Ex Libris 
 C. K. OGDEN 
 
 I 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 THE DOCTRINE 
 
 OF THE INCARNATION 
 
 OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST.
 
 THE DOCTRINE 
 
 OF THE INCARNATION 
 OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST, 
 
 IN ITS KELATION 
 
 TO MANKIND AND TO THE CHURCH. 
 
 BY EGBERT ISAAC WILBERFOBCE, A.M., 
 
 ARCHDEACON OF THE EAST RIDING. 
 
 " Ad imagiiiem Dei factus est homo, ilia imagine qua postea homo factus 
 est Deus." S. AUGUSTINUS. 
 
 " Corpus regenerati fit caro crucifixi." S. LEO. 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 LONDON: 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET; 
 
 JOHN AND CHARLES MOZLEY, PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 1849.
 
 JOHN AND CHARLES MOZLEY, PRINTERS, DERBY.
 
 .0 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 THE YEARNINGS OF HUMANITY AFTER A DIVINE 
 DELIVERER, 
 
 The Gospel opens with a Personal Deliverer. Pre- 
 vious anticipations of a Divine Helper. The 
 Divine Power associated by Greeks with Beauty 
 of Form ; by Orientals with Immensity. The 
 Incarnation the setting forth of an external Saviour. 
 
 The subject divided into two main parts First, the 
 Doctrine of the Incarnation in itself; Secondly, 
 the Benefits which mankind receive by it. The 
 necessity of believing in the existence of a Saviour 
 as an actual object, external to our minds - 1-7 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 CHRIST THE PATTERN MAN; THE FIRST FRUITS 
 AND BEGE^TNING OF THE NEW CREATION. 
 
 The inquiry begins with Christ's Human Nature. 
 Christ the Pattern Man. The principles of hu- 
 manity find their perfection in Him. Illustration 
 from the feelings of loyalty, and the endowments 
 of genius. 
 
 b
 
 VI CONTENTS. 
 
 Christ the Pattern of Humanity, not only through the 
 development of its natural powers, but also through 
 the introduction into it of what is supernatural. 
 The first, the fundamental principle of Rationalism ; 
 the second, of the Church the first built on Pan- 
 theism, the second on the Incarnation. Christ the 
 perfection of Manhood by Office, Nature, and Sym- 
 pathy 8-15 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE OFFICE OF CHRIST AS THE PATTERN MAN 
 MARKED OUT IN ANCIENT SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Scripture testified from the first that the restoration of 
 man's race would be effected through some principle 
 working within it. 
 
 Indefinite expectations of the Patriarchal age. This 
 inward principle identified with that external gift, 
 which was to be bestowed through the seed of Abra- 
 ham. Personal character of the heir of David's 
 throne. The Prophets reveal more fully the coming 
 exaltation of man's nature through its single repre- 
 sentative and head, the Son of Man - - 16-30 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 CHRIST THE PATTERN MAN BY NATURE. 
 
 Christ the Son of Man, as no other could be, through 
 the constitution of His nature. This built on two 
 considerations First, The nature of that Humanity 
 which was taken by Christ ; Secondly, His manner 
 of taking it. 
 
 I. Nature shows itself by continuity of type in animals 
 and in men. Its assertion not open to the charge of 
 Realism. It depends upon the law of organization, 
 by which every race of animated beings is bound 
 together.
 
 CONTEXTS. Vll 
 
 Limits of Traducianism and Creatianism. The whole 
 race of man one, through the community of nature. 
 Testimony to its unity in Scripture. This common 
 nature taken by Christ. His consequent relation to 
 all mankind. 
 
 II. When Christ took our nature He became its repre- 
 sentative, because He was the secotid Adam. Adam 
 the type of man's race First, because the father of 
 all ; Secondly, because the model on which all are 
 formed. The same two things found in Christ. 
 
 How Adam was the type, on which humanity formed. 
 Purity of those principles of body, soul, and spirit, 
 which have been perverted in his descendants. A 
 divine light needed for their guidance. This light 
 connected with that image of God, which supplied 
 the whole perfection of humanity. Three especial 
 effects of God's image. The principle of conscience 
 a remnant of it. This gift of a divine light perfectly 
 given back to humanity in Christ. 
 
 Christ consubstantial with our nature, but without 
 sin : inference respecting man's sinfulness. Christ 
 the new Adam, because all which was designed for 
 humanity in the First Man, is attained in the Se- 
 cond. Man's nature recapitulated in Christ. The 
 expectation of man surpassed. 
 
 The evil of idolatry, whether material or mental, is 
 
 that God's image is lost sight of - - 31-82 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 CHRIST, THE PATTERN MAN IN SYMPATHY. 
 
 Our Lord had a real human character such as suited 
 the Pattern Man both in body and mind. 
 
 His Body shown to sympathize with ours by the cir- 
 cumstances of His Life. That His Body was that 
 of the Pattern Man, shown in four things freedom 
 from sickness power over animals freedom from 
 death His being the source of life to others.
 
 Till CONTENTS. 
 
 The reality of His human mind shown in respect of 
 the will and of the understanding. His will as- 
 sailed like ours. But the only will since Adam's, 
 which ever possessed perfect freedom. Our Lord's 
 manhood not positively ignorant, but ignorant as 
 man, or so far as concerns those means of know- 
 ledge which men employ. The true source of 
 perfect knowledge intercourse with God was 
 first restored to men in Him. 
 
 The perfection of Christ's sympathy and the univer- 
 sality of His human mind, the consequences of His 
 being truly a man, and yet the Pattern Man - - 83-112 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 OUK LORD IS GOD THE WORD, VERY GOD OF 
 VERY GOD. 
 
 Wonderful nature of this truth. The only explana- 
 tion, however, of other mysteries. 
 
 Our Lord's Deity the key to all the Creeds. To trace 
 the manner in which they arose out of it, the best 
 method of appreciating it. Its full relations com- 
 municated to the Apostles by immediate Inspira- 
 tion to their successors, by the teaching of the 
 Spirit. The Early Church not only a witness to 
 facts, but possessed of authority, because guided by 
 the Holy Ghost. The Creeds stand on the united 
 force of historical testimony and divine teaching. 
 Need of the perpetual counterpoise of written Scrip- 
 ture. Advantage of profiting by the religious 
 growth of the Church's mind. The Church's whole 
 system of doctrine elicited by its defence of the 
 truth, that Christ was the God-man. His Man- 
 hood especially assailed in the Second Century, His 
 Godhead in the Third and Fourth. In the Fifth 
 the Personal Unity of His two natures.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Century Second. Ebionites deny Our Lord's God- 
 head, Gnostics His Manhood. Justin Martyr 
 maintains Our Lord's Godhead from prophecy 
 from the doctrine of the Logos, as the wisdom of 
 God. Christ's pre-existence His independence of 
 the Creation. 
 
 Deeper arguments of St. Irenaeus, in his defence of 
 Our Lord's manhood. The Logos, the representa- 
 tive of the moral attributes of God, as opposed to 
 the Gnostic notion, that God's essence consisted in 
 mere Infinity. Our Lord really a man, because the 
 New Head of man's race. Proofs of His true hu- 
 manity First, from His atoning death ; Secondly, 
 from His real union with men in the Holy Com- 
 munion. The elements employed in this feast 
 bread and wine ; its object to unite men to the 
 manhood of Christ. 
 
 Century Third. Objections brought against Our 
 Lord's Godhead, from its alleged inconsistency with 
 the Divine Unity. The arguments which had been 
 adduced for Our Lord's Divinity, from the relation 
 of the Logos to the Divine Attributes and from 
 His mission to create the world are found, if taken 
 by themselves, to be insufficient. The first, by al- 
 lowing the Word to be supposed a mere character 
 of Godhead, would leave an opening for Sabellian- 
 ism the second, by exhibiting Him as an inferior 
 minister, would leave an opening for Arianism. 
 
 Anticipation of the right answer in St. Irenseus. The 
 Son personally distinguished from the Father, in 
 Himself, and independently of the world. The Son 
 of one substance with the Father [Tertullian.] 
 Bound to the Father by eternal generation 
 [Origen]. 
 
 The Antinicene writers were not in error respecting 
 Our Lord's nature. Three Local Councils held in 
 the Third Century two which opposed opinions 
 having a Sabellian ; one those which had an Arian 
 tendency.
 
 X CONTENTS. 
 
 Century Fourth. Arian and Sabellian Heresies con- 
 demned in General Councils of Nice and Constan- 
 tinople. Teaching of St. Athanasius. 
 
 The Doctrine of the Trinity, the assertion of some 
 real mystery in the nature of God. Not a contra- 
 diction in terms, though beyond our comprehension. 
 One God, yet truly Three Persons. To explain 
 away the doctrine of the Three Divine Persons the 
 more prevalent danger at present. This error was 
 guarded against in early times, because the Church 
 started from the worship of Incarnate God, and 
 the existence of separate Personalities in the God- 
 head is a necessary pre-requisite to the Incarnation. 
 But unless the discriminating condition of such Per- 
 sonalities is laid in the nature of Godhead itself, 
 their reality will evaporate either in Arianism or 
 Sabellianism. 
 
 The Incarnation, therefore, involves the Eternal Son- 
 ship of the Word. That the Second Person in the 
 Blessed Trinity should have undertaken to become 
 Incarnate, the result of His original nature. The 
 Son the natural representative of the Father's moral 
 attributes, and His natural object of contemplation. 
 Hence the doctrine of the Divine Coinherence. Its 
 relation to the Christian notion of the moral nature 
 of God. 
 
 Thus the single truth of the Divine Incarnation leads 
 up to the conclusion that the Ever-Blessed Trinity 
 does not exist for the sake of the world, but in and 
 for itself, and therefore is the ultimate cause and 
 object of all existence - 113-180
 
 CONTENTS. XI 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE UNITY OF PERSON BETWEEN GOD THE WORD 
 AND THE SON OF MAN. 
 
 The Personal Oneness of Godhead and Manhood in 
 Christ, not less essential to His office than the reality 
 of each nature. The reality of Christ's two natures 
 assailed in the fifth century : His Godhead by the 
 Nestorians His Manhood by the Eutychians. 
 Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon. 
 
 Error of Nestorius to deny that the Son of Mary was 
 truly God. By denying the distinction between na- 
 ture and personality, he excluded the possibility of 
 an union between God and man. This union prac- 
 tically testified by the Holy Communion. 
 
 The Hypostatical union, the real presence in one per- 
 son of two distinct natures, Godhead and Manhood. 
 The Personality of Christ lies in the former. But 
 an intimate connexion obtains between His two 
 natures. From which connexion comes the en- 
 nobling of humanity. Effect which one nature 
 produced upon the other. 
 
 The exaltation which Christ bestowed upon man's 
 nature, as God, by His Incarnation, distinct from 
 that which, as man, He procured for it by His 
 Obedience. The exaltation of Manhood in the In- 
 carnation limited only by the conditions of the 
 Created nature. To omit this limitation, as done 
 by Eutyches, entails the very same result, which 
 was arrived at by Nestorius the denial of a true 
 union between God and man. For He could not be 
 the representative of man, if Manhood was swal- 
 lowed up in Godhead.
 
 Xll CONTENTS. 
 
 The Descent of Our Lord's human soul into Hell, sets 
 forth the permanence of His humanity. Opinion of 
 Monothelites really involves the evils of the system 
 of Eutyches. Remarkable durability of these 
 heresies. Honour conferred on humanity by the 
 Incarnation - 181-210 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 OUR LOED'S MEDIATION THE CONSEQUENCE 
 OF HIS INCARNATION. 
 
 Our Lord's Mediation is not a work which is arbitra- 
 rily undertaken, but results from His being the real 
 medium through whom Godhead has been pleased 
 to communicate with Manhood. Our Lord's nature 
 made the basis of the Creeds, because His offices are 
 dependent upon it. By virtue of His Mediation He 
 is the sole channel of intercourse between God and 
 Man. And must so continue during His mediatorial 
 kingdom - - 211-218 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 OUR LORD'S ACTS OF MEDIATION PREVIOUSLY 
 TO HIS ASCENSION; OR HIS TEACHING, HIS 
 EXAMPLE, AND HIS SACRIFICE. 
 
 Our Lord's Mediation may be viewed in reference 
 either to God, or to man. Our Lord's teaching and 
 example renders men conscious of truths which 
 their own hearts witness. 
 
 The characteristic of Our Lord's acts towards God was 
 Obedience. The crowning act of obedience, His 
 Death. This the true ransom for man, of which all 
 sacrifices were typical. Burnt -offerings, Sin-offer- 
 ings, and Peace-offerings, have their completion in 
 Him. His work of redemption a real work, making 
 a difference in the relations between God and Man.
 
 CONTENTS. Xlll 
 
 Both the Divine and Human Nature in Christ con- 
 tribute to the Avork of redemption. The Divine 
 nature renders Our Lord a fitting Priest, and a 
 sufficient victim. His Human nature gives man- 
 kind a participation in His work. 
 
 Without venturing to pronounce a priori on the neces- 
 sity of Our Lord's sacrifice, we find in it a revealed 
 example of God's justice. The justice of Our Lord's 
 answering for men, as being the Head of man's race, 
 with whom the whole race is actually connected. 
 St. Anselm's reason why fallen spirits not salvable 219-243 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 OF OUK LORD'S ACTS OF MEDIATION, SUBSE- 
 QUENTLY TO HIS ASCENSION, AND FIRST OF 
 HIS INTERCESSION. 
 
 Christ our perpetual Advocate in Heaven. How His 
 Godhead and His Manhood conjoin in this service. 
 Difficulty of realizing it as a present work. Yet 
 such belief results from accepting Christ's Incarna- 
 tion as a reality. Infidelity on this subject, owing 
 in part to a covert Socinianism or Sabellianism. 
 
 Christ's Intercession in heaven, exhibited figuratively 
 in the Book of Revelations argumentatively in the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews. The consequent oneness of 
 that service which is offered by the whole Church 
 on earth. To pray for the sake of Christ is to 
 trust to that Intercession which He makes as the 
 God-man - - 244-263 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 OUR LORD'S SPIRITUAL PRESENCE AS MEDIATOR 
 WITH MEN. 
 
 All Christ's acts towards man since His Ascension, are 
 summed up in His Presence as the God-man : i. e. 
 in such presence as implies the action of His 
 human, as well as of His Divine nature.
 
 XIV CONTENTS. 
 
 I. Christ's Presence with His people implies the Pre- 
 sence of His Humanity, because that which de- 
 parted at His Ascension was thus given back ; and 
 because it is a presence in some places, and under 
 certain conditions, whereas Godhead, taken by it- 
 self, is everywhere present. 
 
 Objections drawn, first, from the coming of the Holy 
 Ghost ; secondly, from God's peculiar presence un- 
 der the ancient Covenant. 
 
 Answer to the first objection postponed; answer to the 
 second that all those media of intercourse, which 
 God was previously pleased to adopt, are superseded 
 by the real Mediation of the God-man. The effi- 
 cacy of prayer depends upon His Presence as man, 
 because upon His Mediation. 
 
 II. Christ's Presence as man not carnal, or material, but 
 spiritual. Material substances are present in place 
 and by contact. Spiritual substances not subject to 
 these laws. Our Lord's material body in heaven. 
 Its presence upon earth through spiritual power. 
 
 Spiritual not less real than material presence. Spi- 
 ritual not the same thing as figurative. Our Lord's 
 spiritual presence does not depend upon the concep- 
 tions of men, but implies a real power, resulting from 
 the influence of His Godhead. 
 
 III. The Presence of Christ shown to be the Presence 
 of His Manhood, because the office of the Holy 
 Ghost is to unite men to it. The coming of the 
 Holy Ghost is the undertaking this office. There- 
 fore, the Holy Ghost said to be sent by the Incar- 
 nate Son. 
 
 By this means does the co-operation of the Holy Ghost 
 in the Mediatorial office of the Son, consist with 
 their Personal distinctness. 
 
 IV. The benefits of that union with Christ's manhood, 
 which it is the office of the Holy Ghost to effect, 
 must be real, and not technical or artificial.
 
 CONTEXTS. XV 
 
 Man's salvation dependent on those graces, which had 
 their fountain and well-head in the Head and Pat- 
 tern of our race, the Man Christ Jesus. The man- 
 ner in which they are transmitted from Him to others 
 inscrutable, but parallel to the transmission of na- 
 tural powers. The last Adam a quickening spirit. 
 His Manhood the vine in which we are branches. 
 
 Adam the perfection of nature ; Christ, according to 
 His Manhood, the perfection of grace, in whom 
 Manhood was perfected and purified. This renders 
 Him the continual Mediator between God and Man, 
 through whom the gifts bestowed by the one flow 
 into the other. 
 
 The denial of this function of Christ's Manhood is 
 intimately connected either with the Arian or the 
 Sabellian heresy. Evils of either alternative - 264-309 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 CHRIST IS PRESENT WITH MEN IN HIS CHURCH 
 OR BODY MYSTICAL. 
 
 Objective nature of this inquiry. Intimate union 
 between Christ and His Church. As shown by 
 Scriptural expressions respecting His Body. A 
 real relation between His Body Natural and His 
 Body Mystical. The Church's Unity the result of 
 this relation. 
 
 The assertion of the Church's Unity in Scripture and 
 the Creed, shows it not to be an accidental circum- 
 stance, but a fundamental principle the result of 
 organization, not of enactment. Its rule and origin 
 is the harmony of Persons in the Blessed Trinity. 
 The unity which exists above is extended to man- 
 kind in Church-union, through the Mediation of 
 Christ.
 
 XVI CONTENTS. 
 
 This system no abridgment of man's liberty, because 
 it does not preclude the actings of God on individual 
 minds. But those who understand the nature of 
 Christ's Mediation as the God-man, cannot safely 
 overlook it. 
 
 Result of addressing God as the Ultimate Spirit 
 of the Universe, independently of Sacramental sys- 
 tem, as done by the Quakers. Since the channel of 
 Mediation is opened to us through the Manhood of 
 Christ, to leave His Manhood out of account in our 
 approach to God, even though we used His name, 
 would be to pass over His Mediation. Evil of al- 
 lowing internal emotions, or anything by which we 
 draw near to Christ, to supersede those external 
 ordinances, by which Christ draws near to us. 
 Testimony of Hooker and Jackson. 
 
 The history of Fox, the founder of the Quakers, shows 
 the manner in which the notion of an immediate in- 
 tercourse with God, through the self-originating ac- 
 tion of the mind, leads to a forgetfulness of that Me- 
 diation of Christ, which He discharges as the God- 
 man. Coincidence between his principle and the Sa- 
 bellian theory, which destroys the permanence of the 
 union between the Son of God and the Son of Man. 
 
 Other examples of the connexion between the full 
 recognition of Our Lord's nature and the doctrines 
 of grace. Schleiermacher denies the existence of 
 any real relation between the Mystical Body of 
 Christ, and His Body Natural. His opinion traced 
 to his denial of that diversity of Persons in the Tri- 
 nity, which is a necessary pre-requisite to a perma- 
 nent union between Godhead and Manhood in Christ. 
 Archbishop Whately's tendency to represent the 
 Church as a technical system of restrictions, rather 
 than as the effect of Christ's Presence by Grace. 
 
 To recognise Christ's Mediation through His Man's 
 nature, as the Fountain of Grace, is the rightsecurity 
 against the error of putting the Church in the place 
 of Christ : it supplies the principle of Church- 
 Communion and of Church-Obedience - - 310-351
 
 CONTEXTS. xvii 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 OF COMMON WORSHIP AS A MEANS OF UNION 
 WITH THE MYSTICAL BODY OF CHIUST. 
 
 I. Common Worship the natural voice and action of 
 the Christian Community. 
 
 II. Its intimate connexion with the very essence of 
 Christianity, shown by its maintenance in early 
 times, even when forbidden by law, and not directly 
 commanded in Scripture. 
 
 III. The advantage possessed by Israelites was that 
 opportunity of access to God, which was maintained 
 by their Public Ritual. In which even those who 
 were unavoidably absent from the Temple had an 
 interest. 
 
 IV. The like advantage secured for Christians through 
 that Communion in Chui'ch Offices, whereby they 
 participate in the Mediation of Christ. This privi- 
 lege men cannot enjoy except as members together 
 in the Body of Christ. Christ's Intercession is 
 especially on behalf of His Body Mystical. 
 
 Since Christ's Intercession is a perpetual work, the 
 mean whereby it is perpetually participated is 
 essential. But the Sacrifice of the Holy Commu- 
 nion, which is the act whereby it is especially par- 
 ticipated, is a federal act, and therefore implies 
 participation in Common Worship. 
 
 In what sense the Holy Communion is truly the 
 Christian Sacrifice. This character belongs to it, in 
 consequence of its connexion with the offering of 
 Christ's Body upon the Cross once for all. This 
 Body present materially in heaven. Christ's sacri- 
 ficial acts above are participated in by Christians 
 through the sacrificial acts of His ministers.
 
 XV111 CONTENTS. 
 
 Objection 1st That this is not to ascribe sufficient 
 reality to the Sacrifice of the Eucharist. But it is 
 to make it as truly a sacrifice as the Passover. The 
 reality of its sacrificial character depends upon the 
 reality of those functions, which Christ continues to 
 discharge as the God-man. 
 
 Objection 2nd That too much reality is hereby as- 
 cribed to the Sacrifice of the Eucharist. For it is 
 alleged that the existence of a Sacerdotal system in 
 the Church is First, inconsistent with the privileges 
 of Christians and Secondly, incompatible with the 
 prerogative of Christ. 
 
 But First, the privileges of Christians arise from that 
 union with the Manhood of Christ, which is main- 
 tained by the Sacerdotal system Secondly, to sup- 
 pose that a Sacerdotal system is incompatible with 
 the prerogative of Christ, would be to assign too 
 little to Christ, and too much to men. For it would 
 be to suppose that Christ's Mediation is not real, 
 which it is and that men's Mediation was real, 
 which it was not. The Jewish sacrifices and 
 priesthood depended for their whole efficacy on 
 Christ and the reality of the Christian Sacrifice 
 arises from the perpetuity of Christ's Intercession 
 for that Mystical Body, to which men are associated 
 in Common "Worship. 
 
 V. Scripture witnesses to the existence of a Christian 
 Ministry, by the agency whereof men are joined to 
 the humanity of Christ. The nature of this Minis- 
 try gathered from the practice of the Apostles. 
 Apostolical Succession the safest course. 
 
 Abandonment of the Apostolical Succession has usually 
 been followed by a disbelief in the reality of those 
 means, whereby union with Christ as the God-man 
 is maintained. The absence of a public Liturgy has 
 contributed to the same result. Consequent loss of 
 the real dignity of Christian privileges, as dependent 
 on communion with Christ, the Incarnate Head - 352-403
 
 CONTENTS. XIX 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 OF SACRAMENTS, AS MEANS OF UNION WITH THE 
 MANHOOD OF CHRIST. 
 
 Sacraments " the Extension of the Incarnation" 
 Their object is First, to be "badges or tokens of 
 Christian men's profession ;" Secondly, to be chan- 
 nels of Grace. They have the advantage of being 
 a comfort in doubt, without ministering to pride. 
 
 The prejudice against Sacraments as an arbitrary ap- 
 pointment vanishes, if we remember that their 
 essence is to be the means by which the members 
 of Christ are united to their Head. While other 
 means of grace result from union with Christ, they 
 effect it. For such a work their compound nature 
 gives them a singular congruity. Man's whole being 
 requires to be united to Christ. 
 
 Graces flow into humanity, because first concentrated 
 in the Person of Christ. A just appreciation of 
 what was present in Him, connected with a true 
 belief of what is communicated to us. The mode 
 of communication spiritual and not material. 
 
 The benefit of Sacraments does not result from the 
 inherent efficacy of the elements themselves, eitlu-r 
 in Baptism, or the Lord's Supper for, First, the 
 elements would not gain more Sacramental virtue 
 through any material transmutation ; and, Secondly, 
 such an opinion would withdraw men from that refe- 
 rence to the Person of Christ, which is the essence 
 of the Sacrament. Testimony of St. Jerome and 
 St. Augustin. We do not understand the natural, 
 much less the supernatural effect of the elements. 
 
 The benefit of Sacraments results from the spiritual in- 
 fluence of Christ, with whom they bring us into con- 
 nexion. Two senses in which the word spiritual is 
 used one subjective and metaphorical, the other 
 obj ective and real. The latter sense is intended in this
 
 XX CONTEXTS. 
 
 case, because Christ, with whom we are brought into 
 connexion by immaterial influence, is an actual Being 
 external to us. 
 
 Baptism stated in Scripture to effect our first union 
 with Christ. Objections drawn first, from Cal- 
 vinistic Doctrine of Decrees ; secondly, from the 
 want of visible results. But, 
 
 First, the statement of Scripture that Baptism is the 
 means of original union -with Christ, is not more in- 
 consistent with Calvinistic decrees, than its general 
 invitations to repentance. 
 
 Secondly, the common want of effect may arise from 
 want of faith, and is not more than was exhibited in 
 Adam. 
 
 The statements of the Liturgy respecting Baptism are 
 not merely hypothetical because an assertion, not a 
 hope ; and because they speak of its present effect, 
 not its future consequences. Their rejection in- 
 volves the Pelagian hypothesis, that the first move- 
 ment towards men's salvation comes from themselves. 
 Christian education proceeds on the supposition that 
 grace has already been given. 
 
 The Lord's Supper a real participation of Christ. 
 The sixth chapter of St. John has a prophetic 
 relation to it. It was not ministered until the Holy 
 Ghost had been pleased to become the means of 
 union between Christ's manhood and His mystical 
 members. 
 
 To deny the reality of Sacraments, is to supersede the 
 
 action of Christ as Mediator between God and man 404-455 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 CHRIST AS MEDIATOR THE SOURCE OF HOLINESS 
 AND KNOWLEDGE TO MANKIND. 
 
 General effects of the system of Mediation upon the 
 position of mankind. The gifts of holiness and 
 knowledge bestowed through this channel.
 
 CONTENTS. XXI 
 
 First Civil institutions have been supposed capable 
 of securing them. The principles of Rationalism 
 suppose man united to God through the gifts be- 
 stowed on him at Creation, and by the mere exercise 
 of thought. Failure of the attempt, for want of some 
 power which may recover what in Adam was lost. 
 
 Secondly Religious institutions looked to with the 
 same view. But these, so far as they are true, refer 
 to Him who by His nature is the only real Mediator. 
 All gifts, therefore, of Holiness and Truth come 
 through Him. 
 
 I. Holiness has its source in God. Bestowed through 
 the Mediator on man. So far as it is perfect, it is 
 imparted; but the infused holiness, which is ne- 
 cessary to salvation, has likewise its life from the 
 fountain from which it is derived. 
 
 II. Truth has its source in God. Like Holiness, it 
 is bestowed upon fallen man through the Mediator, 
 and is both imparted, and infused or engrafted. 
 
 The imparted truth depends on that Personal Word, 
 who has become Incarnate to instruct men. His 
 Gospel ihejinal system of truth. The Holy Scrip- 
 tures its written expression. St. Optatus's testimony. 
 
 The engrafted truth is that power of spiritual dis- 
 cernment, which the Incarnate Word communicates 
 to His Mystical Body. That the external record of 
 imparted truth, i. e., Holy Scripture, cannot be un- 
 derstood without that engrafted truth or internal 
 principle of spiritual illumination, which God the 
 Son bestows upon His Mystic Body, is shown 
 First, by the common use of the term " "Word" in 
 both cases ; Secondly, by consideration of the re- 
 vealed office of the Mediatorial Word, whose record 
 Holy Scripture is, in guiding the Body of Christ 
 into all truth by His Spirit. So that the Word en- 
 grafted, which dwells in the Body Mystical, is es- 
 sential to the understanding of that Word imparted, 
 which is communicated through the Scriptures. 
 
 A
 
 XX11 CONTEXTS. 
 
 Objection 1st That since the Word conveys its im- 
 parted gifts through written documents, to assert 
 the engrafted Word to be necessary to its under- 
 standing, interferes with the prerogative of reason. 
 But, 
 
 First To admit reason to be, in itself, exclusively of 
 God's engrafted wisdom, a competent judge of all 
 truth, is inconsistent with belief in any objective 
 system of revelation. That some reference must be 
 made to the principle of reason is the necessary re- 
 sult of human responsibility. [Duty of Private 
 Judgment.] But the reasoning faculty, which 
 claims to be independent of God's engrafted wis- 
 dom, must be such a principle, as refuses to ac- 
 knowledge any authority except its own. \Itiyht 
 of Private Judgment.] It rests its conclusions, 
 therefore, either on the senses of which it makes 
 use [Sensualism of Locke] ; or on the senses, to- 
 gether with the inward constitution of the mind. 
 [Intellectualism of Kant.] In either case, it can- 
 not rise to that which is higher than itself, i. i\ to 
 God's revelation. 
 
 Secondly The limits, under which reason may be 
 safely exercised, are found by considering that Di- 
 vine things cannot enter the mind except through 
 some faculty, which supplies means of communing 
 with external truth. Such a faculty is Faith. 
 Faith is an original source of knowledge, and co- 
 ordinate with reason it limits the authority of 
 reason, while it increases its sphere of knowledge. 
 
 Faith depends on the laws of that common nature of 
 man, which testifies to its authority. How this na- 
 ture was ascertained by Heathen Moralists. .V</- 
 tural types of excellence exhibited only what man 
 possessed by Creation, which ends in Rationalism. 
 Christian Faith rests on the higher estate to which 
 nature is elevated, because participated by that Di- 
 vine type of humanity, the Second Adam. Christian 
 Faith therefore depends on the laws of that renewed 
 nature, which, through Mediation, has been bestowed
 
 CONTEXTS. XX111 
 
 upon the Mystical Body of Christ. From union 
 with this Mystical Body of the Church, are derived 
 those fundamental principles, which form the basis of 
 Christian reasoning respecting questions of religion. 
 
 To assert, therefore, that the TVord engrafted is need- 
 ful to the comprehension of the Word imparted, or 
 that truth is attained through the teaching of that 
 Spirit which dwells in the Body of Christ, is not to 
 interfere with the due province of reason, but to 
 enable reason to attain its full perfection by the aid 
 of Christian Faith. 
 
 Respect for the engrafted Word has always been 
 found to keep pace with reverence for the Word 
 imparted. The Inspiration of Scripture and the 
 Church's Authority have stood or fallen together. 
 Common theories of Inspiration unsatisfactory. 
 Those, who would draw their system of truth by 
 mere logical deduction from the text of Scripture, 
 require to discover one which is more satisfactory. 
 None has been put forward by the Church, because 
 her system of interpretation is not built on man's 
 logic, though not contrary to it, but on the gift of 
 the engrafted Word. 
 
 Objection 2nd That to suppose the engrafted Word, 
 dwelling in the Church, to be essential to the under- 
 standing of the Scripture or Word imparted, is in- 
 consistent with the claims of individual illumination. 
 
 Preliminary admission that the excepted cases, in 
 which God bestows an especial gift of guidance, will 
 be numerous. But this does not preclude the ex- 
 istence of a rule. General effect produced by the 
 Church's testimony in maintaining the standard of 
 opinion. For, 
 
 First To allow private illumination to be a sufficient 
 judge of the Word imparted, without reference to 
 that Word engrafted which dwells in the body of 
 the Church, is incompatible with the authority of 
 Scripture Proof of this in the case of Semler and 
 of Fox For it depends on the notion of an imme- 
 diate intercourse between God and man, which may
 
 XXIV CONTEXTS. 
 
 dispense as well with the Word imparted as with the 
 Word engrafted. 
 
 Secondly The due guard to private illumination is its 
 subordination to the system of Mediation, which sup- 
 poses that gifts are bestowed through the dwelling of 
 the Word engrafted in the Body of Christ. 
 
 To admit Church authority, therefore, is to allow that 
 truth is not derived from man's natural intercourse 
 with his Maker, but through the channel of the one 
 Mediator. Its security His promise of perpetual 
 presence with His Body Mystical. The applica- 
 bility of the rule impaired but not destroyed by 
 the Church's divisions. Unity as essential to the 
 Church's perfection as holiness - - 456-530 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 That the Doctrine of Our Lord's Humanity is not 
 duly appreciated, appears, 
 
 First From the practical forgetfulness of the doctrine 
 of future judgment, which will be exercised by 
 Christ with the reality which is suggested to us 
 by His Man's Nature. 
 
 Secondly From the neglect of those seasons of the 
 Christian year, by which the acts of Christ as Me- 
 diator are commemorated ; as those of the Creator 
 were by the Jewish Festivals. The Lord's Day a 
 Christian and not a Jewish Sabbath. 
 
 Thirdly From the infrequency of Sacraments and 
 Public Worship. 
 
 Need of some principle of union amidst the increasing 
 
 turmoil of the age - - 531-542
 
 THE; DOCTRINE 
 
 OF THE INCARNATION 
 OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 THE YEARNINGS OF HUMANITY AFTER A DIVINE 
 DELIVERER. 
 
 " The Book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the 
 Son of David" Thus does the later volume of 
 Revelation usher in the advent of Him on whom 
 its mysteries and blessings are dependent. The 
 Gospel, like the Church's year, begins with the 
 coming of the Son of God in the flesh. And so is 
 it with the first placed of the Epistles. It begins 
 by declaring that the Gospel of God concerns "His 
 Son Jesus Christ Our Lord, which was made of the 
 seed of David according to the flesh, and declared 
 to be the Son of God with power." Thus personal 
 is the dispensation of the Gospel. It rests not, like 
 the theories of Rationalistic philosophy, on the self- 
 relying development of man's inherent powers, but
 
 I YEARNINGS AFTER 
 
 on the advent of an external Saviour. And herein 
 it fulfilled the darling anticipations of man's heart, 
 which for four thousand years had been yearning 
 after the expected birth of some deliverer of some 
 one who might redress the miseries which afflicted 
 every station, age, and country, and give reality to 
 that golden dream, which lived in the consecrated 
 traditions of the past, and the inspired imaginations 
 of the future. 
 
 Now this service, as men's natural conscience 
 testified, could be effected only by some one who 
 was above themselves : for what was witnessed by 
 the traditions of primitive antiquity, had been con- 
 firmed by the experience of forty centuries. And 
 hence arose the two great systems of religion, by 
 which the East and West were distinguished from 
 each other. The intellectual yet sensitive Greek, 
 surrounded by all the forms of natural beauty, ex- 
 alted the deified inhabitants of his Olympus into 
 the courts of heaven, and looked to the advocacy 
 of these favoured representatives of humanity. 
 
 Ille deum vitam accipiet, divisque videbit 
 Permixtas heroas, et ipse videbitur illis. 
 
 Hence the Anthropomorphism of the western 
 world. If men had become gods, there was hope 
 that the inferior might, in some way, be benefited 
 by the superior nature. And the same feeling, 
 though acting in an opposite direction, possessed 
 the more thoughtful sages of Asia. For the ori-
 
 A DIVINE DELIVERER. 3 
 
 ginal charter of our race, which could not be 
 altogether effaced from men's minds, was moulded 
 according to the situation and habits of nations. 
 In the boundless plains of the East, where man 
 seemed nothing in face of the immensity of nature 
 there was still the same longing for the patronage 
 of some higher being, which, by condescending to 
 the weakness of our race, might work its welfare. 
 Such help men hoped to find in those mighty prin- 
 ciples which lay hid in the powers of organized 
 nature. Hence the Avaters of Vishnoo, and the 
 worship of every varied form, under which were 
 personified the principles of the physical creation. 
 The same thing may be seen in the purer worship 
 of ancient Persia. " The kingdoms of Ormusd and 
 Ahriman are in continual contest with one another ; 
 but Ahriman will hereafter be conquered ; the reign 
 of darkness will be altogether at an end; the rule 
 of Ormusd will be universally extended; and an 
 all-embracing kingdom of light will alone remain." 1 
 All these conceptions imply the conviction that 
 man's evils could not be redressed, unless some 
 power from above should stoop to meet him, and 
 they testify to the same need which was felt by 
 the less abstracted Greek, for union with the Most 
 High. 
 
 This deep-rooted feeling, which had maintained 
 its place in the tw r o grand branches of the family of 
 Japhet, as their borders had been enlarged through 
 1 Zendavesta, quoted in Heeren's Ideen, i. 446.
 
 4 YEARNINGS AFTER 
 
 the East and West, was to be satisfied only when 
 they took up their dwelling in the tents of Shem, 
 and paid fealty to the God of Abraham. Hitherto 
 " the earnest expectation of the creature," had 
 been waiting " for the manifestation of the sons 
 of God." But " when the fulness of time was 
 come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, 
 made under the law, that we might receive the 
 adoption of sons." Through this gift was that 
 end attained after which humanity had been yearn- 
 ing. In Him at once it came to pass, that " truth 
 shall flourish out of the earth, and righteousness 
 hath looked down from heaven." For thus did a 
 higher Being enter into relations with mankind, and 
 set Himself forth as their deliverer. 
 
 Thus does Our Lord's coming in the flesh, lie at 
 the very beginning of the Gospel. It is stated in 
 the first pages of Revelation it answers to the first 
 wants of men. To this truth, then, it is proposed 
 to draw attention in the following pages. The 
 Incarnation will be set forth as the great objec- 
 tive fact of Christianity. The subject divides itself 
 naturally into two parts : first, the truth itself; and 
 secondly, the benefits which mankind receive by it. 
 Such an inquiry, unless the writer is mistaken, will 
 suit the wants of the present day. Religion being 
 a divine reality, implies the existence of certain 
 outward facts, external to ourselves, which have a 
 being independent of our thoughts, and are the ob- 
 2 Gal. iv. 4.
 
 A DIVINE DELIVERER. 5 
 
 jects of our consideration. Neither can it flourish, 
 unless the subjective action of our thoughts be 
 maintained by the presence of such objective real- 
 ities. For example, we are justified by faith in 
 Christ. Xow, as faith is a process in our own 
 minds, to discriminate between a true or living 
 faith, and a dead or feigned one, is to inquire into 
 the subjective part of the doctrine of justification 
 into the part, that is, which belongs to us, who are 
 the subject matter of its operation. But, then, our 
 faith must have an object to rest upon the obla- 
 tion of Christ upon the cross once for all; and 
 unless this event had truly happened, unless this 
 great deed, external to ourselves, had an actual 
 place in the world of realities, our inward feelings 
 would be only a delusive dream. 3 
 
 When the minds of men are roused from any 
 protracted apathy, their first inquiries will, of 
 course, be of a subjective character, because they 
 will begin by taking a survey of their own state, 
 before they pass into the world around. And this 
 
 3 " Faith receives the seeds of grace from the Spirit, and thus 
 brings forth the germ of a Christian life, rich in the fruit of good 
 works ; but the notion that faith itself, as a mere human faculty, 
 is the creative principle of all good, is so fascinating, from its 
 tendency to magnify man's heart and mind, that we need to 
 keep watch against every approach to it." 
 
 And again, " Such errors have often prevailed, and have pre- 
 pared the way, ultimately, for the denial of all substantial reality 
 in the objects of faith, converting religion according to one 
 theory, into a product of human feeling according to another, 
 into a product of human reason." Hare's Miss, of the Com- 
 forter, vol. ii. p. 453, note H.
 
 b YEARNINGS AFTER 
 
 accounts for the subjective tone which marked the 
 great reaction of the sixteenth century, as well as 
 for the predominance of the same temper in the last 
 generation. In the last age, the first object required 
 was to provoke men to a seriousness w r hich was too 
 often wanting, and thus to call them to an exami- 
 nation of their own hearts. But it is time that the 
 subjective revival of the last age, should assume 
 also an objective character. If this be neglected, it 
 will gradually die out, like so many other religious 
 revivals; and the real earnestness which dictated 
 its growth, will evaporate in a system of empty 
 phrases and party watchwords. And the sure con- 
 sequence, if men fancy themselves deluded by a 
 phraseology, which has no counterpart in the ex- 
 ternal world, will be the growth of open or covert 
 infidelity. Such has been the result arrived at by 
 a popular writer, who tells us, " that all genuine 
 faith is other circumstances being the same of 
 about equal value. The value is in the act of faith, 
 more than in the object" And though admitting 
 that "it is of very high importance that the ob- 
 jects of faith should be the loftiest and the purest 
 that in any particular age can be attained," the au- 
 thoress cited appears to consider all religions upon 
 a par as regards their abstract truth, and observes, 
 that " men afflict themselves needlessly about one 
 another's safety, as regards points of spiritual be- 
 lief.' H This were doubtless true, if man's life re- 
 4 "Eastern Life," by Harriet Martineau, vol. iii. p, 289-91.
 
 A DIVINE DELIVERER. 7 
 
 sembled a mere soliloquy, in which the purpose was 
 to give vent only to the feelings of his own mind. 
 But if we be truly surrounded by a world of unseen 
 beings, if we have actually " come unto Mount 
 Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the hea- 
 venly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company 
 of angels, to the general assembly and church of 
 the first-born, which are written in heaven, and to 
 God, the JUDGE OF ALL, and to the spirits of just 
 men made perfect, and to Jesus the MEDIATOR of 
 the new covenant," then, surely, it cannot be imma- 
 terial whether we rightly apprehend those mighty 
 realities which press upon us so nearly, and whether 
 our acts and language are fitted for that hallowed 
 intercourse to w r hich we have been admitted. Other- 
 wise, w r e are intruding, like unconscious dreamers, 
 into the sacred presence of the Great King. Hence 
 the desire of the present writer, as being bound by 
 education and hereditary attachment to those evan- 
 gelical principles in which he was nurtured, to call 
 attention to the external truths, on which the doc- 
 trines of grace are dependent. For it is no system 
 of idle words which is made known by the holy 
 Apostles, " concerning Jesus Christ Our Lord, 
 which was made of the seed of David according 
 to the flesh, and declared to be the Son of God 
 with power."
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 CHRIST, THE PATTERN MAN, THE FIRST FRUITS AND 
 BEGINNING OF THE NEW CREATION. 
 
 AN inquiry respecting Our Lord's nature might be 
 conducted in two ways : either we might consider 
 what He was at first, and what He subsequently 
 became ; or we might view Him as He was manifest 
 upon earth, and then pass from the apparent to the 
 hidden characteristics of His being. In the first 
 case, we should begin with His Godhead; in the 
 second, with His manhood. And the latter is, per- 
 haps, the most natural course, because His Incarna- 
 tion is a central point, from which we may approach 
 the eternity which preceded, as well as that which 
 follows it. In numbers, unity is a starting point for 
 those infinite series which ascend above or descend 
 below it ; and Our Lord's taking flesh of the Virgin 
 Mary, His mother, is the only thing on which our 
 minds can fix, which at all resembles a beginning 
 of His being. For time is that middle space, from 
 which finite spirits must track their way, either 
 forwards or backwards, into the profundities of 
 eternity. We begin, then, with the Apostle, that
 
 THE PATTERN MAN, ETC. 
 
 Jesus Christ Our Lord was "made of the seed of 
 David according to the flesh." 
 
 And in this statement, what is especially material 
 is, that Our Lord came to be THE man, not A man- 
 to be David's offspring, the woman's seed, the re- 
 presentative of the human family, the chief among 
 His brethren, the heir of whatever great qualities 
 belonged to mortal flesh, the antagonist of Satan, 
 the second Adam, the new head of man's race. The 
 disposition to look for such a type or pattern, in 
 which may be perfectly expressed what each man's 
 consciousness imperfectly witnesses, lies deep in 
 human nature. It expresses itself in letters as well 
 as institutions in admiration for the poet, and in 
 loyalty to the king. For what is the natural root 
 of loyalty, as distinguished from such mere selfish 
 desire of personal security, as is apt to take its 
 place in civilized times, but that consciousness of a 
 natural bond among the families of men, which 
 gives a fellow-feeling to whole clans and nations, 
 and thus enlists their affections in behalf of those 
 time-honoured representatives of their ancient blood, 
 in whose success they feel a personal interest ? 
 Hence the delight when we recognize an act of 
 nobility or justice in our hereditary princes. 
 
 Tuque prior, tu parce genus qui ducis Olympo, 
 Projice tela manu sanguis tneus. 
 
 So strong is this feeling, that it regains an engrafted 
 influence, even when history witnesses that past 
 convulsions have rent and weakened it ; and the
 
 10 THE PATTERN MAN 
 
 Celtic feeling towards the Stuarts has been re- 
 kindled in our own days towards the grand- 
 daughter of George the Third of Hanover. 
 
 Somewhat similar may be seen in the disposition 
 to idolize those great lawgivers of man's race, who 
 have given expression, in the immortal language 
 of song, to the deeper inspirations of our nature. 
 The thoughts of Homer or of Shakespeare are the 
 universal inheritance of the human race. In this 
 mutual ground every man meets his brother : they 
 have been set forth by the Providence of God to 
 vindicate for all of us what nature could effect, and 
 that, in these representatives of our race, we might 
 recognize our common benefactors. 
 
