo. ^s.

This work is sold both as a Library Book and as one of the Series of University
Extension Manuals, edited by Professor Knight, of St. Andrew's University.

»■ *
♦

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fresh discoveries are being made eyery year. His ' History of Religion ' will be found a
valuable help to those who wish to acquire some knowledge of comparative beliefs. "—ZJ^i/v
CAronic/e.

'' As a popular comprehensive account of all the principal forms of religion, and of their
relations one to another from the evolutionary standpoint, nothing could be more admirable
than Professor Menzies' manual. Considering the limits within which he was necessarily
restricted, the merits of the book are superlative." — Baptist Magazine.

-^-*~

Edward Harold Browne, D.D.

Lord Bishop of Ely and subsequently of Winchester and
Prelate of the Order of the Garter.

A MEMOIR.

By the Very Rev. GEO. WM. KITCHIN, D.D.,

Dean of Durham.

With Portraits. Svo. iSs.

The memoir is not merely a sympathetic and winning portrait of a man, but a luminous
and instructive chapter of contemporary ecclesiastical history." — Times.

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resting personality." — Daily Chronicle.

Mr. Murray's List of New and Recent Works. 5

Sir William Gregory, K.C.M.G.

FORMERLY M.P., AND SOMETIME GOVERNOR OF CEYLON.

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

Edited by LADY GREGORY.

Second Edition. With a Portrait. 8vo. i6s.

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the life-story of a kindly, impulsive, thoroughly lovable Irish gentleman." — Academy.

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"The record of his life told by himself, in strong, simple, virile English, is one of the
most charming narratives it has been our good fortune to read." — Vanity Fair.

♦-♦

The Sapphire Ring.

A NEW NOVEL.
By CHARLES GRANVILLE,

Author of " Sir Hector's Watch," " The Broken Stirrup Leather."
Crown Svo. 6s.

-♦-►-

The Country Banker

HIS CLIENTS, CARES, AND WORK.
By GEORGE RAE.

Tenth Edition. Crown Zvo. "js. 6d.

♦♦

GABRIEL SETOUN'S WORKS.

Sunshine and Haar.

Some further Glimpses into Life at
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By GABRIEL SETOUN.

Crowti 8vo. 6s.

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Scotsman.

" ' Sunshine and Haar ' deserves, and will
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Barncraig.

Episodes in the Life of a Scottish
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Crown %vo. 5.?.

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It is very rarely that a first book is of such
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fulfilment." — Queen,

6 Mr. Mtirrays List of New and Recent Works.

The Life of Sir William Petty.

1623 — 1687.

ONE OF THE FIRST FELLOWS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY;

SOMETIME SECRETARY to HENRY CROMWELL ;

MAKER AND AUTHOR OF THE "DOWN SURVEY" OF IRELAND,

Derived from Private Documents hitherto Unpublished.

By Lord EDMOND FITZMAURICE.

With Map and Portraits. %vo. i6j.

"A work which it is delightful to read and most pleasant to ponder ower."— Daily

Chronicle. .

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whose previous obscurity is inexplicable." — Athenceum.

-♦-♦-

Talleyrand.

By Lady BLENNERHASSETT.

(Countess Leyden.)
Author of " A Life of Madame de Stael."

Translated from the German by FREDEBICK CLARKE,

Late Taylorian Scholar in the University of Oxford.

2 Vols. Crown %vo. 24s.

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handled in the volumes of ' Talleyrand.' "—Standard.

-*>-

The Life and Times of William Laud,

ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY.
By the Rev. C. H. SIMPKINSON, M.A.,

Rector of Farnham, Surrey,
And Examining Chaplain to the Lord Bishop of Winchester.

With Portrait. Cro'wn 8vo. los. 6d.

Mr Gladstone writes :— " This seems to be by far the best and worthiest account
of Laud yet pui)lished, and a new and pleasing proof of the vitality of the new Historic

School at O.xfcrd." . ^ 1, -.

"The biography is skilfully compiled, concisely written, and eminently readable. —

Scotsman.

Mr. Murray s List of Neiv and Recent Works. 7

The House of the Hidden Places.

A CLUE TO THE CREED OF EARLY EGYPT FROM
EGYPTIAN SOURCES.

By W. MARSH AM ADAMS,

Author of " The Drama of Empire," &c., sometime Fellow of New College, Oxford.
With Illustrations. Crown Zvo. "js. 6d.

"■ Within the last few weeks one of the most plausible and cleverly worked-out of all the
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certain fields of Egyptology, describes and supports as a solution of the fascinating problem
the intimate correspondence, as he regards it, between the design of the Pyramid and the
writings which are commonly entitled 'The Book of the Dead.' "—Monnng Pest.

" Mr. Adams has worked out his conception in great detail, and shows a wide acquaintance
with Egyptian mythology." — Scotsman.

"The whole volume is singularly interesting, and contains passages of actual literary
beauty. It will be surprising if it does not make a stir." — Sun.

-♦-♦-

HELEN, LADY DUFFERIN.

Songs, Poems and Verses.

By HELEN, LADY DUFFERIN.

(COUNTESS OF GIFFORD.)

Edited, with a Memoir, and some Account of the Sheridan Family,

by her Son

The MARQUESS OF DUFFERIN AND AVA.

Fourth Edition.

With Portrait. Crown %vo. \2s.

"There are none of Lady Dufferin's Poems in this volume that will not be read with

pleasure and sympathy We do not remember ever to have read a more touching and

more beautiful account of the relations of a son with his mother than is here given." — Daily
Chronicle.

A SELECTION OF

The Songs of Lady Dufferin.

(Countess of GIFFORD.)

SET TO MUSIC BY HERSELF, AND OTHERS.

A Companion Volume to "Songs, Poems, and Verses."

Words and Music. Croivn 8vo. gs.