 These are among the natural indications of that 
 hereditary bond of brotherhood, which attained its 
 perfect consummation in that supernatural advent 
 of the Son of Man, of whom all earthly excellence 
 is typical. For it is a characteristic of the Gospel 
 to give a higher employment to every faculty of 
 the understanding, and a nobler object to every 
 affection of the heart. Its basis is that personal 
 union between God and man, which has added a 
 diviner character to all the relations of humanity. 
 Manhood, with all its mysterious secrets of thought 
 and feeling, has been chosen to be the temple of 
 God. And this has been brought about, not by 
 the natural exaltation of the inferior race, but by 
 the entrance of that higher seed, from whose inter- 
 communion it has received a supernatural elevation.
 
 THE FIRST FRUITS OF THE CREATION. 1 1 
 
 For there are two ways in which Christ might be 
 set forth as that Pattern Man, in whom our nature 
 attained its perfection. Either He might be the 
 happy example in whom its native qualities found 
 their perfect expression, in w y hom all that belongs 
 to mere humanity obtained the utmost develop- 
 ment of which it was susceptible ; or the perfection 
 of His manhood might be due to the influence of 
 that Divine nature, with which it was personally 
 united. The first of these is the system of Ra- 
 tionalism the second, the system of the Church. 
 And it is the main purpose of the present inquiry 
 to show that the latter system is not only sanc- 
 tioned by the authority of revelation, and adapted 
 to the wants of man, but that whatever truth or 
 reason the system of Rationalism may promise, 
 could be attained only through that perfect exhi- 
 bition of man's nature, of which its supernatural 
 adoption by its divine participator was the cause. 
 The system of Rationalism, indeed, can go along 
 with that of the Church so far as to admit Christ 
 in name, and to recognize in words the necessity of 
 divine help. For all but positive Atheists allow 
 the advantage of help from that creative Spirit, to 
 which they refer the world's parentage. And there 
 is little difficulty in supposing that Christ may be 
 the channel through whom divine gifts are be- 
 stowed, seeing that they were once exhibited with 
 peculiar lustre in Himself. But the characteristic 
 distinction between the one svstem and the other
 
 12 THE PATTERN MAX 
 
 is, that Rationalism makes the indi vidual the 
 starting point for all improvement, whereas the 
 Church's starting point is Christ. The first is for 
 dealing with nature as it finds it; it takes man 
 such as he is, with the powders and faculties which 
 he possesses, and supposes that their cultivation 
 may enable him to shake off the evils and infir- 
 mities which all deplore. The man himself, there- 
 fore, is the commencement of all renewal ; he may 
 use God's grace, indeed he may invoke the name 
 of Christ but in himself is the ultimate principle 
 of renovation. For as an individual is he addressed ; 
 his conversion must precede that relation to Christ, 
 which, according to Christians, is the principle of 
 the new nature. The Church system, on the other 
 hand, attributes the first renewal of man's race to 
 the entrance into its ranks of a higher and super- 
 natural Being. His quickening influence is the 
 principle of regeneration to all His fellows. In 
 Him, and not in them, is the original principle of 
 movement. The restoration of the ancient pattern 
 of man is not attained through the natural perfec- 
 tion of individuals, but because in Christ, Our 
 Lord, was the personal presence of that Divine 
 Word, which was above nature. He came down 
 into our lower race to ennoble it. The change, 
 therefore, in every individual must result from that 
 diffusive influence of the second Adam, by which 
 the exertion of individual intellect and will must 
 be preceded. Thus does it continue to extend
 
 THE FIRST FRUITS OF CREATION. 13 
 
 itself through that sacramental system, which binds 
 all men to the head of the race ; and the restoration 
 of every man is due to that great gift which was 
 bestowed upon our common nature through the 
 Incarnation of Christ. 
 
 The contrast of these two systems may be 
 traced through all their complicated relations. 
 The Church system of education rests on the im- 
 provement of that renewed nature, which in Christ, 
 Our Lord, has been bestowed upon His brethren. 
 But Rationalistic education addresses itself to man 
 as he is ; it appeals at once to his natural gifts, and 
 his intellectual endowments, as though these were 
 a sufficient ground for his reform. And as the 
 Church system has its basis in that truth of the 
 Incarnation, on which it rests the world's renewal, 
 so Rationalism has its real foundation in that theory 
 of Pantheism, which ends in deifying the natural 
 powers of man. For put the Incarnation out of 
 view, and Pantheism is the natural resource of re- 
 flective minds. The wonderful mysteries of man's 
 nature the strange contrast of life and death, 
 decay and reproduction all these carry us on to 
 the contemplation of those comprehensive laws of 
 the physical universe, which ally themselves so 
 strangely with the existence of mankind. They 
 are reflected in the traditions of the past they 
 give deeper meaning to the mythology of ancient 
 nations. They imply, that in man's life is a divine 
 principle, akin to that all-embracing power which
 
 14 THE PATTERN MAN 
 
 pervades the universe. But the true explanation 
 of this deep secret is, not that man is naturally 
 God, but that God has mercifully become man. 
 The union between these two natures is real ; the 
 indications of what is high and holy in man's being 
 need not be questioned. The principle of life, to 
 which all primitive mythologies witness, which the 
 ancient mysteries of Egypt and Greece were de- 
 signed probably to illustrate, is truly a chain, 
 which links us to the Almighty. It was no vain 
 notion which taught men in early times, that it 
 was a sacred principle, which gave life to organic 
 frames. But man could not thus ascend to God, 
 until God the Word had first stooped to manhood. 
 Whatever told of the nobility of man's race, was 
 an anticipation of that wondrous work, which was 
 to be fulfilled in its season. In Christ, all that is 
 great in humanity finds its completion, because His 
 coming gives the explanation of those principles, 
 which else seemed too large and noble for our 
 being and state. Whatsoever visions of beauty 
 and excellence have floated before the poet's mind, 
 in Him only they have their fulfilment. " The 
 Song of Songs" speaks of Him who is " the chief- 
 est among ten thousand," and whose real kingship 
 over all His brethren is reflected in the splendours 
 of earthly royalty. 
 
 On this intimate relation between the Head and 
 the members between Him who entered the human 
 family, that He might not only exhibit its capacities
 
 THE FIRST FRUITS OF CREATION. 15 
 
 in their highest state, but bestow upon it gifts of 
 which it was before incapable depends the efficacy 
 of what Christ effected for man's nature in His 
 death, and of what He " ever liveth" to effect for 
 it through His intercession. But before we pass 
 to the consequences of this great truth, we must 
 set forth the truth itself, on which they are de- 
 pendent. If such was Our Lord's participation in 
 whatsoever belongs to humanity if He was the 
 Pattern Man, in whom humanity first attained its 
 perfection ; the consequence must have been a com- 
 plete exhibition of those sympathies which cha- 
 racterize mankind. Again, the completeness with 
 which He set forth the distinctive features of man's 
 race would lead us to anticipate that, regarded as a 
 man, there w r as some peculiar perfection in the con- 
 stitution of His nature. And since it was the 
 object of prophecy to witness His approach, it 
 would bear testimony to that peculiar character in 
 which He came, to that office of the Pattern Man, 
 which it was His purpose to exhibit. These things 
 go to make up that peculiar character of the head 
 of man's race, w r hich He entered into our lower 
 nature to maintain ; and they require, therefore, to 
 be severally set forth as portions of His human 
 being. So that we proceed to show that Our 
 Lord was the Pattern Man, the second Adam 
 First, by Office ; secondly, by Nature ; thirdly, by 
 Sympathy.
 
 16 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE OFFICE OF CHRIST AS THE PATTERN MAN 
 MARKED OUT IN ANCIENT SCRIPTURE. 
 
 SINCE Christ was, by Office, the Pattern Man, the 
 functions which pertained to His character must 
 have been indicated in those records of prophecy 
 which announced His approach. Two points there 
 were which required to be especially set forth 
 first, that the recovery of man's race must be the 
 result of some internal movement communicated to 
 it ; that it was not a mere withdrawal of those ex- 
 ternal inconveniences by which he was environed, 
 but an actual improvement in the race itself; and 
 secondly, that this movement, though existing 
 within, must come from without him; that it was 
 not the mere growth and development of his 
 natural faculties, but some supernatural power, in- 
 troduced into his fallen race by an external deliv- 
 erer. These two conditions would be required, sup- 
 posing that the deliverance, after which humanity 
 was yearning, was to be brought about through 
 the entrance into its ranks of some superior being, 
 by whose communion it was to be raised above itself.
 
 CHRIST'S OFFICE IN ANCIENT SCRIPTURE. 17 
 
 In the former half of those four thousand years 
 which preceded the birth of Christ, the first of these 
 truths was put before men. As the Fall had given 
 occasion to Christ's coming, so from the very 
 moment of the Fall was there this intimation of 
 His approach. The Fall had been the breaking 
 up of natural society ; the failure of whatever 
 might be expected from the original stock of man- 
 kind. His race was doomed to perish " like corn 
 blasted before it be grown up." Death spiritual at 
 once asserted its empire over the disobedient seed, 
 and temporal death would have followed in its ap- 
 pointed season. But in the meantime came in that 
 merciful promise, which opened a door of hope 
 for offending mortality, and asserted that by the 
 woman's seed her serpent enemy should finally be 
 subjugated. This promise found its completion in 
 Christ ; it was the first intimation that He should 
 be the head and representative of His brethren. 
 Yet this first promise was so large and general, that 
 in itself it taught nothing, except that the deliver- 
 ance promised to man should arise from something 
 which was bound up with the race itself, and should 
 connect itself, therefore, with its collective character. 
 By attaching the promise to the woman's seed, its 
 giver bound it to the extension of society. And 
 this is the reason, as St. Irenaeus points out, why 
 St. Luke, who wrote especially for Gentile readers, 
 traces up the descent of Christ to Adam ; his object 
 being to show that all nations, languages, and gene- 
 
 c
 
 18 CHRIST'S OFFICE 
 
 rations, were related to Him who is the new head 
 of Adam's race, because they were united to Adam 
 by common paternity. 1 But as yet there was no 
 intimation, so far as we read, respecting the nature 
 of that deliverance, which the progress of society 
 was to bring along with it; whether God's will was 
 to save by one or many by a gradual renovation 
 of the whole kindred, or through the appearance of 
 some selected combatant, who was to do battle 
 against the common enemy. 
 
 There was the less danger, no doubt, in such an 
 omission, because, while society was young, and 
 while man's intellect had gained little ascendency 
 over the external world, the idea of a self-depen- 
 dent advancement, through his inward power, had 
 no basis to rest upon. The Rationalistic notion, 
 that man's regeneration may be effected through 
 the progress of society, and the development of his 
 natural powers, is the delusion of a cultivated age. 
 In that simpler period of the world's history, the 
 tendency was rather to such unfounded reverence 
 for external objects, as issued in sensible idolatry. 
 But there was enough to sustain faithful hearts, 
 while the recollection of God's first dealings with 
 mankind was fresh, and while the promise was so 
 recent, that through some unknown working of 
 His sovereign power, there should arise out of the 
 race itself the means of its deliverance. Men's ex- 
 pectations showed themselves in such expressions 
 1 S. Iren. iii. 22, 3. p. 219.
 
 IN ANCIENT SCRIPTURE. 19 
 
 as those of Eve at the birth of Cain ; and the same 
 hope probably was associated with the name of 
 Noah, who was to comfort us concerning our work 
 and toil of our hands, because of the ground, which 
 the Lord hath cursed. 
 
 But something more was required when the lapse 
 of two thousand years had removed the first wit- 
 nesses to God's dealings and promises, while, at 
 the same time, the powers of man were strength- 
 ened by the growth of society and the advance- 
 ment of knowledge. It became essential that the 
 second part of God's mystery should be unfolded ; 
 there needed an intimation, that it was not through 
 
 ' O 
 
 the natural development of humanity, but through 
 the entrance into its ranks of some superior power, 
 that its regeneration was to be effected. This 
 was announced through the call of Abraham. As 
 yet, men might still learn from Shem, what had 
 been delivered to him by Methuselah and other 
 contemporaries of Adam. Considering the advan- 
 tages which the first man had possessed, through 
 that acquaintance with God w T hich was his singular 
 privilege, it was impossible that the blessed hope of 
 reconciliation, with all that it implied respecting 
 man's original state and future prospects, should be 
 forgotten by those who had heard it only at second- 
 hand. But now, through the abridgment of man's 
 life, this mode of instruction was about to be lost. 
 The childhood of the human race was to merge in 
 that busy manhood of crime and toil, which made up
 
 20 CHRIST'S OFFICE 
 
 the two thousand years of heathenism. And there- 
 fore, when the course of events had rolled on from 
 the Creation for about a similar period, it pleased God 
 to select a particular family from among the chil- 
 dren of men, to be the maintainers of His worship, 
 and the depository of His promises. With Abra- 
 ham began the peculiar privileges of the Church. 
 Then was the witness of an institution substituted 
 for that of individuals. And the promise that 
 through his seed should all nations of the earth 
 be blessed, was an indication that man's recovery 
 should not be effected by the self-relying efforts of 
 mankind, as they were scattered throughout the 
 earth, but through a gift, which it would please 
 God to bestow upon them through the one peculiar 
 channel of His own election. The seed of Abra- 
 ham was to be their common benefactor. Thus 
 was it made known, that though the renewal of 
 man was to work inwardly through some influence 
 which was to express itself in the woman's seed, 
 yet was it to be bestowed on that seed through one 
 particular family, as an external gift. And this 
 title to be the universal patron of the human race, 
 was confirmed by special promise to Isaac. 2 Now, 
 this promise must plainly look to that peculiar of- 
 fice, which was to be discharged by the coming Me- 
 diator, as the head of the human family ; unless, 
 indeed, it could be supposed that the restoration of 
 man's race was to be the work of that favoured 
 2 Gen. xxvi. 4.
 
 IN ANCIENT SCRIPTURE. 21 
 
 progeny, which inherited the distinction conferred 
 upon their parents. For it might be alleged that 
 the descendants of Abraham were designed to be 
 a seed of hereditary nobles, like the Brahminical 
 caste of India, through whom the degradation of 
 the other children of Adam was hereafter to be 
 redressed. Such was certainly the popular feeling 
 among the Jews, and such is really the tendency 
 of those carnal views of Scripture prophecy, which 
 apply the predictions respecting Israel to the tem- 
 poral seed of Abraham, and not to that true Israel, 
 which is heir by grace to the Father of the Faith- 
 ful. For Scripture speaks plainly of Israel, as the 
 salt of the earth and the head of the nations ; and 
 some such earthly superiority, therefore, would still 
 await it, were not these predictions really applicable 
 to those spiritual descendants of Abraham, " the 
 Israel of God." 3 So St. Paul especially assures us, 
 and he turns our thoughts, therefore, to that head 
 and representative of our race, in whom the words 
 of prophecy have their real fulfilment. As it was 
 through their connexion with Him who was to 
 come, that Israel was formerly God's people, so 
 
 3 Gal. vi. 16. To suppose that the Jewish nation will here- 
 after be converted, as St. Paul appears to intimate, Rom. xi. 26, 
 and that its conversion will be productive of blessings to the 
 world at large, is not inconsistent with a belief that the spiritual 
 precedency granted to the heirs of Abraham belongs to his 
 spiritual and not to his carnal progeny. " Nee hi tantum essent 
 Israel, quos sanguis et caro genuisset, sed in possessionem hoere- 
 ditatis fidei filiis praeparatse, universitas adoptionis intraret." 
 S. Leo, Ser. xxv. 2.
 
 22 CHRIST'S OFFICE 
 
 does Scripture teach us that it is those who are 
 members of Him, who at present constitute the 
 Israel of God. Since the advent of Christ, it is 
 through union only with Him, that men can be 
 heirs of the promise to Abraham. In opposition to 
 that carnal interpretation, which would appropriate 
 the sayings of Scripture to the physical descen- 
 dants of the Patriarchs, St. Paul points out an 
 express declaration in ancient prophecy, that the 
 world-embracing benefits of His seed would not be 
 connected with those many nations, which were 
 sprung from him according to the flesh, but with 
 that single race, which was united to him through 
 relation to an individual representative. " He saith 
 not, and to seeds as of many, but as of one, and to 
 thy seed, 4 which is Christ." 5 And that Abraham 
 himself had discovered the meaning of this deep 
 mystery, we are expressly informed, for " Abraham 
 rejoiced to see My day ; and he saw r it, and was 
 glad." 
 
 That which was understood by the Father of the 
 
 4 That Our Lord is in this verse identified with the members 
 of His body mystical is subsequently noticed. A neological ob- 
 jection has been urged against St. Paul's argument, because, 
 though the Greek word for seed is individual, yet the Hebrew 
 yif which is used in the original promise, is collective, and 
 
 does not, therefore, point out the single character of Christ as 
 Abraham's representative. But the conditions of St. Paul's 
 argument are fulfilled by the fact, that the promises to Abraham 
 were confined to one out of the many races which were de- 
 scended from him ; and this race he affirms to consist of those 
 spiritual descendants of the Father of the Faithful, who make 
 up the body of Christ. 5 Gal. iii. 16.
 
 IX ANCIENT SCRIPTURE. 23 
 
 Faithful, was made still more manifest in a later 
 generation, when it was predicted that He who 
 should arise in Abraham's family, should sit upon 
 David's throne, and be the perpetual representative 
 of his royalty. This marked out plainly the indi- 
 vidual character of Him who was to come. And 
 herein lies the fulness of that prophetic inspiration, 
 which asserts the continuance of David's throne, 
 and the perpetuity of his family. The perpetual 
 use of the Psalms, according to the immemorial 
 custom of the Church, must seem unmeaning to 
 those who discern not the Gospel import of pray- 
 ing " for the peace of Jerusalem," and to whom the 
 Church's oneness, as it is asserted in the Creed, is 
 not a commentary on the declaration that "Jeru- 
 salem is built as a city that is at unity in itself." 
 And so is it respecting those predictions of the 
 head and deliverer of mankind, which were ex- 
 pressed in the shape of promises to David. We 
 behold the Pattern Man in His office as the Son of 
 David, when we testify that " they shall fear Thee, 
 as long as the sun and moon endureth, from one 
 generation to another." Or again, " His seed shall 
 endure for ever, and His seat is like as the sun be- 
 fore me. He shall stand fast for evermore as the 
 moon, and as the faithful witness in heaven." These 
 references to material objects indicate, that the su- 
 periority here assigned belongs to some representa- 
 tive of our race, who should share its created cha- 
 racter. They claim for Him certain rights, (inde-
 
 24 CHRIST'S OFFICE 
 
 pendently of the copartnership of that deity, from 
 which, as we are assured, He was never separate,) 
 in that He came to be heir of David's throne, and 
 inheritor of the promises. In this character, u His 
 name shall endure for ever : His name shall remain 
 under the sun among the posterities, which shall 
 be blessed through Him, and all the Heathen shall 
 praise Him." "All kings shall fall down before 
 Him ; all nations shall do Him service ; for He 
 shall deliver the poor when he crieth, the needy 
 also, and him that hath no helper. He shall live, 
 and unto Him shall be given of the gold of Arabia : 
 prayer shall be made ever unto Him, and daily shall 
 He be praised." 6 
 
 To such declarations the fond expectation of the 
 Jewish nation still clings, and they can not believe 
 that sayings so express, were not designed to re- 
 ceive an earthly fulfilment. The mere figurative 
 interpretation of such promises, seems cold and 
 meagre. But a literal fulfilment they doubtless 
 have, if the humanity of the Son of God be taken 
 account of. It is through His character of the 
 Pattern Man, that He actually fulfils that office 
 of Head or King of God's chosen people, to which 
 ancient prophecy bore such inspiring witness. If 
 the Church of Christ be really God's kingdom, 
 where the Son of David rules over the Israel of 
 His new election, whom He has redeemed to Him- 
 self through the waves of baptism, and is now lead- 
 6 Psalm Ixxii. 5, 17, 11, 12, 15 ; Psalm Ixxxix. 35, 36.
 
 IX ANCIENT SCRIPTURE. 25 
 
 ing, in their weary journey through the wilderness 
 of this world, to the promised Canaan of their 
 heavenly rest, then have the declarations of ancient 
 Scripture a real accomplishment, and "Jerusalem, 
 which is above," is the present "mother of us all." 7 
 If ever the light of Gospel truth shall visit the eyes 
 of God's earlier people, it must surely be by their 
 abandoning the carnal expectations of earthly great- 
 ness, and yet adhering to the meaning of their an- 
 cient realities. If they would thus look at God's 
 words, neither as a mere letter nor as an empty 
 figure they would discern the hidden reality of 
 their hallowed system, they would find their own 
 Jerusalem in the Church of God, the election perpe- 
 tuated in her ranks, the divine presence manifested 
 in her ordinances, the son of David ever with her 
 " even to the end of the world," and " a new and 
 living way into the holiest, consecrated for them 
 through the vail, that is to say, His flesh." 8 
 
 As the individual character of man's deliverer 
 had been indicated by that throne, w T hich was 
 ascribed to Him as the successor of David, so was 
 it declared in still more express words, when He 
 was spoken of by that line of Prophets, who were 
 types of Him in their witness and sufferings, but 
 whose full object could not be attained, till He 
 who had led them by the secret workings of His 
 spirit, came in personal completeness into the 
 world, "a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the 
 7 Gal. iv. 26. 8 Heb. x. 20.
 
 26 CHRIST S OFFICE 
 
 glory of His people Israel." As yet this light 
 " shined in a dark place," and those who heard 
 them might not unnaturally ask at times : "I pray 
 thee, of whom speaketh the Prophet this, of him- 
 self, or of some other man ?" To their own spirits, 
 however, "it was revealed that not unto themselves, 
 but unto us, they did minister the things which are 
 now reported," and their w r ords intimate clearly the 
 personal character of Him who was to arise as the 
 restorer of His brethren. They had deep insight 
 into the great truths, that the regeneration of man's 
 race was not merely an outward benefit, attained 
 through the withdrawal of physical evils, nor yet 
 the result of the mere self-dependent exertions of 
 our inner being, but that some actual power from 
 without must enter into man's nature, and that in 
 Him the long yearnings of humanity should find 
 satisfaction. 
 
 " There shall come forth," says Isaiah, " a rod 
 out of the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow 
 out of his roots ; and the Spirit of the Lord shall 
 rest upon him." This comparison is repeatedly 
 employed, and is of singular significancy. It im- 
 plies, that man's nature is shared in common by 
 the whole human family; and that He who rises 
 up out of it, on behalf of its other partakers, is, in 
 some real manner, united to the parent stock, and, 
 therefore, to all its branches. "Behold the man, 
 whose name is the BRANCH, and He shall grow up 
 out of His place, and He shall build the temple of
 
 IX ANCIENT SCRIPTURE. 27 
 
 the Lord : even He shall build the temple of the 
 Lord, and He shall have the glory, and shall sit and 
 rule upon His throne, and He shall be a priest 
 upon His throne." 5 Or again, "I will raise unto 
 David a righteous Branch, and a king shall reign 
 and prosper." 10 
 
 These passages look to the exaltation of man's 
 nature, in the person of some favoured representa- 
 tive, who should obtain blessings for his whole race. 
 And, therefore, the right of representing the root 
 itself, is attributed to this prosperous branch, in 
 which the parent stock is resuscitated. For that 
 which had been spoken of as a Branch, is imme- 
 diately afterwards declared by the Prophet to be 
 the Root itself : " In that day there shall be a root 
 of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the peo- 
 ple ; to it shall the Gentiles seek : and his rest shall 
 be glorious." 11 And thus was the prophecy inter- 
 preted to the beloved Disciple, since the " Lamb as 
 it had been slain," by which is plainly indicated 
 Our Lord, regarded according to His human nature, 
 is declared to be the "Root of David." 12 Indeed, 
 the word which our translators have understood 
 stem, indicates the same conception ; its literal 
 meaning is that of a stem which has been cut 
 down 13 a stool, as woodmen technically express 
 it, which may serve the purpose of supplying a 
 future plant. And thus are our thoughts led to 
 
 9 Zech. vi. 12. 10 Jer. xxiii. 5. " Isaiah, xi. 10. 
 12 Rev. v. 5. 13 " Abgehauener Stamm." Gesenius, in loco.
 
 28 CHKIST'S OFFICE 
 
 the notion, which is otherwise given by Isaiah, in 
 his fifty-third chapter, where the dry ground of 
 man's nature is spoken of as germinant with the 
 plant of our salvation : " He shall grow up before 
 him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry 
 ground." 14 This is He, then, of whom it is further 
 spoken, " unto us a child is born, unto us a son is 
 given." " Weigh the words," says Bishop An- 
 drews " child is not said, but in humanis, among 
 men." 1 Here, then, we have so many predictions 
 of a personal inheritor of humanity, whose office 
 should be to redeem and restore His race. Thus 
 are we led to the contemplation of Him as that 
 " Son of Man," which He is called in the New 
 Testament as the representative, that is, of man's 
 nature, growing out of it to a glory which, in no 
 other instance it had acquired, and becoming a 
 Head and Pattern, not only to the Jewish, but to 
 the whole human family. For "to it shall the 
 Gentiles look, and glory shall be its dwelling." 
 
 To follow up this subject, as it becomes manifest 
 in the New Testament, would be to anticipate 
 future parts of our inquiry, since it is impossible 
 to separate the statements of Our Lord's Office 
 from the consideration of those blessings which He 
 conferred in its discharge. Here, therefore, it is 
 enough to say, that He is expressly declared to be 
 "the last Adam;" and that what was gained in 
 Him is set against what was lost by His predeces- 
 
 14 Isaiah, liii. 2. 15 Sermon II. Of the Nativity, p. 11.
 
 IN ANCIENT SCRIPTURE. 29 
 
 sor : " for since by man came death, by man came 
 also the resurrection of the dead." 16 He is stated, 
 according to His earthly nature, to be "the first- 
 born of every creature;" 17 a passage which bears 
 out the opinion of St. Athanasius, that the refe- 
 rence to the creation of wisdom in the Book of 
 Proverbs is designed, among other things, to set 
 forth the Incarnation of Our Lord, as the head or 
 pattern of humanity. St. Athanasius, following 
 the Septuagint, and expressing the Hebrew with 
 more exactness than is done in our Translation, 18 
 renders Proverbs, viii. 22, " The Lord created me 
 a beginning of His ways, which is equivalent," he 
 observes, "to the assertion that the Father pre- 
 pared me a body, and He created me for man, on 
 behalf of their salvation." 19 And again, "Because 
 the Son says, when He took on Him the form of a 
 servant, the Lord created me a beginning of His 
 ways, let not men deny the eternity of His God- 
 
 16 1. Corinthians, xv. 21, 45. l7 Colossians, i. 15. 
 
 18 The Hebrew word, |"l3p> has for its original meaning, to 
 
 T!T 
 
 set upright, and thence to build or make. This must be its 
 signification in Deuteronomy, xxxii. 6 ; Psalm cxxxix. 13 ; 
 and probably also in Genesis, xiv. 19, 22, where our transla- 
 tion, following the Vulgate, renders it, as in this case, " possess." 
 The Greek is en-riaev. 
 
 " Firstborn," and " Beginning of His ways," would, in this 
 case, be taken in the order of ideas rather than of time. Per- 
 haps, St. Paul speaks in the same way of the Fifth Command- 
 ment, as being the Foundation Commandment, with a promise. 
 The Fifth Commandment is not the first in order which has a 
 promise, but it is Refoundation of our duty to our neighbour. 
 
 19 Oratio II. contra Arianos, sec. 47, vol. i. p. 515 ; and also 
 Athanasius's Epistle to the Bishops of Egypt and Lybia, p. 317.
 
 30 CHRIST'S OFFICE. 
 
 head." 20 By putting on our nature then did He 
 become the type on which it was moulded. His 
 discharging the function of priest, therefore, and 
 His submitting to be our common sacrifice, are 
 set forth in the Epistle to the Hebrews, as con- 
 sequent upon that undertaking for mankind at 
 large, whereby the predictions, which had been 
 uttered respecting the whole race, found their com- 
 pletion by being concentrated in His single person. 
 " One in a certain place testified, saying, What is 
 man, that Thou art mindful of Him ; or the son of 
 man that Thou visitest him ? Thou madest him a 
 little lower than the angels; Thou crownedst him 
 with glory and honour, and didst set him over the 
 works of Thy hands : Thou hast put all things in 
 subjection under his feet. For in that He put all 
 in subjection under him, He left nothing that is 
 not put under him. But now we see not yet all 
 things put under him : But we see Jesus, who was 
 made a little lower than the angels, for the suf- 
 fering of death, crowned with glory and honour; 
 that He by the grace of God should taste death for 
 every man." 21 Thus do those things, which were 
 spoken of humanity at large, find their completion 
 in Christ, because He, who by office is the Pattern 
 Man, has a right to represent the rest. 
 
 20 Or. II. contra Ar. sec. 51, p. 518. 21 Hebrews, ii. 6-9.
 
 31 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 CHRIST, THE PATTERN MAN BY NATURE. 
 
 THE assertion that Our Lord was, by office, the 
 Pattern Man, leads to the further inquiry, whether 
 He was so merely by title or in reality. Might 
 His office have been as fitly assumed by any be- 
 sides Himself, or was He marked out for it by the 
 constitution of His nature ? Was He any other- 
 wise the Pattern Man than Moses, who, in his day, 
 was representative for his brethren ? Could St. 
 Peter or St. John have been chosen, with equal 
 propriety, to be the new Head of man's race; or, 
 in that case, could such words ever have been em- 
 ployed as, " Thou hast redeemed us by Thy blood;" 
 or again, " My flesh is meat indeed, and My blood 
 is drink indeed ?" 
 
 We proceed, then, to show that Our Lord was 
 fitted, by His man's nature, for the office which 
 He discharged ; that as man He had a right to 
 the title which He bore, and was what He passed 
 for. The long predictions which taught that, in 
 the fulness of time, a MAN should appear, whose
 
 32 CHRIST, BY NATURE 
 
 office should be to restore His brethren, had their 
 consummation in Him, because He and He only 
 was qualified, by the constitution of His being, for 
 the service which He rendered. And although this 
 fitness resulted from the influence of that higher 
 nature, which was associated with humanity in His 
 sacred person, yet it was a fitness which belonged 
 to His man's nature in itself, and by reason of that 
 peculiar manner in which He assumed it. Media- 
 tion was not a function which the Son of Man 
 undertook from arbitrary choice, but one which 
 He was born to discharge. For this end did His 
 Godhead vouchsafe to mingle in our lower world; 
 and for this end His manhood was purposely 
 adapted. Now, the grounds of His peculiar fitness 
 must be found by inquiring into the nature which 
 He took, and into the manner in which He took 
 it. We proceed, then, to the consideration of 
 these questions : First, What is meant by that 
 human nature which Christ, Our Lord, assumed; 
 secondly, What was there in His manner of as- 
 suming it, which made Him the peculiar pattern 
 and representative of mankind. The settlement of 
 these two questions is intimately connected with 
 that which is termed by St. Paul, " the mystery of 
 God, and of the Father, and of Christ," because they 
 exhibit to us how " God was in Christ, reconciling 
 the world unto Himself." The inquiry is one 
 which begins with a survey of our own being, but 
 which speedily leads us up from God's works, as
 
 THE PATTERN MAX. 33 
 
 they are manifest in creation, to His word, as re- 
 vealed in Holy Writ. The expectations of man 
 show what is needed for the satisfaction of his 
 wants, but it must be by some external agency 
 that these wants can be remedied. Our inner 
 feelings, our thoughts, views, hopes, and fears are, 
 no doubt, an important element in our religion 
 they touch on the momentous questions of our 
 earnestness and sincerity. But all these are move- 
 ments and affections which lie within ourselves. 
 If Christ's service, however, be anything real if 
 there be truly a kingdom of heaven round about 
 us if there be such things as heaven and hell, 
 angels and devils, God sitting upon His throne, 
 the Lamb which was slain making intercession for 
 His people then are we likewise surrounded by a 
 set of truths outside of ourselves, and these eternal 
 realities press closely on the transitory concerns of 
 this passing life. And our religious state must 
 depend not only on our inward feelings, but also 
 upon our actual relation to those external realities, 
 which are round about us. 
 
 The review of Our Lord's nature has its begin- 
 ning, then, in a consideration of those observed 
 wants of humanity, which He came, as the child 
 of promise, to supply; but it has its consummation 
 in those higher mysteries, which have been re- 
 vealed to us as the method of supplying them. 
 Out of this circumstance arises the extreme re- 
 verence which is due to the sayings of Scripture. 
 
 D
 
 34 CHRIST, BY NATURE 
 
 Since its inspired words are our indication respect- 
 ing that other world which is all around us, we 
 cannot prize too highly even those occasional in- 
 timations which open vistas into the mighty depth 
 of God's counsels. We are actually living in the 
 midst of a divine and supernatural system. We 
 know of it only through glimpses, and by shadows. 
 What so precious, then, as the sayings of those, 
 " whose eyes were opened," who " spake as they 
 were moved by the Holy Ghost ?" To this it is, 
 then, that our inquiry into that human nature 
 which was taken by Christ Our Lord, must lead 
 us up ; in this it must terminate. We must imitate 
 the great Prophet of nature : " Thy creatures 
 have been my books, but Thy Scriptures much 
 more. I have sought Thee in the courts, fields, 
 and gardens ; but I have found Thee in Thy 
 temples." 
 
 I. We see, then, a race of beings, extending 
 through every part of the world, the members 
 whereof resemble one another in features, organs, 
 understanding, affections, and passions. This race 
 we call collectively mankind. We see also in the 
 world an abundance of other organized beings, 
 which have a greater or less relation to man, 
 and which, from the singular analogy which their 
 bodily organs have to our own, are, in some 
 respects, plainly creatures of the same hand, and 
 parts of the same creation. All these obey this
 
 THE PATTERN MAN. 35 
 
 one singular law, that those only which appear to 
 be derived from the same stock will multiply to- 
 gether. Consider their almost boundless number, 
 the close resemblance which some of them bear to 
 others, and the perfect subjection of so many of 
 them to the caprice of man, and there is something 
 amazing in that plastic nature, which can maintain 
 the almost imperceptible intervals between so many 
 continuous lines of animal life, and reproduce the 
 types of every kind in endless succession, without 
 confusion, variety, or decay. This is one of God's 
 great works, whereby He blends the supremacy of 
 law and the prodigality of nature. From the 
 lowest sponge to the most complex mollusk, and 
 thence to the numerous classes of the vertebrate 
 kingdom, till we come to man there is evidently 
 some single principle, which show r s itself in nothing 
 so remarkably as in the perpetuation of the same 
 type, amidst the various classes of co-ordinate be- 
 ings. Even if their divisions were not referable, as 
 most naturalists suppose, to the fact of a common 
 descent; yet the existence of some such law is 
 evidenced by that harmonious march, which we wit- 
 ness in the tribes of animated nature from day to 
 day. There is, likewise, the singular phenomenon, 
 that qualities will sometimes come out in individuals 
 of a race, for which we cannot account, except by 
 supposing them to have been buried, if such an 
 expression may be used, in the collective nature, 
 till favourable opportunities allowed them to re-
 
 36 CHRIST, BY NATURE 
 
 appear. Abundant instances of the kind are 
 afforded by the physical history of man. 2 To this 
 principle we must refer the fact, that peculiarities 
 which were accidentally present, as it would seem, 
 in the heads of any particular subdivision of some 
 natural class, are commonly, but not perpetually, 
 transmitted to their descendants. Such circum- 
 stances are properties of particular families; but 
 not having been originally bound up with the con- 
 stitution of the race, they are not an indissoluble 
 part of it. 
 
 We find the animal kingdom, then, pervaded by 
 a mysterious law, which imposes unity of type 
 upon all the classes which constitute it. And the 
 analogy thus supplied, seems as though intended 
 to lead us on to the observation of the same fact, 
 when we come to that highest portion of the animal 
 kingdom, which God has endued with the faculties 
 of reason, conscience, and love. In the case of 
 man likewise, we discern the fact of some real prin- 
 ciple of connexion, by which the individual mem- 
 bers of his race are bound together, which consti- 
 tutes them an actual whole, and which shows itself 
 in that uniformity of type, which marks the per- 
 petual ranks of their infinite succession. This 
 
 1 Looking lower in the scale of creation, it is often observed 
 that from two horses of the same colour will arise a progeny 
 which bears no likeness at all to the colour of its parents. 
 
 2 Vide Dr. Pritchard's " Researches into the Natural History 
 of Man."
 
 THE PATTERN MAN. 37 
 
 principle of connexion, is what we call human 
 nature. Wherein this connexion consists can no 
 more be explained, than wherein consists the union 
 between the soul and the body. It depends not, 
 of course, on physical contact, like that which 
 exists between the waters of the great deep. It 
 does not interfere with the separate life of each 
 man's spirit, whereby has been assigned to him the 
 momentous gift of that individual personality, for 
 which he must render account at the great day. 
 All that is asserted of it is that it is a real bond, 
 by which every man is tied to that primitive type, 
 which perpetuates itself in him and in all others. 
 That we should have no powers of analysis, capa- 
 ble of ascertaining what this principle is, presents 
 no just reason for denying its existence. What do 
 we know T of electricity except by its effects ? The 
 constant repetition of the same results, under simi- 
 lar circumstances, leads us to infer the existence 
 of some real though imponderable agent. And the 
 same conclusion seems justified, when we see the 
 perpetual re-appearance of the same type in those 
 who are possessors of the same nature. 
 
 This subject needs more close consideration, be- 
 cause it has been supposed by some persons, that 
 the belief in such a thing as human nature is essen- 
 tially connected with the erroneous notions of the 
 schoolmen, and implies that every class has, as its 
 counterpart, some actual thing. " Each man," it 
 is said, " is born with certain powers and dispo-
 
 38 CHRIST, BY NATURE 
 
 sitions, which constitute his own nature; and the 
 resemblance of them in all his fellows, produces a 
 general idea, or a collective appellation, \vhichever 
 we may prefer to say, called the nature of man." 
 And, therefore, Pascal is censured by Mr. Hallam, 
 because he " seems never to have disentangled his 
 mind from the notion, that what we call human 
 nature has not merely an arbitrary and gram- 
 matical, but an intrinsic, objective reality." 3 
 
 Before we consider the justice of this objection, 
 it will be well to state more exactly the position 
 of those who believe in the reality of that which is 
 called human nature. It is not affirmed, then, that 
 we can trace the connexion by which one man 
 is bound to another, or analyze the mysterious 
 principle of transmitted life, upon which it is 
 dependent. Still less is it asserted, that there is 
 any independent force in the material substratum 
 of man's being, which, by virtue of its innate 
 efficacy, has the power of propagating life. It is 
 probable that matter depends for its existence upon 
 the constant efficacy of God's power and presence. 
 Were not He constantly present with the w r hole 
 creation, it would seem that " its instant annihila- 
 tion could not choose but follow." 4 The conti- 
 
 3 " Literature of Europe," iv. 160. 
 
 4 This last is the principle of God's Immanence, as opposed 
 to that Deistic theory of Transcendence, which supposes that 
 the qualities of matter having been bestowed upon it by its 
 Maker, everything has been left to go on by the impulse which 
 was originally bestowed.
 
 THE PATTERN MAX. 39 
 
 nuity of our race does not depend, any more than 
 the identity of an individual, on the sameness of 
 the parts, which at any time make up man's body ; 
 indeed, one characteristic of it is, that the same 
 portions of matter may pass successively through 
 the whole series of the animal kingdom, without 
 affecting the transmission of that impulse of life, 
 which is handed on from sire to son. " Why may 
 not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander, 
 till he find it stopping a bunghole ?" Again, it is 
 not implied that there is any reality in human na- 
 ture, distinct from the personal characteristics and 
 conditions of the individuals who bear it. It is a 
 principle which shows itself in many types, and 
 exists in the varying types in which it shows itself. 
 We cannot separate off anything, distinct from the 
 constituent parts and qualities of each man, and 
 say that this is the nature which is common to the 
 race. What is it, then, that we affirm ? On the 
 fact that the same form continually appears, we 
 ground the probability that its re-appearance de- 
 pends on some unknown principle of connexion. 
 
 Appearances lead us to imagine that the whole 
 series of man's race is in some sort an organized 
 whole ; its several possessors having an actual rela- 
 tion to one another. As the life of the foot is the 
 same with that of the hand, because they belong 
 to the same body ; so, because all the children of 
 Adam are members of one race, they are the chan- 
 nels through which is transmitted a single nature.
 
 40 CHRIST, BY NATURE 
 
 The scriptural authority for this opinion shall be 
 noticed shortly : at present let us consider its na- 
 tural probability. Those who deny it, object to the 
 assertion, that man's race is to be looked upon as 
 possessing a common organization. Though they 
 may admit, therefore, that all men are corrupt, yet 
 they appear to exclude the notion that original sin 
 is a transmitted corruption. " Man's nature, as it 
 now is," says Mr. Hallam, "that which each man 
 and all men possess, is the immediate workmanship 
 of God, as much as at his creation." On this prin- 
 ciple, "the corruption of human nature," is stated 
 to be a phrase, which is " analogical and inexact." 
 Now, though every individual specimen of human- 
 ity be God's creation, why should it not be His 
 pleasure to exercise His creative powers according 
 to the law of a natural interdependency ? The foot 
 and the hand are His work, as much as the whole 
 body ; but they are not endued with a separate 
 life, but with a life w^hich is relative to the whole. 
 In like manner, the preservation of the race of man 
 is made to grow out of that quickening impulse, 
 which we call the life of humanity. This notion, 
 which was called Traducianism by the schoolmen 
 (the system opposed to it being termed Creatian- 
 ism), has on its side an overwhelming amount of 
 probabilities. If men throw dice several times 
 upon a table, the determination of every cast is 
 in God's hands ; but because there is no law of 
 interdependency in the action, the issue in each
 
 THE PATTERN MAN. 41 
 
 case is wholly uninfluenced by the case which pre- 
 ceded it. Every time they throw, the chances are 
 the same that they were the first time. Now, 
 unless there be some principle of interdependency 
 among organized beings, why is not the same va- 
 riety apparent ? Why should not such anomalies 
 as Virgil attributes to culture, be the ordinary law ? 
 
 CastanesE fagos, ornusque incanduit albo 
 Flore pyri, glandesque sues fregere sub ulmis. 
 
 Unless some reason, therefore, can be assigned 
 for the contrary, there is an infinite improbability 
 in the application of Creatianism to the case of or- 
 ganized nature. And yet there is one case in which 
 it seems necessary to admit it. There is one part of 
 man's nature, the very existence of which depends 
 so completely on its individual, uncompounded, in- 
 dependent action, that it seems impossible to refer it 
 to the co-operating influences of human parentage. 
 The spirit* of man, with its peculiar principle of 
 
 6 It may be thought inconsistent with the general argument 
 of this work, to suppose that the Almighty interferes according 
 to the law of Creatianism by birth, as He does according to the 
 law of regeneration by baptism. But this principle is not con- 
 tended for as respects the soul at large ; there may be enough 
 to maintain its traditive character, even though Personality be 
 supposed to be incapable of being transmitted. It is certain 
 that He who took our whole nature did not take the principle 
 of Personality according to the law of Traducianism ; but that 
 " antequam ab illo forma servi esset accepta, nondurn fuerit 
 Christus, sed tantummodo Verbum." Vlgilius c, Eutych. iv. 5. 
 " Ut per se sibi assumsit ex virgine corpus, ita ex se sibi animam 
 assumpsit." S. Hilar. de Trin. x. 22.
 
 42 CHRIST, BY NATURE 
 
 personality, is generally supposed to be an imme- 
 diate work of God's creative will ; although it be 
 His will, in man's nature at large, to work accord- 
 ing to the system of Traducianism. St. Augustin, 6 
 indeed, expresses himself as uncertain to the last, 
 whether even the soul was an immediate creation ; 
 but the great majority of later writers agree in the 
 opinion expressed by Giinther: 7 "Traducianism has 
 its function in respect to the animal (psyclmclie) 
 life of man ; on the other hand, the province of 
 Creatianism is with his soul, and it would travel 
 out of its province if it extended the immediate 
 creative action of God to that animal life, which is 
 the principle of his body's existence." 
 
 Some of the most striking arguments for tin's 
 view of things, are derived from the relation of man 
 to that inferior world of organized life, of which 
 his creation was the conclusion and crown. The 
 singular identity of arrangement which pervades 
 the whole series of living beings ; the very lowest 
 possessing in rudiment every part and principle 
 which belongs to the body of the highest, marks 
 them out as subject to one universal law. Let us 
 
 6 Quod attinet ad animse originem, utrum de illo uno sit, qui 
 primum creatus est, quando factus est homo in animam vivam, 
 an similiter ita fiant singulis singuli ; nee tune sciebam, nee 
 adhuc scio. St. Aug. Retrac. i. 1, sec. 3. 
 
 St. Hilary expresses the more predominant opinion, that 
 anima omnis opus Dei sit, carnis vero generatio semper ex 
 carne sit. De Trin. x. 20. 
 
 7 Vorschule zur speculativen Theologie. Vol. ii. p. 181, 
 Letter 8.
 
 THE PATTERN MAN. 43 
 
 descend the scale, then, till we reach those inferior 
 beings, in whom the unvaried arrangements of phy- 
 sical structure appear under their simplest condi- 
 tions. Now, in their case we actually discern that 
 continuity, for the existence of which, though after 
 a different manner, we contend in the case of 
 mankind. The law of Traducianism cannot be 
 questioned in the case of the polyp, whose body is 
 often an actual fragment of the body from which it 
 is derived. The same principle may be discerned 
 in this case as in that of the graft or sucker, which 
 existed in its perfect state as a partaker of life, of 
 which, when transplanted, it becomes, in its turn, 
 the parent. If we admit this principle in the lower 
 ranks of animal life, how can we deny its applica- 
 tion to the higher ? Nor can an external truth 
 be destroyed by the logical difficulty which may 
 attach to its expression. The objection brought 
 against the actual existence of human nature is, 
 that being only an abstraction formed by ourselves 
 from a variety of examples, there can be no real 
 thing intended by it; to give it actual existence 
 is supposed to be the error of the Realists, who 
 attributed an objective existence to those universal 
 conceptions, which were only the creatures of their 
 own minds. Hence, the reality of human nature, 
 as a thing existing in the external world, is denied, 
 because to assert reality for the idea of it in our 
 own minds, would be contrary to the theory of 
 Nominalism, which prevails in logic. But this is
 
 44 CHRIST, BY NATURE 
 
 to abuse the principles of Nominalism on one side, 
 as the opposite principle of Realism has been abused 
 on the other. That many objects can be united 
 by our classing them under a common idea, does 
 not give them any real objective union; but neither 
 does it take that union away, provided that by 
 other means it can be shown to exist. Yet this is 
 the argument of those who, on principles of Nomi- 
 nalism, deny the objective existence of human 
 nature. They pass over the distinction between 
 such classifications as men make for themselves by 
 an inward act of reasoning, and such as have been 
 provided in the external world by God's Provi- 
 dence. The one are only our own internal acts; 
 the other have an external existence. The error 
 of the Realists was encouraged, according to Arch- 
 bishop Whately, 8 by observation of those organized 
 beings, which are bound together by the unalter- 
 able laws of nature. That in these cases there 
 existed a real, though unknown bond, which main- 
 tained the perpetuity of the class, led men to 
 attribute an objective existence to their own ab- 
 stractions. But if no real connexion had united 
 these external objects, the sight of them would not 
 have led any one astray. When we class together 
 philosophers or physicians, we bestow a common 
 name upon those who are associated by their dis- 
 positions or employments. There is no connexion 
 between them, distinct from the thoughts and 
 8 Whately's Logic, p. 260.
 
 THE PATTERN MAN. 45 
 
 actions to which the individuals described choose 
 to addict themselves. There is a real similarity in 
 their doings, supposing the class to be happily 
 designated ; but it is a similarity only, and at their 
 will they may cease to resemble one another. It 
 would be a vicious Realism, therefore, to assert the 
 existence of an objective connexion among these 
 parties, because we can embrace them under a 
 common idea; but it would be an equally vicious 
 Nominalism to deny an objective reality, where 
 an inherent law prevents the possibility of such 
 re-arrangement, and confines individuals to the 
 peculiar classes to w r hich they severally belong. 
 The first would be to claim for our own mind the 
 power of making its inward ideas into external 
 realities ; the second would be to deny the existence 
 of external realities, because we have not the power 
 of making them. We have no right, therefore, to 
 deny the existence of a common nature in those 
 who are derived from a common origin ; whose 
 union does not depend upon their voluntary com- 
 bination, and cannot be dissolved by their own will. 
 In such a case, then, it would not be contrary to 
 reason, to suppose that the nature transmitted was 
 susceptible of improvement or deterioration ; so that 
 its collective state might be found to be the result 
 of all those impulses, which had been bestowed 
 upon it by its innumerable possessors, since it came 
 first from its maker's hands. Such impulses, must, 
 of course, be most potent, independently of higher
 
 46 CHRIST, BY NATURE 
 
 considerations, in its earliest stages, when as yet 
 it was centred in a single pair, both because it was 
 without previous bias, and because there could be 
 no one whose descent was not derived from its 
 first possessors. But the very existence of such a 
 deterioration implies, of course, the reality of that 
 common being, which links together every child of 
 Adam. 
 
 But the community of nature must not be con- 
 fined merely to that animal side of man's being, on 
 which he touches upon the brute creation. What 
 is the meaning of all conference and concert among 
 men, unless there be a real unity in the higher part 
 of their constitution ? The instinctive belief in 
 such an union lies too deep, surely, to be the mere 
 result of observation. There is a moral instinct, 
 by which we feel assured that the sentiments which 
 live in our own heart, will be responded to in that 
 of our brother. The man must be cold and faith- 
 less who could enjoy life without such confidence. 
 Even our judgments about the material world, 
 assume the existence of principles common to us 
 all. Coincidence, resemblance, and proportion, the 
 three keys to our knowledge of creation, require to 
 exist within us, in order to be called forth. Any 
 one will discern this who attempts to demonstrate, 
 properly speaking, the Fourth Proposition of the 
 First Book of Euclid. But much more may the 
 same be observed respecting our judgment on the 
 great truths of morals. Here it is especially, that
 
 THE PATTERN MAN. 47 
 
 we bear witness continually to the possession of a 
 common nature. Ingratitude and oppression, jus- 
 tice and truth the feelings of which these are 
 the natural objects testify clearly to some close 
 alliance, which binds together all the far-severed 
 scions of the family of mankind. 
 
 Independently of our conviction, that our opi- 
 nions have such truth and rectitude as must com- 
 mend them to higher beings, there is a principle 
 of sympathy in our judgments, which irresistibly 
 enforces upon us the kindred character of our 
 minds. When Milton describes Adam's inter- 
 course with an angel, he is compelled to seek for 
 that principle of connexion in gratitude to a com- 
 mon Creator, which some inherent law of union 
 produces of itself among mankind : 
 
 " Only this I know, 
 That one Celestial Father gives to all." 
 
 So that, however strong may be the arguments for 
 Creatianism in respect to some part of our spiri- 
 tual constitution, we cannot doubt that a connect- 
 ing principle either binds together these more 
 subtile parts of man's being, or that they are in- 
 fluenced by the alliance of that with which they 
 are united. 9 How close is the connexion which 
 
 9 " The Pelagian can form no other estimate of humanity, 
 than as a mass of co-ordinate independent spiritual individuals ; 
 in virtue, as in sin, every one stands and falls by himself. The 
 Augustinian cannot think of it, except as a collective commu-
 
 48 CHRIST, BY NATURE 
 
 may often be traced even in mental qualities, be- 
 tween the inheritors of the same blood. True, they 
 resemble one another most closely in such parts of 
 their mental constitution as most border upon phy- 
 sical being in memory, for example in habits 
 in hand-writing ; but such things are surely some 
 reflection of what lives within. And then rising 
 from the family to the race, the calculations which 
 are founded on the acts and opinions of men, indi- 
 cate as wonderful an accordance in the judgment 
 of mankind, regarded as a whole, as we find dissi- 
 milarity through the eccentricities of individuals. 
 By some this has been carried so far, that tables 
 have been drawn up, on which it is stated that con- 
 siderable reliance may be placed, with a view to 
 estimate the probable moral conduct of a number 
 of individuals. 10 This has been thought to militate 
 against the reality of man's spiritual nature. Yet 
 what does it show in reality, but that the same 
 unity which belongs so clearly to the animal nature, 
 extends itself likewise to the spiritual part of man ? 
 Our knowledge of immaterial, like our knowledge 
 of material essences, is drawn only from observa- 
 tion ; each has its laws and mode of action ; and 
 those who would materialize spirit, go no further 
 in settling the perplexities of our compound nature, 
 
 nity, the individual members whereof are not separate indepen- 
 dent wholes, but integral portions of the totality." Olshausen 
 on Rom. v. 12. 
 
 10 Vide an extract from the Dublin Review, for August, 
 1840, in "The Vestiges of Creation," p. 333, second edition.
 
 THE PATTERN MAN. 49 
 
 than those who would spiritualize matter. The 
 fact, therefore, remains where it was before ; both 
 our outer and inner being testify to the existence 
 of a relation between the different members of the 
 family of man. It may be that our inner being is 
 in part handed down from one to other in part 
 derived from that creative impulse, which gives 
 each of us a personal life. But whatever theory 
 be adopted on this subject, the facts of the case 
 testify to the existence of one common life, and this 
 common life we call human nature. 11 
 
 It may be said that the preceding considerations 
 do not disprove the system of Creatianism ; for why 
 may not like produce like, though no such entity 
 as human nature be admitted ? No attempt has 
 been made to disprove this system, as being incapa- 
 
 11 " In Adam the original material of Humanity, in Christ the 
 original idea of it in the divine mind, have a personal existence. 
 In them is Humanity concentrated, and therefore is Adam's sin 
 the sin of all, and Christ's offering an universal atonement. 
 Every leaf of a tree may flourish and wither by itself, but all 
 suffer from the decay of the root, and profit by its recovery. 
 The more superficial a man is, the more isolated will everything 
 seem to him, for on the surface all things are detached. In 
 mankind, in the nation, even in the family, he will see nothing 
 but individuals, whose actions are altogether distinct. The 
 deeper a man is, the more conscious will he be of those inward 
 principles of unity, which radiate from the centre. Even the 
 love of our neighbour is only a deep feeling of this unity, for a 
 man does not love those to whom he does not perceive and feel 
 himself bound. Unless sin could come through one, and through 
 one atonement, there could be no understanding the command 
 to love our neighbour." StahPs Phil, des Rechfs, quoted by 
 Olsliausen on Rom. v. 12.
 
 50 CHRIST, BY NATURE 
 
 ble either of proof or of refutation. What has been 
 maintained has been, first, that the logical objec- 
 tion to Traducianism, which is built upon the sys- 
 tem of Nominalism, is inconclusive ; secondly, that 
 probability is infinitely in favour of Traducianism, 
 except in regard to a certain principle of Per- 
 sonality, which has the appearance of being a dis- 
 tinct and original essence. For if no reason is 
 known why like should produce like, the chances 
 are infinitely against such a result, and in certain 
 other cases of an analogous character, an actual 
 traduction can be discerned. To say that for like 
 to spring from like may be a law imprinted by the 
 Creator's will, would be to concede the point under 
 discussion, since what is meant by a traditive nature, 
 except that God has bound successive generations 
 to the primary pair by a law of continuity ? But 
 for the proof that men are really associated by this 
 inexplicable law, we can refer only to Holy Scrip- 
 ture, as being the sole document, which professes 
 to give us an authoritative explanation of man's 
 nature. Now, to what purpose is the history of the 
 race traced to its earliest origin a thing towards 
 which all heathen mythologies were tending, but 
 which Scripture alone attains unless its fortunes 
 were regarded as a whole, and it must stand or 
 fall together ? Again, what means the statement, 
 that "by one man sin entered into the world, 
 and death by sin," unless there be some real con- 
 nexion between the sous of men, whereby the acts
 
 THE PATTERN MAN. 51 
 
 of one affect another ? For the Apostle expressly 
 observes, that his statement is not confined to those 
 whose voluntary acts might have been imitations 
 of their predecessor. This explanation might per- 
 haps be alleged as a ground for the sinfulness of 
 responsible agents. But are not sin and death in- 
 separably united ? And how, then, do we account 
 for the sufferings and death of unconscious infants? 
 " Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses, 
 even over them that had not sinned after the 
 similitude of Adam's transgression." 12 
 
 Again, the same truth is alluded to, when the 
 Apostle tells us, that "as I may so say, Levi 
 also, who receiveth tithes, paid tithes in Abraham. 
 For he was yet in the loins of his father when 
 Melchisedec met him." 13 The introduction shows, 
 indeed, that the statement is used in way of illus- 
 tration. Yet there must be a reality, which it 
 is intended to illustrate. That reality lies in the 
 actual connexion, by which the parties described 
 were bound together. Had there been no such 
 actual connexion, the expression had been forced 
 and hyperbolical. The use of so strong a term 
 shows that we are dealing with the case of things 
 which are not only associated together, so that 
 we can refer them to the same class, but which 
 are united by some actual bond to one another. 
 There is set before us the case of a great family, 
 commencing from the earliest period of recorded 
 12 Romans, v. 12, 14. 13 Hebrews, vii. 9, 10.
 
 52 CHRIST, BY NATUEE 
 
 time, and extending throughout all portions of the 
 earth. It has an actual reference to one common 
 ancestor, and its connexion is analogous to that 
 interdependency of structure, which unites the 
 different portions of an organic agent into a co- 
 ordinate whole. Now, into this family it was, that 
 Christ Our Lord was pleased to enter. When He 
 took man's nature, He vouchsafed to ally Himself 
 to all members of this extended series, by the 
 actual adoption of that transmitted being which 
 related Him to the rest. He not only became like 
 men, and dwelt among them, but He became man 
 itself an actual descendant from their first pro- 
 genitor. He was made man. The Heathen notions 
 of divine succour either looked to the elevation of 
 some man to a divine eminency, or to the depres- 
 sion of some God to the level of mankind. But it 
 was reserved for the Gospel to declare that God 
 had actually become man, that He had really 
 entitled Himself to a share in the hereditary cha- 
 racteristics of this lower being, and qualified Him- 
 self for copartnership with His brethren. 
 
 Now, this is the fact declared, when it is stated 
 that Christ took man's nature : it implies the reality 
 of a common humanity, and His perfect and entire 
 entrance into its ranks. Thus did He assume a 
 common relation to all mankind. This is why the 
 existence of human nature is a thing too precious 
 to be surrendered to the subtilties of logic, because 
 upon its existence depends that real manhood of
 
 THE PATTERN MAN. 53 
 
 Christ, which renders Him a copartner with our- 
 selves. And upon the reality of this fact is built 
 that peculiar connexion between God and man, 
 which is expressed by the term Mediation. It 
 looks to an actual alteration in the condition of 
 mankind, through the admission of a member into 
 its ranks, in whom and through whom it attained 
 an unprecedented elevation. Unless we discern 
 this real impulse which was bestowed upon hu- 
 manity, the doctrines of Atonement and Sanctifica- 
 tion, though confessed in w r ords, become a mere 
 empty phraseology. That " God was in Christ 
 reconciling the w r orld unto Himself," implies an 
 actual acceptance of the children of men, on ac- 
 count of the merits of one of their race ; as well as 
 an actual change in the race itself, through the 
 entrance of its nobler associate. The work of 
 man's redemption and renewal is a real work, per- 
 formed by real agents. It is not only that the 
 Almighty was pleased to save appearances, if we 
 may so express it, by conceding to the representa- 
 tions of a third party, what He did not choose 
 otherwise to yield or to acknowledge (as Queen 
 Philippa prevailed over her harsher husband, 
 Edward) ; but Christ's Incarnation w T as a step in 
 the mighty purposes of the Most High, whereby 
 all the relations of heaven and earth were truly 
 affected. To deny, as is done by Bishop Hamp- 
 den, 14 "that we may attribute to God any change 
 14 Bampton Lecture, V. p. 252.
 
 54 CHRIST, BY NATURE 
 
 of purpose towards man by what Christ has done," 
 would be to resolve this real series of acts into 
 a mere technical juggle. But to the reality of this 
 work, the existence of that common nature is indis- 
 pensable, w T hereby, " as the children were partakers 
 of flesh and blood, He Himself took part of the 
 same." Else, how would the perfect assumption of 
 humanity have consisted with His retaining that 
 divine personality, which it was impossible that He 
 should surrender ? Since it was no new person 
 which He took, it can only have been the substra- 
 tum, in which personality has its existence. For 
 His Incarnation was not the " conversion of God- 
 head into flesh, but the taking of the manhood into 
 God." Or how could He have entered into a com- 
 mon relation to mankind in general, unless there 
 had existed a common nature as the medium of 
 union ? This nature, which exists only in indi- 
 vidual persons, He took for the earthly clothing of 
 that divine personality, in which He must ever con- 
 tinue to exist. 
 
 What Christ associated to Himself, therefore, was 
 no individual man, but that common nature of 
 which Adam was the first example. " It was not 
 any human person in particular," says Bishop Beve- 
 ridge, " but the human nature [which] He assumed 
 into His sacred person." 15 "'The Word' (saith 
 St. John) ' was made flesh and dwelt in us. J The 
 Evangelist useth the plural number, men for man- 
 15 On Third Article, Works 9, 115.
 
 THE PATTERN MAN. 55 
 
 hood, us for the nature whereof we consist, even as 
 the Apostle, denying the assumption of angelical 
 nature, saith likewise in the plural number, ' He 
 took not angels, but the seed of Abraham.' 16 It 
 pleased not the Word or Wisdom of God to take 
 to itself some one person amongst men, for then 
 should that one have been advanced which was 
 assumed, and no more ; but Wisdom, to the end she 
 might save many, built her house of that nature 
 which is common unto all she made not this or 
 that man her habitation, but dwelt in us. The 
 seeds of herbs and plants at the first are not in act, 
 but in possibility, that which they afterwards grow 
 to be. If the Son of God had taken to Himself a 
 man now made and already perfected, it would of 
 necessity follow, that there are in Christ two per- 
 sons, the one assuming, and the other assumed; 
 whereas the Son of God did not assume a man's 
 person unto His own, but a man's nature to His 
 own person, and therefore took semen, the seed of 
 Abraham, the very first original element of our 
 
 o 
 
 nature, before it was come to have any personal 
 human subsistence." 17 
 
 16 The marginal reading, " He taketh not hold of angels, but 
 of the seed of Abraham He taketh hold," is no doubt the literal 
 rendering of the Greek original of Heb. ii. 16. The rendering 
 in the text, however, which is the traditional one, stands to the 
 literal one, as the context shows, in the relation of effect to 
 cause, since it was because " the children are partakers of flesh 
 and blood," that " He also Himself likewise took part of the 
 same." And, therefore, the argument of the text is not impaired 
 by the mistranslation. 17 Eccles. Pol. v. 52-3.
 
 56 CHRIST, BY NATURE 
 
 II. We conclude, then, that there is such a thing 
 as that common nature of man which is handed 
 down through an innumerable series of personal in- 
 heritors; and further, that He who was personally 
 God, took His place in this series by Incarnation, 
 and thus assumed a common relation to all its pos- 
 sessors. It remains to show, in the second place, 
 what was that peculiarity in His manner of taking 
 manhood, which rendered this divine partaker of 
 our nature, the proper head and representative of 
 the rest. That He would be greater, wiser, purer, 
 than others is manifest; But why was He their 
 natural representative ? What fitted Him to answer 
 for the rest? The nobler member who is adopted 
 into an earthly fraternity, has more influence than 
 his brethren ; but He does not become their repre- 
 sentative, unless so constituted by their voluntary 
 act. What was there in Christ's manner of adopt- 
 ing our being, which marked Him out from others ; 
 so that when He was pleased to introduce Himself 
 into the family of human beings, He became at 
 once " the first-born of every creature," " the be- 
 ginning of the creation of God?" Now, this ques- 
 tion is answered in Holy Scripture, when the name 
 of " the last Adam" is bestowed upon Him. Here- 
 by we learn, that those circumstances which ren- 
 dered Adam the type and head of man's race, are 
 exhibited again in more perfect measure in the man 
 Jesus Christ. The relation of Adam to the race of 
 which he was the first example, is witnessed by the
 
 THE PATTERN MAN. 57 
 
 use of his name in the Hebrew language, as a 
 generic title for the human family. Not only is 
 Adam the word employed, when it is said, " let us 
 make man;" but the article prefixed to his name 
 (in cases where our version gives no indication of 
 it) implies that he was the man, the head or repre- 
 sentative of humanity. 18 The grounds of this rela- 
 tion to mankind at large are twofold : First, the tie 
 of common parentage, on account of which "the 
 man called his wife's name Eve, because she was 
 the mother of all living ;" and secondly, that he 
 was the type who represented the race in its per- 
 fection. " The Lord fashioned the Adam who was 
 dust from the earth, and breathed into his nostrils 
 the breath of life, and the Adam became a living 
 soul." An ingenious writer makes it an argument 
 against the genuineness of the book of Genesis " as 
 we have it," that there is here " an obvious attempt 
 to biographize the protogonous and archetypal 
 man ;" 19 but those who are content to take Scrip- 
 ture as they find it, will recognize in this circum- 
 stance the real connexion between the archetype 
 and his descendants. And such a connexion is a 
 necessary preparation for the great antitype of our 
 first parent the new man Jesus Christ. And if 
 His relation to His brethren is to be as perfect 
 as that of the first Adam, it must rest on the same 
 conditions He must be the stock from whom all 
 
 18 Vide Genesis, ii. 19, 20, 21 ; iii. 8 ; and iv. 1. 
 
 19 Vindication of Protestant Principles, p. 140.
 
 58 CHRIST, BY NATURE 
 
 are descended, and the new type after which they 
 are to be formed. Now, the first of these grounds 
 of connexion shall be touched upon hereafter, when 
 we speak of that sacramental union, whereby men 
 are united to Christ. " The words of Adam," says 
 Hooker, "may be fitly the words of Christ con- 
 cerning His Church, ' flesh of my flesh, and bone 
 of my bones,' a true native extract out of mine 
 own body." 20 But what is asserted in this chap- 
 ter is, that the new Adam was as truly the type 
 and pattern of the renewed, as the old Adam of 
 the first creation. Thus did He occupy a place 
 corresponding to our original father, and become, 
 though in a different manner, the representative 
 of the race. Had He been only a common man, 
 however remarkable, He could not be placed in 
 opposition to our first parent, who was both the 
 fountain of our being, and the perfect specimen, 
 on whom the rest were moulded. Hereafter we 
 shall trace the principle of affinity which binds 
 Him to all men : at present it shall be shown, that 
 as Adam was the type in which man was originally 
 made, so Our Lord, regarded according to His 
 human being, was the fresh type, on which was 
 remodelled the nature of mankind. 
 
 The first step in this inquiry is to consider more 
 
 fully how Adam was the type, in which humanity 
 
 was originally made; and thus we shall be led to 
 
 discern that corresponding place, which is occupied 
 
 20 Eccles. Pol. v. 56-7.
 
 THE PATTERN MAN. 59 
 
 by the purer and nobler type of manhood the 
 man Christ Jesus. For adopting this course there 
 is great authority. " You may wonder," says St. 
 Athanasius, "why, when we have proposed to treat 
 of the Incarnation, we now discuss the origin of 
 man. Yet to do so is nowise alien from our pur- 
 pose. For it is necessary that, in treating of Our 
 Lord's appearance among us, we should first con- 
 sider the origin of man." 21 What w r as there pecu- 
 liar then in Adam ? Wherein did the Protoplast, 
 as Bishop Bull calls him, after St. Irenaeus, differ 
 from us all ? His constitution, like ours, consisted 
 of body, soul, and spirit. The first and second of 
 these were the seat of appetite of that capacity 
 of admitting material impulses, which, in itself, is 
 neither virtuous nor sinful. Adam eat in Paradise ; 
 Eve discerned what was " good for food." It was 
 not till an act of disobedience had separated man 
 from God, that appetite degenerated into concupis- 
 cence. Its sinfulness arises from its being ungo- 
 verned, as more or less it is, in all the sinful 
 progeny of Adam. 22 " I delight in the law of God 
 
 21 De Incarnations, sec. 4, vol. i. p. 50. 
 
 2 "Concupiscence and lust hath of itself the nature of 
 sin." Art. ix. an intermediate declaration between the state- 
 ments of the Council of Trent and the ordinary Protestant 
 Confessions. 
 
 The words of the Augustan Confession are : " Quod hie 
 morbus, seu vitium originis, vere sit peccatum, &c." Sylloge 
 Conf., p. 123. 
 
 The Westminster Confession says : " Both itself, and all the 
 motions thereof, are truly and properly sin." 
 
 On the other hand, the Council of Trent says : " Concupiscen-
 
 60 CHRIST, BY NATURE 
 
 after the inward man, but I see another law in my 
 members warring against the law of my mind." 23 
 Again, the soul and spirit of man were the seat 
 of the various passions and affections, while con- 
 science and will belonged especially to the spirit. 
 Wherein lies that personality, which makes each 
 man a separate individual, and thus responsible 
 for the deeds done in the body, before the throne 
 of God, it is vain to conjecture. Of all our con- 
 stituent parts, will seems the most to resemble it; 
 yet even will it is not, for in Christ was one person, 
 yet two wills. Neither is it the same thing with 
 conscience, however closely they are combined. 
 Enough that it is a principle unlike aught besides 
 in the universe, except it be found in those spiritual 
 essences, which exist along with and around us in 
 the creation of God. 
 
 Now, in Adam, all these parts of our nature 
 were not only good in themselves, but they were 
 happily co-ordinated, the one to the other. 24 
 Appetite was not rebellious against reason, nor 
 passion against conscience. So that not only were 
 the parts of his constitution excellent, as being the 
 workmanship of God Himself, but the man who 
 resulted from their union was good also. And 
 this it is which is wanting in Adam's descendants, 
 and which is expressed by that corruption 25 of 
 
 tiam Ecclesiam nunquam intellexisse peccatum appellari, quod 
 vere et proprie in renatis peccatum sit, sed quia ex peccato est, 
 et ad peccatum inclinat." Sess. v. sec. 5. 
 23 Rom. vii. 22, 23. 24 Genesis, i. 81. * Psalms, li. 5.
 
 THE PATTERN MAN. 61 
 
 nature, in which they are declared to be born. 
 Not, of course, that the constituents of our nature 
 can change their character, since they are either 
 indifferent, like the bodily appetites, or good, like 
 the moral virtues ; but they become evil in us, 
 because the general disorganization of our con- 
 stitution diverts each of them from their proper 
 aim and service. To eat is not sinful, nor the 
 appetite of hunger but gluttony, whether in will 
 or deed. How could the half-frozen inhabitants 
 of Greenland have been affected, as the Moravians 
 witness, at the declaration of Our Lord's sufferings 
 for the sins of men, unless there were some such 
 principle as gratitude remaining in our constitution ? 
 And if these principles remain, they cannot have 
 turned round and changed their nature; man's 
 fault is, not that he feels gratitude or love, but 
 that his love is so weak, and that his gratitude is 
 not proof against temptation. The corruption of 
 nature, then, does not lie in these separate portions 
 of it, but in that perversion of man, as a whole, by 
 which their harmony is disturbed, and their pur- 
 poses frustrated. Therefore, a woe 26 is denounced 
 in Scripture against those who deny the truth of 
 these constituent parts of the witness of man's con- 
 science. For if there be no truth in such inward 
 admonitions, what do we mean by speaking of good 
 or evil; and why are we bound to adopt the one, 
 and eschew the other? This was the result to 
 26 Isaiah v. 20.
 
 62 CHRIST, BY NATURE 
 
 which the Manichaeans were led, by supposing 
 human corruption to lie, not in the actings of man 
 as a whole, but in the constituent parts of his 
 nature. The source of evil was traced back from 
 man to his author, and he was alleged to be the 
 work of that evil spirit, whose impress was sup- 
 posed to be visible in the elements of his nature. 
 
 Human corruption then lies in man himself, in 
 the compound creature, who was created good but 
 chose evil. Adam, on the other hand, came from 
 his Maker's hands in the purity of innocence. The 
 compound creature was good. The whole being 
 was in harmony with that higher part of it, which 
 was intended to sway; while all the propensions 
 and appetites moved along with it in happy subor- 
 dination. He needed corroboration, but not im- 
 provement. Yet whence was it that he had light 
 for the guidance of his being? Can man, who is a 
 creature, have light in himself? Is not the light of 
 the moral as well as of the physical world an 
 emanation from the fountain of light? The very 
 Heathen had a conviction that man's nature could 
 not be developed in its fullest proportions, without 
 such external aid : " Nemo sine aliquo afflatu divino 
 vir magnus unquam fuit." Conscience, that is, ap- 
 pears to tell us, that a moral being cannot attain to 
 perfection, without the co-operation of that Infinite 
 Being, in whom perfection is innate. In Adam, 
 therefore, there must have been superadded to 
 those natural qualities which have been described,
 
 THE PATTERN MAN. 63 
 
 some supernatural gift, for the guidance of the 
 whole. 27 Otherwise, man would have approached 
 too near to such independent and self-originating 
 
 27 In affirming that original righteousness is a supernatural 
 gift, it seems improper not to notice the objection taken against 
 the assertion by so high an authority as Dr. Jackson. His 
 objection rests upon the belief, that supposing original righteous- 
 ness supernatural, " this grace or quality might have been, or 
 rather was, lost, without any real wound unto our nature." It 
 is obvious, therefore, that his objection attaches not to the idea, 
 that original righteousness was so high a gift that it transcended 
 the inherent efficacy even of unfallen nature, but to the notion 
 that nature was, in itself, something perfect and entire without 
 such addition. Such an idea was attributed to some of the 
 schoolmen, who are alleged by Archbishop Lawrence to have 
 thought supernatural grace a " superinduced ornament, the 
 removal of which could not prove detrimental to the native 
 powers." That such was the opinion which Dr. Jackson was 
 opposing, is obvious from his own words, " that the righteous- 
 ness wherein Adam was created, was a natural endowment in 
 respect of the essential quality produced, albeit the manner of 
 producing it were somewhat more than supernatural." [ B. x. 3, 
 1, vol. ix. p. 9.] Now, this is all which is assumed in the 
 present argument. The purpose of Jackson was not to exalt 
 the natural powers of man, but to maintain, that by the Fall he 
 was not only deprived of a valuable auxiliary, but that (except 
 so far as God should help him) he lost that which was indispen- 
 sable to the practice of virtue. This seems to be conveyed by the 
 statement of Aquinas, " homo per peccatum originale spoliatur 
 in gratuitis, vulneratur in natural'ibus" And it is expressed 
 with great clearness by a writer, to whom, when treating on 
 this very subject, Jackson refers with high commendation: 
 "that reverend and great divine, Dr. Field, then Dean of 
 Gloucester." Jackson, x. 13, 7, vol. ix. p. 78. 
 
 " Original righteousness is said to be a supernatural quality, 
 because it groweth not out of nature ; because it raiseth nature 
 above itself ; but it is natural, that is, required to the integrity 
 of nature. 
 
 " Neither should it seem strange to any man, that a quality
 
 64 CHRIST, BY NATURE 
 
 action, as St. Athanasius 28 reminds us does not 
 belong even to the angels ; he would have been an 
 efficient cause, a sort of demi-god. " Quicquid a 
 Deo non pendet, ut auctore et principio, per nexus 
 et gradus subordinates, id loco Dei erit, et novum 
 principium, et Deaster quidam." 29 " Man's nature," 
 said the Anti-Pelagian Fathers at the Council of 
 Orange (Canon 19), "even if it remained in that 
 entireness in which it was created, could never pre- 
 serve itself without its Creator's help." 30 There 
 must have been some divine principle in man- 
 some supernatural gift, superadded to the consti- 
 tution of his nature. And such we are told there 
 was. For not only did God create " man out of 
 the dust of the earth," thus giving him body, and 
 breathe " into his nostrils the breath of life," 
 whereby he " became a living soul," but He also 
 created man in His own image " in the image of 
 God created He him." Now, since " God is a 
 
 not growing out of nature, should be required necessarily for 
 the perfecting of nature's integrity ; seeing the end and object 
 of man's desires, knowledge, and actions, is an infinite thing, and 
 without the compass and bounds of nature. And therefore the 
 nature of man cannot, as all other things do, by natural force, 
 and things bred within herself, attain to her wished end ; but 
 must either by supernatural grace be guided and directed to it, 
 or, being left to herself, fail of that perfection she is capable of, 
 and fill herself with infinite evils, defects, and miseries." Field 
 on the Church, Book iii. c. 26. 
 
 28 They are not, he says, efficient causes [H-OM/TIKOV an-toi/], so 
 
 as to be able to co-operate along with God as independent beings, 
 
 in the work of man's salvation. Or. III. cont. Arianos, sec. 14. 
 
 29 Bacon's Meditationes Sacra. "Works v. 530. 
 
 30 Harduin's Cone. 2. p. 1100.
 
 THE PATTEEN MAN. 65 
 
 spirit," this must refer especially to the nature and 
 constitution of man's mind. Its essence, that is, 
 must be in those things which especially charac- 
 terize man's spirit the conscience, namely, and the 
 will. Yet the language of Scripture leads us to 
 give it a wider scope, as embracing all the excel- 
 lencies, both outward and inward, with which man's 
 nature was endowed. For, from the supremacy of 
 his mind proceeds the power of which even his 
 lower nature is possessed. Herein lies that myste- 
 rious principle of Will, which renders his senses and 
 members its instruments. So that three effects are 
 derived especially from the gift of God's image : 
 first, Lordship over the earth and lower animals ; 31 
 secondly, Knowledge of God's works in creation, 
 with which the possession of language w r as inti- 
 mately connected; 32 thirdly, Intercourse with God, 
 from whom man received direct instructions re- 
 specting his conduct. 33 Now, of these three things, 
 the last seems to have been that of which sin most 
 completely deprived him. Approach to God, the 
 true fountain of knowledge ; the opportunity of 
 intercourse with Him; the derivation of perfect 
 \visdom from His infinite into our contracted na- 
 ture, was the first thing which sin rendered impos- 
 sible. Hence did Adam hide himself from God's 
 immediate presence; and Cain declared that its 
 final loss was the consummation of his punish- 
 
 31 Genesis, i. 28. ffi Genesis, ii. 19. ffl Genesis, ii. 16. 
 
 F
 
 66 CHRIST, BY NATURE 
 
 ment : " From Thy face shall I be hid." 34 To 
 this source even nature points, as the ultimate 
 origin of knowledge : 
 
 " Dixitque primum nascentibus auctor 
 Quicquid scire licet." 
 
 This it is which renders the creatures worthy of 
 our study; they are the handiwork of Him, in 
 whose knowledge is the perfection of wisdom. 
 The infinite extent of His kingdom leads our 
 thoughts to Him, who is as multiform in His 
 works, as He is simple in His ways. And the 
 restoration of this intercourse is the measure of 
 man's recovery, for "this is life eternal, to know 
 Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom 
 Thou hast sent." 
 
 This effect of God's image was lost by sin, by 
 which that image in general suffered detriment. 
 Therefore, it is declared, in a marked manner, that 
 "Adam begat a son in his own likeness, after his 
 image." 35 Yet that God's image was not alto- 
 gether lost, is plainly declared in Scripture. For 
 when murder was forbidden after the Flood, the 
 ground of its enormity is referred to that original 
 construction of man in God's image, which would 
 have ceased to be a reason for his preservation, 
 if it had been altogether withdrawn. 36 The same 
 conclusion may be derived from the reference to 
 
 34 Genesis, iii. 8, and iv. 14. 
 35 Genesis, v. 3. ^ Genesis, ix. 6.
 
 THE PATTERN MAN. 67 
 
 this principle, as an argument against detraction, 37 
 and as sanctioning the arrangements of domestic 
 life. 38 This partial loss of a principle which is not 
 totally forfeited, led some of the ancient writers 
 to discriminate between God's likejiess, which was 
 lost by sin, and His image, which was still re- 
 tained. The distinction is especially maintained 
 by the Alexandrian Fathers. And St. Cyril of 
 Jerusalem says, " God's image man received at the 
 Creation; but His likeness He obscured through 
 disobedience." 39 And so says Tertullian: "What 
 comes from God is not so much extinguished as 
 overshadowed. It can be overshadowed, because 
 it is not God: it cannot be extinguished, because 
 God gave it." 40 The image of God, therefore, 
 remains as that principle of conscience, which St. 
 Paul vindicates even for the heathen world. 41 And 
 "Esaias is very bold, and saith, I was found of 
 them that sought me not ; I was made manifest 
 unto them that asked not after me." 42 But is this 
 " work of the law, written in their hearts," an 
 implanted, or an imparted gift ; is it a power of 
 judging with which God endowed men, and then 
 left them to themselves ; or is it the result of His 
 remaining presence ? It must plainly have been 
 from the first an indwelling, not an implanted, gift, 
 because it is declared to have been the indwelling 
 of that principle of life, which is inherent in the 
 
 37 James, iii. 9. M I. Cor. xi. 7. M Catech. xiv. 10. 
 40 De Anima, 41. 41 Romans, ii. 15. ** Romans, x. 20.
 
 68 CHKIST, BY NATURE 
 
 Eternal WORD. "In Him was life, and the life 
 was the light of men." And to be an independent, 
 original source of life, is an incommunicable attri- 
 bute of self-existent GODHEAD; for it belonged as 
 an especial gift to Him, in whom the Spirit dwelt 
 without measure. "For as the Father hath life 
 in Himself, so hath He given to the Son to have 
 life in Himself." That which was bestowed then 
 as a peculiar attribute on the Son Incarnate, could 
 belong to man only as an indwelling gift by super- 
 natural communication. So that our first parents, 
 as St. Chrysostom says, " were clothed with glory 
 from above." 43 And St. Athanasius speaks of the 
 first man as " having received grace from without, 
 and having lost it." 44 That which guided him 
 was an illumination from that exhaustless foun- 
 tain, which has its centre in Him, before 
 whom the angels hide their faces, and "who 
 dwelleth in the light which nothing can approach 
 unto." 45 
 
 The guiding light then of original humanity, 
 was not merely that perfection of natural under- 
 standing, which resulted from the happy consti- 
 tution of man's inherent powers, but a special and 
 supernatural indwelling of the great author of all 
 knowledge. And as this results from the general 
 testimonies of Scripture respecting that sole source 
 
 43 De Gen. Horn. xv. Or. II. c. Arian. 68, & Or. III. 38. 
 45 0w9 OIKWV aTTpdffnov. The force of the term is hardly 
 given by "no man can approach unto." I. Tim. vi. 16.
 
 THE PATTERN MAN. 69 
 
 of wisdom who dwells above, so it is confirmed 
 by what is taught respecting the subsequent gifts 
 bestowed upon mankind. For even the Heathen 
 must have derived their remaining light of con- 
 science, however darkened and confused, from Him 
 who is "the true light which lighteth every man." 46 
 And it is the peculiar blessing of Christians, that 
 by their union with Christ, they may renew that 
 connexion with God which Adam lost. For it was 
 through the intervention of the Word, or Eternal 
 Son, that man was originally created in the image 
 of his Maker. For it was by Him that "the worlds 
 were made." He was that Word or Wisdom, 
 "whose delights were with the sons of men." 47 
 Especially does St. John tell us, that it was 
 through Him that the Light or guidance of man 
 was given. 
 
 Now, it is set forth in numerous places of Holy 
 Writ, that the peculiar gift of the Holy Ghost, 
 which is bestowed in the Gospel, is that through 
 union with the Son of God, we may regain the 
 perfect image of the Creator. Christ " became the 
 head 48 of man's race," says St. Irenaeus, " that in 
 Him we might recover the likeness of God, which 
 in Adam we had lost." Inasmuch, then, as the 
 gift of union with Christ, which is bestowed by the 
 Holy Ghost, is plainly a supernatural blessing, and 
 
 46 1. John, i. 9. 47 Proverbs, viii. 31. 
 
 48 " Recapitulavit." 'AvuKefyaXaiotu was, no doubt, the original 
 word of St. Irenasus, iii. 18, 1, p. 209.
 
 70 CHRIST, BY NATURE 
 
 that through it we are to recover that likeness 
 to God which man originally possessed, it follows 
 that the likeness of God must have been some 
 Divine presence, superadded to primitive nature. 
 This presence of a superior Being was what gave 
 perfection to that likeness of God in which man 
 was created. Now, that what is to be enjoyed in 
 the Gospel is a likeness to Christ, and thus to God, 
 is a truth which had been ever pressing upon the 
 minds of the Apostles, from the time that our 
 Lord vouchsafed that wondrous declaration : " The 
 glory, which Thou gavest Me, have I given them." 
 Hence St. Paul declares it the vocation of Chris- 
 tians, that whom God " did foreknow, He also did 
 predestinate to be conformed to the image of His 
 Son." 49 Hence he tells the Corinthians that "as 
 we have borne the image of the earthy, we must 
 also bear the image of the heavenly." 50 And 
 again he says, that Christians " have put on the 
 new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the 
 image of Him that created him." 51 And "we all 
 reflecting 52 like a glass the glory of the Lord, are 
 changed into the same image from glory to glory, 
 even as by the Spirit of the Lord." All these 
 passages show, that the gift of the Gospel is that 
 "knowledge of the glory of God in the face of 
 
 49 Romans, viii. 29. * I. Corinthians, xv. 49. 
 
 51 Colossians, iii. 10. See also Ephesians, iv. 22, 23 ; I. John, 
 iii. 2 ; II. Corinthians, iv. 4. 
 
 52 Vide Olshausen on II. Corinthians, iii. 18.
 
 THE PATTERN MAN. 71 
 
 Jesus Christ," which had originally, though as the 
 Apostle implies in inferior measure, been designed 
 for the family of man. When the Eternal Word 
 created the first man in God's image, He bestowed 
 the beginning of this gift; its fulness was vouch- 
 safed when He gave Himself to be the second man 
 in the flesh. 
 
 And this may lead us to some further apprecia- 
 tion of what has been already stated, that birth-sin 
 does not lie in the depravation of those individual 
 principles of right and wrong, which constitute the 
 witness of our conscience, but in the disorder and 
 disarrangement which our being, regarded as a 
 whole, has derived from sin. This is " the fault 
 and corruption" of every man's nature. For the 
 very cause of this disorder is the withdrawal, or at 
 least the obscuration of that divine light, by w r hich 
 man was originally guided. And thence arises the 
 turmoil and confusion of clamorous appetites war- 
 ring against the law r of our mind, and bringing us 
 into captivity to the law of sin, which is in our 
 members. We must be careful indeed not to limit 
 this rebellion of the inferior nature to that material 
 being, which has been united in our constitution to 
 an intelligent soul. This is the heresy of Manes, 
 which is for ever appearing under various forms, 
 and which merges the deformity of sin in the 
 impotence of matter. The inheritance of man's 
 sin extends both to his body and his mind. It 
 follows from the lack of that divine light which
 
 72 CHRIST, BY NATURE 
 
 man lost through sin, and which is not less need- 
 ful for the guidance of his intellect, than for the 
 subjugation of his material clay. So that man's 
 corruption 53 consists first, in the deprivation of the 
 divine guidance which he has rejected, for "the 
 light shined in darkness, and the darkness compre- 
 hended it not;" and secondly, in the consequent 
 rebellion of the lower principles of his body and his 
 soul. Now, that this is the real nature of man's 
 sinfulness is evidenced by the fact that Christ our 
 Lord took our common nature ; and it may also be 
 shown to be most accordant with those principles 
 of justice, which the Most High has sanctioned in 
 Holy Scripture. That Christ should have taken 
 man's nature, shows that its corruption was not in 
 such wise inherent in its existence, that to assume 
 the nature, was to adopt the sin. On this subject 
 we may quote a remarkable admission in Baur's 
 reply to Mohler's work on Symbolism. Certain 
 expressions of some of the German Reformers tend, 
 according to Mohler, to the Manichaean heresy; 
 
 53 " If we speak of original sin formally, it is the privation 
 of those excellent gifts of divine grace, enabling us to know, 
 love, fear, serve, honour, and trust in God, and to do the 
 things He delighteth in, which Adam had and lost. If mate- 
 rially, it is that habitual inclination that is found in men 
 averse from God, carrying them to the love and desire of 
 finite things more than of God, and this also is properly sin, 
 making guilty of condemnation the nature and person in which 
 it is found. This habitual inclination to desire finite things 
 inordinately is named concupiscence." Field on the Church, 
 Appendix to Book 3, Chap. 5.
 
 THE PATTERN MAN. 73 
 
 because, by making man's hereditary sin a positive 
 part of his constitution, they exempt man himself, 
 regarded as a whole, from its guilt, and refer it 
 back in reality to the being by whom this part of 
 his constitution was created. Baur replies, that 
 whatever may be alleged against the expressions in 
 question, such could not have been their intention, 
 because the German Reformers affirm Christ to 
 have become by Incarnation consubstantial with 
 mankind. " That Christ's manhood was consub- 
 stantial with the nature even of fallen man, was 
 never denied by the Protestants ; all that was 
 affirmed was, that He was free from original sin. 
 But had the true meaning of the Protestant teach- 
 ing respecting original sin been, as Mohler sup- 
 poses, to reduce man to the condition of a beast, 
 it would have been impossible that Christ should 
 have been consubstantial with mankind." 54 Thus 
 then are we led to the conclusion, that original sin 
 arises from the absence of that guiding light, the 
 lack of which was followed by general confusion in 
 man's inner nature. By this means was a door 
 opened to that hostile power of evil, which had no 
 place in man's original being. And though it is 
 not for us to explain the principle of God's deci- 
 sions, yet it may be observed, that to represent 
 original sin as resulting from the withdrawal of a 
 divine light, and as a consequent transmitted dis- 
 organization of the lower appetites and powers, 
 54 Baurs Gegensatz, &c., p. 78.
 