"It will be welcomed by many, especially by those to whom the 'Songs,' with their
music, are already familiar." — Globe.

8 Mr. Mttrray's List of New and Recent Works.

Primogeniture.

A SHORT HISTORY OF ITS DEVELOPMENT IN VARIOUS
COUNTRIES, AND ITS PRACTICAL EFFECT.

By EVELYN CECIL, M.A.,

Of the Inner Temple, Barrister-at-Law ; Member of the London School Board.

%vo. \os. 6d.

"Well worth studying are the views that he expresses on the practical value of great
landlords, and all that he has to say on the subject of small properties and ' morcellements." "
— Daily Telegraph.

"Even those who do not agree with the writer's conclusions will find themselves better
equipped for a rational discussion of the subject by a study of the facts historically and dis-
passionately expounded as Mr. Cecil expounds them."— Times.

" A book of the hour as well as of the age. " — Daily JVeivs.

♦-♦

Sir Henry Layard's Early Adventures in
Persia, Babylonia, &c.

INCLUDING A RESIDENCE AMONG THE WILD TRIBES

OF THE ZAGROS MOUNTAINS BEFORE THE

DISCOVERY OF NINEVEH.

Condensed from his larger Work, and Revised by the Author.

With an Introductory Notice of the Author by LORD ABERDARE,

IViih Portrait. Crown 8vo. "js. 6d.

" It is indeed a charmingly told story of genuine adventure. It is the simple unpretentious
story of the wanderings of his youth in one of the most interesting regions of the world." —
Times.

-♦♦-

The Scientific Papers and Addresses

Werner von Siemens.

VOLUME II. Including the following subjects:—

Induction Writing Telegraph.— Magneto-Electric Quick Type-
Writer.— Electric Water-Level Indicator. — Mine Exploder. —
Alcohol Meter. — The Universal Galvanometer. — Automati-
cally-steered Torpedoes. — Automatic Electric Lamp. — Electric
Plough. — Electric Elevator. — Electricity Meter. — Energy
Meter, etc.

With Illustrations. Svo. i^f.

Mr. Murray s List of New and Recent Works. 9

An Unrecorded Chapter of the
Indian Mutiny.

BEING THE PERSONAL REMINISCENCES OF
REGINALD G. WILBERrORCE,

Late 52nd Light Infantry.

COMPILED FROM A DIARY AND LETTERS WRITTEN ON THE SPOT.
Third Edition. lUttstrations. Crown Zvo. "js. 6d,

" No matter how much the reader may have read of other publications, he will find this a
most pleasing appendix to all that has gone before." — Field.

" There is not a dull page in the volume, and our only regret is that it is so short. . . .
We have said enough to direct the attention of all lovers of tales that are stranger than fiction
and of all admirers of British heroism to this remarkable little book. Mr. Wilberforce is to be
congratulated upon the e.xtraordinary interest of his reminiscences." — Guardian.

-M-

NOTES OF

A Journey on the Upper Mekong, Siam.

By H. WARRINGTON SMYTH,

Of the Royal Department of Mines and Geology, Bangkok.

Published for the Royal Geographical Society.

With Maps and Illustrations. Crown ?,vo. "js. 6d.

" Well described by Mr. George Curzon, at the meeting of the Society, as ' a faithful and
vivid account of boat life, raft life, camp life, and jungle life in Siam ' ; and ' a singularly
attractive picture of the various tribes who inhabit that country." " — Times.

-♦-♦-

The Rise and Expansion of the
British Dominion in India.

FROM THE EARLY DAYS OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY

TO THE MUTINY.

By Sir ALFRED LYALL, K.C.B.

A New Library Edition, with Considerable Additions.
With Coloured Afaps. Svo. 12s. net.

The favourable reception given to this work on its first publication as a Volume of the
University Extension Series, edited by Prof Knight, has induced the author to expand it
and to bring out a larger edition continued to the time of the Mutiny.

"A cordial welcome is due to its appearance as an independent work." — Times.

lo Mr. Murray s List of New and Recent Works.

TWO GREAT NATURALISTS.

The Life of Richard Owen.

BASED ON HIS CORRESPONDENCE, HIS DIARIES, AND

THOSE OF HIS WIFE.

By his Grandson, The Rev. RICHARD OWEN.

Assisted in the Revision of the Scientific Portions
by C. DA VIES SHERBORN.

"With an Essay on Owen's Position in Anatomical Science by the

Right Hon. T. H. HUXLEY,

Second Edition. With Portraits and Illustrations. 2 Vols. Crozvn 8z'0. 24s.

" A".book of moderate compass and remarkable interest. In these pages a very human
figure stands out, bold in its outline, but revealing many an intimate detail." — Saturday
Review.

'' The volumes teem with anecdotes ; and the second is even richer than the first, for
Owen's life became fuller and broader as manhood ripened into age." — St. James's Gazette.

The Life and Correspondence of
WilHam Buckland, D.D., F.R.S.,

Sometime Dean of Westminster, Twice President of the

Geological Society, and

First President of the British Association.

By his Daughter, Mrs. GORDON.

With Portraits and Illustrations. Crown %vo. 1 2s.

"The Dean well deserves the tribute paid him in this volume, which is of modest propor-
tions, and in no way exaggerates its subject's claim to remembrance." — Globe.

"It is a very readable book, for it gives an e.vcellent account, without any padding or
unnecessary detail, of a most original man." — Westminster Gazette.

-*-•-

Christianity and Morality.

THE BOYLE LECTURES, 1874 and 1875.
By HENRY WAGE, D.D.,

Principal of King's College, London.

Eighth Edition (Revised). Crozvn 8vo. 6s.

Mr. Murray s List of New and Recent Works. 1 1

The Life and Correspondence of
Arthur Penrhyn Stanley,

LATE DEAN OF WESTMINSTER.

By ROWLAND E. PROTHERO, M.A.,

Barrister-at-Law, late Fellow of All Souls' College, Oxford.

With the Co-operation and Sanction of the
Very Rev. G. G. BRADLEY,

dean of WESTMINSTER.

TiiiKO Edition. With Portraits and Ilhistrations, 2 Vols. %vo. 32^.

♦"♦

MR. WILFRED CRIPPS' WORKS.

Old English Plate.

ECCLESIASTICAL, DECORATIVE, and DOMESTIC.

By WILFRED J. CRIPPS, C.B.

A New Edition (Fifth), Enlarged and Revised.
Mediuin %vo. 21s.

"A work on old English plate far more satisfactory and scientific than any that has
preceded it. We recommend all plate collectors to have it at their elbow." — Times.

" We confidently say that ' Cripps on Old EngUsh Plate ' will henceforth be found on the
shelves of every library worthy of the name, and be recognised for what it is,— the best work
on its own subject." — P.all Mall Gazette.

*^* Tables of the Date Letters aW Marks sold separately, 5^-.

Old French Plate.

ITS MAKERS AND MARKS.

By WILFRED J. CRIPPS, C.B.

A New and Revised Edition, with Tables of Makers' Marks, in Addition to the

Plate Marks. %vo. \os. 6d.

12 Mr. Hurrays List of New and Recent Works.

The Pamirs :

BEING A NARRATIVE OF A YEAR'S EXPEDITION ON

HORSEBACK AND ON FOOT THROUGH KASHMIR,

WESTERN TIBET, CHINESE TARTARY, AND

RUSSIAN CENTRAL ASIA.

By the EARL OF DUNMORE.

Second Edition. With Maps and many Illustrations, chiefly from the Author's
Sketches. 2 Vols. Crown %vo. 2\s.

" Lord Dunmore's account of his adventures in those far-off lands is excellent reading
throughout, and is very well illustrated." — Morning Post.

" For sportsmen there is much to read in these two volumes of grand hunting days after
the 'ovis poU,' the Tibetan antelopes and wild horses."— Daily Telegraph.

-♦♦-

Joslah Wedgwood, f.R.S.

HIS PERSONAL HISTORY.
By SAMUEL SMILES, LL.D.,

Author of the "Lives of the Engineers," of " Self Help," " Character," &c.
With Portrait, Crown %vo. bs.

"A monograph which promises to be not the least popular of the author's already long
list of works of this class." — Daily News.

' ' He has not failed to make us feel that the subject of his biography was a great man,
almost worthy of the splendid compliment paid him by Novalis, when he said that Goethe
played in the German world of letters the same part that Wedgwood played in the English
world of art." — Observer.

♦♦-

Dr. Dollingers Addresses on Historical
and Literary Subjects.

Translated, in accordance with the wish ok the late Author,
By MARGARET "WARRE.

A New Scries. ?,vo. i^s.

CONTENTS.

Universities, Past and Present; Founders of Religions; The Empire of
Charles the Great and his Successors ; Anagni ; The Destruction of
the Order of Knights Templars; The History of Religious Freedom;
Various Estimates of the French Revolution ; The Literature of
THE United States of America.

Mr. Murray's List of Neiv and Recent lVo7'ks. 13

A Peasant State.

AN ACCOUNT OF BULGARIA IN 1894, DERIVED FROM
A RECENT VISIT TO THE COUNTRY.

By EDWARD DICEY, C.B.

%V0. 1 25.

" A careful reading of Mr. Dicey 's book will give any Englishman an accurate view of the
present and a fair estimate of the future of the Bulgarian State." — Athenceum.

♦♦

The English Novel.

FROM ITS ORIGIN TO THE PUBLICATION OF WAVERLEY.

By Professor WALTER RALEIGH, University College, Liverpool.

Second Edition. Crown ^vo. y. 6d.

[Also published as one of the University Extension Series, Edited by
Professor Knight, of St. Andrews Univeksity.]

" He has read enormously and has digested hii learning ; his style has ease, measure,
point ; his summaries are luminous , his criticism of individuals is generally sound ; and, on
the whole, his book is one to have as well as read — alike for the conclusions it achieves and
the information it arrays." — Pall Mall Gazette.

"An admirable handbook,— clear, concise, definite, and yet not dry . . . The book is
full of good things, and as readable as any novel." — Journal of Education.

-♦-♦-

THE DUKE OF ARGYLL'S WORKS.

The Unseen Foundations of Society ;

AN EXAMINATION OF THE FALLACIES AND FAILURES OF
ECONOMIC SCIENCE DUE TO NEGLECTED ELEMENTS.

By the DUKE OF ARGYLL, E.G., K.T.

Second Edition. 2)Vo. i8j.

The Burdens of Belief.

AND OTHER POEMS.

Irish Nationalism.

AN APPEAL TO HISTORY.

By the DUKE OF ARGYLL, By the DUKE OF ARGYLL,

K.G. , K.T.

Croivn %vo. 65.

K.G., K.T.

Crown St'O. 35. 6d.

* *

14 Mr. Murray's List of New and Recent TFor/cs.

Speeches on the Eastern Question.

By the late LORD STRATHEDEN AND CAMPBELL.

bVO. 12S,

->■♦-

TWO DISTINGUISHED LADIES.

The Letters of

Lady Burghersh

(afterwards Countess of
Westmorland)

FROM GERMANY AND FRANCE

DURING THE CAMPAIGN

OF 1813-14.

Edited by her Daughter,
Lady ROSE WEIGALL.

Second Edition.
IVii/i Portraits. Croiun 8vo. 6s.

A Sketch of the Life of
Georgiana, Lady de Ros.

WITH SOME REMINISCENCES

OF HER FAMILY AND FRIENDS,

INCLUDING THE

DUKE OF WELLINGTON.