 74 CHRIST, BY NATURE 
 
 consists well with St. Paul's statement respecting 
 the dealings of the Almighty. He " endured with 
 much long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted for 
 destruction." Now, however difficult it may be for 
 us to discern the nature of man's trial, it will doubt- 
 less appear at last, that every one is tried and 
 judged according to his opportunities. But that it 
 should have pleased God to withdraw the specific 
 gift of guidance, which was originally conferred 
 upon Adam, is in itself not more inconsistent with 
 the principles of justice, than the removal of any 
 other endowment which man could not challenge 
 as a right, though it had been mercifully bestowed 
 upon him. All that is necessary is, that we should 
 not so wholly identify the sinfulness of man with 
 that loss of guidance on which it followed, as to 
 destroy the individual responsibility of Adam's 
 children. And one circumstance, which must, of 
 course, greatly affect this whole question, is the 
 perfect parallel which exists between the first man 
 and the second between the type and the anti- 
 type him in whom humanity fell, and Him in 
 whom it rose again ; between Adam, in whom a 
 divine spirit was united only for a season to our 
 mortal being, and Christ, in whom the same spirit 
 dwelt permanently and without measure. " For if 
 through the offence of one, many be dead, much 
 more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which 
 is by one man Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto 
 many."
 
 THE PATTERN MAX. 75 
 
 For that Adam should be the type and head 
 of man's race, leads us to appreciate the character 
 which was assumed lyy that new head of our 
 race, Christ Jesus. The fact, however it be 
 accounted for, that man's race has been dealt 
 with as an organic whole, 65 which was represented 
 by the one, makes it more natural that it should 
 be in like manner associated with the other. For 
 it may be shown, that the peculiar constitution of 
 nature, which existed in Adam, and w T hereby he 
 was especially qualified to be the representative of 
 his race, re-appeared for the first time, but in a far 
 higher measure, in the second Adam, Jesus Christ. 
 So that one was fitted by His nature for that office, 
 which the other had in fact discharged. For what 
 was His conception in the Virgin's womb, save a 
 
 55 On this subject, the following passage occurs in the 
 able work of Giinther [Vorschule zur Speculativen Theo- 
 logie] : " The Idea of man, as originally conceived in the 
 mind of the Creator, is not merely that of an individual or 
 person, but at the same time that of a race. This, when pro- 
 perly understood, does not imply merely a collective, but an 
 organic being. By this Idea, as being His original thought, 
 God's acts of creation for the support of the race are directed. 
 If therefore the first man, as the representative of the race 
 because its father, broke off the connexion between his spirit 
 and the Godhead, the Creative Impulse on the part of God 
 could not renew that connexion and take away that breach, 
 which He had allowed to be produced in the case of the 
 solitary first man. And why could it not ? Because, by 
 such an act of alteration and renewal, God would have been 
 at variance with Himself, by reason of that Idea which He 
 had originally formed of mankind as a race." Letter 7, 
 vol. ii. p. 161.
 
 76 CHRIST, BY NATURE 
 
 taking of the original elements of our being, which 
 He moulded into a perfect manhood, through the 
 power of the Holy Ghost ? For the Word was 
 made flesh ; He clothed Himself in man's whole 
 nature ; He took the very same composition of 
 parts, which remained to Adam after the likeness 
 of God was lost. " Because the children were par- 
 takers of flesh and blood, He also Himself took 
 part of the same." And this He did, not by the 
 creation of materials which did not before exist ; 
 the materials were drawn from that stock for which 
 the benefit was designed. He was " made of a 
 woman." The materials, therefore, which were 
 employed were weak and disorganized, because they 
 were taken of one who was heir to Adam's de- 
 fects. 56 But then He who took them was the Word 
 of God. Into those weak and poor elements of our 
 nature, there flowed the very might, wisdom, and 
 purity of Deity itself. Thus was their weakness 
 from the first corrected ; from the first moment that 
 His nature existed, its disorder was counteracted 
 by the perfect order and harmony of God's spirit, 
 and though made of a woman, He was made 
 without sin. Therefore, when the tempter assailed 
 Him, He did it not, as Damascene remarks, 
 through the medium of His inward thoughts, but, 
 
 >6 " Quod (de B. Virgine) assumpsit, id profecto aut sus- 
 cipiendum mundavit, aut suscipiendo mundavit." S. Aug. de 
 Pecc. Meritis, ii. 24. If the Blessed Virgin had not been an 
 inheritor of our common nature, she would have been less suit- 
 able for that service which it was her privilege to discharge.
 
 THE PATTERN MAX. 77 
 
 as in Adam's case, by external aggression. 57 For 
 in His constitution there were the elements of 
 Adam's being, together with the perfect presence 
 of that Wisdom of God, which had vouchsafed His 
 influence as an indwelling gift to our first parent. 
 So exactly did the constitution of the one accord 
 with the constitution of the other. " For when the 
 Son of God was made man, He took the ancient 
 mould upon Himself." 58 For He had Himself, as 
 Methodius observes, been the very model upon 
 which it had been fashioned. For " God made 
 man after the pattern of His image Jesus Christ." 59 
 In Adam was humanity, and the presence of the 
 Word superadded as a guiding light. In Christ, 
 was God the Word by personal presence, who for 
 our sakes had added to Himself human flesh. Thus 
 is attained that perfection of man's nature, which, 
 in the case of our first parent was only transiently 
 set forth. For that perfection lay in the intercourse 
 with God, which Adam so soon renounced. But in 
 Christ is this intercourse restored permanently and 
 in its completeness. So that so far as He is truly 
 imitated, the greatest gift of primeval nature is 
 given back. "Although we were made after God's 
 image," says St. Athanasius, " and are called God's 
 image and glory, yet we are not called so on our 
 own account ; but it is by reason of the true image 
 and glory of God which dwelt in us, namely His 
 
 57 De Fide Orthod. iii. 20. 
 58 S. Irenasus, iv. 33-4, p. 271. 59 Method. Symposium.
 
 78 CHRIST, BY NATURE 
 
 WORD, which afterwards for our sakes became flesh, 
 that we have the gift of this appellation." 60 Thus, 
 as Adam was a type of humanity in his constitu- 
 tion, so also is Christ. True it is, that men are not 
 united to the second man by that actual paternity, 
 by which they are all bound to the first. But the 
 pattern form is perfectly developed ; it remains only 
 to find some no less real means of union, whereby 
 they may enjoy the blessing of this higher descent. 
 For " the first man is of the earth, earthy, the se- 
 cond man is the Lord from heaven." The first is 
 the original form on which humanity was moulded, 
 and with which all its inheritors have been con- 
 nected by natural descent. The second is the pat- 
 tern form on which it was remodelled, and which 
 was designed as a principle of union to those who 
 should be joined to it by grace. With Adam 
 all men are actually connected, for they are 
 born his children ; and all men who will, may 
 by the new birth of regeneration be united to 
 Christ. " For the first man Adam was made 
 a living soul, the last Adam w^as made a quicken- 
 ing spirit." 
 
 Thus is that object attained for which man's 
 heart had always longed the union of our inferior 
 with that superior nature, by which its weakness 
 might be redressed, and its ignorance enlightened. 
 And here it is impossible not to observe the con- 
 
 60 Orat. III. contra Arian. sec. 10.
 
 THE PATTERN MAN. 79 
 
 trast between that gift which was bestowed by the 
 God of Truth, and those idle dreams in which the 
 vain imagination of men had embodied their hopes. 
 If the gods, says Aristotle, take interest in human 
 affairs, they may be expected to look with most 
 satisfaction on what is most akin to their own na- 
 ture. 61 On this principle have man's natural con- 
 ceptions of Divine interference proceeded. Taking 
 that notion which his corrupt heart suggested of the 
 Deity, he has reasoned from it to the probable mani- 
 festations of Divine help. Hence with the Greeks, 
 in w r hom strength 62 and beauty were the idolized 
 qualities of our nature, the manifestations of the 
 Deity w r ere 
 
 " Too fair to worship, too divine to love." 
 
 The favoured ^Eneas was u os humerosque Deo 
 similis." On the other hand, the notions of im- 
 mensity of power and stature which floated before 
 the dreamy minds of the Orientals, when they 
 thought of the Incarnation of God, are such as 
 Southey delights to express, though they want the 
 
 61 Eth. Nic. x. 8. 
 
 62 So in Habakkuk, the description of a lawless warrior is (in 
 the Hebrew), one "to whom his might is his God," cap. i. v. 11 ; 
 and in Job, xii. 6 (according to Gesenius), "he bears his God in 
 his hand," i. e. his sword is his God. 
 
 It would be unjust not to notice the remarkable exception 
 afforded by Plato. " The temperate man," he says, " is dear to 
 God, for he is like Him." " Likeness to God consists in jus- 
 tice, holiness, and prudence." Vide Petamus de Opificio Sex 
 Dierum, ii. 2, 10.
 
 80 CHKIST, BY NATURE 
 
 deep moral tone which is given to them by that 
 truly Christian poet : 
 
 " I take my grant, the Incarnate Power replies, 
 With his first step he measured o'er the earth, 
 The second spann'd the skies." 
 
 Or again, 
 
 " In form a fiery column did he tower, 
 Whose head above the highest height extended, 
 Whose base below the deepest depth descended." 
 
 Contrast these, then, with Him, whose " visage was 
 marred more than any man, and His form more 
 than the sons of men." 63 The glory of His pre- 
 sence lies in the revelation of that image of God, 
 which addresses itself to our inner nature : " The 
 new man is after God created in righteousness and 
 true holiness." 64 Therefore, though no doubt the 
 interior must have cast some beams of its lustre 
 on the outer man " the unpolluted temple of the 
 mind" yet it was no splendour of external fea- 
 tures by which the Son of God revealed Himself : 
 " He hath no form nor comeliness ; and when we 
 shall see Him, there is no beauty that we should 
 desire Him." 65 He was in truth "the brightness of 
 His" Father's "glory, and the express image of His 
 person," but mortal eyes required to be purged be- 
 fore they could appreciate the divine excellence. 
 " He came unto His own, and His own received 
 Him not. But as many as received Him, to them 
 63 Isaiah, Hi. 14. w Ephesians, iv. 24. w Isaiah, liii. 2.
 
 THE PATTERN MAN. 81 
 
 gave He power to become the sons of God, even to 
 them that believe on His name." Thus was there 
 exhibited a true Pattern for the children of men, in 
 whom was set forth that gift, of which all may have 
 participation. For here is restored the true consti- 
 tution of our being, and man renewed takes the 
 place of man fallen. 66 
 
 And further, we see here the great evil of Idola- 
 try, as being a perversion of the grand principle of 
 man's being. For it is to lose sight of what is truly 
 divine and noble, that original image of God, the 
 traces whereof had not been altogether effaced from 
 the consciences of mankind. For " He left not 
 Himself without witness," not only in that "He 
 did good, and gave us rain from heaven, and fruit- 
 ful seasons," but also in that men's conscience bore 
 witness, and their thoughts accused or excused one 
 another. 67 Now, for this inward approach to that 
 Word which was the true image of the Father, men 
 substituted the worship of images made like to cor- 
 ruptible men, and to birds, and beasts, and creeping 
 things. But what depraved their judgment was the 
 corruption of their will. It was " because they did 
 not like to retain God in their knowledge," that God 
 gave them over to a reprobate mind. 
 
 And no less may be said of that more disguised 
 idolatry of polished times, which gives to intellec- 
 tual strength or beauty the worship which was once 
 
 66 Neque enim mole sed virtute magnus est Deus. & jlug. 
 Ep. 137. 67 Acts, xiv. 17 ; Romans, ii. 15. 
 
 G
 
 82 CHRIST, THE PATTERN MAN. 
 
 paid to physical powers. To search after God by 
 the exertion of understanding to realize Him by 
 the powers of abstract meditation to satisfy our- 
 selves that we are secure of His favour, because we 
 have on our side the witness of our private will, in- 
 stead of seeking for union with that Pattern Man, 
 whom He has set forth as the way, the truth, and 
 the life what is this but a more subtile idolatry 
 than that of old? God's likeness must be first re- 
 stored, before we can truly draw near to our Creator. 
 It lies not in strength of intellect, more than in 
 strength of limb, but in that divine gift, which, hav- 
 ing been forfeited by the first Adam, was more than 
 given back by the second. We must draw near to 
 God, therefore, " through that new and living way, 
 which He has consecrated for us through the veil, 
 that is to say, His flesh." " For not by intervals of 
 space," says St. Augustin, " but by likeness do we 
 draw near to God, and by unlikeness do we depart 
 from Him." 68 And those who would seek Him 
 otherwise, in truth " worship and serve the creature 
 more than the Creator, who is blessed for evermore." 
 
 68 De Trin. vii. 10.
 
 83 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 CHRIST, THE PATTERN MAN IN SYMPATHY. 
 
 IT has been shown that the office of the Son of 
 Man, was to be the Pattern of our race. For 
 this He was marked out by ancient prophecy ; 
 and as such He is described in later Scripture. 
 Again, He has been shown to have been fitted 
 for His office by the constitution of His nature. 
 He vouchsafed actually to introduce Himself into 
 the line of transmitted humanity, so as to gain 
 a real relationship to all its inheritors ; and the 
 character in which this was effected corresponded 
 so exactly with that original type in which our 
 nature was moulded, as to make Him a new Head 
 to mankind. Regarded according to His human 
 nature, He was truly the second Adam; a fresh, 
 but glorified specimen of that primitive type, in 
 which humanity was formed. One thing remains, 
 before He is exhibited on the other and higher 
 side of His being ; it must be shown that the 
 conditions of His earthly character were such, that 
 His sympathies were truly those which His office 
 implied, and His nature warranted.
 
 84 CHRIST, THE PATTERN MAN 
 
 The present inquiry does not respect those 
 single acts which Christ wrought for our benefit, 
 especially that crowning act, by which He paid 
 the price of our redemption. For these, though 
 wrought through the intervention of that nature, 
 which He took that He might be capable of suf- 
 fering and death, were yet wrought by one who 
 was truly God by unity of personal subsistence. 
 And therefore His acts of mercy to mankind will 
 be considered, when He has been set forth as 
 " God over all, blessed for ever." For whatsoever 
 He did was done by the same person it was God 
 who w r as born His Virgin Mother was the Mother 
 of God; it was God who was crucified God who 
 purchased His flock " with His own blood." " By 
 the Lord of Glory, w r e must needs understand the 
 whole person 1 of Christ, who, being Lord of Glory 
 was indeed crucified, but not in that nature for 
 which He is termed the Lord of Glory." " Cyril 
 contendeth, that whosoever will deny very God to 
 have suffered death, doth forsake the faith. Which 
 notwithstanding to hold were heresy, if the name 
 of God in this assertion did not impart, as it doth, 
 the person of Christ, who being verily God suffered 
 death, but in the flesh, and not in that substance 
 for which the name of God is given Him." 2 
 
 1 All properties or attributes, which belong either to the 
 human or divine nature, may be predicated in the concrete of 
 Christ, both God and Man : but those which belong to the one 
 nature, cannot be predicated in the abstract of the other. 
 2 Eccles. Polity, v. 53, vid. Vigilius c. Eutych. iv. 5.
 
 IX SYMPATHY. 85 
 
 The acts of Christ, then, as they were performed 
 by the co-operation, or at least association of His 
 two natures, do not come, except by way of illus- 
 tration, into our present inquiry, which concerns 
 His manhood considered in itself. What we are 
 examining is, that power of doing or suffering, by 
 which His manhood contributed to the acts or 
 passions of that Divine Person who was manifest 
 in the flesh. What is to be shown is, first, that 
 there was a true human character in Christ our 
 master ; and secondly, that His manner of par- 
 ticipating it, corresponded with that pattern or 
 representative function, which it was His pleasure 
 to discharge. And this must be shown both as 
 respects the body of the Son of Man, and as 
 respects His mind. 
 
 I. That there was a true human character in 
 Our Lord's body, is too obvious to require proof; 
 since Scripture shows us that it was, in fact, sub- 
 jected to hunger, pain, weariness, and death. We 
 have evidence that food sustained, and sleep re- 
 freshed it. As in Our Lord's immaterial nature, 
 what needs most attention is, to discern that what 
 is human was not wholly effaced by personal 
 union with Deity; so since Our Lord's body was 
 obviously consubstantial with ours, our principal 
 aim in considering it must be to discern the con- 
 sequences of that Godhead by which it was never 
 forsaken. For even the earthly body which was 
 taken by Christ Our Lord in the Virgin's womb,
 
 86 CHKIST, THE PATTERN MAN 
 
 afforded indications of His peculiar character. It 
 was not, so far as we read, assaulted by sickness; 
 man's ancient mastery over the brute creation ap- 
 pears to have been given back; it derived such 
 a principle of vitality from union with Godhead, 
 that not only was its own subjection to death a 
 voluntary act, but it was a source of life and health 
 to others. These things pertained to Our Lord's 
 human body, by reason of that peculiar constitu- 
 tion of nature, which fitted Him to be the Head 
 and Pattern of man's race. 
 
 That Our Lord would actually suffer under 
 human sickness, might perhaps be expected from 
 St. Matthew's words : " Himself took our infir- 
 mities and bare our sicknesses." 3 That no such 
 event is recorded, has been made a ground for 
 questioning the vicarious nature of those acts, by 
 which He remedied the sins of men, as well as 
 their sorrows. For the two benefits are introduced 
 together in the words of Isaiah 4 to w r hich St. 
 Matthew refers ; and St. Peter speaks of Christ as 
 bearing "our sins," 5 as St. Matthew of His bearing 
 our sicknesses. If the second, it is said, implies 
 only that sickness was cured, the first need not 
 imply any real sacrifice of atonement. Hence it is 
 argued that there was no mystery in Our Lord's 
 sufferings, nor any relation between us and Him, 
 except that between a benefactor and those who 
 profit by his services. To avoid so monstrous a 
 3 St. Matt. viii. 17. 4 Isaiah, liii. 4. 5. 5 1. Pet. ii. 24.
 
 IN SYMPATHY. 87 
 
 conclusion, we seek some real mode in which 
 Christ can be said to have borne our sicknesses. 
 And what is commonly suggested is, that His per- 
 fect sympathy with man's nature enabled Him to 
 participate perfectly in all its griefs. This is to 
 transfer Our Lord's participation in mortal ills from 
 His body to His soul. But that this explanation 
 may be complete, we must show that Our Lord's 
 actual immunity (so far as we read) from sickness, 
 was compensated for in some other manner ; so that 
 any defalcation in His acquaintance with human 
 sufferings on the side of the body, was made up 
 by that greater fulness with which the gift of 
 sympathy possessed His mind. It is commonly 
 said, that whatever be men's kindness of dispo- 
 sition, they cannot realize bodily pain, unless they 
 have experienced it. Was it so with Christ ? 
 Would He have entered more fully into human 
 sickness, if He had Himself made trial of its bitter- 
 ness ? The reason why such a circumstance would 
 not have enhanced His sympathy is, that it is 
 excluded by that very condition from which His 
 sympathy is derived. For His sympathy resulted 
 from His being the Pattern Man, the very repre- 
 sentative of our common being, who was able to 
 enter into all its wants, and had fellow-feeling with 
 all its SOITOWS. This subject shall be taken up 
 again, when we have spoken of the mental charac- 
 teristics of the Son of Man : at present His body 
 only is spoken of. Xow, by virtue of that Head-
 
 88 CHKIST, THE PATTERN MAN 
 
 ship, which made Him the representative of man- 
 kind, it belonged to His body to exhibit whatever 
 pertained to man's race at large, and constituted 
 its generic qualifications. Therefore, He submitted 
 to fear, because it belongs to humanity; to pain, 
 because none escape it ; to death, because it is 
 appointed for all. But when He tasted " death for 
 all men," it was not necessary that He should 
 make trial of every kind of death by w T hich the 
 tribes of man return to the dust. These are the 
 accidental circumstances of that event, whose com- 
 mon elements only He came to share. And so 
 may it be said respecting sicknesses, which are all 
 summed up in death as their common end. But 
 their individual conditions arise commonly from 
 intemperance, or from some original defect in the 
 attempering of the elements of our being. These 
 causes could not exist in Him, w r ho was the Head 
 and type of man's nature. 6 For when He intro- 
 duced Himself into the series of human being, He 
 assumed that perfect form of manhood w r hich was 
 free from the varieties of individual eccentricity. 
 This was w r hat qualified Him for relationship to 
 collective humanity. So that the very circum- 
 
 6 "Illos defectus Christus assumere debuit, qui consequuntur 
 ex peccato communi totius naturse. Quidam autem defectus 
 sunt, qui non consequuntur communiter totam humanam natu- 
 ram, propter peccatum primi Parentis, sed causantur in aliquibus 
 hominibus. Qui quidem defectus quandoque causantur ex culpa 
 hominis, puta ex inordinate victu ; quandoque autem ex defectu 
 virtutis formativae. Quorum neutrum convenit Christo." 
 Summa TJieol. iii. 14, 4.
 
 IN SYMPATHY. 89 
 
 stance which rendered His sympathy so perfect, 
 precluded participation in the accidental parti- 
 culars of human sicknesses. Yet He bore their 
 collective burthen when He put on that earthly 
 body, of whose nature they are the individual 
 developments. And we know not how far He 
 may have tasted all their bitterness in that season 
 of temptation, in which He was proof against the 
 solicitations of the body, as well as against the 
 Seducer of the mind : 
 
 " A thousand ways frail mortals lead 
 
 To the cold tomb, and dreadful all to tread ; 
 But dreadful most, when, by a slow decay, 
 Pale hunger wastes the manly strength away." 
 
 And finally, He sustained them all, not only 
 by His inward sympathy with His brethren, but in 
 that actual death, wherein He summed up all the 
 pains and evils which afflict humanity at large. 
 Unless this fact be discerned, we form but an 
 imperfect estimate of the sufferings of Him, who 
 truly sustained the weight of afflicted humanity. 
 He bore that collective load, which none but the 
 God-man could undergo, and in His single burthen 
 supported all the woes of His fellows. 
 
 Again, the nature of the Pattern Type of man- 
 hood is indicated by some occasional allusions to 
 Our Lord's intercourse with the inferior creatures. 
 A supremacy over them had been the result of 
 Adam's likeness to their Creator. The perfect
 
 90 CHRIST, THE PATTERN MAN 
 
 restoration of this likeness in the Son of Man 
 must have given Him that complete control, which 
 humanity in general is not so far fallen as alto- 
 gether to have lost. Such may perhaps have been 
 one lesson which the Gadarenes were intended to 
 learn from the miracle of the swine. And so much 
 seems indicated to us, when we read that Our Lord 
 was " with the wild beasts," 7 in that solitary region 
 where He triumphed 8 over the foe, by whom 
 Adam, in presence of the same spectators, had 
 been worsted. 
 
 Again, That the earthly body of Our Lord was 
 the medium through which life and health was 
 conveyed to other bodies, is expressly recorded in 
 Holy Writ. It is not our purpose to speak of the 
 acts of healing which were thus wrought, because 
 His Divine mind and will must not be excluded 
 from participation in the miracles of which His 
 body was the medium. Yet, when we consider the 
 nature of His body in itself, when we inquire 
 whether the conditions of its existence answer to 
 the character of Him who assumed it, we see 
 peculiar reasons why virtue should flow, as we are 
 assured it did, 9 out of this body into the bodies of 
 others. Something of the same kind is said to 
 have happened occasionally, and by God's 10 peculiar 
 
 7 St. Mark, i. 13. 
 
 8 Fe'iyoi/e ffap ui>0pu>7ros f a/a TO vncrjOev viKi^a^. Damasc. de 
 
 Fide Orth. iii. 18. 
 
 9 St. Mark, v. 30. 10 Acts, xix. 11, 12.
 
 IX SYMPATHY. 91 
 
 appointment, in the case of others : in the case of 
 Christ no such external actor is referred to, as 
 though the effect was a natural consequence of 
 His character. 11 Now, since Christ as the second 
 Adam is that seed of life, through whom the 
 "spiritual body" 12 is to be quickened at the last 
 day, that " virtue should go out of Him" 13 when 
 He was upon earth, is nowise inconsistent with 
 what Scripture leads us to expect. For it speaks 
 of some mysterious change as incident to the 
 bodies of men, and of His body as the type of 
 their new creation. He " shall change our vile 
 body, that it may be like unto His glorious body." 14 
 Whether the influence exerted when He were upon 
 earth were material or immaterial, it is needless to 
 ask. The miracle must appear equally great to 
 those who believe the statement of the Apostle, 
 that the virtue which proceeded from Christ "healed 
 them all." And that " the whole multitude sought 
 to touch Him," shows that His body was the 
 instrument through which the gift was bestowed. 
 Bishop Hampden thinks it necessary to offer a sort 
 of apology for Our Lord's statement, that " virtue 
 
 11 It is impossible not to be struck by the contrast which, in 
 this particular, is presented by the Apostles and Prophets to 
 the Son of Man ; the conferring of a derived life seemed to task 
 their powers to the utmost, while this gift flowed forth at a 
 word or a touch, from His majestic manhood. The opposition 
 is strikingly brought out on the day when the Church reads a 
 miracle of Elisha, and another of Christ, for the two Morning 
 Lessons [May 11 II. Kings, iv ; St. Matthew, ix.] 
 
 l - 1 Cor. xv. 44. 13 St. Luke, vi. 19. u Philip, iii. 21.
 
 92 CHRIST, THE PATTERN MAN 
 
 had gone out of Him," as being " a mode of speak- 
 ing, characteristic of the prevalent idea concerning 
 the operation of Divine influence, as of something 
 passing from one body to another." 15 But the 
 words of Him who spake as never man spake, could 
 not be infected by human errors. Now without 
 stating the manner in which virtue proceeded from 
 His man's body, Our Lord reveals, as a fact, that 
 it was the medium through which virtue was be- 
 stowed. He sets it forth as possessed of an in- 
 strumental efficacy in that work of renovating 
 the race of man, which extends to the restoration 
 of their bodies, as well as the renewal of their 
 souls. 16 
 
 Lastly, That Our Lord's body has some especial 
 effect in this work of regeneration, follows from the 
 peculiar attribute of an innate life, with which itself 
 is declared to have been invested. This rendered 
 it the type and pattern of innumerable partakers in 
 Adam's race, of whom its resurrection is declared 
 to be the first fruits. For the oneness with God- 
 head which it possessed by nature, corrected that 
 tendency to decay which belonged to all other 
 descendants of Adam. Life natural would have 
 been maintained in our first parents by that tree of 
 
 15 Bamp. Lect. vii. p. 316. 
 
 16 " Since the life-giving Word of God dwelt in the flesh, He 
 transformed it into that excellence, which belongs to Himself, 
 i. e. into Life, and by His intimate and unspeakable union with 
 it, He rendered it life-giving as He is Himself." S. Cyr. 
 Alex. iv. 354.
 
 IN SYMPATHY. 93 
 
 life, which to eat was to " live for ever. 17 There- 
 fore, death temporal would not have befallen them, 
 save as the effect of that death spiritual, which was 
 the result of sin. And so in Christ, who was Him- 
 self the very source of life 18 by virtue of His God- 
 head, this Divine influence made it impossible that 
 His body should decay. Therefore, when His body 
 entered the mansions of death, " it was not possible 
 that He should be holden of it." 19 The spiritual 
 immutability, which belonged to Him by nature, 
 was a perpetual antidote to His body's death. So 
 that when this event befell Him, it was by His own 
 consent : " Xo man taketh My life from Me, but I 
 lay it down of Myself ; I have power to lay it down, 
 and I have power to take it again." 20 All these 
 things show that Christ's body is the Type and 
 Pattern of those innumerable frames, with whom 
 He consented to become consubstantial both in 
 body and soul, " for since by man came death, by 
 man came also the resurrection of the dead." 21 
 
 II. That which has been proved respecting the 
 body of Christ, is not less true respecting the facul- 
 ties of His mind. In this respect also was He in 
 character, not less than in nature and by office, the 
 Pattern of mankind. There are two main parts of 
 man's mental constitution the will and the under- 
 standing. Each of these was assumed by Christ 
 
 17 Genesis, iii. 22, vid. S. Aug. de Pecc. Mer. i. 3, De Civ. 
 Dei, xiii. 23. 18 St. John, v. 27. 
 
 19 Acts, ii. 24. * St. John, x. 17. 21 1 Cor. xv. 21.
 
 94 CHRIST, THE PATTERN MAN 
 
 according to the fulness of man's being ; and in 
 respect of each, it may be shown that the character 
 under which He displayed it, expressed the perfect 
 type of the nature which He had adopted. 
 
 An inquiry into Our Lord's human will is facili- 
 tated, by the consideration that w r e are ourselves 
 conscious of a multiform action in this part of 
 our nature. Besides the " video meliora proboque, 
 deteriora sequor" of the heathen, we have St. Paul's 
 declaration, " I delight in the law of God after the 
 inward man, but I see another law in my members, 
 warring against the law of my mind." Thus are 
 we conscious of being approached on two sides, if 
 we may express a mental process physically ; we 
 can fancy opposing powers to hold one another in 
 such exact counterpoise, that without a self-deter- 
 mining will, there would be no means of settling 
 the preponderancy. These thoughts prepare us for 
 the declaration of Scripture, that Our Lord " was 
 in all points tempted like as we are, yet without 
 sin." 22 The perfection of His man's nature implies 
 the complete development both of body and mind, 
 so far as they were consistent with personal union 
 with the nature of God. Not only was He subject 
 to those sensations which approach us through the 
 body hunger, thirst, weariness, faintness, fear 
 but likewise to those which especially assault the 
 mind : " My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even 
 unto death." And to His disciples He says in 
 general, " ye are they that have continued with Me 
 22 Hebrews, iv. 15.
 
 IN SYMPATHY. 95 
 
 in My temptations." Further, we have a peculiar 
 means of discerning what Our Lord endured on the 
 human side of His character, by observing what is 
 said of those who typified Him. For it was of 
 Christ, as a man, that their lives were an acted 
 prophecy. David was a type of his great descen- 
 dant, because Christ's humanity was exalted to 
 royal honour. For the Incarnation was as great 
 a debasement of Divine as it was an exaltation of 
 human nature; and it must have been in reference 
 therefore to the last, that the Psalmist expressed 
 himself : " The Lord said unto My Lord, sit Thou 
 on My right hand, until I make Thine enemies 
 Thy footstool." The trials, therefore, of Our 
 Lord, considered according to His earthly nature, 
 are set forth in the twenty-second Psalm : " O go 
 not from Me, for trouble is hard at hand, and 
 there is none to help Me." And when all the 
 Disciples forsook Him and fled, we see how " they 
 of Mine acquaintance were afraid of Me, and they 
 that did see me without, conveyed themselves 
 from Me." 
 
 Thus truly did Our Lord make trial of those 
 assaults to which man's will is incident ; and espe- 
 cially in that last great act of His earthly course, 
 whereby He made atonement for the sins of men. 
 For then it was that He exclaimed : " My God, 
 My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" This 
 burthen of deprivation He endured through His 
 man's nature, when in some manner, to us un-
 
 96 CHRIST, THE PATTERN MAN 
 
 known, He withdrew from it for a time the suc- 
 cours of Deity. It may be that it was impossible 
 that perfect sympathy for man's weakness should 
 exist, w r here man's temptations had not been 
 actually undergone. For " we have not an High 
 Priest w r hich cannot be touched with a feeling of 
 our infirmities;" and "in that He Himself hath suf- 
 fered, being tempted, He is able to succour them 
 that are tempted." 23 Thus completely, as regards 
 the province of the will, did Our Lord submit to 
 the conditions of Humanity. But wherein did He 
 exhibit Himself as the Pattern Man of the race? 
 Because in Him, first of all descendants of Adam, 
 was will exhibited in that complete freedom, w T hich 
 was its normal condition and perfect state. By 
 will is meant, the power of choice or of refusal. 
 Its existence, therefore, implies freedom from ex- 
 ternal constraint. But it is compatible with the 
 influence of inward motives, which cannot fail to 
 appeal to it, according to their proper powers of 
 attraction. To suppose, indeed, that motives pos- 
 sess such irresistible power, that it is impossible 
 for will to offer resistance, is practically to deny 
 its reality, and thus to exonerate its possessors 
 from responsibility. But though will must be sup- 
 posed to be so far free, that men are accountable 
 for their actions, yet it has never been perfectly 
 free in any of the fallen descendants of Adam. 
 This perfect liberty it gained only in Him, in 
 23 Hebrews, iv. 15, and ii. 18.
 
 IN SYMPATHY. 97 
 
 whom the unlimited presence of God's Spirit 24 
 supplied the place of that Divine guidance which 
 had been given to our first parent; and counte- 
 racted the concupiscence which had been trans- 
 mitted to his progeny. Thus did the Son of Man 
 allay the inner storm of human passion, saying, 
 "peace, be still." And thus did He set forth in 
 its perfection that state of freedom, for which man 
 was originally designed. This is the gift which, 
 by union with Him, He bestows upon His brethren. 
 The liberty, sought by worldly men in exemption 
 from external restraints, can be realized only by 
 union with that Pattern Man, who attained the 
 true freedom. The conformity of man's will to the 
 will of Him, in whose pattern man was moulded, 
 is that normal state of tranquillity and happiness 
 after which unregenerate humanity is vainly yearn- 
 ing. For God's " service is perfect freedom," and 
 " if the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free 
 indeed." 
 
 We approach a more difficult subject, when we 
 speak of Our Lord's participation in human igno- 
 rance. But as He was perfect man, He must have 
 made acquaintance not only with the infirmities 
 of our will, but with the weakness of our under- 
 standing. This participation however could not 
 have deprived Godhead of that infinite knowledge, 
 which everywhere and always is its inalienable 
 
 84 " Inclinationem solus ille immutare potest, qui virtutem 
 volendi creatune contulit." Summa. i. Q. 106, 2. 
 
 H
 
 98 CHRIST, THE PATTERN MAN 
 
 portion. Yet, since knowledge and ignorance are 
 incompatible, we understand not how in the same 
 person they could dwell together. Conflicting 
 impulses may strive in the same mind, but it is 
 the very character of knowledge, that by its ap- 
 proach, ignorance is banished. How then could 
 there be ignorance in that human mind, which was 
 personally united to Omniscience ? 
 
 There are not wanting expressions in the 
 writings of the earlier Fathers, which would imply 
 that a belief of the actual ignorance of Our Lord, 
 regarded as man, if not positively received, was 
 yet not always distinctly rejected. Thus St. 
 Athanasius tells us, that Our Lord " shows that 
 He knows the end of all things as the Word, but 
 as man is ignorant of it. For it belongs to man 
 to be ignorant, especially of such things as these, 
 So that this expression arises from His goodness 
 towards man's nature, inasmuch as becoming man 
 He is not ashamed, so far as His ignorant flesh 
 goes, to say 'I know not.'" 25 And again, "We 
 who reverence Christ are assured that He did not 
 say He was ignorant, in that He was the Word, 
 for in that relation He knew well; but showing 
 His human nature, because it belongs to humanity 
 to be ignorant, and He had put on ignorant flesh 
 speaking in reference to this He said, that as a 
 man, He was ignorant." 26 A similar statement 
 
 25 Oral. III. c. Arian. xliii. vol. i. p. 593. 
 
 26 Orat. III. c. Arian. xlv. vol. i. p. 594.
 
 IN SYMPATHY. 99 
 
 occurs in St. Ambrose, in reference to Our Lord's 
 increase in wisdom. " There was increase," he 
 says, " of age, and increase of wisdom, but it was 
 of human wisdom." " If He advanced as a man in 
 age, He must have advanced as a man in wisdom ; 
 the advance in wisdom must have been propor- 
 tionate to that in perception, from which it is de- 
 rived." 27 "And in like manner," says St. Irenaeus, 
 " the Son of God assigned a knowledge of the day 
 and hour of the Day of Judgment to the Father 
 only, saying plainly, 'of that day and hour know T eth 
 no man, no, not the Son, but the Father.'" 28 
 
 On a closer examination, however, these pas- 
 sages at least those in both the later writers ap- 
 pear to mean nothing but that, by virtue of His 
 Humanity, Our Lord was not conversant with that 
 which, as matter of fact, was never hidden even 
 from His human mind. The expressions of St. 
 Athanasius allow ignorance in Christ, not so much 
 in that He was a man, but in so far as knowledge 
 came through His manhood. When he proceeds to 
 treat of Our Lord's increase in knowledge, though 
 he allows His Humanity to have admitted of acces- 
 sions, yet he explains it mainly by "an inward 
 revelation or unveiling of the Deity to those who 
 beheld Him." 29 And St. Ambrose declares still 
 
 27 De Incarnatione, vii. sec. 72, vol. ii. p. 720. 
 28 St. Mark, xiii. 32. Vide Iren. II. xxviii. 6, p. 158. 
 
 29 He speaks of i] (j)avf.ptaai<3 r^s 0eoTiyTos rot's opfaaiv. atria e 
 
 ) 0eoT7/s aireicaXvTne-To K.T.\. Orat. III. contra Avian. 52, 
 vol. i. p. 601.
 
 100 CHKIST, THE PATTERN MAN 
 
 more positively his dissent from those (of whom he 
 say there were many) "who say confidently that 
 Our Lord could not be ignorant so far as His 
 Deity was concerned, but that so far as He shared 
 our nature, He was ignorant before His cruci- 
 fixion." " He took our affections," replies St. 
 Ambrose, "that He might speak of Himself as 
 sharing in our ignorance; He was not positively 
 ignorant." 30 And the same seems to have been 
 the feeling of St. Ambrose's greater disciple : " I 
 would by no means suppose," says St. Augustin, 
 " that there was the ignorance of infancy in that 
 infant, in whom the Word was made flesh to dwell 
 in us, nor would I attribute the weakness of the 
 mind of children to the childhood of Christ." 31 
 And the same thing was still more strongly stated 
 by St. John Damascene, when the Nestorian con- 
 troversy had opened men's eyes to the possible 
 consequences of the opposite alternative : " Those 
 who maintain that Christ advanced in wisdom and 
 grace, as though there was a positive addition of 
 them, cannot maintain the conjunction between 
 Godhead and His flesh to have commenced from 
 its first existence, and therefore do not really hold 
 the hypostatical union, but, inclining to the teach- 
 ing of the vain Nestorius, they are deceived by 
 
 30 Nostrum adsumsit affectum, ut nostra ignoratione nescire 
 se diceret, non quia aliquid ipse nesciret. S. Ambrose de 
 Fide. v. 18, sec. 221, 222, vol. ii. p. 592. 
 
 31 De Pecc. Mer. ii. sec. 48, vol. x. p. 65.
 
 IN SYMPATHY. 101 
 
 the notion of a mere union of relations, and a bare 
 indwelling." " For if the flesh was truly united to 
 God the Word from its first origin, or rather if it 
 had its origin in Him, and belonged to the same 
 person with Him, how could it but be filled full 
 with all knowledge and grace?" 32 And this, ac- 
 cordingly, has since been the received opinion in the 
 Church. "As there was no sinful concupiscence 
 in Christ through the fulness of grace, so through 
 the perfection of wisdom, which was in Him, was 
 there no ignorance." " For the nature which Christ 
 assumed may be considered in two ways : one, as 
 it is in itself, and in this respect it is ignorant and 
 slavish for man is his Maker's servant, and has no 
 knowledge of the future ; the other, as it is united 
 to the person of Him who, as St. John witnesses, 
 was full of grace and truth." 33 This statement of 
 the Apostle is the more important, since it indicates 
 the condition of Our Lord's being, even when He 
 was manifest among men. The assertion that in 
 Him " are hid all the treasures of wisdom and 
 knowledge," 34 may be assigned to the period since 
 the Godhead has dwelt in His glorified body. 
 But St. John's words refer to what the disciples 
 "beheld." 35 And they speak of Him as having 
 upon earth that fulness of truth, which excludes 
 ignorance. 
 
 And therefore, since it would be impious to sup- 
 
 32 De Fide Orthodox, iii. 22, vol. i. p. 246. 
 33 Sumina Theologia;, iii. xv. 3. w Col. ii. 3, 9. B St. John, i. 14.
 
 102 CHRIST, THE PATTERN MAN 
 
 pose that Our Lord had pretended an ignorance 
 which He did not experience, we are led to the 
 conclusion, that what He partook, as man, was not 
 actual ignorance, but such deficiency in the means 
 of arriving at truth, as belongs to mankind. With- 
 out asserting that the man, Christ Jesus, Avas igno- 
 rant, it may be said that He was ignorant, as man, of 
 that which by His other nature was known to Him. 
 His growth then was no delusion, but a real one; 
 but the advance w^as in those means of intercourse, 
 by which the human mind communicates with the 
 external world. He made trial of those channels 
 of communication w r hereby the children of men are 
 furnished with knowledge; He tested their uncer- 
 tainty ; He is able to pity those who are in like 
 manner " compassed with infirmity." And so much 
 seems distinctly asserted in that remarkable text, 
 which tells us that "though He were a Son, yet 
 learned He obedience by the things which He suf- 
 fered." 36 Learning is plainly relevant to know- 
 ledge, and the especial difficulties which are inci- 
 dent to man may, for what we know, have been 
 inappreciable, save by experience. 37 Therefore, He 
 
 36 Hebrews, v. 8. 
 
 37 This appears to be the meaning of Aquinas, who, while 
 denying that Christ could be said, even as man, to be positively 
 ignorant, admits, as Le Grand expresses it, "quod multa jam 
 sibi per scientiam infusam cognita, rursus novo modo, nempe 
 experiendo, secundem varia astatis SUJE incrementa, didicerit." 
 Le Grand de Incarnation?, diss. ix. cap. ii. 
 
 St. Thomas's words are : " Quod scientia Christi profecit 
 secundum experientiam." iii. 12, 2.
 
 IN SYMPATHY. 103 
 
 who was above the Angels, even as man, in His 
 knowledge itself, consented to stoop below them in 
 His manner of acquiring it. Xot of course that 
 His human soul can be partaker in itself of that 
 Omniscience which belongs only to the Godhead. 
 Of this Christ partakes in that He is God; but in 
 that He is man, He can receive it only so far as 
 His human nature is its fit recipient. His know- 
 ledge, says St. Thomas, extends " to all things 
 which are in the power of a creature." 38 And this, 
 according to Bishop Bull, 39 is the reason w r hy St. 
 Irenseus supposes Our Lord, as man, to have been 
 ignorant of the Day of Judgment : " The Divine 
 Wisdom produced its impression on Our Lord's 
 human soul according to the occasion, and there- 
 fore there is no absurdity in supposing that Our 
 Lord, during the time of his mission on earth, w r hen 
 such knowledge was needless for Him, was igno- 
 rant of the Day of Judgment." 40 
 
 Now, by w r hat means Our Lord should on the 
 one hand have partaken at once of all creaturly 
 knowledge, and, on the other, have trodden the 
 tedious path of observation and inference, is be- 
 yond our comprehension. Not but that we can 
 discern how a thing which is already known can be 
 
 38 Summa Theolog. iii. x. 3. 
 
 39 Massuet, in his preface to St. Irenseus, p. cxxxiii., asserts 
 that Our Lord's expressions are only a species of hypothesis 
 that He professes to have no knowledge by Himself, but only as 
 derived from the Godhead. 
 
 40 Defensio Fidei Nic. ii. 5, sec. 8, p. 82.
 
 104 CHKIST, THE PATTERN MAX 
 
 subsequently demonstrated. A man might deter- 
 mine, by admeasurement of parts, that the square 
 of the hypothenuse was equal in area to the squares 
 of the sides, and yet afterwards come to the same 
 conclusion by reasoning. But in Our Lord there 
 is something far beyond this : for every step which 
 He gained by those means which acquaint us with 
 the external world, must have been long before 
 familiar to Him by way of intuition. But as He 
 saw by outward light, as well as by the inward 
 glory of the Godhead, and was sustained by food 
 as well as by Omnipotence, so He condescended to 
 reason on things outward, as well as to guide Him- 
 self by inward inspiration. Therefore, St. Augustin 
 refers the statement, that " the riches of Damascus 
 shall be taken before the child shall have knowledge 
 to cry, My Father and My Mother," 41 to the offering, 
 by the Magi, of the wealth of the East to our infant 
 Lord. The two kinds of knowledge are brought 
 together when Our Lord " lifted up His eyes, and 
 saw Nathaniel coming to Him," yet told Him after- 
 wards that "before that Philip called thee, when 
 thou wast under the fig-tree, I saw thee." 42 
 
 The increase then of Our Lord's " wisdom" 
 was but the further development of those human 
 powers, which are the means whereby we acquire 
 knowledge. There may probably have been stages 
 in their growth, and His entrance into the Temple 
 in His twelfth year may have been a crisis in the 
 41 Isaiah, viii. 4. John, i. 47, 51.
 