By her Daughter,
The Hon. Mrs. SWINTON.

Second Edition.

IVit/i Portraits. Crown Svo. Js. 6d.

-♦-«-

Italian Painters.

CRITICAL STUDIES OF THEIR WORKS.

By GIOVANNI MORELLI (Ivan Lermolieff).

Translated from the German

By CONSTANCE JOCELYN FFOULKES.

I— THE BORGHESE AND DORIA PAMFILI GALLERIES

IN ROME.

With an Introductory Notice by Sir A. HENRY LAYARD, G.C.B.

With Illustrations. Svo. i^s.

"It does not need an enthusiastic sentiment for art to find this book interesting. No
student of painting can afford to do without it." — St. James's Gazette.

ii.-THE GALLERIES OF MUNICH AND DRESDEN.

Wit/i Illustrations. Svo. l^s.

Mr. Murray's List of New and Recent Works. 15

A Manual of Naval Architecture.

FOR THE USE OF OFFICERS OF THE NAVY, THE
MERCANTILE MARINE, SHIP-OWNERS, SHIP-BUILDERS,

AND YACHTSMEN.

By Sir W. H. WHITE, K.C.B,, F.R.S.,

Assistant-Controller and Director of Naval Construction, Royal Navy; Fellow of the Royal Societies
of London and Edinburgh ; Vice-President of the Institution of Naval Architects ; Member of the
Institutions of Civil Engineers and Alechanical Engineers ; Honorary Member of the North-East Coast
Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders ; Fellow of the Royal School of Naval Architecture.

Third Edition, thoroughly Rrdsed and in great part Re-written^

With 176 Illustrations. Medium 8vo. 24J.

" Mr. White's manner is excellent, and as his work embraces in a concise and clear form
all that is at present known of naval science, it can conscientiously be recommended as a
trustworthy preceptor. All who take an interest in ships, whether they be war, merchant, or
pleasure ships, such as yachts, will find in the ' Manual ' all that science can teach them." —
Field.

-♦-♦-

A SELECTION FROM

The Writings of Dean Stanley.

Edited by the Venerable A. S. AGLEN,

Archdeacon of St. Andrews.

Second Edition. IVitk Portrait. Crown %vo. -js. 6d.

"A series of animated and picturesque passages culled from the writings of the Dean.
He was one of those writers, we venture to think, who are seen more to advantage in select
passages than in continuous works, and this volume ought to prove highly popular."—
AthettcBum.

-♦-♦-

The Epistles of St. Paul to the
Thessalonians, Galatians and Romans.

WITH NOTES AND DISSERTATIONS.

Including an Essay on the Interpretation of Scripture, originally
Published in " Ess.ws and Reviews."

By the late B. JOWETT, M.A., Master of Balliol College.
Edited by LEWIS CAMPBELL, M.A., LL.D.,

Emeritus Professor of Greek in the University of St. Andrews.

2 Vols. Crown %vo. "js. 6d. net, each voluvie.

1 6 Mr. Murray's List of New and Recent Works.

NEW AND REVISED EDITION OF

Fergusson's History of Architecture
in all Countries.

In Four Volumes, medium 8vo, with upwards of 1,700 Illustrations.

Vols. I. & II.-ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL ARCHITECTURE.

Edited by R. PHENE SPIERS, F.S.A.

With \,ooo Illustrations. 2 Vols. £2, y.

Vol. iii.-INDIAN AND EASTERN ARCHITECTURE, z^s. 6d.
Vol. iv.-MODERN STYLES OF ARCHITECTURE. 31^.6^.

-♦■<-

Kirkes' Handbook of Physiology.

By W. MORB-ANT BAKER, F.R.C.S.,

Surgeon to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, Examiner in Surgery at the Royal College of Surgeons ; and

VINCENT DORMER HARRIS, M.D. Lond.,

Demonstrator of Physiology at St. Bartholomew's Hospital.

Thirteenth Edition Thoroughly Revised.
With over 500 Illustrations and Coloured Plates. Crown 8vo. 14s.

-♦4-

The Conversion of India.

FROM PANT^NUS TO THE PRESENT TIME, 193—1893.
By GEORGE SMITH, C.I.E., LL.D.,

Author of the Lives of William Carey, of Henry Martyn, of John Wilson, F.R.S.,

and of Alexander Duff.

With Illustrations. Croivn Svo. gs.

"To those who remember Dr. George Smith's admirable Life of William Carey, whicV
without fear of challenge we reckon among the choicest of Missionary Biographies, the book
before us will need no recommendation. ... A statesmanlike account of seventeen centuries
of mission wovk."— Literary World.

Mr. Mtcrrays List of New and Recent Works. 1 7

A First Introduction to the Study of
the Greek Testament.

COMPRISING A CONNECTED NARRATIVE OF OUR LORD'S LIFE,

FROM THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS, IN THE ORIGINAL GREEK.

WITH CONCISE GRAMMAR, NOTES, AND VOCABULARY

By THEOPHILUS D. HALL, M.A.

Crown ^vo. ■^s. 6d.

This volume is intended to aid those who desire to study the New Testament in the
original Greek Text. The student, without any previous knowledge of the language, and
with only a moderate amount of labour, may, by the assistance of this book, gain an insight
into the Gospel Narrative text which he could not otherwise acquire.

WORKS BY THE REV. CANON CHARLES GORE.

The Mission of the
Church.

FOUR LECTURES DELIVERED

IN THE CATHEDRAL OF

ST. ASAPH.

Crown 2>vo. 2s. dd.

The Incarnation of the
Son of God.

THE BAMPTON LECTURES
FOR 1891.

Seventh Thousand. Svo, ys. 6d.

-♦-♦-

Jenny Lind the Artist.

A NEW AND ABRIDGED EDITION OF THE MEMOIR OF

MADAME JENNY LIND-GOLDSCHMIDT.
1820 — 1851.

FROM MSS. AND DOCUMENTS COLLECTED BY
MR. GOLDSCHMIDT.

By H. SCOTT HOLLAND, and W. S. ROCKSTRO,

Canon of St. Paul's Cathedral ; Author of " The Life of Mendelssohn.

JViih Portraits, Crown 8vo. gs.

1 8 Mr. Murray's List of New and Recent Works.

Handbook of Ancient Roman Marbles.

CONSISTING OF

A HISTORY AND DESCRIPTION OF ALL ANCIENT COLUMNS
AND SURFACE MARBLES STILL EXISTING IN ROME,

WITH A LIST OF THE BUILDINGS IN WHICH THEY ARE FOUND.
By tlie Rev. H. W. PULLEN, M.A.

(Formerly Chaplain of H.M. Arctic Ship '■'Alert")

Author of " The Fight at Dame Europa's School," &c.

Fcap, 8vo. 2s.

" A perfect mine of information." — Glasgcnv Herald.

"We commend Mr. Pullen's work to the notice of all who have anything to do with that
beautiful substance — marble." — Carpenter and Builder.

-♦4-

The Psalter of 1539.

A LANDMARK OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.

jCOMPRISING THE TEXT, IN BLACK-LeTTER TyPE.

Edited, with Notes, by JOHN EABLE, M.A.,

Professor of Anglo-Saxon in the University of Oxford.

Zvo. 165.

"Alike in the introduction and in the notes, students of the Psalter, whether theological,
philological, literary, or devotional, will derive abundant guidance, instruction, and edification
from Mr. Earle's comments." — Tunes.

-♦V

Glimpses of Four Continents.

LETTERS WRITTEN DURING A TOUR IN AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND
AND NORTH AMERICA, IN 1893.

By the DUCHESS OF BUCKINGHAM AND CHANDOS.

With Portrails and Illustrations from the Author's Sketches, dr'f.
Crown S>vo. 91. net.

"There is not a dull page in the book, and the Duchess has made the most of her oppor-
tunities and has taken her fellow citizens and citizenesses into her confidence." — Westtninster
Gazette.

Mr. Murray's List of New and Recent Works. 19

NEW EDITIONS OF MURRAY'S HANDBOOKS.

Handbook — Rome.

Rearranged, brought thoroughly up to date, and in a great measure rewritten by

The Rev. H. W. Pullen.

The Classical Archceology by Professor RoDOLFO Lanciani.

The Sculpture Galleries described by A. S. Murray, LL.D., Keeper of the Greek and
Roman Antiquities at the British Museum.

The Picture Galleries revised by the Right Hon. Sir A. Henry Layard, G.C.B., D.C.L.

With Numerous Maps and Plans.

Post %vo. \os.

"The amount of information in the book maybe indicated by the fact that, though of
convenient size, being printed on thin paper, it is a volume of 596 pages, and contains
92 maps and plans. The maps are all beautifully engraved. ... A better or more
serviceable guide-book could not be devised." — Scotsman.

Handbook — India, Ceylon, and Burma,

Including Bengal, Bombay, and Madras (the Panjab, North-West Provinces,
Rajputana, the Central Provinces, Mysore, &c.), the Native States, Assam,

And in addition a Short Guide to Cashmere.

With 55 Maps and Plans of Tozvns and Buildings. Crown Svo. 20s.

" Far and away the best book of its kind." — Scotsman.

''No pains have been spared to render this excellent guide-book as comprehensive and
complete as possible." — Home and Colonial Mail.

" No visitor to India should start without a ' Murray.' " — Pall Mall Gazette.

Handbook — Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire,
and Huntingdonshire.

An Entirely New Work. With 10 Maps and Plans. Crown %vo. js. 6d.

" Wherever we have tested it we have found its information accurate, adequate and
well digested." — Times.

"An entirely new volume of the well-known and deservedly appreciated series. It is
fully worthy of its long line of useful companions. . . . The number of interesting places,
full of delightful memories in these three little counties, will fairly astonish not a few readers.
The maps are good enough for either pedestrians or bicyclists." — Daily Chronicle.

"This guide-book is admirably written, well arranged, and it abounds in welcome and,
in many cases, little known facts." — Speaker.

20 Mr. Ahir ray's List of New and Recent Works.

MURRAY'S

University Extension Manuals.

Edited by Professor KNIGHT, of St. Andrews University.

THE FOLLOWING WORKS ARE NOW READY:

The Study of Animal Life. By J, Arthur Thomson, Lecturer

on Zoology, School of Medicine, Edinburgh, Joint Author of the Evolution of Sex,
Author of Outlines of Zoology. With many Illustrations. Crown Svo. 55.

The Realm of Nature : A Manual of Physiography.

By Dr. Hugh Robert Mill, Librarian to the Royal Geographical Society. With
19 Coloured Maps and 68 Illustrations. (380 pp.) Crown Svo. 5^.

An Introduction to Modern Geology. By R. D. Roberts.

With Coloured Maps and Illustrations. Crown Svo. 55.

The Elements of Ethics. By John H. Muirhead, Balliol College,

Oxford, Lecturer on Moral Science, Royal Holloway College, Examiner in Philo-
sophy to the University of Glasgow. Crown Svo. 35.

Logic, Inductive and Deductive. By William Minto, late

Professor of Logic and Literature, University of Aberdeen. Crown Svo. 4^^. ()d.
The Fine Arts. By Prof. Baldwin Brown, University of Edin-
burgh. With Illustrations. Crown Svo. y. 6d,

The French Revolution. By C. E. Mallet, Balliol College,

Oxford. Crown Svo. 3^-. 6d.

The Rise of the British Dominion in India. By Sir Alfred

Lyall, K. C.B. With Coloured Maps. Crown Svo. 45. 6d.