 IN SYMPATHY. 105 
 
 capacity which was gained by His human faculties. 
 They may then have so far opened, as to cor- 
 respond to the largeness of those truths, which by 
 direct intuition had already flowed into His mind. 
 And if these statements seem to border on a con- 
 tradiction, let it be remembered how often we our- 
 selves can scarcely tell whether we know a thing 
 or are ignorant of it ; what has been told may be 
 stored up in our mind and forgotten, till some new 
 occasion calls it to light. Much of our knowledge 
 consists of deductions from principles, which we 
 either possess by the constitution of our nature, or 
 have received so early, that we never noted their 
 approach; and yet these things, which w r e learn 
 afterwards to be conclusions furnished from within 
 ourselves, address themselves to us at first as un- 
 expected communications. Why do we allow 
 things, save from discerning them to be true? How 
 do we know them to be true, save that the elements 
 of judgment are laid up within us ? Whence were 
 these originally derived? Such thoughts may pre- 
 pare us for receiving what is stated concerning Our 
 Lord with the less difficulty. He truly " increased 
 in wisdom as in stature;" and yet, looked at ac- 
 cording to the actual attainments of His mind, 
 He was full of truth. 
 
 So much respecting our Lord's actual partici- 
 pation in the infirmities of man's understanding. 
 Further, it was in Him that the understanding as 
 well as the will of man attained its perfection.
 
 106 CHRIST, THE PATTEKX MAX 
 
 For man's reason cannot attain its full propor- 
 tions, till it is shaped according to that primitive 
 type in which it originated. Now, the excellence 
 of its normal state lay in that complete reflection 
 of God's image, the very condition of which was 
 uninterrupted intercourse with the Creator. For 
 " God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all." 4 
 By being a fit subject for the reception of God's 
 glory, was man distinguished from the beasts of 
 the field. But by seeking after knowledge in his 
 own way, he lost that true knowledge which 
 cometh from God only. He forgot that " the 
 knowledge of The Holy is understanding." 44 Thus 
 was man's understanding obscured, till " God, who 
 commanded the light to shine out of darkness," 
 gave back "the light of the knowledge of the 
 glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." 45 In 
 Him was the understanding of man restored to its 
 perfect state, because in Him intercourse with God 
 was perfectly re-opened. He became " the way," 
 and " the truth." In those who are conformed to 
 His likeness, understanding regains its proper rights, 
 and attains that perfection, which intercourse with 
 God can alone produce. Thus does His character 
 set forth in all respects the true type and pattern 
 of man's nature, and by imitating Him, even His 
 erring brethren may be seen to have " been with 
 Jesus." 
 
 43 I. John, i. 5. Proverbs, ix. 10. 
 
 45 II. Corinthians, iv. 6.
 
 IN SYMPATHY. 107 
 
 This view of Our Lord's character, as the true 
 Pattern of Humanity, is further illustrated by two 
 circumstances : First, the perfectness of His sym- 
 pathy; secondly, the universality of His mind. 
 And first, of the Sympathy of Christ. 
 
 It has been already mentioned, that to interpret 
 the statements of Scripture by a reference to Our 
 Lord's sympathy, is to transfer His participation 
 in human griefs from His body to His mind. 
 Not but that He made bodily trial of them, so 
 far as consisted with that character of the perfect 
 Pattern of Humanity, in which He was manifested. 
 And in the exercise of His mental sympathy we 
 see in like manner its human origin, and yet that it 
 was checked and controlled by those perfect con- 
 ditions of will and understanding, which belonged 
 to Him as the Son of Man. His acts of mercy, 
 when He was in the flesh, were performed in 
 accordance with that law of human sympathy, 
 which He took upon Him as part of the nature 
 in which He became Incarnate. In His hands, so 
 far as His Godhead was concerned, w r as lodged 
 even at that season all power in heaven and earth. 
 All sicknesses, which afflicted any of the sons of 
 men, might have been healed by Him in a moment. 
 All the pains of humanity might have been as- 
 suaged. But He exercised no such universal 
 power of healing. His benefits w^ere confined to 
 those who came before Him in the flesh. These 
 He cured through that divine power, which was
 
 108 CHKIST, THE PATTEEN MAN 
 
 present with His manhood. And why were not 
 others benefited by it? Because He allowed it to 
 act according to that law of sympathy which be- 
 longs to man's nature, which time, place, presence 
 affect, and which could not, regarded as a mere 
 human feeling, be equally moved by the mere ab- 
 stract knowledge of the existence of suffering. He 
 gave scope, therefore, to the actings of this human 
 principle, whether it led as by the grave of Lazarus 
 to tears, or at the gates of Nain to pity. These 
 were indications how truly He had adopted that 
 common nature, which He shared with His breth- 
 ren. But then His sympathy was controlled and 
 rendered stable by that guiding light which has 
 been wanting both to the will and the understand- 
 ing of man ever since the Fall. Without such 
 guidance, sympathy is vague, unmeaning, or even 
 mischievous. So that, missing the designed end of 
 its operation, it falls back not seldom into the 
 opposite extreme of misanthropy. Let it be given 
 to the mere creature of human impulse to stay 
 all sicknesses, or to feed thronging multitudes by 
 miraculous support, and the consequence would be 
 an inversion of the ordinary laws of God's provi- 
 dence, as mischievous for its immediate objects, as 
 for those who would rely on its prospective help. 
 What would be the sure consequence, but the 
 growth of those still greater moral evils, which are 
 in a measure kept in control by physical wants? 
 This tendency is seen in such alleged miracles of
 
 IN SYMPATHY. 109 
 
 the middle ages, as are founded on an exaggerated 
 application of what was permitted to the prophets 
 of the Theocracy. 
 
 Xow, this unlimited power Our Lord possessed ; 
 but because it was under the control of that inward 
 light which guided His spirit, it led in Him to no 
 such results. His eye indeed saw man's miseries 
 and pitied them. But His true perception of the 
 real evils of man's nature, His estimate of the ef- 
 fect of guilt, His discernment that pain was an evil 
 so much lighter than sin this guided the general 
 course of His sympathy. He gave therefore to 
 His human nature what was its due. He wept 
 when grief overflowed its banks He succoured 
 those whom the providence of the Great Disposer 
 of all brought near Him. In His path through 
 this world He scattered round Him His favours ; 
 but He allowed them not to interfere with His 
 great mission for the common benefit of the race, 
 which He had come to represent : He " did not 
 commit Himself to any man, for He knew what 
 was in man." 
 
 Again, the same principle is witnessed by the 
 universality of our Master's earthly mind. When 
 we turn to the greatest models of human genius, 
 we find in their thoughts an all-adapting power, 
 which makes them the interpreters of our common 
 nature. They seem to be built upon the deepest 
 basis of man's general being, because there is no 
 feeling or condition of life, which does not find its
 
 110 CHRIST, THE PATTERN MAN 
 
 reflection in their writings. Thus does human ge- 
 nius render its possessors a sort of type of their 
 race, by concentrating in them those characteris- 
 tics, which are dispersed through the ordinary spe- 
 cimens of mortality. Now, that which is given in 
 its measure even to human genius, belonged in per- 
 fection only to Him who by nature was one with 
 God. From Him all earthly excellence is derived ; 
 of Him it is typical. In Him that wisdom has its 
 personal abode, which " in every people and nation 
 got a possession." 46 Therefore do His words con- 
 tain such deep and unsearchable meaning, as shows 
 them to be the sayings of One who discerned all 
 the mysteries of man's nature. They are equally 
 fitted, therefore, for every nation ; they suit every 
 climate, age, or condition. And again, in His cha- 
 racter is such " largeness of heart," as exceeds the 
 compass of mortal thought. Compare this perfect 
 Pattern of our being with those various ministers 
 who attended or preceded His approach, and how 
 partial appear the several conditions which discri- 
 minate their nature, when compared with that all- 
 embracing universality which is characteristic of 
 His. This is why those many types which pre- 
 saged His coming, were unable to exhaust the 
 infinite multifariousness of His character. For in 
 them the choicest individual endowments were 
 perfected by the gift of inspiration, but in Him 
 humanity at large was elevated by the actual 
 46 Ecclesiasticus, xxiv. 6.
 
 IN SYMPATHY. Ill 
 
 indwelling of God. That exaltation which was 
 offered to man's whole race, through the power 
 of the Holy Ghost but of which the examples 
 are only scattered, approximate, incomplete, ac- 
 cording as men " are made partakers of the Divine 
 image" was at once exhibited without measure 
 and in perfect type, in the great Pattern of our 
 being. For in others we see the single colours of 
 a reflected lustre ; but in Him the concentrated 
 glory of an original radiance is all that we can 
 discern. How different, for example, was the 
 practical earnestness of St. Peter and St. Paul, 
 from the deep contemplativeness of the Beloved 
 Apostle. How far removed are the plaintive 
 breathings of Jeremiah, and the picturesque visions 
 of Ezekiel, from the loftiness of the Evangelical 
 Prophet. What a contrast is there between the 
 fervent devoutness of the Psalmist, and the senten- 
 tious majesty of his son. But who can venture to 
 assign earthly limits to the universality of His 
 character, of whom it is enough to declare that 
 He " spake as never man spake ?" For this reason 
 should His simplest acts and words be treated with 
 the reverence, with which in ancient times were 
 regarded the lineaments of His outward form. For 
 every thing is great which comes out of the depth 
 of His unfathomable knowledge. Regarded only 
 as a man, He is the Pattern whom the residue 
 of His race are to adopt as their standard. For 
 through Him is renewed that intercourse with
 
 112 CHRIST, THE PATTEEN MAN IN SYMPATHY. 
 
 God, which is our life. When we meditate upon 
 His character, that door is opened which admits 
 us to the Almighty. With what awe should we 
 contemplate our near approach ! " Draw not nigh 
 hither : put off thy shoes from off thy feet ; for the 
 place whereon thou standest is holy ground."
 
 113 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 OUR LORD IS GOD THE WORD, VERY GOD 
 OF VERY GOD. 
 
 OUR LORD'S Human character has been set forth 
 in the preceding Chapters. It remains to show, 
 that He who was thus manifest in the flesh was 
 in truth " over all, God blessed for ever." 1 
 
 Now, this statement implies so unutterable an 
 amount of condescension, as to have been often 
 received either with open dissent or with con- 
 cealed dissatisfaction. And yet more frequently, 
 perhaps, have men adopted the still less reasonable 
 course of yielding it only a half credence, and thus 
 have made their doubts a ground for questioning 
 the opinions and practices, which, if the doctrine 
 be admitted at all, are its necessary consequence. 
 " How can I believe," said a politician of leading 
 eminence in the last century to the late Mr. Wil- 
 berforce, when he opened his mind in the privacy 
 of domestic converse, " that the Almighty Creator 
 of all things should have become a wailing infant, 
 and submitted to the weakness of our nature ? 
 1 Romans, ix. 5. 
 I
 
 114 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 
 
 Surely, it is utterly impossible." " I should be 
 ready to enter into your feeling," was the reply, 
 " if I viewed this truth in the abstract way that 
 you do, and did not consider what difficulties there 
 are in disbelieving it." Among these difficulties 
 must be ranked, in the first place, the circum- 
 stances of Our Lord's Human character, the prepa- 
 ration which had marked Him out as the Pattern 
 Man, and the events in His life by which that 
 character is indicated. How was it that a Jewish 
 peasant, untaught even in the simple lore of Syrian 
 literature, 2 should have conceived those truths, 
 which have enlarged the sphere of man's know- 
 ledge, and made the one grand revolution in the 
 history of his race? How could his designs have 
 been developed, with a power which shook the 
 mightiest kingdoms, overthrew all preceding forms 
 either of faith or philosophy, and have finally cast 
 into a new mould the most distant countries and 
 generations of the earth? How was it that one 
 who spoke no language, save a dialect of the bar- 
 barous East, could triumph over the pride of the 
 Porch and the subtilty of the Academy ? How 
 came the might of thirty legions to yield to the 
 staff and sling of the Son of David ? What com- 
 pelled men to admit the paradox of the fervid 
 African, and allow the very strangeness of this 
 truth to stamp it with the character of being 
 Divine? " Cruxifixus est Dei filius : non pudet, 
 2 St. John, vii. 15.
 
 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 115 
 
 quia pudendum est ; et mortuus est Dei films : 
 prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est : et sepultus 
 resurrexit : certum est, quia impossible est." 3 
 
 Such are some of the considerations, which are 
 suggested by that Human side of Our Lord's cha- 
 racter, which it has been the purpose of the pre- 
 ceding pages to set forth. And if we turn to its 
 other or Divine side, we shall find that this also 
 allies itself with a whole world of thoughts, to 
 which the coming of God in the flesh conducts us, 
 and of which that event was the appointed result. 
 To this subject we now approach. For, first, the 
 doctrine of an Incarnate God has an immediate 
 relation to that ultimate nature of Deity, in which 
 lies the beginning of all being, and the end of all 
 truth on which all knowledge is dependent which 
 exists in and by itself, as the parent of all action, 
 and the basis of all thought ; and secondly, through 
 this doctrine only has the Godhead been revealed 
 to us under that nobler character, in which we have 
 learned to recognize Him. For it is this truth 
 which has made that mighty alteration in the opi- 
 nions of men, on which our noblest intellectual 
 attainments are dependent. It is the Incarnation 
 of Christ Our Lord, which has raised us as well 
 above the carnal anthropology of the Greeks, as 
 above the grotesque speculations of the Brahmins. 
 This principle it is, which has so blended justice, 
 mercy, and truth, with the omnipotence, omni- 
 3 Tertull. de Carne Christi, sec. v.
 
 116 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 
 
 science, and eternity of God, as to enable man 
 to respond to the best aspirations of his nature. 
 If it be true, as the philosophic Cudworth ex- 
 presses it, that " we have all of us by nature 
 /lav-revfia TI (as both Plato and Aristotle call it), a 
 certain divination, presage, and parturient vatici- 
 nation in our minds, of some higher good and per- 
 fection than either power or knowledge," 4 yet was 
 this but uncertain and glimmering, till " God, who 
 commanded the light to shine out of darkness, 
 shined in our hearts, to give the light of the know- 
 ledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus 
 Christ." 5 For " no man hath seen God at any time ; 
 the only-begotten Son, which is in the bosom of 
 the Father, He hath revealed Him." 6 
 
 The moulding together of those mighty elements 
 of moral and intellectual truth, which had been 
 revealed through the Gospel, was the task of the 
 Christian Church during the first five centuries of 
 her age-long existence a task more arduous far 
 than her other work of remodelling the barbarian 
 hordes, which occupied the next five centuries. 
 Her principle of action in both cases was that 
 indwelling power of the Holy Ghost, by which 
 the Body of Christ was never forsaken. Thus, 
 by an inward and an outward work, did the 
 Church prepare the way for the subsequent dawn 
 of European civilization. The result of this process 
 
 4 Intellectual System, cap. iv. sec. 9. 
 * II. Corinthians, iv. 6. 6 John, i. 18.
 
 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 117 
 
 has been handed down to us in our present Creeds, 
 for the perfection of which the Providence of God 
 made wonderful provision in that mighty outspread 
 of the Fourth Empire, by which communication 
 was first widely extended, and an opening made 
 for the progress of Christian truth. For subtile 
 as some statements of Our Creeds at first sight 
 appear, the whole amount of their varied instruc- 
 tion may be shown to have been held in solution, 
 if the phrase may be employed, in that great 
 central truth, which was made known respecting 
 Jesus Christ Our Lord, when He " was declared 
 to be the Son of God with power, according to 
 the Spirit of Holiness, by the resurrection from 
 the dead." Those parts in them which reach 
 highest, have been attained only by following the 
 ascending line of Scriptural doctrine, as it reversed 
 that wonderful process by which the Son of God 
 left His Father's glory to clothe Himself in mortal 
 flesh. And this circumstance suggests a different 
 course of proceeding from that which was adopted 
 in the preceding Chapters. In treating the nature 
 and acts of man, even though that man be Christ 
 Our Lord, we are dealing with that which is pro- 
 jected before us, as it were on a level surface 
 which may be described therefore, and measured, 
 as we actually discern it. But w T hen we turn from 
 the Human to the Divine side of Our Lord's cha- 
 racter, we have to do with realities which we can- 
 not estimate, till we have viewed them in various
 
 118 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 
 
 relations, and ascertained, as it were, the exact 
 shape of those multiform bodies, of which at first 
 we can form no accurate conception. Here then 
 it will not be enough to take the simple inti- 
 mations of Scripture by themselves ; we must 
 combine them together, as was done in the early 
 age of the Gospel; we must see their reference to 
 the acts of Our Lord's life, and build them up into 
 that harmonious whole which they were intended 
 to present. And how can this be done so effec- 
 tually as by tracing the process which was actually 
 adopted, when, under the guidance of the Holy 
 Ghost, the Church's system was originally matured? 
 We shall thus see the relation of its several parts, 
 and how the central fact of Our Lord's Incar- 
 nation led to the full expression of all Christian 
 doctrines. 
 
 The early Church, when she was deprived of 
 the guidance of her inspired teachers, had not 
 reduced the truths which she inherited into that 
 harmonious and connected order, which was sub- 
 sequently attained. A sufficient evidence is, that 
 the word Trinity, which afterwards assumed so 
 important a place in her system of belief, was first 
 introduced into her service by Theophilus of 
 Antioch, near the end of the second century. Not 
 that the holy Apostles had been wanting in a 
 complete view of the Gospel, any more than in a 
 knowledge of its individual truths. But their light 
 had not come from learning, but from Revelation.
 
 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 119 
 
 The process of learning is first to accumulate 
 individual facts, and then, by observing the varying 
 relations which they bear to one another, to gain 
 a connected view of the whole field of mental 
 observation. But Revelation, through the mys- 
 terious communication of God's Spirit, brings the 
 mind into the same immediate contact with things 
 unseen, which we have with things visible through 
 the organs of the body. Thus is the inner man 
 endowed with the gift of intuition. So was St. 
 Paul " caught up into the third heaven, and 
 heard unspeakable words, which it was not lawful 
 for a man to utter." Thus St. John the Divine 
 saw a door opened into Heaven. For Our Lord's 
 promise was, that the Spirit of Truth should guide 
 His disciples " into all truth :" " He will show 
 you things to come." Truth, therefore, properly 
 speaking, belongs to a system or book Inspiration 
 to its teacher or author. And thus possessing 
 " the mind of Christ," the holy Apostles had that 
 complete insight into the unseen world, which en- 
 abled them to comprehend the relations of things, 
 as fully as their individual nature. But it was 
 otherwise, when the truths which they had held in 
 the earthen vessels of perishable mortality were 
 handed over to their successors. To pass from 
 St. Paul to Clement, or to Ignatius from his 
 master, St. John, is to descend at a step to earthly 
 ground from heavenly. The detached writings of 
 the Apostles and Evangelists were in men's hands,
 
 120 CHKIST IS GOD THE WORD. 
 
 but the pregnant relations which their inspired say- 
 ings revealed, were but imperfectly apprehended. 
 The simple facts indeed are there : Christ is wor- 
 shipped, His sacrifice is the sole ground of pardon, 
 union with Him is the only means of grace, the 
 nature and offices of the Third Person in the 
 Blessed Trinity are recognized, but the rich exu- 
 berance of those whose eyes were opened is de- 
 parted. It was only by gradual steps that the 
 Christian mind gained such practical mastery over 
 its spiritual inheritance, that there arose an Athana- 
 sius to contend for " the proportion of faith," and 
 an Augustin to be its exponent. Why it did not 
 please God that the full gifts of the Apostles were 
 continued to their successors, it is not for us to 
 say. But it is plain that the Christian community 
 grew from an infant to a mature state ; that the 
 truths, which from the first it firmly held, assumed 
 an ever-increasing consequence and meaning, as 
 discerned by its various generations ; that the 
 mind of the Church appeared to advance towards 
 "the measure of the stature of the fulness of 
 Christ ;" and that the course which it has pleased 
 God to adopt respecting natural knowledge and 
 individual minds, was not abandoned in the case of 
 that collective body, which was divinely instructed. 
 The process may be illustrated by what befalls 
 every young student, when he becomes acquainted 
 with that systematic view of Our Lord's nature 7 
 7 Eccl. Pol. v. c. 51-56.
 
 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 121 
 
 which is given by Hooker. At first probably he 
 admires the majestic and harmonious flow of those 
 weighty sentences, their prodigious grasp of Scrip- 
 tural truth, and the deep reverence with which 
 they touch things sacred. But though there is 
 nothing which he does not seem to understand, 
 there is in some points a copiousness which he is 
 at a loss to account for. And it is only after 
 repeated perusals, and in many years, that he 
 discerns the full meaning of what had at first fallen 
 idly on his incurious ear, and finds how far this 
 great writer has entered into the deep things 
 of God. 
 
 If this happens even when we peruse the 
 writings of an earthly thinker, how much more, 
 when the mysteries of the kingdom of God were 
 proclaimed in the words of Revelation ! Hence 
 the numerous heresies which sprung up in the 
 early age of the Church, among those who had 
 the letter of Scripture in their hands ; and hence 
 likewise, the incapacity of entering into Gospel 
 truth, so often visible in those who have been 
 brought up in error. These things show us the 
 infinite importance of that gradual schooling of the 
 Christian community in the truths of the Gospel, 
 which was completed by the publication and 
 general reception of the Creeds. The mere pub- 
 lication of these documents indeed had been little, 
 but they were not published till every statement 
 which they contain had first been verified; till the
 
 122 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 
 
 various relations of each had been appreciated; till 
 all had been shown to stand in reality on Scrip- 
 tural authority; till the Christian mind had been 
 prepared by the teaching of the Holy Ghost for 
 their reception; and thus, till a foundation had 
 been laid at once in man's nature and God's truth, 
 on which stands the accumulated weight of our 
 present Christianity. 
 
 And here we must carefully distinguish between 
 two things of a very different nature the authority 
 of the early Christian Church as a witness to 
 facts, and as the propounder of doctrines. Our 
 Article, by speaking of the Church as not only 
 "a witness and keeper of Holy Writ," but also 
 as having " authority in controversies of faith, 
 suggests to us clearly this twofold relation. The 
 early Church was a witness to facts, not only in 
 that she received certain books as inspired, but in 
 that she testified to certain practices. When dis- 
 putes arose respecting the doctrine of Our Lord's 
 Divinity, not only were certain statements to be 
 found in Scripture, but it was an admitted fact, 
 that worship had been paid to Him in all Christian 
 congregations. Thus the Fathers who opposed 
 Paul of Samosata at Antioch, witness to the 
 singing of hymns to Christ as a God, as an 
 acknowledged custom. 8 Again, a second fact, 
 which was witnessed by the Church, was the use 
 of Sacraments. " At the head of the ancient 
 8 Eusebius, vii. 31.
 
 CHEIST IS GOD THE WORD. 123 
 
 Christian worship," says Professor Dorner, " must 
 be placed the Eucharist, in which the congregation 
 celebrates its at-onement with God in Christ, the 
 Mediator between God and mankind; and in the 
 perpetual celebration of this feast is seen the first 
 proof of the belief of Christendom in Christ's 
 Divinity." " The second proof," he adds, " is the 
 practice of Holy Baptism." 9 A third fact of the 
 same nature, is the existence of those early 
 Creeds to which the Church required men to 
 give their assent in Baptism. For though less 
 detailed than was subsequently required, they 
 all witness a belief in Our Lord's Divinity. A 
 fourth thing is the existence of Doxologies, in 
 which glory was wont to be assigned to Him, in 
 conjunction with the Father and the Holy Ghost. 
 A fifth, is the setting apart of Holy Seasons, in 
 commemoration of His Birth, Death, and Resur- 
 rection. A sixth, is the use of Emblems, by which 
 the import of His passion was impressed upon the 
 mind. Here are six several particulars, indepen- 
 dently of the preservation of Holy Scripture, in 
 which the early Church witnessed to facts of great 
 importance in the determination of Our Lord's 
 character. But independently of her historical 
 testimony, she possessed an authority in respect 
 to the conclusions to which these facts conducted. 
 
 9 Dorner's " Lehre von der Person Christi," cap. i. vol. i. 
 p. 274 (a work of which great use has been made in the present 
 Chapter).
 
 124 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 
 
 That not only are there three Persons in one God, 
 but that the Son is " very God of very God," " of 
 one substance with the Father ;" the Church, when 
 stating this at Nice, was discharging a different 
 function from that which she fulfilled, when wit- 
 nessing to the facts which have previously been 
 noticed. In the one case, she was only doing 
 what, in his degree, was performed by the heathen 
 Pliny, when he related that the Christians sang 
 hymns to Christ as a God. In the other, she was 
 certainly exercising some " authority in contro- 
 versies of faith." In the former case, her claim to 
 respect is to be tested by the ordinary rules of 
 evidence. But what is it in the latter? It stands 
 on the validity of that promise, which assures us 
 that the gates of hell shall not prevail against her, 
 and which assumes therefore that the Body of 
 Christ will never be deserted by that guiding 
 Spirit, which is as necessary for truth as for obe- 
 dience. The help of the Holy Ghost is no doubt 
 an abiding succour, which is given according to 
 the wants and circumstances of the inheritance of 
 God. In one age it speaks by physical miracles, in 
 another through that moral influence which renews 
 the life. And so too did it display itself in the 
 Church's guidance. In the Apostles there was 
 that original communication of all truth, which 
 was given once for all, for the instruction of man- 
 kind. The subsequent direction of God's Spirit 
 was for the purpose only of interpreting what had
 
 C HEIST IS GOD THE WORD. 125 
 
 already been delivered. Thus was it always re- 
 garded in ancient times, and unless thus restrained 
 the Spirit's guidance might be a warrant for 
 Neology on one side, or Mahometanism on the 
 other. Whereas the Christian covenant was from 
 the first understood to be God's final dispensation 
 with man. " There have been two changes in 
 man's life," says St. Gregory Xazianzen, "which 
 accompanied the two Testaments, and which from 
 their greatness, might be called shakings of the 
 earth. And a third earth-shaking does Scripture 
 tell us of, when this earthly state namely shall 
 yield to that which is unshaken and eternal." 10 
 
 The Church's " authority in controversies of 
 faith," requires therefore, as its constant counter- 
 poise, the paramount authority of Holy Writ. To 
 adjust such varying claims, may in some cases be 
 difficult. But no such difficulty displayed itself in 
 that early age, in which the system of her belief 
 was embodied in the Creeds. For since no division 
 as yet impaired her unity, the promise of Christ's 
 presence was with her in its fulness, and the weight 
 of her decision was without abatement. Had her 
 interpretation of the fundamentals of the Gospel 
 been erroneous, how had Christ's promise in her 
 favour been fulfilled? This circumstance invests 
 her judgment on these momentous subjects with 
 an importance superadded to that which the fact 
 of her testimony naturally commands. There are 
 10 Oratio 37, sec. 58.
 
 126 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 
 
 those, indeed, who seem as though they would be 
 glad to divest themselves of the advantage of such 
 decisions. They would rather fall back on the 
 unreflecting simplicity of that early faith, which 
 rested only on the single facts of the Gospel. But 
 this is to be ignorant, that the gradual expansion 
 of Christian doctrines was only the growth of the 
 religious mind, as under the moulding power of the 
 Holy Ghost, it compared the individual truths with 
 which it had been entrusted. Those truths must 
 have resolved themselves into wrong combinations, 
 if they had not been resolved into right ones. The 
 Body of Christ must have grown up in an un- 
 natural and distorted shape, if the informing Spirit 
 had not fulfilled its appointed function of guiding 
 it into all truth. In the earnest obedience of the 
 early age, when the warmth of love dispensed with 
 the maturity of knowledge, there was a moment 
 indeed, when the outward growth of the Church 
 scarce left time to embody what was believed in 
 abstract formularies. But this infant security de- 
 pended either on the personal guidance of the 
 inspired Apostles, or on the witness of men, to 
 whom, as to St. Ignatius, long habits of intercourse 
 with the first leaders had given such confidence 
 respecting their decisions, both in faith and in prac- 
 tice, that a reference to the general principles of 
 the Church's existence was not yet required. And 
 those who seek to regain it by throwing away what 
 was earned by the religious impulse then given to
 
 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 127 
 
 the age, do but restore the imbecility of childhood 
 without its innocence. 
 
 The work, then, at present before us, is to con- 
 sider by what gradual steps the testimony of Scrip- 
 ture, illustrated by the practice of the Apostles, 
 led to that matured statement of the doctrine of 
 Our Lord's Divinity, to which the Church was 
 directed by the Holy Ghost. For though the doc- 
 trine itself had been understood from the first, 
 yet its expression became more comprehensive, as 
 through the Spirit's guidance its full relations were 
 more adequately appreciated. To trace the actual 
 progress of thought is the best exhibition, there- 
 fore, of the truth of Our Lord's Divinity, since it 
 shows how indissolubly this doctrine is bound up 
 with the whole system of the Divine nature ; and 
 since it likewise illustrates its influence as the basis 
 of all the religious instincts of Christendom. For 
 in this manner it will appear, that the whole system 
 of the Church's faith was elicited in the defence of 
 this its one cardinal principle : that the vindication 
 of Christian piety led to those deep inquiries which 
 enlarged and exalted the conceptions of mankind. 
 Indeed, the primary importance of the worship of 
 the God-man, is as manifest from the conduct of 
 the Church's assailants, as from that of her chil- 
 dren : for during the earlier ages of her existence, 
 no enemies assaulted her, by whom the doctrine of 
 His sacred Person was not assailed as the first and
 
 128 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 
 
 most prominent part of her system. Their assaults 
 may be referred in general to three classes. In the 
 second century, they were grounded chiefly on a 
 view of the nature of man, and of the impossibility 
 of an union between him and his Maker. During 
 the third and fourth centuries, on the other hand, 
 the prevalent heresies arose from speculations on 
 the Divine nature, and on the want of coherence 
 between belief in Christ, and the unity of the God- 
 head. And this brings us in the fifth century to a 
 third class of disputes. Our Lord being admitted 
 to be both God and man, the question which 
 remained was as to the manner in which these two 
 natures were united. 
 
 Confining ourselves in this Chapter to disputes 
 of the first and second kind, we may observe that 
 the argument advanced through the first into the 
 second. It was when the difficulties which had 
 been suggested by the thought of Christ's man- 
 hood had been in a measure overcome, that they 
 awoke again in relation to the Unity of the God- 
 head. Thus did they rise from the lower to the 
 higher nature. And in each age the assailants 
 might be resolved generally into two classes, those 
 who questioned the Deity, and those who ques- 
 tioned the Humanity of Christ. The Arians were 
 in some sort the successors of the Ebionites, and 
 the Gnostics were precursors of the Sabellian and 
 Apollinarian school. The Ebionites were among 
 the first antagonists by whom the Christian mind
 
 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 129 
 
 was called forth to the survey and defence of the 
 truths entrusted to it. They formed the small and 
 unimportant party, rather arising from the Church 
 than in it, which questioned the Divine character 
 of Our Lord. Their influence was so slight in early 
 times, that they would be lost sight of, but for the 
 diligence of Eusebius, 11 and a few other ancient 
 authors. They rose probably out of the Jewish 
 Christians, and had retained the notion, attributed 
 by Justin to that nation, that Christ would be only 
 a man, and born of men. 12 Hence perhaps their 
 name (poor), from their entertaining, says Euse- 
 bius, poor and low notions of Christ ; unless it was 
 derived from the meanness and want of instruction 
 which characterized their party. They are re- 
 markable only for affording the original example of 
 that error, which afterwards displayed itself in a 
 more dangerous shape. 
 
 The popular error of the second century lay on 
 the opposite side, and consisted in a denial of Our 
 Lord's Humanity. The works which He had 
 wrought had been so marvellous, and His worship 
 was so universal among His disciples, that those 
 who left the middle way of truth, were generally 
 inclined to deny that there could be any human 
 nature in one whose Godhead was so manifest. 
 This error of the Gnostics was encouraged by the 
 prevalent philosophy of the East, where it espe- 
 cially extended itself ; according to which all cor- 
 11 Eusebius, iii. 27. 12 Dial, cum Tryph. sec. 49. 
 
 K
 
 130 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 
 
 ruption lay in the fleshy part of man, and spirit was 
 confounded with purity. Supposing matter there- 
 fore to be the sole principle of evil, and ignorant 
 that defilement lies in reality in sin, whether of 
 body or mind, the Gnostics supposed Our Lord 
 to be a Divine Spirit who came only in the form 
 of man, without being really united to manhood. 
 This was the other extreme of error ; and its 
 earlier growth and greater popularity is shown 
 by the testimony which is borne against it by the 
 Beloved Disciple : " Every spirit that confesseth 
 not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of 
 God; and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof 
 ye have heard that it should come, and even now 
 already is it in the world." 13 
 
 Either of these heretical opinions was subversive 
 of the Christian faith ; since the one represented 
 the object of our hope to be a mere creature, and 
 the other denied Him that participation with our- 
 selves, on which rests our salvation. Those who 
 adopted them were, of course, excluded from the 
 Church's communion ; yet, though merely hovering 
 on the verge of the faith, they chose to call them- 
 selves Christians. But, since they were not con- 
 stituent parts of the Christian body, it was not ne- 
 cessary to meet their errors by any official degree 
 of the Church's rulers; it was left to single writers 
 at their will to oppose and confute them. Two of 
 great consideration arose in the middle and latter 
 13 I. John, iv. 3.
 
 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 131 
 
 part of the second century, Justin Martyr, and St. 
 Irenaeus. The former may be referred perhaps to 
 the school of St. Paul, the latter to that of St. 
 John, though Irenaeus keeps far closer to his guide, 
 and enters far more deeply into the spirit of the 
 Gospel, than the philosophic Justin. 14 
 
 In his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, Justin 
 Martyr sets forth the ground upon which the 
 Ebionite denial of our Lord's Divinity was to be 
 confuted. His arguments rest upon a review of 
 those predictions of the Old Testament respecting 
 the character of Messiah, which are inconsistent 
 with the notion, that He who bore it was merely 
 a human being. From the argument of prophecy, 
 he passes to Our Lord's title of the Word ; main- 
 taining Him to be as closely bound, as its very 
 attributes, to Godhead itself. " I will give you 
 Scripture proof," he says, " that God begot from 
 Himself a certain intellectual form, as a beginning 
 which preceded all creation, which is sometimes 
 called by the Holy Ghost God's glory, some- 
 times His Son, sometimes Wisdom, sometimes His 
 Angel, sometimes God, sometimes the Lord and 
 the Word" 1 * And again, speaking of His pre- 
 sence among men; "the 16 omnipotent and invisible 
 God from Heaven has Himself placed among men 
 
 14 Mohler's Einheit der Kirche, sec. 35. 
 10 Dialogus cum Tryphone, sec. 61, p. 157. 
 16 Ad Diognet. sec. 7. Whether this letter be Justin's or 
 not, it is, the Benedictine editors say, " S. Martyre dig- 
 nissirnum ."
 
 132 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 
 
 His truth and Holy Word not as one might 
 suppose sending a minister or an angel but the 
 very Artificer and Maker of all things." " As a 
 King, sending His royal Son, has He despatched 
 Him." This Being, Justin speaks of as containing 
 in Himself, as a source and centre, all the light 
 and reason, of which faint adumbrations are to be 
 met with among men. " Whatever has been well 
 spoken or discovered by philosophers or legislators, 
 has been owing to that partial discovery and 
 observation of the Word, to which their labours 
 conducted them. But because they had no com- 
 plete knowledge of the Word, who is Christ, they 
 fell into many contradictions. "" Thus would 
 he account for the fact, that Plato's teaching is 
 in so far "not contrary to that of Christ," 18 that 
 he likewise believed in " those three divine hypos- 
 tases, that have the nature of principles in the 
 Universe, viz., monad, mind, and soul." 19 Indeed, 
 if in the secret abyss of infinite Being we recognize 
 the mysterious Three as the primal source of all 
 existence, what more natural, to say nothing of an 
 original revelation, than that man's heart should 
 have such natural affinity to this belief, as to lead 
 deep thinkers to anticipate it ? " Each one, there- 
 fore," says Justin, " spoke well, according as 
 through the seminal principle of the Divine Word, 
 he discried something which was akin to his 
 
 17 Apol. II. sec. x. p. 95. 
 18 Apol. II. sec. xiii. p. 97. 19 Cudworth's Intell. Sys. iv. 36.
 
 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 133 
 
 nature." "And whatever they said well belongs 
 to us Christians. For the Word of the unbegotten 
 and ineffable God, we worship and love together 
 with God, since for our sakes He became man, 
 that being partaker of our sufferings He might 
 cure them." 20 
 
 Having thus declared Christ to be God's 
 Wisdom or Word in its completeness, 21 he shows 
 His pre-existence, 22 and that He shared the coun- 
 sels 23 of the Father before the world was. Finally, 
 he points out that Our Lord had an inherent and 
 independent, not merely a conditional and rela- 
 tionary existence, both as regards the works of 
 Creation, and the Father Himself. For He was 
 " the Son of God, the only real Son, who was 
 with God before all creation." 24 "And He it is, 
 who was seen by Abraham, Jacob, and Moses, 
 and who is called God other than the God who 
 is the original of all things ; that is, other in 
 number [i. e. person], not in mind." 25 
 
 The writings of St. Irenaeus against the Gnostics 
 are built upon the same doctrine of " the Incarnate 
 Word," which is brought forward by Justin, but 
 St. Irenaeus is far fuller and deeper in his view 
 of Gospel truth, and his solutions of the errors 
 he refutes are far more satisfactory. On one 
 side he has a truer view of the character of God, 
 
 20 Apol. II. sec. xiii. p. 98. 21 Apol. II. sec. viii. p. 94. 
 
 " Apol. I. sec. Ixiii. p. 81. ^ Ep. ad Diog. viii. p. 238. 
 
 34 Apol. H. sec. vi. p. 92. Cum Trypho, Ivi. p. 152.
 
 134 CHEIST IS GOD THE WORD. 
 
 on the other a profounder sense of the wants of 
 humanity. The teaching of Justin shows signs of 
 a more recent conversion from Heathenism; and 
 the tendency which had been derived from the 
 schools of philosophy, is not so completely sub- 
 ordinated to the principles of the new Revelation. 
 According to his system, we should be in danger 
 of resting the Godhead upon the mere heathen 
 ground of intellectual greatness, and the Word 
 who manifests Him, though His goodness is not 
 left unnoticed, would be regarded too exclusively 
 in His character of the "Light of men." But 
 St. Irenaeus discerns that what constitutes the 
 Godhead is neither mere immensity nor abstract 
 substance, but that ultimate self-originating per- 
 sonal existence, of which the characteristic is Love. 
 The words of the Beloved Apostle are thus a 
 guiding star to him who had sat at the feet of 
 his disciple. The Word of God therefore, by 
 whom the Divine character is manifested, is in 
 like manner distinguished by that attribute which 
 is proper to Deity. " The one God, who made 
 and arranged every thing by His Word and 
 Wisdom, is the real Creator, who assigned this 
 world to the human race, who, in regard to His 
 greatness, is unknown to all His creatures (for His 
 depths, none either of past or present men have 
 sounded); but as respects His love, He is known 
 by Him, through whom He made all things. For 
 this is His Word, Jesus Christ Our Lord, who in
 
 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 135 
 
 these last times was made a man among men, 
 that He might join the end to the beginning 
 that is, man to God." 26 And in another place he 
 says, that "the immensity of God and His sub- 
 stance are things beyond human estimation, for 
 no man has ever measured nor handled them; but 
 what falls within man's perception is His love." 27 
 This is his mode of answering the Gnostic spe- 
 culators, whose effort was to resolve Christianity 
 into a sort of Theogony, and thus to ally it to 
 Oriental fables. And Irenaeus, after showing them 
 the true source in which they should seek for the 
 knowledge of God, declares all other inquiries 
 respecting Him to be vain and unsatisfactory, 
 since He is an ultimate Personality, and not 
 resolvable into fate 28 or any higher law. "Non 
 enim excogitabis." 29 "Canst thou by searching 
 find out God ?" " He 30 who seeks it, unless he 
 repent, will float about for ever in the ocean of 
 incomprehensibility." 31 
 
 Having thus shown that the basis of the Gnostic 
 errors was an imperfect estimate of the nature of 
 God, he passes to that particular heresy in which 
 these opinions manifested their effect; their de- 
 nial namely of the Humanity of Christ. To sup- 
 pose Immensity to be the essence of Deity, was 
 
 26 S. Irenaeus, iv. 20, 4, p. 254 [Massuet]. 
 27 Ibid. iii. 24, 2, p. 223. * Ibid. ii. 5, 4, p. 121. 
 
 29 Ibid. ii. 25, 4, p. 153. " Ibid. iv. 9, 3, p. 238. 
 
 31 " Quemadmodum poterit quis intelligere aut cognoscere in 
 corde tarn magnum Deum ?" Ibid. iv. 19, 3, p. 252.
 
 136 CHRIST IS GOD THE WOKD. 
 
 nearly connected with supposing what was tangible 
 and material to be its direct opponent. Hence 
 the feeling that it was impossible that the Supreme 
 Mind should manifest itself in the flesh. Against 
 this opinion St. Irenseus puts the declaration of 
 Scripture, and the constant belief of the Church, 
 that " Our Lord redeemed us by His own blood, 
 and gave His life for our life, and His flesh for 
 our flesh." 32 He discriminates between mere natural 
 limitation, which belongs to material being, and 
 that moral corruption, which is the consequence of 
 sin. Without the removal of the last, he says, 
 there was some natural impossibility in man's sal- 
 vation; 33 whereas the admixture of material 
 elements in man's nature was only a part of that 
 perfect 34 construction in which he was originally 
 made. And that Christ Our Lord participated in 
 them, was shown by abundant individual indica- 
 tions. Why else should He have been hungry 
 after His fast, or weary after His journey? Why 
 should He have wept at the tomb of Lazarus, 
 or in His Passion have shed drops of blood r 35 
 But Irenaeus goes deeper than this, and is not 
 satisfied by such mere incidental notices of Our 
 Lord's Humanity. He seems to have feared lest 
 these signs of sympathy in one who was also a 
 
 32 S. Iren. v. 1, 1, p. 292. 
 
 33 " Impossibile erat ut salutem perciperet qui sub peccato 
 ceciderat." S. Irenceus, iii. 18, 2, p. 209. 
 
 34 S. Iren. v. 6, 1. p. 299. 
 36 S. Iren. iii. 22, 2, p. 219. S. Leo, Ep. xxiv. 4.
 
 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 137 
 
 Divine Being, should be looked upon only as 
 individual instances of gratuitous condescension; 
 as an assumed conformity to our lot, rather than 
 an actual copartnership in our nature. This was 
 exactly what was afterwards maintained by the 
 Aphthartodocetae, 36 a sect of Eutychians ; and thus 
 was Christ's sympathy with ourselves divested of 
 its reality. To guard against such an error, 
 Irenaeus insists on that relation between Christ 
 and humanity at large, which is revealed in Scrip- 
 ture ; and thus lays a foundation for the apparent 
 facts of His life, in the principles which were 
 essential to its object. " For if He had not of 
 man taken the substance of flesh, He would not 
 have been man or the Son of Man ; and if He had 
 not been made what we were, He would not have 
 done so great a thing in His sufferings." 37 This 
 relation of Christ to man, he grounds on those 
 passages of Holy Scripture which speak of Christ 
 as the antitype of Adam, " whence also, by St. 
 Paul, Adam is called the type of Him who was to 
 come;" 38 and likewise on the declarations which it 
 contains of a real unity of nature between Christ 
 and His ransomed brethren. In this system he 
 seems to have discerned that peculiar fitness and 
 harmony to which Hooker apparently refers, when 
 
 36 " Oportebat non solum velle, sed fecisse Deum aliquid erga 
 nos." Leonthis, c. Nest, ct Eutych. Bib. Max. Pat. ix. 688. 
 vid. Pet. de Inc. x. 3. 
 
 37 S. Iren. iii. 22, 1, p. 218. * Ibid. iii. 22, 3, p. 219.
 
 138 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 
 
 he says that " Christ's Incarnation and Passion can 
 be available to no man's good, which is not made 
 partaker of Christ, neither can we participate Him 
 without His presence;" 39 but his conclusions do 
 not rest on mere natural arguments, but on the 
 inspired sayings of the Apostles. And to these 
 no one could refer with greater confidence, than 
 one who professes to have learnt the general pur- 
 pose of their teaching from their immediate dis- 
 ciples. " It was necessary that He who began to 
 destroy sin, and to redeem men who deserved 
 death, should Himself be made partaker of that 
 nature, which by sin had been brought into ser- 
 vitude, and was enthralled by death, that so sin 
 might be destroyed by man, and man might be 
 delivered from death. ' For as by the disobe- 
 dience of one man,' who was formed originally out 
 of the virgin earth, ' many were made sinners,' 
 and lost their life, ' so by the obedience of One' 
 who from a virgin had His origin, many have been 
 justified and obtained salvation. Thus therefore 
 was the Word of God made man. In the words 
 of Moses, it was truly God's work. For if He had 
 only obeyed as flesh, and not become flesh, it had 
 been no real work. He became that which was 
 obedient: God, by taking the elements of man- 
 hood, became Himself a new Head to man's 
 original race, that He might destroy sin, deprive 
 death of its sting, and give mankind life." 
 
 39 Eccl. Pol. v. 55, 1. S. Irenseus, Hi. 18, 7, p. 211.
 
 CHEIST IS GOU THE WORD. 139 
 
 There are two particular points to which 
 Irenaeus refers, as evidencing the reality of the 
 relation, which has been thus described; the one, 
 Our Lord's sacrifice upon the Cross ; the other, 
 that real communion with Himself, which He 
 vouchsafes in the Lord's Supper. " If the flesh 
 is not saved, then did not Christ redeem us with 
 His blood, nor is the cup of the Eucharist the 
 communion of His blood, nor is the bread which 
 we break, the communion of His body. It could 
 not be blood, unless there were flesh, veins, and 
 whatever else belongs to man's substance; yet all 
 this the Word must truly have taken, for He 
 redeemed us with His blood, as the Apostle says, 
 ' in whom we have redemption through His blood, 
 the forgiveness of sins.'" 41 In referring to the 
 Holy Communion as evidencing the truth of Our 
 Lord's humanity, St. Irenseus appeals to the testi- 
 mony of the early Church, that the gifts of grace 
 are obtained through union with the man Jesus 
 Christ, in as real a manner as forgiveness of sins 
 was purchased by His blood. Is it, then, that as 
 His earthly body was nailed upon the Cross, so it 
 is divided into morsels, and eaten as natural food 
 by men? Such was the notion of the Capharnaites ; 
 and the same opinion, with the addition that Our 
 Lord's material body is capable of being dis- 
 tributed in portions, without limit and without 
 destruction, and also that men's senses are super- 
 41 S. Irenaeus, v. 2, 2, p. 293. S. Leo, Ep. 24, 5.
 
 140 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 
 
 naturally withheld from discerning it, is denied 
 by our Church under the name of Transubstan- 
 tiation. What other interpretations may be given 
 to a word unknown to antiquity, and how far, 
 considering the technical nature of the term sub- 
 stance, a more refined construction of it may 
 harmonize with the decrees of the Council of 
 Trent, is a question for those who have to sub- 
 scribe its formularies. The Capharnaite notion, 
 however, must imply that some supernatural effect 
 is connected with the eating of Our Lord's body, 
 since naturally it would act only as common food. 
 And such supernatural effect is attributed to it by 
 all who, without holding a carnal presence, believe 
 with our Church that "the inward part or thing 
 signified" in the Holy Communion is "the body 
 and blood of Christ, which are verily and indeed 
 taken and received by the faithful in the Lord's 
 Supper." Now this is all which is requisite, to 
 give its force to the argument of St. Irenaeus. 
 That argument turns on the belief that Our Lord's 
 Humanity, through spiritual supernatural influence, 
 is in the Holy Communion the consecrating prin- 
 ciple of ours. It implies, of course, that the 
 participation of Our Lord's body in the Holy 
 Communion is not merely figurative, that it is not 
 a mere memorial of His death, an acted sermon on 
 His sufferings ; and it is a point of no little mo- 
 ment, that one who had been nurtured in the faith 
 by St. John's disciple, and who lived within half
 
 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 141 
 
 a century of the writing of his Gospel, should have 
 thought this assertion so clear, that the reality of 
 the Atonement and the Resurrection could be built 
 upon it. For he reasons back from the reality of 
 the gift bestowed, to the reality of the source from 
 which it emanates ; and considers it a sufficient 
 argument against the Docetae, that Christ must be 
 truly man, since we are truly benefited by union 
 with His manhood. Whereas the heretical party, 
 believing Christ's Incarnation and Death to be only 
 a representation, supposed, naturally enough, that 
 His presence in the Eucharist was only a figurative 
 process, by which our imagination was strongly im- 
 pressed, and that neither was there in Christ any 
 real body to produce an effect upon us, nor w r ere 
 the bodies of mankind to be quickened at the 
 resurrection. The renewal of " body, soul, and 
 spirit," to which the Apostle refers, was lost sight 
 of with the belief in Our Lord's Body. On the 
 reality then of the human body of Our Lord, 
 stands, according to Irenseus, the certainty of man- 
 kind's resurrection. That he supposes the media 
 through which its sanctifying agency extends itself 
 to the Christian, to continue to be actual elements 
 of bread and w r ine, is shown by his repeated 
 reference to their earthly character, 42 subject, 
 as the Gnostics supposed, to the Demiurgus or 
 Lord of this world, whose gifts they thought 
 could not be made subservient to the purposes of 
 42 S. Iren. IV. 33, 2, p. 270, & iv. 18, 4, p. 251.
 
 142 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 
 
 God. This opinion he refutes, by showing that 
 they are the means of communicating that mys- 
 terious union, whereby men are bound to the 
 second, as by nature they were to the first Adam. 
 It follows, since our whole union with the second 
 Adam is not by natural descent, but by super- 
 natural alliance, that His presence therefore in the 
 Eucharist, however true and real, must not be by 
 carnal interpenetration, but by spiritual power. 
 " The mixture of [Christ's] bodily substance with 
 ours, is a thing which the ancient Fathers disclaim. 
 Yet the mixture of His flesh with ours they speak 
 of, to signify what our very bodies, through mys- 
 tical conjunction, receive from that vital efficacy 
 which we know to be in His, and from bodily 
 mixtures they borrow divers similitudes, rather to 
 declare the truth, than the manner of coherence 
 between His sacred and the sanctified bodies of 
 Saints." 43 Accordingly Irenaeus says, "when the 
 mixed cup, and the bread which results from 
 growth, receives 44 the word of God, the Eucharist 
 becomes the body of Christ, and from them the 
 substance of our flesh receives increase and cor- 
 roboration. How then can they say that there is 
 no capacity for that gift of God, which is eternal 
 life, in the flesh which is nourished by the body 
 and blood of the Lord, and becomes a part of 
 
 43 Eccl. Pol. v. 56, 9. 
 
 44 " Accedit verbum [z*. e. of consecration] ad elementum, et 
 fit Sacramentum." S. Aug. in Joan. Ixxx. 3.
 
 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 143 
 
 Him? as the blessed Paul says in his Epistle to 
 the Ephesians, ' we are members of His body : of 
 His flesh, and of His bones.' ' ?45 
 
 Other passages would illustrate the same deep 
 view of Christ's relation to Humanity, as, for 
 instance, the striking one in the Fourth Book 
 [xviii. 4], which is cited by Hooker. But what has 
 been adduced is sufficient proof that St. Irenseus, 
 with the rest of the early Church, maintained 
 Our Lord's Manhood as certainly as His Godhead. 
 The two natures were believed to be absolutely 
 joined together in one Person. Was there any 
 thing which belonged of necessary right to the 
 nature of man, it might certainly be attributed to 
 Him ; was there anything which could not be sepa- 
 rated from Godhead, it could not be denied Him. 
 These two widely-separated characters in one single 
 person made up His Being. As God He was the 
 object of all honour and worship : as man He had 
 offered His body on the Cross, and was still pre- 
 senting it in heaven as the ground of intercession 
 and the source of graces. 
 
 Thus did the first assaults upon the cardinal 
 principle of the Christian faith, lead to a clear 
 and full assertion that in Christ Our Lord, two 
 natures, Godhead and Manhood, were perfectly 
 manifested. The time however was now come, 
 when the influx of educated and thoughtful men 
 into the Church, made it necessary to give this 
 45 S. Irenaeus, v. 2, 3, p. 294.
 
 144 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 
 
 great truth a more adequate expression. In the 
 third century of the Christian aara, to the con- 
 sideration of which we now come, there arose a 
 new set of objectors, to try men's allegiance to the 
 Gospel. These were no longer external to the 
 Church, like the Ebionites and Gnostics : they had 
 passed within it. Their assaults were not directed, 
 like the errors of the second century, against the 
 avowed principle of Christianity, that man was 
 God and God man; they had learned the more 
 subtile and dangerous policy of amending rather 
 than disputing it. They were ready to admit the 
 Church's doctrine in name, if in reality they might 
 reject it. They claimed to interpret it in such 
 wise as should not clash with another leading doc- 
 trine of the Scripture revelation, the Unity of God. 
 For whereas the objections of the preceding age 
 had been built on a regard to the constitution of 
 man's nature, those which now arose were derived 
 rather from the nature of God. The Unity of the 
 Divine Being was one essential point which the new 
 Revelation had to maintain against Polytheism. 
 With this fundamental principle of Christianity, 
 the real belief in Christ as God was asserted to be 
 inconsistent. " They charge us with setting forth 
 two Gods or three," reports Tertullian, "while 
 they assert themselves to be worshippers of but 
 one. We hold, they say, to the monarchy." 46 
 There was plainly this difficulty, that Christ as 
 46 Adv. Praxeam, 3.
 
 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 145 
 
 man, was one individual in a class containing many 
 members. If His other nature could be dealt with 
 in a corresponding manner if His Divine Being 
 could be spoken of as, in like manner, one out of 
 many what difference would there be between 
 Christianity and the religion of the Heathen ? 
 Hence the various attempts which were made in the 
 third century, to explain away the Christian doc- 
 trines without absolutely rejecting them. These 
 attempts were met by no less strenuous efforts on 
 the part of more enlightened believers, to guard 
 the ancient deposit of Christian truth, by insisting 
 on the real reception of the very same belief which 
 had originally existed. Hence the introduction of 
 new forms of expression, to negative those several 
 misconceptions by which the ingenuity of men 
 would have perverted the great facts of revelation. 
 "Just as the Heathen make gods with their hands," 
 says Tertullian, " so do the heretics by their words, 
 while they introduce a different God and a different 
 Christ." 47 "It was in maintaining, therefore, the 
 character of Christ, that there rose all those dis- 
 putes respecting the Doctrine of the Trinity, which 
 existed in the early Church." 48 To assert Our 
 Lord to be merely the Divine Wisdom, as had 
 been done by Justin Martyr, and thus to assign 
 Him a place among the attributes of God, was 
 soon found to be insufficient. On this showing, 
 
 47 Adv. Praxeam, sec. 18. 
 48 Dorner's Person Christi, vol. i. p. 940. 
 
 L
 
 146 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 
 
 was there not a danger lest His personality should 
 be wholly lost in the infinite perfection of the one 
 God ? But suppose that to escape this difficulty, 
 His mission to create the world was insisted on, 
 and He was thus exhibited as invested plainly with 
 a personal character. Yet such a personality was 
 merely drawn from God's works; it depended on 
 the visible creation; it was not deep enough to 
 serve for the personal identification of an Eternal 
 Being. So that two conditions which belonged 
 plainly to the great object of the Church's worship, 
 that He was the Word or Wisdom of the Father, 
 and that by Him the worlds were made, were not 
 only insufficient, when taken in themselves, as the 
 determining characteristics of His character, but, 
 in fact, became the very germinant principles of 
 the great heresies of the age. For what was this 
 denial of the real personality of the Son of God, 
 but the heresy which afterwards became so fatal 
 under the names of Sabellian, Patripassian, or 
 Apollinarian ? while to rest Our Lord's Being on 
 His relation to the external world, was that more 
 consistent heresy of Arius to which the others con- 
 ducted. If it pleased God to embody the abstract 
 attribute of His wisdom in a personal substance for 
 the creation of the world, the Being so employed 
 was only a creature, distinguished by greater re- 
 sponsibility from the things which He created. 
 "Refer Our Lord's Godhead only to His resem- 
 blance to the Divine attributes, and His personality
 
 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 147 
 
 was lost in the Unity of God; prove His per- 
 sonality by His activity in creation, and His God- 
 head was lost in the created universe. If God be 
 not personally distinguished from God, the prin- 
 ciple of discrimination is not founded in the inner 
 nature of God, but depends only on His relation 
 to the world. And thus the Son becomes only a 
 secondary, accidental, contingent thing, like the 
 world of creation. So that unless the conditions 
 which discriminate the Son's personality are sought 
 for in God Himself, Arianism must of necessity 
 follow." 49 
 
 It was essential then to meet the inquiring spirit 
 of the age, by laying down the precise limits of 
 that idea under which the worship of the God-man 
 had existed from the foundation of the Church. 
 The right course had been marked out by St. 
 Irenseus, in a manner sufficient for the require- 
 ments of the second century. For first he dis- 
 tinguishes between the Creator and the creation, 
 pointing out that Our Lord was not only in Him- 
 self an invisible 50 power, ever present 51 with the 
 Father, but that His Being was not dependent 
 on the world's existence, the world having been 
 created in subsequent time to show forth God's 
 glory. 52 This supplies him not only with a safe- 
 guard against the danger of a general Pantheism, 
 the principle of which is to merge the personality 
 
 49 Dorner's Person Christi, i. 449. 
 
 50 S. Irenteus, iv. 24, 2, p. 260. " Ibid. iv. 20, 1, p. 253. 
 52 Ibid, iv. 14, 1, p. 243.
 
 148 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 
 
 of the moral Governor in the circle of His works, 
 but it is a protest by anticipation against the 
 Arian heresy, the essential feature of which was 
 to represent the existence of the Son as relative 
 only to creation. On the other hand, Irenaeus 
 makes provision against Sabellian misrepresenta- 
 tions, by discriminating the person of the Word 
 from that of the Father. He disclaims such esti- 
 mate of the nature of the Word, as might be 
 drawn from the application of the same terms to 
 man. "When you explain His generation from 
 the Father, and transfer to the Word of God 
 ideas drawn from the utterance of words from 
 the tongue of man, you are clearly detected to 
 be ignorant of what is human as well as what 
 is Divine." 53 
 
 These explanations were sufficient, so long as 
 the tendency which it was necessary to oppose, 
 showed itself in the shape of Ebionism and 
 Gnosticism. But more was required when they 
 ripened into the Arian and Sabellian heresies. 
 That they are the very same tendencies are 
 obvious ; for while Arianism is the professed 
 denial of Our Lord's real Divinity, the Sabellian 
 notion, that the Son is not personally distinct 
 from the Father, but merely one side or phase 
 of the Father's character, is an obvious revival 
 of the notion of an emanation from the Godhead, 
 and is fatal therefore to the real permanent 
 53 S. Irenajus, ii. 28, 5, p. 157.
 
 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 149 
 
 coherence of God and man in the one Person of 
 Christ. So that while Arianism tends directly 
 towards creature worship, the Sabellian heresy im- 
 plies the denial of any real intervention of the Son 
 of God as the Saviour of mankind. 
 
 There was no want of opponents to these errors, 
 when they began to display themselves within 
 the Church. The course indicated by Irenasus 
 was followed by Tertullian, who marked out more 
 carefully the Son's independence of the external 
 world, by observing that He was one in sub- 
 stance with the Father. Thus was He taken 
 altogether out of the class of created beings. 
 The explanations of Origen were still more com- 
 plete. 55 He introduced the phrase of the " Son's 
 eternal generation," which was at once adopted by 
 the whole Church, as expressing the exact view 
 of Our Lord's relation to the Godhead, which had 
 always been delivered to them. Thus was secured 
 the notion of a perpetual generation, in which 
 time had no part ; and since the discriminating 
 considerations of the Son's personality were thus 
 laid in the nature of the Deity itself, the Sabellian 
 confusion was escaped, and yet the Deity was not 
 rendered dependent upon His works. 
 
 It is not to be supposed indeed, that the early 
 
 54 Adv. Praxeam, sec. 4. 
 
 55 " Est namque ita seterna ac sempiterna generatio sicut 
 splendor generatus ex luce. Non enim per adoptionem spi- 
 ritus Filius fit extrinsecus, sed natura Filius est." De Prin- 
 cipiis, 1, 2, 4.
 
 150 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 
 
 writers could always use expressions incapable of 
 being taken in a partial and erroneous sense. 
 While the relations of the great truths they handed 
 down were imperfectly apprehended, it was impos- 
 sible to foresee of what further enlargement 
 either words or ideas were susceptible. And 
 this is the ground of those complaints against 
 them, which have been made by Petavius, and 
 more recently by Mr. Newman. It is not 
 alleged that the ideas which they entertained 
 were incorrect, but that in comprehending their 
 relations, and clothing them in language, they did 
 not go beyond the wants of their generation. 
 But it is only when taken out of their place, 
 and applied in a sense in which they were not 
 intended, that the expressions of these ancient 
 writers can be said to be erroneous. Take them 
 in reference to that particular stage in the pro- 
 gress of opinion to which they were adapted, 
 and the imputation is ungrounded. The traveller 
 who inclines to the right to-day, is not deviating 
 from his course because he will incline to the 
 left to-morrow. It must not be supposed, there- 
 fore, that the holy men of the three first cen- 
 turies were in error respecting any of the great 
 truths of the Gospel ; though the Church's mind 
 was gradually led on by the Holy Ghost to a more 
 complete appreciation of all their multiform rela- 
 tions. And one resource was resorted to in the 
 third century, which in the second had been
 
 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 151 
 
 found needless the authority of Councils. This 
 had not been needful, while the enemy lay with- 
 out the Church. It was enough for the Bishops 
 to exclude those from the communion of the 
 faithful, who opposed her acknowledged doctrines. 
 Marcion was first excommunicated by his own 
 father, the Bishop of Synope, and when he sought 
 the Capital, he was again sentenced by the Bishop 
 of Rome, as the common father of its citizens. 
 But in the third century, w 7 e find no less than 
 three local Councils, which opened the way for 
 that great assembly at Nice, in which the Catholic 
 doctrines were fully vindicated. The first two 
 of these were directed against Sabellian tenets, 
 which were propagated in the one case by the 
 disciples of Xoetus of Smyrna; 56 in the other by 
 the Arabian Bishop Beryllus. In the latter in- 
 stance, Beryllus, the author of the error, was him- 
 self reclaimed by the arguments of Origen. 57 We 
 learn from Socrates, 58 that the Synod which op- 
 posed Beryllus dwelt especially on the existence 
 of Christ's human soul, a fact, which though 
 plainly implied by earlier writers (as Irenaeus and 
 Tertullian), for they speak of Our Lord as ignorant 
 according to His manhood, had been first put in a 
 clear light by Origen. The errors of Beryllus had 
 been those which are commonly maintained by 
 
 56 His opinions are recorded by S. Hippolytus Contra Noe- 
 tum, i. 5. Vide Routh's Rel. Sac. ii. p. 374. [1st Ed.] 
 
 57 Eus. Eccl. Hist. vi. 33. M Hist. iii. 7.
 
 152 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 
 
 Sabellians, that Our Lord, before His Incarnation, 
 was not really discriminated by any personal dis- 
 tinction from the Father, and that when He came 
 upon earth, it was not His own, but the Father's 
 Deity which dwelt in Him. 69 The effect of this 
 theory was to represent the Blessed Trinity as a 
 mere set of relations or characters, under which 
 the same individual displayed himself; and these 
 relations were supposed therefore to be increased, 
 when the work of creation brought the Deity in 
 contact with a new set of objects. Two objec- 
 tions may be made to it, independently of its 
 inconsistency with the statements of revelation: 
 first, that the Godhead might as readily have 
 assumed any number of Persons as those three, 
 in which it has been its will to be revealed ; 
 and secondly (as will shortly be proved), that 
 to explain away Our Lord's personality was 
 inconsistent with the reality of His Incarnation. 
 It was on this side that Sabellianism was most 
 plainly inconsistent with that first principle of 
 the Christian Church its reverence for Christ 
 Our Lord ; and, therefore, it was by a perception 
 of this danger, that Beryllus was reclaimed from 
 his errors. For when he had learnt, through 
 the teaching of Origen, to form a deeper estimate 
 of Our Lord's real and separate existence as the 
 God-man (endowed not only with human flesh but 
 a reasonable soul), he saw that it was essential 
 59 Eusebius, u. s.
 
 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 153 
 
 to seek for the distinguishing conditions of His 
 personality, within the sacred precincts of Deity 
 itself. 
 
 The third Council held in this century, against 
 Paul of Samosata, had no such prosperous issue; 
 but it was not less important, as a precautionary 
 guard against what was afterwards the Arian 
 heresy. Paul was condemned for denying that 
 first principle of the faith, Our Lord's real Divinity, 
 just as Arius was condemned afterwards. And as 
 the Fathers who opposed Xoetus declared that 
 they were not introducing any new theory, but 
 only maintaining the truths which had been de- 
 livered to them "we say that which we have 
 learnt" so the Council at Antioch, after affirming 
 the reality of Our Lord's Godhead against Paul, 
 concludes with an assertion that " all the Catholic 
 Churches agree with us." 60 This Council carries us 
 on to that celebrated assembly at Nice, A. D. 325, 
 for the celebration of which such providential 
 preparation had been made by the ascendency of 
 Constantino. Its creed contains the broadest pos- 
 sible assertion of Our Lord's real Divinity. The 
 second General Council, held during this century 
 at Constantinople, followed likewise in the same 
 track, and filled in certain particulars of the outline 
 which had already been delineated. Besides its 
 main work, the assertion of the Deity of the Holy 
 Ghost, it condemned the Apollinarian heresy, by 
 
 60 Eus. Ecc. Hist. vii. 30.
 
 154 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 
 
 which Our Lord's Humanity was called in ques- 
 tion. In neither of these Councils however was 
 anything concluded, except what all the Fathers 
 declared to have been received from the beginning 
 in their several Churches. For the ascending line 
 of Christian truth was only the prolongation of 
 that first principle of the Gospel, that Christ was 
 perfect God and perfect man, in the full complete- 
 ness of both these relations. And as it has pleased 
 God that His Church has never been without a 
 champion in its hour of need; as the expounder 
 and indomitable advocate of the creed of Nice, 
 there was raised up the great Athanasim. 
 
 From his teaching did this momentous Doctrine 
 of our religion receive that full elucidation, which 
 showed the relation of its various parts, and vin- 
 dicated for revealed religion its proper superiority. 
 His four Orations against the Arians have re- 
 mained as a rich mine of truth for all subsequent 
 generations. The Trinity in Unity we must re- 
 ceive, according to him, as a real mystery in the 
 eternal Godhead, which has partially been revealed 
 to mankind. There are those who deny that we 
 are taught anything of God's nature, and allege 
 religion to consist only in our relation to some 
 Being who is incomprehensible. That our ideas 
 must be infinitely inadequate is obvious ; but unless 
 there be an object without us, to which to direct 
 our thoughts, relative is as impossible as positive 
 knowledge. Unless we have some objective know-
 
 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 155 
 
 ledge of the Deity, our subjective knowledge of 
 Him is only a dream. " He that cometh to God 
 must believe that He is, and that He is the re- 
 warder of them that diligently seek Him." 61 " He 
 who comes to God, or enters himself in the Church 
 of God, must first believe that there is a God in 
 some intelligible sense; and not only that there is 
 something in general without any proper notion, 
 though never so inadequate, of any of its qualities 
 or attributes for this may be fate, or chaos, or 
 plastic nature, or anything else as w r ell as a God." 
 " AVe may say," indeed, " that as God is infinitely 
 above men, so is the knowledge of God infinitely 
 above the knowledge of men. And after this same 
 analogy, we must understand all those attributes 
 to belong to the Deity, which in themselves simply 
 and as such denote perfection." 62 But unless our 
 faith have a counterpart in some external reality, 
 it is but a delusive imagination. All explanations 
 therefore respecting the Divine nature must begin 
 with the fact, of which revelation has assured us, 
 that in the Unity of the Godhead there are Three 
 
 61 " Moral infinity as well as mathematical ; moral modes in 
 their highest degree, as well as modes of quantity in its un- 
 limited extent ; are subject to some rules of discourse, when we 
 discourse of them at all ; and one rule is, that in passing up 
 the scale of the finite subject, in order to approach the pro- 
 perties of the infinite, we must pursue the enlarged idea taken 
 from the properties of the first, and not adopt the contradictory 
 or any alien idea, to make the approximation to the infinite in 
 question." Damson on Prophecy, p. 548. 
 
 62 Minute Philosopher, Dial. iv. 18, 21.
 
 156 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 
 
 Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. 
 Now, the first and most essential condition of be- 
 lief in this fact, is to acknowledge that it is a mys- 
 tery. For the Apostles speak of the nature of 
 God and of His relation to mankind as mysteries. 
 The first is the mystery of the Blessed Trinity, the 
 second the mystery of the Incarnation. These 
 two are necessarily linked together, inasmuch as 
 the first is approached through the second ; and 
 the second can never be really accepted without 
 the admission of the first. They form between 
 them " the mystery of God, and of the Father, and 
 of Christ." 63 It is not meant, of course, that they 
 involve a contradiction in terms, for did they do 
 so, we might deny, with as much truth as we can 
 affirm them. But, by asserting them to be mys- 
 teries, the Apostles teach us that it has pleased 
 God to give us an actual external object in His own 
 nature, consisting of features and characteristics, 
 which in our present state we are unable to harmo- 
 nize ; but which faith in Him, who bestows them, 
 assures us will eventually resolve themselves into 
 one consistent whole. Such has been the case 
 already in a great measure respecting the world 
 of matter; such will no doubt be the case here- 
 after respecting the world of mind. Various incon- 
 gruities in the external universe, which perplexed 
 Lucretius, have been cleared up by Newton and 
 Davy : and those incompatibilities which were sug- 
 
 63 Colossians, ii. 2.
 
 CHRIST IS GOD THE WOKD. 157 
 
 gested by Arius and Sabellius, will prove hereafter 
 to be equally illusory. The individual truths re- 
 specting God which we learn from revelation, must 
 therefore be held as firmly as the individual phe- 
 nomena which we learn from observation. We 
 cannot expect that in our present state we can 
 perfectly harmonize them. What we should aim 
 at is, to discern the limits which have been laid 
 down on either side, without endeavouring to draw 
 them together forcibly by the bond of a logical 
 connexion. 
 
 In respect to the Blessed Trinity, for example, 
 the peculiar difficulty which is experienced in its 
 real reception, by those who do not discern that 
 its transcendent nature raises it above our ordinary 
 laws of thought, is that our common notion of 
 spiritual beings is derived from that internal prin- 
 ciple which we call Personality. This indivisible 
 principle in our nature, with which consciousness is 
 intimately connected, is what gives us the power 
 of speaking of ourselves. It is the " ego" the 
 " /c/i," of our being. Here then there is some 
 fixed principle, whereby our own consciousness 
 assures us, that we are dissevered from all other 
 being's. So that if earthly faculties are adequate 
 to the complete resolution of heavenly questions, 
 we may go on, and deal with the principles of per- 
 sonality and individuality as being always identical. 
 We may say further, that to attribute this prin- 
 ciple of individuality to Godhead at large, would
 
 158 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 
 
 be to deny its applicability to the Three Persons ; 
 or to assert that it was absolutely identical with 
 that which might be attributed to the Three sepa- 
 rate Persons, would be to deny that it had any 
 relevancy to Godhead at large. And yet to deny 
 its applicability to either of them, would seem on 
 the one hand, to detract too much from the one- 
 ness of the Supreme Being; 64 and on the other, to 
 derogate from the actual existence of the Three 
 Blessed Persons. 65 Of course, a solution of the 
 perplexity may be found, if it be admitted that the 
 finite individuality which supplies our standard, is 
 no adequate measure of the infinite. To the Infi- 
 nite and Absolute Being must be ascribed an indi- 
 .viduality of His own, which is above our thought ; 
 and on the same principle there may exist some 
 other than that limited and relative personality, 
 by which each man is divided from all connatural 
 substances. But those who deny that anything 
 is told us respecting the Godhead, which our 
 present powers are unable to harmonize, must 
 choose one side or other of the difficulty. Both 
 they cannot adopt, without such contradiction in 
 terms as would be to affirm an untruth. But 
 
 64 " Cur ergo non hsec tria simul unam personam dicimus, sicut 
 unam essentiam et unum Deum, sed tres dicimus personas, cum 
 tres deos aut tres essentias non dicamus, nisi volumus vel unum 
 aliquod vocabulum servire huic signification}, qua intelligitur 
 Trinitas," &c. S. Aug. de Tr'm. vii. 11. 
 
 65 " Quaesivit quid tria diceret : et dixit substantias sive per- 
 sonas, quibus nominibus non diversitatem intelligi voluit, sed 
 singularitatem noluit," &c. S. Aug. de Trin. vii. 9.
 
 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 159 
 
 what is the Catholic course, as it was explained 
 in ancient times, and is still maintained in all 
 Churches of the Saints ? Neither is one of these 
 alternatives affirmed nor the other. 66 For no 
 attempt is made to explain the nature of the 
 Divine Being. Since Revelation is assumed to be 
 the entrance of Divine realities into this lower 
 world, it is not supposed that human conceptions 
 can give them adequate expression. 67 The Church 
 does not aim, therefore, at such logical complete- 
 ness on this subject, as may be required from those 
 who consider that every thing is brought down to 
 the level of their faculties. She is content to state 
 that the Supreme Being is one in some true and 
 real sense. For this is revealed as the original law 
 of God's nature. Such is the doctrine of the 
 Unity in Trinity. On the other hand, the Church 
 teaches that in the Blessed Trinity are Three Per- 
 
 66 "Ut, quia in deitate Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti nee 
 singularitas est nee divcrsitas cogitanda, vera Unitas et vera 
 Trinitas possit quidam mente simul sentiri, sed non possit ore 
 simul proferri." *S*. Leo adversus Eutych. 
 
 " Timuit dicere Tres essentias, ne intelligeretur in ilia summa 
 nequalitate ulla diversitas. Rursus non esse tria quasdam non 
 poterat dicere, quod Sabellius quia dixit, in haeresim lapsus est." 
 S. Aug. de Trin. vii. 9. 
 
 67 " Conveniens est ut hoc nomen (persona) de Deo dicatur ; 
 non tamen eodem modo, quo dicitur de creaturis, sed excellen- 
 tiori modo." Summa Tlieol. i. 29, 3. 
 
 "All these expressions resolve themselves into the original 
 mystery of the Holy Trinity, that Person and Individuum are 
 not equivalent terms, and we understand them neither more nor 
 less than we understand it." Note on St. Atlianasius ' s Select 
 Treatises ; Oxford Library of the Fathers, vol. viii. p. 155.
 
 160 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 
 
 sons. In neither case does she affirm that the 
 principle of existence which belongs to the Supreme 
 Being, is identical with that which we call perso- 
 nality in mankind, or that our consciousness of our 
 own being qualifies us to fathom the depths of that 
 Being which is Infinite. But that the Three Per- 
 sons in the Blessed Trinity have a real existence in 
 themselves that in the Deity there is an original, 
 objective triplicity, independently of us, and of the 
 world of creation she grounds on the declarations 
 of Holy Writ. And this is the mystery of the 
 Trinity in Unity. 
 
 These two then are the starting points from 
 which we must proceed : and the firm reception 
 of both of them maintains the reality of our belief 
 in God. It supplies a guard against those assaults 
 which are made on either side, in the attempt to 
 explain what is inexplicable. Such explanations 
 are plausible enough, when viewed in relation to 
 either of these truths singly, but they invariably 
 fail when we attempt to apply the theory which 
 has been framed with a view to one, to the eluci- 
 dation of the other. It matters not whether they 
 begin with the Three Persons in the Blessed God- 
 head, or with the Unity of Deity at large. In 
 the first case, the separate existence of different 
 Persons is seen to consist readily enough with 
 unity of nature. Peter, James, and John were 
 three persons ; but they shared in that human 
 nature which was common to them all. But such
 
 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 161 
 
 a mode of accounting for the existence of the 
 Blessed Persons in the Deity is inconsistent with 
 the other side of the mystery ; for it is compatible 
 with Polytheism; it does not recognize the Unity 
 of God. It is at variance therefore with the whole 
 teaching of the Old Testament, and has in con- 
 sequence been formally condemned, as heretical. 68 
 The same will be found to be the result if we 
 begin with the other side of the doctrine. That a 
 single being might display himself under various 
 characters, as he came into relation to various 
 parties, is intelligible enough. Cicero speaks of 
 himself, when practising for the bar, as discharging 
 the part of three persons the plaintiff, the judge, 
 and the accused. Here again is another expla- 
 nation, which would maintain the Unity of the 
 Supreme Being, and yet render the existence of 
 different Persons intelligible. But as the previous 
 solution offends against the Unity of the God- 
 head, so does this against the reality of the Three 
 Blessed Persons which constitute it. That which 
 is essential to their reality that which constitutes 
 them real Persons, and not a mere fictitious repre- 
 sentation, is, that the characteristic conditions 
 which mark their divergency should lie in the 
 
 68 The notion of the Abbot Joachim, that the Unity of Per- 
 sons in the Blessed Trinity was only like that which binds 
 together different men, was censured by the Fourth Lateran 
 Council. According to him, it was an " unitas collectiva et 
 similitudinaria, quemadmodum dicuntur multi homines unus 
 populus." Hard. vol. vii. p. 18. 
 
 if
 
 162 CHRIST IS GOD THE 
 
 eternal nature of Godhead itself, and not in any 
 relation to the surrounding world of Creation. 
 For otherwise, why should the Persons in the 
 Blessed Godhead be limited to Three ? Why 
 should not their number be unbounded ? And 
 the consequence of explaining away the actual 
 Being of the Blessed Three, would be to destroy 
 the possibility of the Incarnation, and the reality 
 of the Mediation of Christ. The Three Persons 
 therefore in the Blessed Trinity, have something 
 more than a mere relationary existence dependent 
 on external things. They have a necessary Being, 
 dependent on that eternal law by which the God- 
 head exists. As it would be impossible for Deity 
 to be other than holy and just these being pri- 
 mary conditions of its nature so to exist in Three 
 Persons is the law of Godhead. Such is the 
 barrier which the Personal Being of the Father, 
 the Son, and the Holy Ghost, opposes to all 
 Sabellian deductions from the Unity of the Su- 
 preme Being; and thus are we turned back again 
 to that unfathomable mystery of the Holy Trinity, 
 which is revealed. 
 
 These are the two principles, by whose firm 
 maintenance the Christian mind is restrained from 
 error on this cardinal article of our faith. " In all 
 things, the Unity in Trinity and the Trinity in 
 Unity is to be worshipped." The reception of the 
 first secures us against Polytheism ; a barren Deism 
 is excluded by the second. The former error, at
 
 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 163 
 
 least in its avowed form, is at present to be little 
 apprehended. The only popular shape which it 
 assumes, is that Pantheistic adoration of all exist- 
 ing powers, which excludes the action of any moral 
 Ruler. For the worship of many Gods is rejected 
 by the reason of the age; and its inconsistency 
 with revealed truth is indelibly impressed on the 
 whole system of the Old Testament. The more 
 dangerous error is to be found on the other side, 
 in that surrender of the Personal reality of the 
 Blessed Three, which results from an exclusive 
 regard to the truth of the Divine Unity. The 
 Unity of the Divine nature is a doctrine so true, 
 simple, and important it has such strong hold in 
 our nature, and is so forcibly recommended to us 
 in ancient Scripture, that it naturally overbears 
 any antagonist principle. To this circumstance is 
 owing the popular tendency of the day to an 
 unconscious Sabellianism. Men construct their 
 notion of the Three Blessed Persons on the prin- 
 ciple of a logical consistency with that system 
 of interdependence, of which the Unity of the 
 Godhead is the basis. So that the prevalent mis- 
 conceptions show the natural tendency of the mind 
 to harmonize the whole scheme of the Trinity with 
 this central idea. And if this error was guarded 
 against in early days, it was because the whole 
 system of the Church was in continual antagonism 
 against it. For, starting from the fact of Our 
 Lord's Incarnation, having His worship, as its first
 
 164 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 
 
 object, the support of His true objective reality as 
 its primary function, the Church's system as it 
 traced its way upwards towards the doctrine of 
 the Blessed Trinity, was occupied all along in 
 making good the other side of the alternative, and 
 in maintaining the true existence of its Incarnate 
 Head. The vindication of His worship had led it 
 to those deep mysteries, which it was found neces- 
 sary to explore ; and this side therefore of the 
 doctrine, it was impossible that it should abandon. 
 So that while the reaction against Heathenism was 
 a sufficient guarantee that the Unity of the God- 
 head would never be surrendered, the opposite 
 truth the real existence of the Ever-Blessed 
 Three was no less deeply rooted in the instinct 
 of Christian piety. For the existence of the 
 Eternal Son, as a separate Person in the Ever- 
 Blessed Trinity, was linked by inevitable sequence 
 to that manifestation of God in the flesh, which 
 was the first starting point for the religious mind 
 of the Church. From the single fact of the wor- 
 ship of Christ as very God, are "vve carried back 
 by necessary connexion to His personal indwelling 
 in the bosom of Eternal Godhead. And for this 
 reason it is, that those who either openly or un- 
 consciously are betrayed into Sabellian doctrines, 
 cannot receive the truth of Our Lord's Incarnation 
 in its fulness. For they are deprived of the sub- 
 stratum on which it must rest the existence, 
 namely, of an Eternal Father of the Eternal Son.
 
 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 165 
 
 The one of these notions is of necessity implied in 
 the other. " As the Father always existed," says 
 St. Athanasius, "His image must have had the 
 same co-eternal being. For God's image is not 
 something which is delineated externally to Him- 
 self, but God Himself is the parent of that image, 
 in which His pleasure is to contemplate Himself." 
 " Was there ever a time, then, in which the Father 
 did not contemplate Himself in His own image ? 
 Was there ever a time in which it was not His 
 pleasure thus to contemplate Himself?" 69 
 
 The relation then between the two Persons is, 
 that as one is ever Son, so is the other ever Father. 
 As the one therefore is eternal, so is the other. 
 " Such as is the Father Himself, such is His 
 image." 70 And this likeness is not a mere matter of 
 appointment, as the Heathen set up idols to represent 
 their Gods. The Arians could allow the worship 
 of Christ, as being authorized to represent God; 71 
 
 63 S. Ath. contra Arian. i. 20. ro S. Ath. u. s. 
 
 71 On this ground it is, that Archbishop Whately justifies the 
 worship of Christ. " We differ from the Avorshippers of any 
 mere man, whether an impostor, as Mahomet for instance, or a 
 Saint, as Moses or Peter ; or of a graven image, or a fire, or of 
 anything else that they have set up for themselves ; we differ 
 from them I say in this, the essential circumstance, that their 
 worship is unauthorized, presumptuous, and vain, while ours is 
 divinely appointed." Whatebjs Sermons [1835], p. 53. 
 
 "If any one should choose, instead of looking to common 
 usage, to turn to the strict etymological sense of the word 
 ' Idolater,' and to ask whether we are or are not ' worshippers 
 of an image,' we ought without hesitation to say that we 
 are. "We worship God in His beloved Son Jesus Christ." 
 Ibid. p. 52.
 
 166 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 
 
 but this was to degrade Him into the region of 
 created beings, and to forget that He was in Him- 
 self and by nature the " brightness of His Father's 
 glory, and the express image of His Person." 
 And, except through Him whose office is to reveal 
 Him, is the Father invisible and unapproached. 
 For He is not only " the King invisible," but who 
 " dwelleth in the light, which nothing can approach 
 unto." Scripture, says Tertullian, points out the 
 difference between the Persons of the Godhead, 
 " by discriminating between the one which is visible 
 and the one which is invisible." For though " the 
 Son regarded as God, as the Word, and as a 
 Spirit, is in His nature invisible, yet He mani- 
 fested Himself even before He took our flesh." 
 So that "the Father is invisible, the Son visible." 72 
 Whether this be the real distinction between these 
 two Blessed Persons or not, the writer who makes 
 it must have fully recognized the fact, that not- 
 withstanding the oneness of their nature, they are 
 personally distinct. Now the reality of their Per- 
 sonal distinction is the material point; and that 
 it does not depend only on the fact of their being 
 revealed, but is essential, primary, archetypal. For 
 it lies in the nature of the Trinity itself, antecedent 
 to its relation to any created substance. It was not 
 that the Son was a name which the Godhead bore 
 for a time, in place of bearing the name of Father 
 as though for the purposes of creation or govern- 
 
 72 Tert. adv. Praxeam, sec. 14, vide S. Ath. contra Arian. i. 6.
 
 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 167 
 
 ment, it displayed itself in various characters but 
 the two titles imply a real co-existence of discrimi- 
 nated Persons, and " though God had never seen fit 
 to make things created, yet the Word would not the 
 less have been with God, and the Father in Him." 73 
 Now such real diversity of Persons it is, which 
 is a necessary preliminary to the Incarnation of 
 Christ. This circumstance is suggested in a well 
 known letter of St. Augustin. " How," it had 
 been asked him, " could the Lord and Ruler of the 
 world, endure the prison of the Virgin's womb ?" 
 " How could He lie concealed in the narrow limits 
 of infancy, for whom the universe is not sufficiently 
 extensive ? The Ruler of all things leaves His 
 own abode, and He who has care of the whole 
 world, transfers Himself into one little body" n St. 
 Augustin replies by distinguishing between things 
 material and immaterial ; maintaining that the con- 
 ditions which are applicable to the one, cannot be 
 transferred to the other. " It is not true that God 
 is so infused into flesh, that He has abandoned the 
 care of the world's government." And then he 
 adds that, " The Word of God has not put off His 
 eternity, nor abated His power, nor abandoned the 
 world's government, nor departed from the Father's 
 bosom, from the secret place, where He is with 
 Him and in Him." 75 In this last circumstance lies 
 the explanation of those passages of Holy Writ, 
 
 73 S. Ath. contra Arian. ii. 31. 
 74 S. Aug. Ep. cxxxv. sec. 2. 75 Ib. cxxxvii. sec. 4, 6.
 
 168 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 
 
 which speak of God as really united to manhood, 
 and which yet deal with the Father's Personality, 
 as though unaffected by the event. For it was 
 the Word which was made flesh, but not the Father 
 or the Holy Ghost. It was not the whole Trinity 76 
 which was personally united to our nature. Those 
 who lose sight of this circumstance, cannot pos- 
 sibly give its due weight to the reality of that 
 union which was effected between God and man. 
 For either they must esteem what was united to 
 manhood in Christ to be an inferior or delegated 
 Deity, which is the Arian side of the dilemma, or 
 else they must look upon the Union as partial and 
 transitory as an indwelling, not an impersonation 
 as the gift to manhood of such power and presence, 
 as was bestowed in their measure on the Prophets. 
 Without the belief in a diversity of Persons, more 
 than this could not be supposed, without entrench- 
 ing too far on the self-existent and indivisible Unity 
 of God. Now this last, which is the Sabellian 
 alternative, is as plain a denial of Our Lord's 
 Human, as the Arian hypothesis of His Divine 
 nature. Those who receive it cannot believe that 
 really and permanently God is man, and man God. 
 This is why a demonstration of the truth and 
 completeness of Our Lord's Human nature, as evi- 
 denced by the existence of His man's soul, was 
 found so effectual a means (vid. p. 151) of re- 
 leasing Beryllus from Sabellian errors. The full 
 76 Damasc. de Fid. Orth. iii. 6.
 
 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 169 
 
 admission of Christ's manhood, in those who do 
 not suppose that personally He was a mere man, 
 implies that there must be some Personality in the 
 Blessed Trinity, other than that of the Father and 
 of the Holy Ghost, on which this abiding and com- 
 plete Union may be dependent. Xot, of course, 
 that what is Human can be so completely iden- 
 tified with what is Divine, as to be its measure or 
 limit : even when Godhead and manhood were so 
 intimately allied as to make up one Person, the 
 Finite nature was not lost, but comprehended, in 
 the Infinite. But, by admitting the permanence of 
 Christ's lower nature, we are driven to find some- 
 thing which shall discriminate His Divine Perso- 
 nality in Deity itself. And since such discrimi- 
 nating circumstances cannot be drawn from His 
 relation to the creatures ; since then He would 
 either be a creature Himself, or else not truly 
 other than the Father, from whom He is personally 
 discriminated; therefore it must be by some rela- 
 tion within Deity itself that the distinction must 
 be maintained. And therefore it must be an eter- 
 nal relation a relation in the nature .of things 
 self-originating, primary, archetypal. 
 