English Colonization and Empire. By A. Caldecott, Fellow

of St. John's College, Cambridge. Coloured Maps and Plans. Cr. Svo. 3^. 6d.

The Use and Abuse of Money. By W. Cunningham, D.D.,

Fellow of Trin. Coll., Cambridge, Professor of Economic Science, King's College,
London. Crown Svo. 3^.

The Philosophy of the Beautiful. Parts I. and II. By Pro-
fessor Knight, University of St. Andrews. Crown Svo. 35. 6d. (each Part).

The Physiology of the Senses. By John McKendrick, Professor

of Physiology in the University of Glasgow ; and Dr. Snodgrass, Physiological
Laboratory, Glasgow. Crown Svo. 45. 6d.

Outlines of English Literature. By William Renton. With

Illustrative Diagrams. Crown Svo. 3^. 6d.
French Literature. By H. G. Keene, Wadham College, Oxford ;
Fellow of the University of Calcutta. Crown Svo. 3^-.

Greece in the Age of Pericles. By A. J. Grant, King's College,

Cambridge, and Staff Lecturer in History to the University of Cambridge. With
Illustrations. Crown Svo. 35. 6d.

Chapters in Modern Botany. By Patrick Geddes, Professor of

Botany, University College, Dundee. With Illustrations. Crown Svo. 3.r. dd.

The Jacobean Poets. By Edmund Gosse. Crown Svo. 3^. 6d.
The Enorlish Novel. By Professor Walter Raleigh, University
College, Liverpool. Crown Svo. 35. 6d.

History of Religion. By Allan Menzies, D.D., Professor of

Biblical Criticism, University of St. Andrews. Crown Svo. 5^.

Albemarle Street,

My, 1895.

Mr. MURRAY'S

LIST OF

FORTHCOMING WORKS.

=^7lv7j77iv^

NEW AND IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT.

THE

UNPUBLISHED WORKS OF EDWARD GIBBON.

INCLUDING SEVEN AUTOBIOGRAPHIES, HIS JOURNALS, COR-
RESPONDENCE, ETC., PRINTED VERBATIM FROM MSS.
IN THE POSSESSION OF THE EARL OF SHEFFIELD.

Edited, with a Preface, by the EARL OF SHEFFIELD.

?>vo.

These literary remains, a small portion of which was exhibited at the Gibbon Centenary
Commemoration in 1894, and aroused wide-spread interest and attention, comprise the
celebrated autobiographies which constitute one of the recognized curiosities of Uterary
history : Gibbon's Journals in 1762-1764, written mainly in French ; his correspondence with
his own family ; with the family of his intimate friend Lord Sheffield, and with other distin-
guished contemporaries ; various note-books, (S:c. , &c.

"The large literary remains," said Mr. Frederic Harrison, at the Centenary Meeting of
the historian, "since the final publication of Lord Sheffield's labour of love exactly eighty
years ago, have never received any critical review from any eye whatever. . . . This
profusion of intimate letters that care has preserved, forms one almost unbroken record
of a most affectionate nature, of a generous and grateful temper, of quiet and sane judgment ;
and in his attachment to Lord Sheffield and his family, one of the most constant and
beautiful types of friendship embalmed in our literature.

"The published life as we read it to-day does not follow any MS. of Gibbon at all. It is
made up of passages pieced together with singular skill, first from one, then from another of
the six MSS. The order is constandy inverted ; paragraphs, sentences, phrases, are omitted ;
whole pages disappear, and many characteristic points drop out altogether. The printed
Memoir is really a pot pourri, concocted out of the manuscripts with great skill, with signal
tact, but with the most daring freedom. . . . Entire episodes are suppressed. Passages
of Gibbonian humour or irony are omitted. Long and important paragraphs which are in
the text of the MS. drop into the notes of the print. Possibly a third of the manuscript is not
printed at all. Some of the most famous passages are varied, and unsuccessful attempts are
made to shield the author of the fifteenth chapter from the reputation of being unorthodox.

"His monumental work still stands alone, in the colossal range of its proportions and in the
artistic symmetry of its execution. It has its blemishes, its limitations, we venture to add, its
misconceptions : it is not always sound in philosophy, it is sometimes ungenerous and cynical.
But withal it is beyond question the greatest monument of historical research, united to
imaginative art, of any age in any language."

2 2 Mr. Murray s List of Forthcoming Works.

THE HEART OF A CONTINENT.

A NARRATIVE OF TRAVELS IN MANCHURIA— THE DESERT

OF GOBI— TURKESTAN— THE HIMALAYAS— THE

HINDU KUSH— THE PAMIRS, ETC.

From 1884 to 1894.
By Captain FRANK YOUNGHUSBAND, C.I.E.,

Indian Staff Corps, Gold Medallist, Roj'al Geographical Society.
With Maps, Illustrations, o^c. 8vo.

FOUR HUMOURISTS OF THE NINETEENTH

CENTURY.

I. — DICKENS : The Humourist as Democrat.
II.— THACKERAY: The Humourist as Philosopher.
III.— GEORGE ELIOT : The Humourist as Poet.
IV. — CARLYLE : The Humourist as Prophet.

LECTURES DELIVERED AT THE ROYAL INSTITUTION OF

GREAT BRITAIN.

/Revised and Ettlarged.
By WILLIAM SAMUEL LILLY.

LIGHTS AND SHADES OF INDIAN HILL LIFE

IN THE AFGHAxN AND HINDU HIGHLANDS.

A CONTRAST.
By F. St. J. GORE, B.A., Magdalen College, Oxford.

JVith iijnvards 0/ 100 Illustrations from photographs taken by the Author, and Maps.

The author visited the Kulu Valley in the Himalayas in circumstances which afforded him
exceptional advantages for studying the native life and customs. He was also permitted to
accompany the military expedition of the Indian Government which took over the Kuram
Valley on the Afghan frontier of the Punjab.