 The Eternal Son then it was, who in the fulness 
 of time became man for our sakes. " The Word 
 was made flesh." Having been the Eternal Son, 
 He became the Incarnate Son also. Even accord- 
 ing to His man's nature, He was not, properly 
 speaking, a creature, though consisting of created
 
 170 CHRIST IS GOD THE WOKI). 
 
 elements ; for whereas all creation was His own 
 work, He Himself was moulded according to His 
 manhood, out of the created substance which He 
 had made, by the informing power of the Holy 
 Ghost. 77 Not as though He had not been the 
 Son previous to the existence of any created intel- 
 ligences ; nor yet as though to send Him had 
 been merely to bestow Sonship upon some inferior 
 nature, which God had first created. For "what 
 was called His mission, was the uniting the God- 
 head to manhood, that the Invisible nature might 
 be discerned by man through the Visible." 78 And 
 His name of Son is not derived from His gracious 
 Advent, but His Advent was consequent on those 
 discriminating characteristics in the Godhead, which 
 are referred to when He is called the Eternal Son. 
 For it must be borne in mind, as St. Basil 79 reminds 
 us, that earth and things human are borrowed and 
 derivative; that which is self-existent and primary 
 being those heavenly realities, from which things 
 worldly have their origin. And Holy Scripture re- 
 fers us to the fact, that it was by Him who was the 
 " appointed heir of all things," that the " worlds 
 were made;" and likewise, that it was "after His 
 
 77 "Nee ab eo genitus, sed creatus." Paschas. de Spir, 
 Sonet, i. 2. So the ancient Creed, which is preserved among 
 the documents of the Council of Ephesus : " oXov UKTISOV KOI 
 fiera TOV cra'^aTos, aXV ov 1 )^ Kara TO trwfia UKTI^OV Harduin, i. 
 
 p. 1639. But vide also S. Ath. c. Ar. ii. 45, 47, with the notes 
 to the Oxford Translation. 
 78 S. Ath. c Arian. iv. 36. * S. Basil. Adv. Eunomium, ii. 23.
 
 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 171 
 
 likeness," who was "the express image of the 
 Father," that man had been created as being the 
 reason, why, to the gracious condescension of this 
 especial Person in the Blessed Trinity, we are in- 
 debted for the economy of our salvation. For 
 " He was in the world, and the world was made by 
 Him." " He came unto His own." " The true 
 light which lighteth every man was coming into 
 the world." For as Hooker observes, " it seemeth 
 a thing unconsonant that the world should honour 
 any other as the Saviour, but Him whom it honour- 
 eth as the Creator." 80 " And as God's wisdom had 
 been pleased to humble itself to the creatures, and 
 to give them the impress and semblance of its 
 image, 81 so does He expressly declare in the Book 
 of Proverbs, " My delights were with the sons of 
 men." 82 So that "it could be no other Person of 
 the Deity who conversed with men on earth in 
 ancient times, but the Word, who was afterwards 
 to become flesh." 83 Thus was there a peculiar 
 adaptation for the work of man's regeneration in 
 Him, after whose pattern man had been originally 
 created. For whatsoever God was going to make 
 in the creatures, existed beforehand in the Word, 
 and could not have existed in things below, had it 
 not been previously in the Word." 84 
 
 It is from some natural law therefore of His 
 
 80 Eccl. Pol. v. 51, 3. 81 S. Ath. contra Arian. ii. 78. 
 
 82 Proverbs, viii. 31. ffl Tertull. adv. Praxeam, 16. 
 
 84 S. Aug. on Psalm xliv. 5.
 
 172 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 
 
 Divine Being, not from a mere temporary economy, 
 and in reference to things created, that the Son is 
 the image and representative of the Father. For 
 " the substance of God, with the property to be of 
 none, doth make the Person of the Father; the 
 very self-same 85 substance in number, with this 
 property to be of the Father, maketh the Person of 
 the Son." 86 So that the distinction between them, 
 of which the work of redemption is an effect, did 
 not arise from that work of mercy, but lay in their 
 own Being, the \vorlds being yet unbuilt. Neither 
 was it merely the result of the Father's will, by 
 which He commissioned an inferior being to under- 
 take what He designed to be performed, for this 
 would be only to fall back again upon what has 
 already been negatived, and to make the Son's 
 Being depend upon the works which He was 
 raised up to discharge. Whereas, He repre- 
 sents the Father as being His equal. " Such 
 as is the Father Himself, such is His image." 87 
 " He is God from God, Light from Light, Very 
 God from Very God." 88 And on this depends 
 that higher notion of Divine character, which 
 has been communicated to mankind by the Gospel 
 of Christ. For, mounting up from that which has 
 
 85 Hebrews, i. 3, would be more correctly rendered " the 
 express image of His substance." It is the Father's Godhead, 
 not His Paternity, of which the Son is the image. 
 86 Eccles. Pol. v. 51, 1. 87 S. Ath. Or. contra Arian. i. 20. 
 
 88 " o TraT>ip pi'^d- KCII Tnjryrj TQV vlou KO.I TOV a n /iov Tri/etyiaTOS." 
 
 S. Bas. Horn. 27. c. Sabell. vid. Def. Fid. JYic. iv. 1. 7.
 
 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 173 
 
 been taught us by the natural representative and 
 true image of Godhead, we may attain to heights 
 which the weakness of humanity had been unable 
 to reach. This it is which first raises us above 
 those carnal notions of Deity, which Grecian fable 
 had built upon the more splendid vices of cor- 
 rupted man. And one effectual manner, in which 
 the early Church witnessed to that higher ideal, 
 under which the Godhead had been exhibited by 
 its true Pattern-Image, was to give the first lesson 
 to mankind of universal love. The acts of mercy 
 showed by Christians to the indigent Heathen in 
 time of public distress, are recorded 89 to have been 
 one main circumstance which inclined the world to 
 the general acceptance of Christianity. For " by 
 this shall all men know that ye are My Disciples, 
 if ye have love one to another." And, in like 
 manner, is there a truth as well as dignity given to 
 our conceptions, which the grander mysticism of 
 the East could not attain. For so long as Infinity 
 alone was supposed the essence of Deity, there was 
 no communing with any thing that could represent 
 its nature, and bring home its greatness to our 
 thoughts. But the acts, not less than the com- 
 munications of Him, who is " the express Image of 
 His Father's Person," have taught us that the 
 moral attributes of Godhead make up the true 
 "Brightness of its Glory." Therefore can we say, 
 in the sublime words of Anselm: "I ask not, 
 89 Eusebius, Hist. vii. 22, and ix. 8.
 
 174 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 
 
 Lord, to attain to Thy height, with which my 
 understanding is not compatible, but I desire in 
 some measure to understand Thy truth, which my 
 heart believes and loves" M For as it was under 
 this aspect that the Godhead has been manifested 
 by the Eternal Son, so is it revealed respecting 
 the self-existent Father also, that the character- 
 istic essence of His Being is Love. And this leads 
 on to that further consideration of the Coinherence 
 of the Three Persons in the Godhead, by which 
 the mystery of the Trinity in Unity is distin- 
 guished, as well from the mixture which is pro- 
 duced by the material union of different bodies, as 
 from the mere harmony which attends the moral 
 union of different minds. In this fact probably, if 
 we may presume to judge respecting such a mys- 
 tery, lies the secret which reconciles the existence 
 of Three Persons in the Blessed Trinity with the 
 Unity of that nature which is common to them all. 
 " For how," asks St. Cyril, " can there be Unity in 
 Godhead, if each Person is separated by a perfect 
 individuality; and the name of God is given to 
 each Person, without community of nature and 
 substantial inherence in the others?" 91 But that 
 which was declared to us by Our Blessed Lord, 
 was the fact that He "is in the bosom of the 
 Father." " The Father therefore is in the Son, 
 and the Son in Him, They both in the Spirit, and 
 
 90 Proslogion, i. 
 91 St. Cyril, as cited by Petavius de Trinit. iv. 16, 10.
 
 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 175 
 
 the Spirit in both of Them. The Son in the 
 Father, as light in that light out of which it 
 floweth without separation ; the Father in the Son, 
 as light in that light which it causeth and leaveth 
 not." 92 On this subject Athanasius refers to the 
 words of Dionysius of Rome (in the third cen- 
 tury), that "with the God of the Universe the 
 Divine Word is one, and the Holy Ghost has in 
 the same its resort and converse." 93 And the 
 same truth seems to have been aimed at in a 
 fragment of St. Irenseus, in which the Son is said 
 to be " the measure of the Father." Inasmuch as 
 there is one nature in the Divine Three, while by 
 personal difference they are really discriminated, 
 therefore, by mutual indwelling and coinherence, 
 they are to one another an object of contem- 
 plation, and, if it may be so expressed, "a place 
 of abode." 94 To this it is then that Our Lord 
 refers, when he says that " I am in the Father, 
 and the Father in Me;" and this is "the glory 
 which He had with" the Father " before the world 
 was." 95 And on the other hand, thus it was that 
 He was the " beloved Son," in whom the Father 
 was " well pleased." For how should He be truty 
 a Father, asks St. Hilary, except by contem- 
 plating Flis own substance as it existed in His 
 
 92 Eccl. Pol. v. 56, 2. 93 De Decretis Nic. Sjn. 26. 
 
 94 " Filius locus est Patris, sicut et Pater locus est Filii." 
 Jerome in Ezec. iii. 12. 
 
 95 St. John, xvii. 5.
 
 176 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 
 
 Son?" 96 And so says Athanasius, that as "the 
 Son is the subject of the Father's pleasure, so is 
 the Father the subject of the Son's love, pleasure, 
 and honour." 97 Let this thought be coupled with 
 what has before been noticed of the nature of 
 the Godhead, and we may discern how the eternal 
 Sabbath of Divine self-contemplation enhances our 
 conception of the Moral Attributes of God. For 
 it does not lead to a mere Brahminical dream of 
 never-ending forgetfulness, but it sets forth the 
 Eternal Godhead as having, in its own self-existent 
 harmony, the most perfect object of thought and 
 of affection. " The essential happiness of God 
 consists in the knowledge and love of Himself; 
 and this reflected perfectly from one Person of 
 the Godhead to another." 98 And hence can it 
 dispense with such lower objects of interest as are 
 supplied to inferior beings by the material world. 
 For "I am in the Father and the Father in Me" 
 speaks an eternal relation ; it shows that the Word 
 was not dependent on our Being ; that " He was 
 not brought into being for us, but that we were 
 brought into being for Him." 99 And on this 
 topic Athanasius enlarges in the very striking 
 passage, in which he comments on the declaration 
 concerning Our Lord in the Book of Proverbs : 
 " For the knowledge of the Father which is by 
 
 96 De Trinit. ii. 3. 97 Orat. contra Arian. iii. 66. 
 
 98 Leslie's Socinian Controversy, Dialogue I. vii. p. 236. 
 
 99 S. Ath. contra Arian. iv. 12.
 
 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 177 
 
 the Son, and that of the Son which is by the 
 Father, is all one, and the Father delights in Him; 
 and with the same joy the Son delights in the 
 Father, saying, ' I was daily His delight, rejoicing 
 always before Him.' This shows that the Son 
 is not something foreign, but proper to the 
 Father's substance. For He did not come into 
 existence on our account, nor was He made out 
 of nothing ; for it was not from any external 
 source that God procured to Himself a cause of 
 rejoicing, but He is set forth as being proper to 
 God and like Him. When could it be then that 
 the Father rejoiced not ? And if He always 
 rejoiced, then the cause of His rejoicing must 
 have had an eternal, existence. And wherein does 
 the Father rejoice, save by beholding Himself in 
 His proper image that is, His Word? And if, 
 after the world was made, He rejoiced also in the 
 sons of men, as the Proverbs witness, yet this 
 comes to the same thing. For this delight was 
 not from any joy which was additional to His 
 nature, but He rejoiced at seeing that the works 
 were created after His own image. So that His 
 own image was here too the cause of the Divine 
 joy. And how again does the Son rejoice, save 
 as beholding Himself in His Father ; for this is 
 the meaning of His saying, 'He that hath seen 
 Me hath seen the Father, and I am in My Father, 
 and My Father in Me.'" 100 
 
 100 Orat. contra Arian. ii. 82, vol. 1, p. 549. 
 
 N
 
 178 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 
 
 Thus have we been led on then to recognize 
 in the Divine nature what is at once the highest 
 object of contemplation, and the primary source 
 of being. For since God is the last of these, He 
 must plainly be the first likewise. And whatever 
 is real and self-existent must be found in Him. 
 IK AIDS a/>xVe<r6>a. Our notions therefore of things 
 human, and the conceptions of mankind, are rather 
 to be measured by this standard, than to measure 
 it. For "this is life eternal, to know Thee the 
 only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast 
 sent." As the doctrine of the Trinity, therefore, 
 has been shown to be essential to the development 
 of that first movement of piety, whereby the Son 
 of Man was reverenced by those who had been 
 admitted to His knowledge, so will all higher 
 branches of truth be found to rest on this reality. 
 When men attempt therefore, as was done by Plato 
 of old, and has been done with less excuse by the 
 thinkers of modern Germany, to invent an intel- 
 lectual Theogony out of their own conceptions, the 
 attempt is so far useful, as it is looked upon as an 
 illustration only and shadow of those great realities, 
 which exist around and above us, and by Revela- 
 tion have been made known to our minds. In this 
 view, the intellectual schemes, which have been 
 put forth by a series of German writers from Kant 
 to Hegel, are not without interest. The last of 
 them has carried further the notion of his pre- 
 decessors, and given shape to the idea which is
 
 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 179 
 
 thrown out by an ancient Father : " The Monad 
 moving forth originally into Duality, 101 at length 
 rested in the Trinity." 102 No doubt this thought 
 is capable of wide development, and since man was 
 originally created after His maker's image, there 
 will be some appetency to admit those truths, 
 which have their original in Him. But all specu- 
 lations on the Godhead proceed on a fallacious 
 ground, if they rest only on human conceptions, 
 and on the requirements of man's mind. For 
 neither is this our sole means of knowledge, nor 
 in it consists that ultimate object after which we 
 seek. What were this but to "worship and serve 
 the creature more than the Creator ?" Unless the 
 reality and original of all things be fixed in the 
 actual Being of the self-existent Godhead, there 
 can be no basis on which to ground our thoughts. 
 The real existence of the Ever-Blessed Trinity 
 must be received as before all creation, and as 
 underlying all knowledge. The mystery of its 
 Sacred Persons must be the beginning of our 
 thoughts. 103 And this it is which Revelation dis- 
 closes to us. "For there is one Person of the 
 Father, another of the Son, and another of the 
 Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, 
 
 101 This notion is enlarged upon by Leslie ; Socinian Contro- 
 versy, the First Dialogue, viii. 1. 
 
 102 Dorner, vol. i. p. 904. 
 
 103 n j n jn a Xrinitate summa origo est rerum omnium, et per- 
 fectissima pulchritude et beatissima delectatio." S. Augustin 
 de Trin. vi. 12.
 
 180 CHRIST IS GOD THE WORD. 
 
 and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all 
 One, the Glory equal, the Majesty co-eternal. 
 Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such 
 is the Holy Ghost. And in this Trinity none is 
 afore or after other none is greater or less than 
 another ; but the whole Three Persons are co- 
 eternal together, and co-equal. So that in all 
 things the Unity in Trinity and the Trinity in 
 Unity is to be worshipped."
 
 181 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THP; UNITY OF PERSON BETWEEN GOD THE WORD 
 AND THE SON OF MAN. 
 
 OUR LORD'S character has now been considered 
 under its two aspects : first, as the Son of Man ; 
 and secondly, as God the Word, " who is over all 
 blessed for ever." To complete this part of the 
 subject it is essential to establish a third point, 
 which is no less necessary than the reality of each 
 of Our Lord's natures, namely, that they were 
 truly joined together. For " although He be God 
 and Man, yet He is not two, but one Christ." 
 
 This truth is as plainly demanded by the re- 
 quirements of Christian piety, as any which have 
 preceded it. For since Our Lord is the link be- 
 tween heaven and earth the true Jacob's ladder, 
 whereon the angels of God ascended and descended ; 
 since our salvation rests on the fact that He who 
 is con substantial with the Father, is also consub- 
 stantial with His brethren a sufficient advocate 
 because He is God, a sympathetic advocate because 
 He is flesh ; since this is the manner in which the
 
 182 GOD THE WORD, AND THE 
 
 higher being was brought down to the lower, and 
 the nature which was pure and holy entered as a 
 renovating principle into the corrupted line of 
 Adam's race therefore, unless the actual personal 
 unity of Our Lord's two natures is held as fast as 
 the reality of each, we may find ourselves unex- 
 pectedly deprived of that which seemed to be most 
 surely established. This feeling of the infinite 
 importance of Our Lord's Mediation, has led the 
 Church to exercise such scrupulous watchfulness 
 against all theories, which break that golden chain 
 by which God and man are bound together. For 
 though that which hazards the real Unity of the 
 two natures in Christ may seem at first sight to be 
 only an explanation, or a dislike of explaining, as 
 the case may be, yet further consideration shows it 
 to be fatal to the very existence of Godliness, of 
 which the truth that the same Person is both God 
 and man forms the very foundation. 
 
 This fact it is then which must now be con- 
 sidered, and its reality depends plainly on the two 
 following conditions: first, that there should be a 
 true union of Godhead and manhood in Christ ; 
 and secondly, that the mode of union should be 
 such, that neither nature should be destroyed in 
 the conjunction. The consideration of which sub- 
 ject will lead to the further inquiry, how each 
 nature is affected by the union, and what prepara- 
 tion is thereby made for that work of Christ, which 
 both as God and man it has been His pleasure to
 
 SON OF MAN ONE PERSON. 183 
 
 undertake. For this work depends in truth upon 
 both His natures, and upon that peculiar con- 
 stitution of each, of which its union with the other 
 is the cause: inasmuch as no part of that won- 
 derful mystery of Incarnation, to which He gra- 
 ciously submitted for the sake of man, is without 
 its influence on our welfare. 
 
 Xow, in considering the real union of the Divine 
 and Human natures in Christ, it will be best, per- 
 haps, to follow the course which was marked out 
 in the last Chapter ; to inquire what were the 
 actual steps by which God's Providence secured 
 for this doctrine its full statement and perfect ap- 
 preciation, and what were the individual errors by 
 which it was hazarded. For the history of the 
 three first centuries has been shown to be a witness, 
 that the detailed statements of the Creeds respect- 
 ing the Trinity in Unity are not refinements en- 
 grafted by men's subtilty on the simplicity of 
 Scripture, but that they are only the complete ex- 
 pression of that august truth, which was enshrined 
 in the pious veneration of the first Disciples. The 
 facts of the case show that nothing less than their 
 plenary acceptance can either save us from fatal 
 errors, or do justice to the fulness of those commu- 
 nications, which were made to the Apostles by the 
 Holy Ghost. And the same may be said respect- 
 ing the doctrine which is now to be considered 
 the Real Union of Natures in Christ. For it will 
 be found, that there was one specific period of the
 
 184 GOD THE WORD, AND THE 
 
 Church's history, when it was brought forward with 
 peculiar prominence, because then it was especially 
 hazarded ; and as the two first General Councils 
 were engaged in maintaining the truth of those 
 natures which were present in Christ, so was it the 
 no less necessary task of the two next (at Ephesus 
 and Chalcedon), to maintain the reality of their 
 union. It has been pointed out, how the doctrine 
 of Our Lord's Divine nature was witnessed both at 
 Nice and Constantinople, and how it was illustrated 
 by the great Athanasius. The primary truth of 
 the Ever-Blessed Trinity was shown by him not 
 only to be involved in the words of Scripture, 
 but to be demanded by the requirements of the 
 Christian mind. Unless the Word or Eternal Son 
 existed really as a separate Person in the glorious 
 Godhead, neither could Christ be the proper object 
 of worship, nor could the redemption of mankind 
 be truly effected. But the existence of the Eternal 
 Word can not be really admitted, unless that view 
 and those relations of the sacred objects of our 
 worship, which we call the Trinity in Unity, are 
 taken as the beginning of our knowledge and basis 
 of our thoughts. 
 
 It has been stated how this doctrine was op- 
 posed in the second century, by those who main- 
 tained that man's nature could not be united to 
 God ; and who therefore, like the Ebionites, denied 
 the Godhead or like the Gnostics, the manhood 
 of Christ. Again, it has been shown how in the
 
 SOX OF .MAX ONE PERSON. 185 
 
 following ages the controversy rose to a higher 
 level how it was transferred from the human to 
 the Divine nature, and what arguments were de- 
 rived from the Unity of the Godhead against the 
 presence of Deity in Christ. In this period, too, 
 the Arian school came to the conclusion that in 
 Christ there was no real Godhead, while the reality 
 of His manhood was explained away by the Sa- 
 bellians. " These mists," as Hooker expresses it, 
 though dispelled by " the light of the Xicene 
 Council," yet returned in the fifth century under 
 that different form which must now be considered. 
 For though Our Lord had been recognized as both 
 
 O O 
 
 God and man, yet it was found possible to intro- 
 duce such misconceptions respecting the manner in 
 which these two natures were united, as in reality 
 to deny what in profession was admitted. Through 
 which process we fall back again upon the very 
 same alternative, which has before been exhibited; 
 so that while the Xestorian theory issues in the 
 conclusion, that the Son of Man was not God, His 
 manhood was on the other hand destroyed by the 
 Eutychians. It was essential therefore for the satis- 
 faction of Christian piety, that this part also of the 
 truth should be firmly established, and it is an in- 
 stance of that Providential government by which the 
 Great Head has provided for His people, that the 
 question was decided by the voice of two of those 
 General Synods, which have always been allowed 
 to express the collective judgment of the Church,
 
 186 GOD THE WORD, AND THE 
 
 and which cany with them therefore all the weight, 
 whether of testimony or authority, which belongs 
 to the Body of Christ. 
 
 It was not denied by Nestorius that Christ might 
 be called both God and man ; his error was the 
 denial that these two natures were really united 
 in one Person, and the supposition that they dwelt 
 only by inhabitation, and (as it were) by vicinity 
 in the same mortal frame. The Son of God, there- 
 fore, and the Son of Man, were looked upon by 
 him as being in reality two Beings, who were 
 linked together in amity, because the higher had 
 condescended to make His dwelling in the body of 
 the lower. What led Nestorius to this conclusion, 
 seems to have been the confusion of man's perso- 
 nality with his nature, and his incapacity to per- 
 ceive that there are parts of their constitution 
 which men share in common, while to every indi- 
 vidual there is something peculiar to himself. He 
 was a victim to that spurious sort of Nominalism, 
 which asserts, that because men are able by ab- 
 straction to class things together, which have no 
 real connexion, therefore there can be no such 
 common entity as nature in the creations of God 
 (vide p. 43, 44). This error has already been 
 noticed; it has been shown that in all those crea- 
 tures which God has endowed either with animal 
 or vegetable life, one condition of that life is a 
 mysterious principle of combination which is called 
 their nature. Its existence may be tested by
 
 SON OF MAX ONE PERSON. 187 
 
 those singular laws which govern reproduction, and 
 w r hich lead to the perpetual re-appearance of the 
 same type in successive generations. There is 
 something in the simplest vegetable, which the 
 most perfect imitation of its parts is unable to 
 supply. But from age to age, the innumerable 
 classes of organized beings go on transmitting the 
 impress which was bestowed upon them by the 
 Creator. And it is unphilosophical to deny the 
 existence of a principle, of which we see such ob- 
 vious effects, because our modes of analysis are 
 not subtile enough to discover on what it is de- 
 pendent. Let the principles of Nominalism, there- 
 fore, be confined to their proper ground the ab- 
 stractions namely of men, which are connected 
 together merely in our own thoughts but let us 
 not attempt to break the chain, by which God's 
 Providence has united the varying classes of His 
 organized works. This was the error of Nestorius, 
 and by this speculation was he led to the fearful 
 result of denying in fact the reality of Our Lord's 
 sacrifice, and of the Christian covenant of grace. 
 And it was the truth of these doctrines, which the 
 Church Catholic vindicated against him. " What 
 leads to the mistake of the heretics," says Dama- 
 scene, " is that they confound substance w r ith per- 
 son." And the ground of his objecting to what 
 might seem only a philosophical error is, that he 
 might assert that "the union" of two natures in 
 Christ " is substantial, by which," he says, " I mean
 
 GOD THE W011I), AND THE 
 
 true, and not merely imaginary." 1 Now it is plain, 
 that unless the Son of God and the Son of Man were 
 really and not merely by profession one, those things 
 which were done by the one could not truly be 
 participated by the other. In the sufferings then, 
 
 which were borne for us by the one, the other 
 
 j 
 
 would have no proper share ; nor would the in- 
 ferior person participate really in the glory of the 
 superior. And more than this, since the Son of 
 Man must first be a complete Person in Himself, 
 and then be joined to the Son of God, it could not 
 be anything which pertained to our nature at large, 
 but this single individual, who was so highly 
 favoured. " The Word (saith St. John) was made 
 flesh and dwelt in us. The Evangelist useth the 
 plural number, men for manhood, us for the nature 
 whereof we consist, even as the Apostle, denying 
 the assumption of Angelical nature, saith likewise 
 in the plural number, 'He took not Angels, but 
 the seed of Abraham.' It pleased not the Word 
 or Wisdom of God to take to itself some one 
 person among men, for then should that one have 
 been advanced, which was assumed, and no more; 
 but Wisdom, to the end she might save many, 
 built her house of that nature which is common 
 unto all ; she made not this or that man her habita- 
 tion, but dwelt in us" 2 "For He took my whole 
 nature upon Him, and in the fulness of Godhead 
 was united to it all, that the whole might obtain 
 1 De Fid. Orth. iii. 3. 2 Eccles. Pol. v. 52, 3.
 
 SON OF MAX ONE PERSON. 189 
 
 salvation . For if there were anything which He 
 did not take upon Him, it would have no part in 
 His saving power." 3 
 
 Such was the Church's faith, therefore, as put 
 forward in the Anathemas of Cyril, 4 which were 
 adopted by the Third General Council of Ephesus. 
 It is not built upon any system or school of philo- 
 sophy, but aims only at maintaining what had been 
 asserted from the first, that the same Person Jesus 
 Christ was truly God and truly man also. But it 
 may be asked, can a point so intricate be really 
 necessary, or is it possible that the poor of Christ's 
 flock, who form its most cherished portion, should 
 be able to thread the mazes of so subtile a con- 
 troversy ? Doubtless they can not. And yet the 
 truth which is thus set forth, is no less necessary 
 
 3 Greg. Naz. et Cyril in Damasc. de Fide Orthod. iii. 6. 
 
 4 His opposition to Xestorianism led St. Cyril to the repeated 
 employment of such statements as the following : " The Body 
 of Christ is life-giving, because it is the temple and dwelling- 
 place of that living God, the Word," &c. Vol. iv. C02 [In 
 Joann.] "Because He made that Body, which was taken of 
 the pure Virgin His own, He rendered it life-giving, and very 
 naturally, for it is the Body of that Life, which is the parent of 
 life to all things." De recta Fide, c. 56, 5, part 2. 177. 
 
 St. Cyril is spoken of by Dr. Jackson, as generally ac- 
 knowledged to be " the fittest umpire" in a controversy 
 respecting the Real Presence. If his statements are true 
 and they were countenanced by the universal Church, as 
 represented by the Third General Council it follows that 
 any school, which denies the Humanity of the Mediator to be 
 the medium through which Divine gifts are communicated to 
 mankind (and such is the error of all Rationalists), is theo- 
 logically allied either to Nestorianism, or to Deism, in which 
 Nestorianism results.
 
 190 GOD THE WORD, AND THE 
 
 to them than to the great and noble, nor are any 
 persons better prepared to accept it to the saving 
 of their souls. For even as our merciful Saviour, 
 in the days of His flesh, while the covetous Pha- 
 risees derided, was ministered to by the poor 
 women of Galilee, so are none more ready than 
 the poor of this world to trust in Christ as their 
 present God, and yet to look to the perpetual 
 sympathy of Him who in His poverty was their 
 brother. But how is this lesson to be taught 
 them ? A means has been appointed for bringing 
 it before their minds, which, while open to the 
 observation of all, yet raises their thoughts at once 
 to the most momentous mysteries of Our Lord's 
 nature. That means is the Holy Communion 5 a 
 rite which is not less fitted than in the days of 
 St. Irenaeus to teach men that Our Lord is God, 
 since He can make earthly instruments answer a 
 heavenly purpose, and that He is man also, since 
 it is His Body and Blood which He gives as our 
 spiritual food in that holy feast. The Sacraments 
 have been, from the first, the natural outwork of 
 the Doctrine of the Incarnation; and from recog- 
 nizing a true presence of Christ in these ordinances, 
 
 6 " As there is a recapitulation of all in heaven and earth in 
 Christ, so there is a recapitulation of all in Christ in the Holy 
 Sacrament. You may see it clearly : There is in Christ the 
 Word Eternal, for things in heaven ; there is also flesh, for 
 things on earth. Semblably the Sacrament consisteth of a 
 heavenly, and of a terrene part." Bishop ^.ndrews's six- 
 teenth Sermon of the Nativity.
 
 SON OF MAN ONE PERSON. 191 
 
 in which He communicates Himself both as God 
 and Man, are we carried on to a genuine belief, 
 that two natures are really united in His adorable 
 Person. For if Godhead and Manhood are truly 
 united in Christ, both must co-operate in those 
 offices which He discharges towards mankind. To 
 this truth many are unwilling to listen, because 
 they suppose that the efficacy of Christ's manhood 
 can mean only the natural efficacy of His material 
 body. And this induces unbelief respecting the 
 supernatural efficacy of that manhood of Christ, 
 which is the principle of regeneration to all His 
 brethren. Now, that the Holy Communion must 
 in some way or other be connected with the man- 
 hood of Christ is manifest, since but for His taking 
 our flesh, body and blood could not in any wise have 
 been conditions of His nature. To declare Christ's 
 real presence therefore by spiritual power in the 
 Holy Communion, is the simplest method of re- 
 minding men that the one of Our Lord's natures is 
 modified and advanced by the other. For that 
 which renders the manhood of Christ a fountain of 
 graces that which gives it glory, power, and wis- 
 dom which makes it the source of life for " as 
 the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given 
 to the Son to have life in Himself" this is that 
 hypostatical union in Christ Our Lord, which brings 
 the Divine into such close union with the Human 
 nature. To believe then in this mysterious union 
 in Christ Our Lord, it is not needful that men
 
 192 GOD THE WORD, AND THE 
 
 should be conversant with the errors of the Nes- 
 torian theory, but only that they receive what the 
 Catechism teaches, that while the benefit of the 
 Lord's Supper is that " strengthening and refresh- 
 ing of our souls," which can be bestowed only 
 through the divine power of the Saviour, the in- 
 ward part or thing signified is as plainly that which 
 is connected with Christ's manhood, the " Body 
 and Blood of Christ, which are verily and indeed 
 taken and received by the faithful in the Lord's 
 Supper." 
 
 Such is the manner in which this great Doctrine 
 addresses itself to simple minds, who will be found 
 not less ready than the educated to believe the 
 truth of an event, the manner of which no intellect 
 is able to divine. For the mode in which Godhead 
 and Manhood are united in Christ, is like the con- 
 junction of soul and body in man as impossible to 
 explain as to deny. And the Creed, therefore, 
 contents itself with paralleling the two together ; 
 not as though they were exactly alike, but as 
 though they must both be referred to the class of 
 things, the manner of which is beyond mortal com- 
 prehension : " For as the body and soul is one man, 
 so God and man is one Christ." Now, this union 
 cannot take place by the mixing together of two 
 natures so as to form a third, for then the result 
 would neither be God nor man, but some com- 
 pound nature ; it must be the conjunction of one 
 personality with two natures. Christ is " one not
 
 SON OF MAN ONE PERSON. 193 
 
 by confusion of substance, but by unity of person." 
 Xow, since personality is plainly one and indivi- 
 sible, it must pertain originally to one of these 
 natures, unless, which was far otherwise, they had 
 been in their origin contemporaneous ; and it could 
 not therefore be equally related to each of them. 
 For though personality has been shown by Butler 6 
 and Berkeley 7 to be a primary principle, not resolv- 
 able into mere consciousness, yet consciousness is 
 so intimately allied with its actings, that since 
 unity is the very essence of the one, it must plainly 
 be a condition of the other. In which, then, of His 
 two natures did the Personality of Christ Our Lord 
 originally reside ? Plainly in His Godhead. For 
 He Himself refers to its actings, before His human 
 nature was assumed: "Before Abraham was I am." 
 Let the foundation of the hypostatic union be laid 
 in the Doctrine of the Trinity, and the Personality 
 of Christ is comprehended in that of the Eternal 
 Son. " Christ is a Person Divine, because He is 
 personally the Son of God ; human, because He 
 hath really the nature of the children of men." 8 
 The Word was already in existence as a Person, 
 before He " was made flesh." " For the manhood 
 of Christ did not assume the Godhead, but the 
 Godhead of the Word assumed the human na- 
 ture." 9 Christ was " one not by conversion of the 
 
 6 Appendix to the Analogy. 
 
 7 The Minute Philosopher, Dial. vii. sec. 11. 
 
 8 Eccles. Pol. v. 53, 3. 9 Gennadius in Suicer, i. p. 358. 
 
 O
 
 194 GOD THE WORD, AND THE 
 
 Godhead into flesh, but by taking of the manhood 
 into God." 
 
 And yet it is not meant that two unconnected 
 natures, continuing in themselves wholly unrelated, 
 were joined together by some third substance, 
 namely, the Personality of Christ. For though 
 what we call nature is some mysterious law which 
 we observe to bind together many individuals, yet 
 it is only in individuals that it has its being, and 
 personality is that in which it subsists. Though 
 personality and nature may be conceived of apart, 
 yet they are not things which in act can be sepa- 
 rated from one another ; inasmuch as the one can- 
 not exist, except in and through the other. We 
 cannot, indeed, attribute to Christ a human per- 
 sonality distinct from His Divine, because this 
 would be to deny His Unity, and thus to relapse 
 into the heresy of Nestorius ; nor yet, in speaking 
 of His Divine Personality, can we undertake to 
 limit that infinite existence of which we have only 
 a partial knowledge, and to affirm that it is strictly 
 identical with what our experience enables us to 
 call Personality among men. But Our Lord's own 
 sayings 10 justify the assertion, that His Divine Per- 
 sonality is so far identical with that with which we 
 are conversant, as to comprehend and discharge its 
 functions. So that we may affirm, even of Our 
 Lord's human nature, that it never existed except 
 
 10 St. John, viii. 18.
 
 SON OF MAN ONE PERSON. 195 
 
 in a Personal relation. 11 If Christ had not a human 
 Person, it was because " the Personal Being, which 
 the Son of God already had, suffered not the sub- 
 stance to be personal which He took ; although, 
 together with the nature which He had, the nature 
 also which He took continueth." 12 Now, of two 
 natures thus manifested in the same Person, by that 
 law of their constitution whereby their existence is 
 identical with their inherence in one individual 
 being, it is impossible to suppose that the one is 
 not in some degree affected by the other. For in 
 its relation to His Divine nature, the Personality of 
 Christ continues no other than it was before the 
 world began. And therefore since His other and 
 inferior nature has been attached by Personal pro- 
 priety to Himself, this union of Godhead and Man- 
 hood in one Person must have involved intimate 
 action of the one nature upon the other. So that 
 when it is said that Godhead and Manhood were 
 joined together, it is plainly meant that the two 
 natures were not only allied, in that they belonged 
 to the same person, but that they were closely 
 united the one to the other. And this is the great 
 truth which Revelation discloses to us. For its 
 purpose is to declare a way, by which God and 
 man may be joined together. Now, if this had 
 happened only by the accidental assigning of two 
 
 11 " Natura quippe nostra non sic assumpta est ut prius creata, 
 post assumeretur ; sed ut ipsa assumptione crearetur." S. Leo, 
 Ep. 25, 3. 
 
 12 Eccles. Pol. v. 52, 3.
 
 196 GOD THE WORD, AND THE 
 
 unconnected natures to one common possessor, 
 what benefit had it been to mankind at large ? 
 There needed such union, that between Godhead 
 and Manhood there should be a permanent alliance. 
 That as God mercifully condescended to become 
 man, so might man be truly God. And in conse- 
 sequence of this great event, as the whole Trinity 
 condescended to participate by interest and sym- 
 pathy 13 in that being which was taken by the Eter- 
 nal Son into co-partnership with His own, so was 
 there a channel opened to the whole race of man, 
 through regeneration and grace, for communion 
 with God. There flowed forth into the lower na- 
 ture of the Mediator such streams of grace, as 
 sufficed to enrich the whole generation 14 of His 
 brethren. The alliance of the elder brother enno- 
 bled the whole household from which His kindred 
 was derived. 
 
 Now, if it be asked what were the particular 
 effects which resulted to each nature in Christ 
 from its union with the other, it is plain that to 
 the superior nature there could accrue no proper 
 alteration, seeing that to be unalterable is the 
 very nature of God. All, therefore, which can be 
 attributed in this respect to Christ's Godhead is, 
 that its Will was, by union with man's nature in 
 
 13 Damasc. de Fid. Orth. 3, 6. 
 
 14 " Se totum toti Adas immiscuit, vita mortuo, ut eum ser- 
 varet, in eum totum penetrans cui unitus erat, sicut anima 
 magni corporis, totum animans, et toti vitam impartiens." 
 Anast. Sinaita, Or. 3, Bib. Max. Pair. 9. 932.
 
 SUN OF MAX OXE PERSOX. 197 
 
 His one Person, to exercise some new manner of 
 sympathy with that being with which it was per- 
 sonally associated. And in this the whole glorious 
 Trinity is declared to have co-operated. For " he 
 that loveth Me, shall be loved of My Father." 15 
 And "the Father Himself loveth you, because 
 ye have loved Me, and have believed that I came 
 out from God." 16 And, therefore, was "God in 
 Christ reconciling the world unto Himself." 17 But 
 if it be asked, on the other hand, what effects were 
 produced by personal union with Deity upon man's 
 nature, we are assured that gifts greater than 
 tongue can utter or heart conceive, were bestowed 
 upon it. For this is the very meeting-place of 
 heaven and earth, the union of glory and humili- 
 ation ; herein the two worlds of the infinite and the 
 finite touch upon one another; by this we see what 
 God can bestow, and of what man is susceptible. 
 Surely the very comprehension of man is incapable 
 of enlarging itself to such conceptions. His ear 
 cannot drink in the intensity of the angelic har- 
 mony, " Glory to God in the highest, and on 
 earth peace, good- will towards men." With this 
 subject does even the fulness of Holy Scripture 
 overflow. Those who do not discern it, are un- 
 taught in " the whole counsel of God." To put 
 it aside as an unnecessary portion of our faith, 
 would be like Esau to despise our birthright. For 
 through this event it is, that the gifts of regene- 
 15 St. John, xiv. 21. l6 St. John, xvi. 27. 17 II. Cor. v. 19.
 
 198 GOD THE WORD, AXD THE 
 
 ration and grace have found their way into the 
 progeny of fallen Adam. On this circumstance 
 depends the truth, that salvation rests on the 
 supernatural gift of God, and not on the self- 
 dependent exertions of human excellence. For 
 this is the very promise which was made to Abra- 
 ham, that in his seed should all the families of the 
 earth be blessed. Their common nature was to be 
 exalted through Him who sanctified humanity by 
 being born into the world, as by His death He 
 redeemed it. For this was the true Son of David, 
 of whom God spake by the Psalmist : "I will 
 make Him My first-born, higher than the kings of 
 the earth." His kingdom had been beheld in 
 vision by Daniel, when " one like the Son of Man 
 came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the 
 Ancient of Days, and there was given Him 
 dominion, and glory, and a kingdom His domi- 
 nion is an everlasting dominion, and His kingdom 
 that which shall not be destroyed." 18 And if it 
 be asked when He was anointed to this kingly 
 office, this likewise is declared in Scripture : 
 " The 19 Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and 
 the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee; 
 therefore, also that holy thing which shall be 
 born of thee, shall be called the Son of God." 
 " And the Lord God shall give unto Him the 
 throne of His Father David, and of His kingdom 
 there shall be no end." It was when the Divine 
 18 Daniel, vii. 13, 14. 19 St. Luke, i. 35, 32, 33.
 
 SON OF MAN ONE PERSON. 199 
 
 then came in contact with the human nature, that 
 there were bestowed upon the latter those gifts of 
 grace, by reason whereof it is declared, that 
 " God, even Thy God, hath anointed Thee with 
 the oil of gladness above Thy fellows." 5 For the 
 anointing was the presence of that " spirit and 
 power," which dwelt in Christ " without measure." 21 
 And thus " Christ Himself," says Damascene, 
 " anointed Himself. As God He anointed His 
 body with Deity, as Man He was the anointed 
 One. For He was at once both God and Man. 
 And the Godhead was the unction of the Man- 
 hood." 22 " The gift whereby God hath made 
 Christ a fountain of life, is that conjunction of the 
 nature of God with the nature of man in the Per- 
 son of Christ, which gift (saith Christ to the 
 woman of Samaria) if thou didst know, and in 
 that respect understand who it is which asketh 
 water of thee, thou wouldest ask of Him, that He 
 might give thee living water." 23 
 
 Xow, it is no diminution of the reality of this 
 gift, that during Our Lord's sojourn upon earth 
 it was so imperfectly apprehended. For the sea- 
 son was not yet arrived when He had " taken" to 
 Him His "great power, and had reigned." 24 For 
 after that He had been "found in fashion as a 
 man, He humbled Himself and became obedient 
 unto death." As His Incarnation was the humili- 
 
 - Hebrews, i. 9. 21 Acts, x. 38 ; John, iii. 34. 
 
 22 De Fide Orthod. iii. 3, p. 206. Vid. Vigilius, c. Eutych. iv. 5. 
 
 23 Eccles. Polity, v. 54, 3. 24 Revelations, xi. 17.
 
 200 GOD THE WORD, AND THE 
 
 ation of His Godhead, so was His death the 
 humiliation of His earthly nature. For He con- 
 sented to serve like Jacob for His hire, and His 
 hire was the Church, which He purchased with 
 His own blood. And on His humiliation did there 
 follow the exalting of His man's nature. For 
 " being made perfect, He became the author of 
 eternal salvation to all them that obey Him." 25 
 " Wherefore God also hath highly exalted Him, 
 and given Him a name which is above every 
 name; that at the name of Jesus every knee 
 should bow, of things in heaven and things in 
 earth and things under the earth." 26 And "we 
 see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the 
 Angels that He might taste death for every man, 
 crowned through the suffering of death with glory 
 and honour." 27 And thus is He made " the Head 
 of the body, the Church, the beginning, the first- 
 born from the dead, that in all things He might 
 have the pre-eminence." 28 But all this is some- 
 what different from that exaltation of man's na- 
 ture, which is now in question. The present sub- 
 ject is not the glory which Christ gained for man's 
 nature by His Obedience, but that which He con- 
 ferred upon it by His Incarnation. For by that 
 act were Godhead and manhood brought into 
 contact with one another. The question, there- 
 fore, is not what was gained for man's nature by 
 
 25 Heb. v. 9. 26 Phil. ii. 9. v Heb. ii. 9. 
 
 29 Colossians, i. 18 ; vide also Eph. i. 21 ; I. Peter, iii. 22.
 
 SON OF MAN ONE PERSON. 201 
 
 Christ's Obedience; but of what it was made 
 capable by His coming in the flesh. For from 
 this capacity did all His acts as man result. 
 Adam's nature, even had it retained its early 
 purity, had been incompetent to support them. 
 They were something for which the genius of 
 Isaiah or the love of St. John would not have 
 sufficed. They showed the natural exaltation of 
 that humanity, with which Godhead had been 
 personally united. For first, all power had been 
 bestowed upon it : " For it pleased the Father 
 that in Him all fulness should dwell." And " the 
 Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things 
 into His hand." 29 And secondly, in Him "were 
 hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." 30 
 For He was " the Power of God and the Wisdom 
 of God." 31 Even in His humanity He was an 
 object of worship to the hosts of heaven. 32 Though 
 He was crucified, yet He was " the Lord of 
 Glory." 33 And when He somewhat withdrew the 
 veil, in which He commonly shrouded His lustre, 
 " His face did shine as the sun, and His raiment 
 was white as the light." 34 
 
 And by reason hereof there was conferred as 
 a gift upon the man Jesus Christ, that quickening 
 power which pertained to His Godhead by nature. 35 
 
 29 St. John, iii. 35 ; xvii. 2 ; St. Matt. xi. 27. * Col. ii. 3. 
 31 I. Cor. i. 24. ^Heb.i. 6. w I. Cor. ii. 8. 34 St. Matt. xvii. 2. 
 35 " Quicquid in tempore accepit Christus, secundum hominein 
 accepit, cui quse non habuit conferuntur." *S*. Leo, Ep. 97, 7.
 
 202 GOD THE WORD, AND THE 
 
 For "as the Father hath life in Himself, so hath 
 He given to the Son to have life in Himself." 36 
 And so did He declare when addressing the Father 
 as Mediator for His brethren : " Thou hast given 
 Him power over all flesh, that He should give 
 eternal life to as many as Thou hast given Him." 37 
 Thus was there bestowed upon what was human 
 in Him such living energy, as was evidenced while 
 He was upon earth, when " there went virtue out 
 of Him and healed them all." 38 So that it became 
 that "quickening spirit" 39 which is able to bestow 
 a new life on the progeny of Adam, and that 
 " bread" of life, " which cometh down from heaven, 
 that a man may eat thereof and not die." 40 All 
 these are indications of Divine powers bestowed 
 upon the Manhood of Christ, through its union 
 with the Eternal Word; and we witness our belief 
 in their permanent connexion with it, when it is 
 through "His body' H1 that we seek to profit by 
 their presence. For so much has been bestowed 
 
 36 St. John, v. 26. 37 St. John, xvii. 2. * St. Luke, vi. 19. 
 
 39 1. Cor. xv. 45. * St. John. vi. 50. 
 