The contrast afforded by the peaceful Himalayan Mountaineers, and the warlike clans of
the Afghan border, is so striking an instance of the varied responsibilities which the British
Government has had to assume, even in one province of the vast continent of our Indian
I'-mpire, that it is hoped that this account of them, fully illustrated by photographs taken
with the special purpose of illustrating the narrative, will prove interesting to English readers

Mr. Mtirrays List of Forthcoming Works.

A NEW WORK BY THE DUKE OF ARGYLL.

LAW IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.

By the DUKE OF ARGYLL, K.G.

Author of "The Reign of Law," "The Unseen Foundations of Society," &c.

Crown 8vo.

In the preface to the 8th edition of the " Reign of Law," (1868) the Duke wrote : " As re-
gards the intention I had at one time entertained of adding a chapter on " Law in Christian
Theology," further reflection has only confirmed me in the feehng that this is a subject which
cannot be adequately dealt with in such a form."

The idea suggested in the foregoing paragraph will, after many years of thought, be dealt
with in the forthcoming volume. It will thus form the conclusion of the argument com-
menced with the " Unity in Nature," and farther pursued in "The Reign of Law."

REMINISCENCES; OR, THIRTY-FIVE YEARS

OF MY LIFE.

By Sir JOSEPH A. CROWE, K.C.M.G., C.B.,

Author of "The Early Flemish Painters," " Painting in North Italy," etc. etc.

Including the founding and early days of the Daily News. Experiences as War Corre
spondent : during the Campaign on the Danube in 1854 ; the Crimean War ;
Bombay during the Mutiny ; the Franco- Austrian War in 1859, &c. &c.

With Flans. 8vo.

THE CORRESPONDENCE OF
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, D.D.,

LATE DEAN OF WESTMINSTER.
Edited by ROWLAND E. PROTHERO,

Author of the " Life and Letters of Dean Stanley."
I T^ol. Zvo.

The great interest aroused by the publication of the Life of Dean Stanley, and the
frequent requests for more of his letters, have led to the preparation of this volume. It
comprises a selection from his unpublished letters, written throughout his whole life, to the
members of his family, the late Master of Balliol, Mrs. Arnold, Mrs. Drunmiond,
Dr. Vaughan, Sir George Grove, and many other personal friends. By gracious permission
of Her Majesty the Queen many of the Dean's letters to Her Majesty are included in the
volume, which will also contain selections from his poems, hymns, and occasional verses.

This work will therefore form the complement of the two volumes of the Biography.

24 Mr. Murray's List of Forthcoming Works,

THE LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF
THOMAS VALPY FRENCH.

SCHOLAR AND MISSIONARY. FIRST BISHOP OF LAHORE.

1825-1891.

By the Rev. HERBERT BIRKS, M.A.

Portrait, Illustrations, and Maps. 2 Vols. 8vo.

■VOL. I.— THE MISSIONARY SCHOLAR.
VOL. II.— THE MISSIONARY BISHOP.

DISSERTATIONS ON SUBJECTS CONNECTED
WITH THE INCARNATION.

By the Rev. CHARLES GORE,

Canon of Westminster.

Svo.

CONTENTS.

The Virgin Birth of Our Lord. — The Consciousness of Our Lord in
His Mortal Life. — Transubstantiation v. Nihilianism. etc., etc.

»♦♦♦»♦»♦»«>•♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦

A POCKET DICTIONARY OF THE

MODERN GREEK AND ENGLISH LANGUAGES

AS ACTUALLY WRITTEN AND SPOKEN.

Being a Copious Vocabulary of all Words and Expressions Current in
Ordinary Reading and in Everyday Talk, with Especial Illustration,
BY means of Distinctive Signs, of the Colloquial and Popular Greek
Language, for the Guidance of Students and Travellers through
Greece and the East.

By A. N. JANNARIS, Ph.D. (Germany.)

Author of the latest Aocient and Modern Greek Lexicon (the only one approved by the

Greek Government).

Crown %vo.

Mr. Murray's List of Forthcoming Works. 25

UNPREPARED TRANSLATION.

A MANUAL OF INSTRUCTION IN THE TRANSLATION OF
UNSEEN PASSAGES OF LATIN.

With Rules and a Series of Graduated Examples, Carefully Selected.

an entirely new and original work.

By Professor T. D. HALL,

Author of " The Students' English Grammar," etc., etc.
Crown %vo.

LYELL'S STUDENTS' ELEMENTS OF GEOLOGY.

A New Edition, thoroughly Revised and in great part

Rewritten by

Professor J. W. JUDD, C.B., F.R.S.,

Of the Royal School of Mines.
With Upwards of 600 Illustrations. Crown 8vo.

THE JOURNAL OF A SPY IN PARIS

FROM JANUARY TO JULY, 1794.
By RAOUL HESDIN.

J^cap. Svo.

EXTRAC7 FROM THE EDITOR'S PREFACE.

" The writer would appear to have been trained as a wood-engraver in France in his youth,
to have been at one time in North America, and possibly also in Germany ; to have been
thoroughly famihar with Paris under the ancien rdgime, to have been present at many of the
earlier scenes of the Revolution, especially in 1789 and 1790. He evidently returned to
Paris late in the year 1793, but whether from England or America seems doubtful. Allusions
in his journal indicate that he was in the pay of the English Government at this time. Any-
how, he obtained employment, apparently, as an engraver or director of engravings under the
Committee of Public Safety, which, since the suspension of the ' Constitution of 1793,' '^^ the
previous summer, exercised an absolutely despotic and practically irresponsible power in
France.

" Hesdin was of sufficient importance to be allowed to work in a room in the Tuileries, near
to that in which the Committee itself sat. He seems to have been intimate, in the practical
way in which we should expect to find a spy intimate, with several persons of consideration.
Fouche, if I am right in identifying the ' Nantais ' with that astute person, was evidently
known to him previously. Some one high in the confidence of Danton appears to have
received a large sum of money from him, and, on the fall of the Dantonist party, he considers
himself to be in some danger. He had, however, other channels of information besides

Fouche, and was associated with an Englishman or American whom he calls V , whom I

have been unable to identify, but who certainly seems to have been a spy also.

' ' When and how Hesdin left Paris does not appear ; he is always longing to get away.
Mr. Rtt, it is well known, left a great deal of license as to their movements to his secret
agents. The date of " Fructidor I'an II." on the cover may be a part of the blind ; but if not,
the journal was brought to conclusion between August i8th and September i6th."

26 Mr. Murray's List of Forthcoming Works.

A NEW, REVISED, AND CHEAPER EDITION.

ROMAN GOSSIP.

By Mrs. MINTO ELLIOT,

Author of "An Idle Woman in Sicily," etc.

Crown Svo.

CONTENTS.

rio NoNO ; Countess Spaur ; Cardinal Antonelli ; II Re Galantuomo;

Garibaldi; the Roman Buonapartes, "Madame MfeRE,"

Queen Hortense, Princess Pauline, &c.

"One of the most interesting books of gossip we have read for some time." — Daily
Chronicle.

" A volume which hardly contains a dull page." — IVeslminster Gazette.
"The whole book affords delightful reading." — Daily Telegraph.
"A fascinating picture of Roman society." — Daily News.

SOME POOR RELIEF QUESTIONS.

With the Arguments for and against the present Law, and the
various proposed Changes in it.

{On the plan of Mr. Sydney Btixton's Handbook of Political Questions.)

A MANUAL FOR ADMINISTRATORS AND WORKERS.

By Miss GERTRUDE LUBBOCK.

With a Preface by the Right Hon. Sir JOHN LUBBOCK, Bart., M.P.

Croivji Svo.

THE NEW FOREST.

By ROSE C. DE CRESPIGNY

and

HORACE G. HUTCHINSON,

Autliorof " Golf" in the Badminton Series.

The Forester, The Law ok the Forest. Gypsies. Folk-Lore. Local
Names, <S:c. The Barrows and Old Potteries. Domestic Creatures
and Some Others. Deer Hunting and Fox Hunting. The Beauties
of Flora. Charcoal-Burners and Queer Characters. Shooting.
Knotty Points. Deer-Poaching and Smuggling. Birds in the Forest.
Insect Life. Geological Formation.

IVzt/i Illustrations. Crown Svo.

Mr. Mur7'ays List of Forthcoming Works. 27

COLLEGE SERMONS.

For the most part Preached in the Chapel of Bai.liol College, Oxford,

To which are added

SOME SHORT ADDRESSES TO COMMUNICANTS.
By the late BENJAMIN JOWETT, M.A.,

Master of Balliol College.
Crcnoi 8z'o.

BISHOP HEBER.

POET & CHIEF MISSIONARY TO THE EAST, 17S3-1826.

With Letters and Verses not hitherto Published.

By Dr. GEORGE SMITH, C.I.E., F.R.G.S.,

Author of the " Life of William Carey," " Henry Martin," &c.
Wi//i Portrait, Maps, and Illustrations. Large Cvfftvn 8vo.
.♦♦♦♦-♦♦♦ ♦»•»»»»»»♦

NEW EDITIONS OF HANDBOOKS.

HANDBOOK-ASIA MINOR, TRANSCAUCASIA, PERSIA, &c.

An entirely New Work. Edited by Major-General Sir Charles Wilson, R.E.,
G. C.B. With Assistance from Col. Chehmside, R. E. , C. B. ; Mr. D. G. Hogarth ;
Prof. W. Ramsay; Col. Everett, C.M.G. ; Lieut.-Col. Harry Cooper;
Mr. Devey and others. With numerous Maps. Crown Svo.

IRELAND.

A Thoroughly Revised Edition, with New Set of Specially Prepared Maps on a
large scale.

DEVON.

EXETER, ILFRACOMBE, SIDMOUTH, PLYMOUTH, TORQUAY, &c.

GLOUCESTERSHIRE.

GLOUCESTER, CHELTENHAM, BRISTOL, TEWKESBURY, &c.

WARWICKSHIRE.

WARWICK, KENILWORTH, LEAMINGTON, &c.

28 Mr. Murray's List of Forthcoming Works.

UNIVERSITY EXTENSION MANUALS.

THE FOLLOWING ARE IN PROGRESS:—

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS PREDECESSORS IN THE
ENGLISH DRAMA.

By F. S. Boas, Balliol College, Oxford. [/« the Press.

LATIN LITERATURE.

By J. W. Mackail, Balliol College, Oxford. [Ready in Septeniber.

AN INTRODUCTION TO PHYSICAL SCIENCE.

By John Cox, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, Professor of Experimental
Physics, McGill College, Montreal.

THE ENGLISH POETS, FROM BLAKE TO TENNYSON.

By Rev. Stopford A. Brooke, Trinity College, Dublin.

THE HISTORY OF ASTRONOMY.

By Arthur Berry, Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, Secretary to the
Cambridge University Extension Syndicate.

A HISTORY OF EDUCATION.

By James Donaldson, Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of
St. Andrews.

»♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦«

THE ENGLISH FLOWER GARDEN.

AN ILLUSTRATED DICTIONARY OF ALL THE PLANTS USED, ANI
DIRECTIONS FOR THEIR CULTURE AND ARRANGEMENT.

By W. ROBINSON, F.L.S.

New and Revised Edition.
With Numerous Illustrations. Medium Svo. l^s. [Notv reaa_

BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO. LD., PRINTERS, WHITEPRIARS.

Los Angeles
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