 41 " Si quis non confitetur camera Domini vivificatricem esse, 
 
 tanquam propriara ipsius Dei Verbi quia facta est propria 
 
 Verbi Dei, cui omnia vivificare possibile est ; anathema esto." 
 This is the Eleventh of St. Cyril's Anathemas (Harduin's Cone. 
 vol. i. p. 1294) ; and in defence of it he adds : Eireicr) te ^wrf 
 
 KOTO, (j)vaiv esiv CK 6eov TTOT/JO? Ao^yo?, ^WOTTOIOV a7re(fir]i>e T^J/ 
 eavrov ac'ipxa. -ravrrj Tot ryefyoj/ej/ y/niv V\ojt'a ^WOTTOIOS. Contra 
 
 Orient, ad Anath. 11. p. 192. 
 
 "Est enim hsec caro, quia est filii Dei, sic et sanguis gwoTroids, 
 ut D. Cyrillus contra Nestorium pulchre explicat." JBuceri 
 Scrip. Ang. p. 473.
 
 SON OF MAN ONE PERSON. 203 
 
 upon the manhood through its union in one Person 
 with the Godhead of Christ. Thus has the one 
 nature received by gift, what the other had by 
 inheritance. And the only limit which can be 
 assigned to their perfect union is, that the proper- 
 ties of each are not so transferred as to destroy 
 the reality of either. For " the glory of the God- 
 head, which dwelleth bodily in Christ, is infinite. 
 But it is not communicated to Christ's human 
 body according to its infinity; the communication 
 of it, or the glory communicated, is created, and 
 therefore finite." 42 "As the Son of God is now 
 in the association of flesh, no alteration thereby 
 accruing to the nature of God; so neither are the 
 properties of man's nature in the person of Christ 
 by force and virtue of the same conjunction so 
 much altered, as not to stay within those limits 
 which our substance is bordered withal." 43 
 
 Now this was the very point which was main- 
 tained against Eutyches by the Fourth General 
 Council of Chalcedon. His error arose from the 
 very same misconception, which lay at the root of 
 the speculations of Xestorius. Since it was clear 
 that Christ was one determinate Person, performing 
 all which He did with the unity of one single 
 consciousness, it followed, if nature and person are 
 of necessity the same, that He must have but one 
 nature also. This result might be brought about 
 
 42 Jackson's works, Book xi. c. 3, vol. x. p. 31. 
 43 Eccles. Pol. v. 54, 5.
 
 204 GOD THE WOltD, AND THE 
 
 either by the swallowing up of one nature in the 
 other, or by the coalition of both in something 
 compounded of the two. In the latter case, both 
 natures would be extinguished, and Christ would 
 neither be God nor Man; in the former case, one 
 nature would perish, and either the Godhead or 
 the Manhood would be wanting. The notion of 
 Eutyches was, that the Manhood was lost in the 
 Godhead. But this, just as much as the theory 
 of the Nestorians, was fatal to the reality of our 
 oneness with Christ. For it was in reality to 
 revive that opinion of the Docetae, which had been 
 abandoned in name. Our Lord's sufferings and 
 death w T ould thus become only a figurative repre- 
 sentation, and He would have no proper copartner- 
 ship in man's trials. So that here again the truth 
 of Our Lord's Being was what the Church Catholic 
 maintained. And its vindication was the purpose 
 of all that was stated respecting His nature. This 
 it was, no doubt, which made His descent into hell 
 a point of sufficient moment to be introduced as a 
 constituent Article into the Creed. For it sets 
 forth the reality of that human soul, which is a 
 specific part of man's nature. " The true Doctrine 
 of the Incarnation against all the enemies thereof, 
 Apollinarians, Nestorians, Eutychians, and the like, 
 w r as generally expressed by declaring the unity of 
 the soul of Christ 44 really present in hell, and the 
 
 44 This action of Our Lord's human soul, when separate from 
 His Body, is one of the most satisfactory arguments against that
 
 SON OF MAX ONE PERSON. 205 
 
 unity of His Body at the same time really present 
 in the grave." 45 The truth of these assertions was 
 virtually involved in the statement which had been 
 received from the beginning, that Christ was truly 
 and in all respects man, even in the Article of His 
 death. For it belongs to man's body to rest in 
 the grave, and to his soul to visit the unknown 
 abode of the departed. And such an entrance of 
 Christ into the unseen world, had been especially 
 predicted by David, as contemporaneous with the 
 deposition of His body in the grave. " He seeing 
 this before, spake of the resurrection of Christ, that 
 His soul was not left in hell, neither His flesh did 
 see corruption." 46 Thus did the Church's testi- 
 mony respecting Christ, supply the explanation of 
 St. Peter's words, that Christ preached after His 
 death to the spirits who were "in safe keeping;" 47 
 to those, it must be supposed, among the ante- 
 diluvian Patriarchs, who having been disobedient in 
 slighting Noah's warning, were yet not so far im- 
 penitent as to be altogether cast away. 
 
 The confession of faith therefore which was put 
 forth at Chalcedon, was only designed to guard the 
 reality of those individual points of Christian belief, 
 
 opinion of the sleep of the soul between death and judgment, 
 which is built upon the material notion that the soul cannot act 
 without the body. Since Our Lord was the type of man's 
 nature, the certainty of the soul's separate action in His case 
 implies its possibility in ours. 
 
 45 Pearson on the Creed, Art. v. ^ Acts, ii. 31. 
 
 47 " tv 0u\a/c>/ does not in itself imply a place of punishment, 
 but of detention." I. Pet. iii. 19.
 
 206 GOD THE WORD, AND THE 
 
 which were declared in the express words of Scrip- 
 ture, and which had been enshrined in the devout 
 affection of the Apostolic age. The Church had 
 been brought under the guidance of God's spirit 
 to such ripeness of judgment, as "by reason of 
 use" to discern the full meaning of various truths, 
 which had been revealed at once to her inspired 
 founders. " Following therefore the holy Fathers," 
 said the six hundred Bishops at Chalcedon, "we 
 agree unanimously to set forth one and the same 
 Jesus Christ to be perfect God and perfect Man, 
 without confusion and without division/' 48 This 
 was the work which was completed by what 
 Hooker terms the "four most famous ancient 
 General Councils." The question which subse- 
 quently arose, whether there was one Will or two 
 in Christ, was in reality involved in what was 
 already decided. For since to will belongs to the 
 completeness of man's nature, had not this part of 
 our being been taken, Our Lord would not have 
 been that perfect man which He consented to 
 become for our salvation. This single point, there- 
 fore, if traced into its results, would have vitiated 
 all which had been before effected. And therefore 
 the Monothelites, as they were called, were in truth 
 only a section of the Monophysites : to deny Our 
 Lord's two wills was in reality to deny one of His 
 natures. Yet it is remarkable, that while the 
 heretical parties, by which the truth of either of 
 48 Actio V. Harduin's Con. ii. p. 455.
 
 SOX OF MAX OXE PERSON. 207 
 
 Our Lord's natures was directly denied, were of 
 the most variable and transient nature, either dying 
 out altogether after a few years, or else passing 
 into some other form of heresy; those which were 
 built on errors respecting the manner of their con- 
 junction have been most settled and lasting, and 
 continue to have their place among the Oriental 
 Churches even to this very day. The reasons 
 appear to be; first, that errors of this last sort do 
 not lie so near the beginning of the system of 
 Christianity, as immediately to discover their con- 
 sequences ; and secondly, that they do not destroy 
 the belief of that union with Christ, on which all 
 external Church-coherence is dependent. For faith 
 in Christ, as shown in the last Chapter, requires, 
 as a pre-requisite, belief in the existence of the 
 Eternal Son as a separate Person in the Ever- 
 Blessed Trinity. If this be wanting, there is no 
 opening for the permanent Incarnation of the Son 
 of God. And, on the other hand, when Our 
 Lord's manhood is lost sight of, the permanent 
 union of mankind under Him, as its new head, 
 has nothing to stand upon. These errors, there- 
 fore, prevent the formation of any abiding party, 
 because they destroy in its beginning the very 
 ground of the faith the union, namely, between 
 God and man. Whereas errors respecting the 
 nature of that union itself, however fatal, have yet 
 their termination in themselves, and rather benumb 
 and deaden belief, than directly destroy it. What-
 
 208 GOD THE WORD, AND THE 
 
 soever separates men indeed from actual union with 
 Christ, must be fatal to that inward life, which can 
 result only from the gift of an external blessing; 
 and such seems to have been the result with those 
 bodies by which the Nestorian and Eutychian 
 heresies have severally been adopted : their pro- 
 tracted existence has been marked by a perpetual 
 decay, which has witnessed to the viciousness of 
 their original constitution. 
 
 The faith of the Church Catholic, on the other 
 hand, sets forth each part of the mystery of the 
 Incarnation in its completeness. It begins with 
 the real existence of the Eternal Son, as a true 
 Person in the Ever-Blessed Trinity ; not a work 
 of creation, nor owing His being to the Father's 
 will, but "begotten of the Father before all 
 worlds," by some eternal and mysterious law of 
 necessary derivation. This is the foundation of 
 the Doctrine of the Incarnation ; and its super- 
 structure is that this same Being, when He took 
 flesh, continued to be "perfect God," but became 
 likewise "perfect man," possessing "a reasonable 
 soul and human flesh." The first of these is the 
 Doctrine of the Trinity; the second, that of the 
 hypostatical [or personal] union. Both are neces- 
 sary parts in a belief in the Incarnation of Our 
 Lord. Both were fully present, doubtless, to the 
 minds of the inspired Apostles. But it was only 
 through the gradual growth of the Church's mind, 
 and by the teaching of the Holy Ghost, that their
 
 SON OF MAN ONE PERSON. 209 
 
 full relations and mutual interdependence were seen 
 to be involved in the individual statements of 
 Scripture concerning the Son of God. 
 
 And here, then, this survey of Our Lord's nature 
 may terminate. Let it be observed only, that by 
 this union with Deity there has been conferred 
 upon our whole race the greatest honour of which 
 created substance is susceptible. For that man- 
 hood should thus have been taken into God- 
 head, shows that there was between them such 
 compatibility and accordance, as stamps the 
 lower nature with that truth which belongs to 
 the very essence of the higher. It has sometimes 
 been disputed, whether the decisions of reason 
 and the decrees of conscience have any proper 
 authority, or have only such semblance of reality 
 as belongs to our transitory state. That they 
 should have been present in Him in whom they 
 were matured, purified, exalted, and should thus 
 have harmonized with those perfect lines of truth 
 which radiate from the throne of God, is the best 
 evidence of their reality. For had God been 
 pleased to employ the organs of some inferior 
 animal, as is once recorded in Holy Writ, for the 
 expression of His will, such nature had not been 
 susceptible of that personal union with Him 
 which is set forth in the Incarnation of Christ. 
 But that man was found susceptible of it that 
 his faculties required to be exalted, not destroyed 
 shows that the traces of that image in which He
 
 210 GOD THE WOKD, ETC. 
 
 was first created, had not been obliterated from 
 his soul." 49 And thus does the Incarnation, more 
 than aught beside, witness to the reality of 
 that objective system of belief, which it has 
 pleased the All-Wise to reveal to His reasonable 
 creatures. 
 
 49 "Rectissime dicitur homo factus ad imaginem et simili- 
 tudinem Dei : non enim aliter incommutabilem veritatem posset 
 mente conspicere." S. JLug. de vera Relig. sec. 44.
 
 211 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 OUR LORD'S MEDIATION THE CONSEQUENCE OF 
 HIS INCARNATION. 
 
 HITHERTO the inquiry has respected Our Lord's na- 
 ture : we have seen that He is both God and Man 
 " the seed of David according to the flesh," and 
 likewise, " the Son of God with power." More than 
 this, it has been shown that He is the Pattern Man, 
 the second Adam, the representative of humanity ; 
 and again, that He is the "Eternal Son," the co- 
 equal participator of self-existent Godhead, of one 
 substance with that Almighty Father, from whom 
 He is personally distinct. Finally, it has been 
 shown, that these two natures are so truly joined 
 together in the one Person of Christ Our Lord, 
 that, while continuing to be what they were, they 
 are yet each influenced the one by the other. 
 
 The second part of the subject proposed, was the 
 effect which has been produced upon the condition 
 of mankind by our Lord's Incarnation. This, in 
 other words, is the Doctrine of Our Lord's Media- 
 tion. For His name of Mediator is not bestowed 
 by reason of any work in which He was occasion-
 
 212 OUR LORD'S MEDIATION 
 
 ally or partially occupied ; it sets forth that office, 
 which resulted from the permanent union in one 
 person of God and Man. For the benefits which 
 He bestows upon man's nature result from His be- 
 ing the link which binds it to Deity. The salva- 
 tion of Adam's race depends upon the influence of 
 that higher nature, which has been introduced into 
 it from above. This gift was first bestowed upon 
 humanity in the Person of Christ, that from Him 
 it might afterwards be extended in degree to all 
 His brethren. 1 Before considering the course 
 through which these benefits have been dispensed, 
 it will be necessary to state to what heads they 
 may severally be referred, and what is the exact 
 nature of that office of mediation, through which 
 they are conferred upon us. 
 
 I. By Our Lord's Mediation, then, is meant that 
 He is not a Mediator, but the Mediator between 
 God and man. This is the meaning of St. Paul's 
 assertion : " There is one God, and one Mediator 
 between God and Men." 2 The expression is equi- 
 valent to an assertion that there is one only. And 
 herein lies the distinction between the Christian 
 Church, and those who, without adopting her whole 
 belief, profess faith in Our Lord. For Our Lord 
 might be a Divine Person raised up to teach He 
 
 1 " Since sure it is that the Son of God is made the Son of 
 Man, it is not incredible but that the sons of men may be made 
 the sons of God." Bishop j4ndreivs's Sixth Sermon on the 
 Nativity, " Filius hominis est factus, ut nos filii Dei esse pos- 
 simus." S. Leo, Ser. xxv. 2. " I. Tim. ii. 5.
 
 THE CONSEQUENCE OF HIS INCARNATION. 213 
 
 might be a perfect example He might be the me- 
 dium through which gifts of grace were bestowed, 
 and pardon of sins conferred on men ; and yet there 
 might be other channels opened, through whom the 
 Godhead might bestow its blessings, and other per- 
 sons who might be its intermediate ministers. The 
 Arians do not seem to have generally rejected the 
 Doctrine of Our Lord's Atonement ; nor need it be 
 rejected even by Socinians ; though they are un- 
 likely to attach importance to a doctrine, the true 
 grounds whereof they have abandoned. Again, the 
 Mahometans universally allow Christ to have been 
 a Mediator between God and man, so that He is 
 one among those, through faith in whom they hope 
 to be justified. But the Christian faith is, that 
 Christ is not a Mediator, one out of many, but the 
 Mediator the real bond by which Godhead and 
 manhood are united. And this arises not from any 
 technical and artificial appointment ; He bears this 
 name, because He is 3 what it expresses. His title 
 follows from His nature, as effect from cause, as 
 consequent from antecedent. He truly is what no 
 other is, or can be beside Him, the Pattern Man, 
 the second Adam ; therefore no other can take His 
 place among the generations of mankind. And 
 again, He alone is fitted to represent the Father, 
 for " no man hath ascended up into heaven, but He 
 
 3 " Officium Mediatoris, nisi ex veritate naturae carnis, quara 
 ex nobis habuit, implere non potuit, quoniam per ipsam inter 
 Deum et homines medius apparuit." Vigil, c. Eutych. v. 15.
 
 214 OUR LORD'S MEDIATION 
 
 that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man 
 which is in heaven." The blessing which is to rege- 
 nerate man's nature must have an external source, 
 and it cannot be obtained, therefore, except through 
 one who is a real channel of intercourse with God. 
 This is what we speak of then as Our Lord's Media- 
 tion. We speak of an office which belongs to Him 
 by nature, and results from the constitution of His 
 Being. For this cause the Son of God consented 
 to become the Son of Man : " When Thou tookest 
 upon thee to deliver man, Thou didst not abhor the 
 Virgin's womb." Moses acted as mediator, Christ 
 became one. 
 
 II. And this, doubtless, is the reason why the 
 universal Church, acting under the guidance of 
 God's Spirit, has set forth as the distinguishing cri- 
 teria of belief, not the mere acts of Our Lord, but 
 those conditions of His character on which their 
 value is dependent. It has sometimes been asked 
 why Our Lord's Atonement is not inserted in the 
 Creed in such express words as is His Incarnation. 
 The reason is, that Our Lord's Atonement may be 
 admitted in words, although those who use them 
 attach no Christian sense to the doctrine which they 
 acknowledge; whereas if the Doctrine of Our Lord's 
 Incarnation is once truly accepted, His Mediation 
 follows as its necessary result. So that the Church 
 was guided by Divine Wisdom, to make this Article 
 of Our Lord's real nature the criterion of her belief, 
 the " Articulus stantis aut cadentis ecclesise :" it
 
 THE CONSEQUENCE OF HIS INCARNATION. 215 
 
 holds a leading place in the profession which in all 
 ages has been required at Baptism ; and the early 
 believers gave a token of their reverence when, on 
 declaring that He "was made man," they were wont, 
 with one consent, to bow the knee and \vorship. 
 
 III. It must be observed, then, that the very es- 
 sence of this office is, that all functions which are 
 discharged on God's part towards man, or on man's 
 part towards God, are gathered together in His 
 single Person. In this respect was Joseph His type 
 in the prison, as well as upon his seat of power, in- 
 asmuch as " whatsoever they did there, he was the 
 doer of it." He is the sole channel of all which is 
 done by God towards man, or man towards God, 
 under the Christian covenant. For He is the one 
 only Mediator who unites both. He is the sole 
 channel through whom the graces of the new dispen- 
 sation are bestowed by God upon mankind. There- 
 fore, He said, when promising the gift of the Holy 
 Ghost : " He shall receive of Mine, and shall show it 
 unto you." 4 And so, likewise, is He the only me- 
 dium through whom our prayers can ascend to God, 
 for " no man cometh unto the Father but by Me." 
 This is the place wherein heaven and earth are con- 
 nected; the bridge which joins them together. He 
 is "the door," 5 "the way, the truth, and the life." 6 
 
 IV. Again, the Office of Mediator which is thus 
 undertaken by Our Lord, is not a transitory, but 
 an enduring one. It lasts as long as the Gospel 
 
 4 St. John, xvi. 14. 5 St. John, x. 9. 6 St. John, xiv. 6.
 
 216 OUK LORD'S MEDIATION 
 
 kingdom. It was not merely discharged while He 
 was upon earth, and resigned so soon as He had 
 founded the Church, and commissioned His Apos- 
 tles : He continues " Head over all things to the 
 Church ;" 7 and as He now bears the office of re- 
 gency, so does that of Judge await Him at the 
 Great Day. For the Father " hath given Him au- 
 thority to execute judgment also, because He is 
 the Son of Man." 8 This is part of His office, who 
 is God's perfect representative towards mankind ; 
 and meantime, He acts perpetually on behalf of 
 mankind towards God : " He ever liveth to make 
 intercession for them." 9 For He is present conti- 
 nually in heaven according to that human nature, 
 whereby He is the "Lamb that was slain ;" 10 while 
 in earth also He is present through His power, for 
 " Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of 
 the world." 11 What may happen in these respects 
 in another state of things we know not. " Then 
 cometh the end, when He shall have delivered up 
 the kingdom to God, even the Father." " Then 
 shall the Son also Himself be subject unto Him 
 that put all things under Hun, that God may be 
 all in all." 12 The authority which the Mediator 
 now possesses, as Incarnate Son by gift, may then 
 perhaps be merged in that which He possessed 
 before all worlds, as only-begotten Son by nature. 
 But till then, u all power is given to" Him "in 
 
 7 Eph. i. 22. 8 St. John, v. 27. 9 Heb. vii. 25. 
 
 10 Rev. v. 12. " St. Matt, xxviii. 20. I2 1. Cor. xv. 24, 28.
 
 THE CONSEQUENCE OF HIS INCARNATION. 217 
 
 heaven and in earth;" 13 "and He is the Head of 
 the Body, the Church, who is the beginning, the 
 first-born from the dead." 14 
 
 V. And yet since Our Lord's Mediation de- 
 pended upon His man's nature, and since that man's 
 nature was capable of being perfected, He must 
 plainly have entered upon it by degrees. This it 
 is which enables us to consider it in its several 
 parts, and to trace those different stages into which 
 it was divided. The acts of Godhead are in them- 
 selves eternal, like the nature of that Infinite Being, 
 with whom is " no variableness, neither shadow of 
 turning." It is only on man, to whom succession 
 is the law of life, and whose endurance is measured 
 out by time, that successive events impress their 
 several impulses. " Known unto God are all His 
 works from the beginning of the world." 15 It is 
 because manhood, therefore, has been united to 
 Godhead in Our Lord's Person, that His acts can 
 be arranged according to those conditions of time, 
 by which man's nature is limited. In the counsels 
 of God, Our Lord's acts were ever present ; He 
 was " the Lamb slain from the foundation of the 
 world." 16 So far as His death contributed to the 
 purposes of mercy, it might ever equally be taken 
 account of. But since He was made "perfect" as 
 a man " through sufferings ;" 17 since His work, 
 that is, was provided for by the growth of His 
 
 13 St. Matt, xxviii. 18. " Col. i. 18. 15 Acts, xv. 18. 
 16 Revelations, xiii. 8. 17 Hebrews, ii. 10.
 
 218 OUR LORD'S MEDIATION, ETC. 
 
 body and the preparation of His mind so that 
 " being made perfect, He became the author of 
 eternal salvation to all them that obey Him" 18 
 therefore His Mediation may be referred to different 
 periods, and considered under those several condi- 
 tions, in which He successively displayed Himself. 
 Now, that which made the most marked difference 
 in His human character, was His ascension into 
 glory. For then was the obedience of His earthly 
 life rewarded by a heavenly crown. To this He 
 directed the attention of the Jew r s, as that which 
 would render His man's nature the source of graces 
 to His brethren : " What and if ye shall see the 
 Son of Man ascend up where He was before." 1 
 Therefore, " when He ascended up on high, he led 
 captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men." 5 The 
 consummation of His resurrection was His session 
 at the right hand of God. The interval was a tran- 
 sition state, when He was neither present carnally, 
 as among the Jewish multitudes, nor, as in the 
 ordinances of the Church, by spiritual power : 
 " Touch Me not, for I am not yet ascended to My 
 Father." 21 Thus is this event the dividing epoch 
 in Our Lord's history. So that His acts of Media- 
 tion may be conveniently divided into those which 
 preceded, and those which followed, His Ascension 
 into Heaven. 
 
 18 Heb. v. 9. 19 St. John, vi. 62. Ephes. iv. 8. 
 
 21 St. John, xx. 17.
 
 219 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 OUR LORD S ACTS OF MEDIATION PREVIOUSLY TO HIS 
 ASCENSION ; OR HIS TEACHING, HIS EXAMPLE, AND 
 HIS SACRIFICE. 
 
 SINCE Our Lord's Mediation was the natural result 
 of that twofold nature in which He was manifest 
 among men, it implies plainly a twofold action, as 
 its relation towards man is considered, or its rela- 
 tion towards God. For to man He was manifested 
 as a teacher and an example, while He offered to 
 God the perfect sacrifice of our redemption. 
 
 I. And first to consider Him in His relation to- 
 wards man. To detail at all His actions on this 
 side of His character, would far exceed the limits 
 of the present volume, since it would be to state at 
 large the whole lesson which is exhibited by the 
 Evangelists. The life of Christ, as Bishop Taylor 
 has shown us, is the best channel for communi- 
 cating the precepts of the Gospel. In this place it 
 is enough to refer in general to God's goodness, in 
 having bestowed such a medium of instruction upon 
 men. For hereby reason has its employment, and
 
 220 THE TEACHING OF CHRIST. 
 
 love its pattern. Thus are all parts of our nature 
 called into exercise, and the understanding learns 
 to assent to that which the will is to perform. 
 Through the instructions which Our Lord be- 
 stowed, we gain that gradual ascent from earthly 
 things to heavenly, whereby He conducted His 
 Disciples, and through them all subsequent gene- 
 rations, towards that higher world, with which 
 Himself was familiar. And then in the more ex- 
 alted communications which followed His Resur- 
 rection, did He open the understandings of His 
 Disciples to " things pertaining to the kingdom of 
 God." 1 These they afterwards unfolded at large 
 through the teaching of the Spirit. Meanwhile 
 their affections were no less elevated than their 
 reason, and the Being, before whose majesty they 
 trembled, they learned to love. For He who was 
 the true Pattern Man, " the chiefest among ten 
 thousand," "altogether lovely," 2 submitted to be 
 "heard" and "seen" with their eyes, and "looked 
 upon." 3 
 
 Such was the peculiar privilege of those, who 
 were the first to profit by that great event, where- 
 by God and man were brought together. And 
 thus has the blessing been extended to all genera- 
 tions of mankind. For through the teaching of 
 the Gospels have all nations been made conscious 
 of those deep mysteries, of which man's nature is 
 susceptible. The cold, selfish, isolated, grovelling 
 
 1 Acts, i. 3. 2 Sol. Song, v. 10, 16. 3 1. John, i. 1.
 
 THE TEACHING OF CHRIST. 221 
 
 spirit, which bound all men to party, race, or 
 language, and, still more, which centred each man's 
 thoughts in his own private ends, have yielded in 
 a measure to that more generous and exalted feel- 
 ing, which the Pattern Man exhibited upon earth. 
 Here is that in which all men have a common 
 interest to which all men's sympathy responds 
 alike which all must admire, love, seek, cherish 
 which they discern to contain the real secret of 
 their happiness and object of their being. Thus 
 is man's life made capable of higher ends his race 
 is discerned to be the depository of nobler prin- 
 ciples he is compelled to allow the supremacy of 
 better maxims, and the wisdom of rules, by which 
 his own practice is too often condemned. How 
 many have prayed for their murderers, now that 
 the Pattern Man has enabled our hearts to feel 
 what, but for His example, might have been for 
 ever hidden in the undeveloped capacities of man's 
 nature that revenge is less noble than forgiveness. 
 Thus has He set forth the perfect type of manhood, 
 and through the example of the elder brother, the 
 lineaments of truth may be discerned even in the 
 corrupted nature of His brethren. 
 
 And further, by enshrining these truths in that 
 one book, which has thus become the common 
 standard of all civilized nations, literature has in 
 some sort been made catholic, and art been made 
 divine; so that they are no longer limited to indi- 
 vidual races, but esteemed the common property of
 
 222 THE TEACHING OF CHRIST. 
 
 every child of Adam ; and again, that their noblest 
 subjects are felt to rest no longer on mere beauty 
 of form or strength of conception, but to depend 
 on that moral greatness, which, once exhibited in 
 its perfection upon earth, can never cease to be 
 regarded as the true ideal of human excellence. 
 
 II. But it is when we turn from Our Lord's 
 actings towards men, and consider the part which 
 He discharged towards God, that we approach the 
 most wonderful side of His Mediation. And here 
 we must expect that our reason will speedily be 
 left behind by the greatness of the subject, since 
 what we consider is the function which was per- 
 formed towards the Everlasting Father by Him, 
 who, His equal by nature, had consented to be- 
 come the representative of mankind. His sayings 
 too to His brethren are given to us in abundance; 
 of His words to His Eternal Father but a few 
 occasional specimens are recorded in Holy "Writ. 
 A few expressions occur at different periods of His 
 ministry, and one remarkable chapter (St. John, 
 xvii.) which declares its completion. These all 
 reveal the same truth respecting Our Lord's rela- 
 tion to the Father, that its single characteristic was 
 Obedience. Thus did the Pattern Man render ex- 
 actly that service, in which all His brethren had 
 been wanting. " Submission to the will of God," 
 says Butler, " may be said to be the whole of 
 religion." And disobedience is the very condition 
 of our sin. Now, Our Lord declares the fulfilment
 
 THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST. 223 
 
 of His Father's will to have been the very purpose 
 of His being : "I have glorified Thee on the earth ; 
 I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me 
 to do." 4 Or again: "What shall I say? Father 
 save Me from this hour: but for this cause came 
 I unto this hour." 5 And once more, even in His 
 hour of agony did He exclaim : " Nevertheless, 
 not My will, but Thine be done." 6 This lesson of 
 " obedience" it is declared in the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews, that Our Lord "learned." 7 Everything 
 else was communicated to His man's soul by way 
 of inspiration. This thing only it was essential 
 that He should acquire through the perfect road of 
 experience. In its complete mastery lay the signal 
 excellence of His man's soul. The two wills which 
 dwelt within Him moved together in perfect and 
 unalterable harmony. What the Divine will pre- 
 scribed, the human will completely responded to: 
 " For I came down from heaven, not to do Mine 
 own will, but the will of Him that sent Me." 8 
 And " therefore doth My Father love Me, because 
 I lay down My life, that I might take it again. 
 No man taketh it from Me, but I lay it down of 
 Myself : I have power to lay it down, and I have 
 power to take it again. This commandment have 
 I received from My Father." 9 
 
 The life of the Pattern Man, then, may be said 
 to have been a continual setting forth of that duty 
 
 4 John, xvii. 4. 5 John, xii. 27. 6 Luke, xxii. 42. 
 7 Hebrews, v. 8. 8 John, vi. 38. 9 John, x. 18.
 
 224 THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST. 
 
 of Obedience, which His brethren, the children of 
 Adam, had failed to render. He appeared once 
 for all as the representative of mankind, and was 
 obedient : " Lo, I come (in the volume of the book 
 it is written of Me) to do Thy will, O God." 10 
 This it is which He exhibited from first to last 
 from His conception in the womb until He was 
 buried in the earth. In all parts of life in child- 
 hood, youth, and ripeness of years as member of 
 a family or a single worshipper in solitude or in 
 company in the wilderness or the city in the 
 shop or the temple in honour or contempt in 
 penury or at feasts His "meat" was "to do the 
 will of Him that sent Me, and to finish His work." 11 
 Yet there remained one thing still greater; for all 
 mortal pangs are gathered together in that last and 
 most fearful one, the tearing asunder of soul and 
 body in death. Now, from this trial also Our 
 Lord did not shrink. He was " obedient unto 
 death." 12 And in this part of His course lie those 
 especial circumstances, which are declared in Holy 
 Scripture to be the causes of man's redemption. 
 For though He is said in general to be the "last 
 Adam," the " second Man," 13 yet it is with His 
 Death and Passion that His sacrifice for sin is ex- 
 pressly connected. For " we 14 have redemption 
 through His blood," says the Apostle tw r ice over, 
 " the forgiveness of sins." He has " made peace 
 
 10 Heb. x. 7. " John, iv. 34. 12 Phil. ii. 8. 
 
 13 1. Cor. xv. 45, 47. " Ephes. i. 7 ; Col. i. 14.
 
 THE SACEIFICE OF CHRIST. 225 
 
 through the blood of His cross," 15 and He came 
 "to give His life a ransom instead of many." 16 
 
 This offering of Himself on behalf of man was 
 the true sacrifice, which all the sacrifices of the 
 Ancient Law served to introduce. Not that Our 
 Lord's offering was built upon them ; that it 
 pleased God merely to give His sanction to an 
 ancient usage, and to hallow it by the sacrifice of 
 Christ. That which happened was exactly the 
 reverse; the offerings of the Law were built upon 
 the offering of Christ ; they were the type of a 
 future reality, which cast its shadow beforehand 
 on the Jewish nation. For all the Jewish ordi- 
 nances " serve unto the example and shadow of 
 heavenly things, as Moses was admonished of God, 
 when he was about to make the tabernacle." 
 " It was therefore necessary that the patterns of 
 things in the heavens should be purified with 
 these, but the heavenly things themselves with 
 better sacrifices than these." 17 How the practice 
 first began of presenting flocks and herds as an 
 offering to God is not recorded, though it seems 
 most natural to attribute it to a Divine appoint- 
 ment; but when it was made a part of the Jewish 
 Law, its meaning was explained to that chosen 
 people. For while they were allowed to retain the 
 old custom of presenting Burnt- Offerings as the 
 expression of their piety, two especial kinds of 
 sacrifice were added, Peace- Offerings and Sin- 
 15 Colossians, i. 20. 16 Matthew, xx. 28. 17 Heb. viii. 5 ; ix. 23. 
 
 Q
 
 226 THE SACEIFICE OF CHEIST. 
 
 Offerings, as expressive of those particular rela- 
 tions to God, of which they were the depositories. 
 These three species of sacrifices are described in 
 the commencement of Leviticus. The Burnt- Of- 
 fering, as the representative of piety at large, had 
 in it some circumstances which belonged specifi- 
 cally to each of the others. It was an atonement, 18 
 like the Sin-offering a sweet savour, 19 like the 
 Peace-Offering. For these are the characteristics 
 of the two other sorts of sacrifice. The Peace- 
 Offering typified the general duties of worship 
 the Sin-offering the application for forgiveness. 
 That which was indicative of the first, was " a 
 sweet savour unto the Lord;" 20 that which was 
 characteristic of the last, was first, the prohibition 
 of frankincense, 21 with a view of preventing it from 
 being a sweet savour ; secondly, the burning of 
 the beasts so offered without the camp; 22 and 
 thirdly, the consequent defilement of the man 23 
 who burnt them. These circumstances indicated 
 that the "blood" of the Sin-Offerings was 
 "brought in to make atonement." 24 And yet the 
 very circumstance, that for legal impurities there 
 was in each case provided a special purification, 
 while the greater faults which burthened men's 
 conscience, except in a few cases which might lead 
 to social disorder, 25 were not remitted, was sum- 
 
 18 Leviticus, i. 4. lfl Ibid. i. 17. Ibid. iii. 5. 21 Ibid. v. 11. 
 22 Ibid. iv. 12, viii. 17; Heb. xiii. 11. 23 Lev. xvi. 28. 
 24 Leviticus, xvi. 27. M Leviticus, v. 1-6; xix. 21.
 
 THE SACKIFICE OF CHRIST. 227 
 
 cient to suggest what was subsequently declared, 
 that " it is not possible that the blood of bulls and 
 of goats should take away sins." 26 What these 
 sacrifices effected, then, was to maintain for those 
 who offered them, a title to participate in the privi- 
 leges of the chosen nation ; and in that collective 
 worship, whereby it kept its hold on the true 
 Sacrifice, which once in the fulness of time was to 
 be offered on the Altar of the Cross. The Peace- 
 Offering set forth man's allegiance to God when he 
 was forgiven, and the Sin-Offering showed that 
 forgiveness was not to be obtained through his own 
 deserts, but by the substitution of some interme- 
 diate victim; while both together witnessed that 
 the sacrifices of men were to be offered, not like 
 the Burnt-Offerings of old, by each man or house- 
 hold for itself, but by an appointed servant of 
 God, whom He had anointed to be Priest : " No 
 man taketh this honour upon himself, but he that 
 is called of God, as was Aaron." 27 
 
 Now, Christ Our Lord is the one centre in which 
 all these lines have their meeting. He is the true 
 Peace-Offering, who " hath given Himself for us 
 an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet- 
 smelling savour." 28 And He is the only effectual 
 Sin-Offering, who, " that He might sanctify the 
 people with His own blood, suffered without the 
 gate." 29 For this very purpose it was that He 
 
 26 Hebrews, x. 4. v Hebrews, v. 4. 
 28 Eph. v. 2. Heb. xiii. 12.
 
 228 THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST. 
 
 clothed Himself with a mortal body ; He took that 
 common nature which He shares with mankind, 
 that He might "have somewhat also to offer." 30 
 " Wherefore, when He cometh into the world, He 
 saith, sacrifice and offering Thou wouldest not, but 
 a body hast Thou prepared 31 Me." So " that we 
 are sanctified through the Body of Jesus Christ 
 once for all." 32 
 
 Now, since this is the crisis of that great work 
 which Christ came to perform, its groundwork must 
 have been laid in both of His natures. Their 
 separate action, indeed, is not now before us, but 
 that work wliich He wrought as God-man by their 
 perfect co-operation [0eai>fy t /n} eW/^eta.] But this 
 may be better appreciated, if it be observed how 
 exactly He was fitted by the wisdom of God for 
 the service of mercy which He discharged. So 
 that we may look first to the Divine and then to 
 the human side of His character, and see why this 
 was the only real sacrifice which could be pre- 
 sented on man's behalf to God. For by reason 
 
 30 Heb. viii. 3. 
 
 31 The quotation in the Epistle to the Hebrews is from the 
 Septuagint; the Hebrew giving "mine ears hast thou opened." 
 " Why," asks Tholuck, " has the translator rendered ' ears ' by 
 ' body?' If he thought that in the original a part was put for 
 the whole, the ground of his translation was obvious. If he 
 looked at the phrase as the Chaldean Paraphrasts, the Rabbins, 
 and most modern interpreters, have done, he expressed the effect 
 in place of the cause, in his translation:" i. e. a body was 
 essential for that obedience, which the Hebrew expresses that 
 Our Lord rendered. Tholuck on Hebrews, x. 5. 
 32 Hebrews, x. 10.
 
 THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST. 229 
 
 of His Divine nature, had the sacrifice of Himself 
 such intrinsic value, that the representative of 
 mankind could offer it effectually in mediation for 
 our race. For, from Christ's Divinity there flowed 
 such consecrating virtue, as made Him a fitting 
 Priest, and such atoning efficacy as made Him a 
 sufficient Victim. 
 
 A Priest is explained in the Epistle to the He- 
 brews, to be some one " ordained for men in things 
 pertaining to God ;" his office being to " offer gifts 
 and sacrifices." 33 And such is the origin of the 
 word in primitive languages, 34 in which the notion 
 of the setting apart those who should act on man's 
 behalf towards God, is everywhere visible. For 
 some peculiar sacredness seemed to be needed for 
 the office, so soon as any thing of a public Ritual 
 arose. Hence, while common worship was that of 
 single hearths, the father of each household was its 
 Priest ; and hence the identifying of the office with 
 that of the chief 35 in simple times. All these cir- 
 cumstances look to some peculiar consecration for 
 the Priestly office. Yet where shah 1 such be found? 
 Who is pure enough to be Priest on behalf of his 
 brethren? The one Mediator between God and 
 
 33 Hebrews, v. 1. 
 34 From the verb fro to be a mediator or middle person 
 
 - T . 
 
 [Gesenius], comes the substantive p3 Priest. So iepevs 
 
 from iepos, sacred. Sacerdos, from sacrare, to set apart. In 
 the Gothic of Ulphilas, Gudja is used for Priest, from Guth, 
 God. 
 
 35 Rex Anius, rex idem hominum Phtebique sacerdos.
 
 230 THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST. 
 
 man is plainly the only being who is capable of 
 being Priest for fallen humanity : " For such an 
 High Priest became us, who is holy, harmless, un- 
 defiled." For since He is a Mediator by nature, 
 He is by nature fitted to be Priest. For a Priest 
 is a Mediator in action. So that our Lord's Priest- 
 hood does not arise only from His having an offer- 
 ing to make on our behalf; it lies in His constitu- 
 tion ; it is the result of that personal union which 
 binds man to God. A Priest is consecrated, and 
 Christ's consecration, as Damascene reminds us, 
 was that uniting of His Divine to His human na- 
 ture, whereby He was anointed the Son of God: 
 " Christ glorified not Himself to be made an High 
 Priest, but He that said unto Him, Thou art My 
 Son, this day have I begotten Thee." So that He 
 who was the Pattern Man and representative of 
 humanity, was qualified to execute the office of a 
 Priest in and by His man's nature for His breth- 
 ren of mankind. 
 
 But that the Mediator for men might act as 
 a Priest, He must "have somewhat also to offer." 
 And what was there which He could offer on man's 
 behalf, which was of value before God ? Plainly 
 nothing, but that humanity of His own, which He 
 had rendered of infinite value by joining it in His 
 own Person to the infinite. For this is the only 
 thing pertaining to mankind, which, regarded in 
 itself, is of intrinsic value. Of what value are all 
 things which are possessed by men, whether in
 
 THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST. 231 
 
 body or in mind ? Not to mention that they are 
 God's already, there is the further consideration 
 that through sin they have been defiled. Now, 
 "the sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to 
 the Lord." So that no other possession or work is 
 in itself worth offering. We cannot go too far in 
 detracting from the value of all other works, if 
 spoken of as an offering to God, independently of 
 the perfect work of Christ our Saviour. It is not 
 too much to say, that viewed as an independent 
 sacrifice from man to God, all other works are 
 unnecessary. For if they were necessary, no flesh 
 could be saved. For He is the sole Mediator 
 between God and man. What He pleads, is the 
 sacrifice of His crucified humanity. He stands 
 alone. The elder brother does all ; His brethren 
 do nothing. 30 He bears the burthen of all offences. 
 He offers Himself "a ransom for all." And this 
 ransom is of infinite value. For we were "not 
 redeemed with corruptible things as silver and 
 gold," "but with the precious blood of Christ." 37 
 " The Church of God" " He has purchased with 
 His own blood." And " worthy is the Lamb that 
 was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, 
 and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing." 
 
 36 " Acceperunt justi non dederunt coronas ; et de fortitudine 
 fidelium exempla nata sunt patientite, non dona justitite. Fides 
 
 vera justificans impios et creans justos in illo acquirit 
 
 salutem, in quo solo homo se invenit innocentem." S. Leo, 
 Ep. 97, 4. 
 
 37 1. Peter, i. 19 ; Acts, xx. 28 ; Revelations, v. 12.
 
 232 THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST. 
 
 Herein then is concentrated that service of Obe- 
 dience, which Christ rendered to the Father. He 
 " needeth not daily as those High Priests to offer 
 up sacrifices," "for this He did once, when He 
 offered up Himself." How far this act of sacrifice 
 lay in the tearing asunder of soul and body, and 
 how far in those sufferings of body and mind, 
 which prepared for that event, it is needless to 
 inquire. That Our Lord's trial did not arise merely 
 from His bodily pains, but that He suffered also 
 through those more subtile avenues, through which 
 grief assaults the soul, is manifest. For it was 
 during His agony in the garden, that " His sweat 
 was as great drops of blood." This could not arise 
 merely from the expectation of those bodily pains 
 under which He suffered. We see in it, probably, 
 the effect of His sustaining as our representative 
 that burthen of God's wrath, of which all man- 
 kind was deserving. For though guilt cannot be 
 transferred, yet its punishment may be. " Now, 
 the chastisement of our peace was upon Him." 38 
 " He made Him to be sin for us, who knew no 
 sin;" 39 and "Christ hath redeemed us from the 
 curse of the Law, being made a curse for us." 40 
 For "God sending His own Son in the likeness 
 of sinful man, and for sin, condemned sin in the 
 flesh." 41 In the unknown agonies then of Our 
 Lord's Passion, is seen the awful struggle of the 
 
 38 Isaiah, liii. 5. II. Cor. v. 21. 
 
 40 Galatians, iii. 13. 4I Romans, viii. 3.
 
 THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST. 233 
 
 infinite victim, when making compensation for the 
 offences of a world. 
 
 Such is that sacrifice, by which the Pattern Man 
 consummated His work of Obedience. He had 
 been "made a little lower than the Angels, that 
 He, by the grace of God, should taste death for 
 every man." For this purpose it was, that He had 
 become incarnate : " A body hast Thou prepared 
 Me." And when this work was over, He could 
 exclaim, "It is finished." It was a real work, 
 then; not a mere compliance with the notions of 
 men, as represented by Socinian writers, but an 
 actual change in the position of mankind, effected 
 through the unspeakable sufferings of its Infinite 
 Head. Therefore did the convulsions of external 
 nature bear witness to that mighty work, w r hich 
 before heaven and earth was achieved. Thus was 
 " God in Christ reconciling the world unto Him- 
 self, not imputing unto them their trespasses." 
 The work was not merely a change on man's 
 part: The Divine reconciliation was the basis of 
 his regeneration. For though God's nature be 
 love, yet He is also " of purer eyes than to behold 
 evil, and cannot look on iniquity." 42 Therefore, 
 " blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not 
 impute sin." Now, this blessedness it is which 
 Christ came upon earth to bestow : " He came to 
 give His life a ransom instead of many." 43 On 
 Him, first of the children of Adam, could the 
 42 Habak. i. 13. Matt. xx. 28.
 
 234 THE SACRIFICE OF CHKIST. 
 
 Father look with perfect satisfaction. For the 
 first time since the Fall could He say, " This is 
 My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." 44 
 The Mediator was fitted for His work. Through 
 the indwelling of Deity, the representative of man- 
 kind was beheld with favour. 
 
 And this leads us to the other side of Our Lord's 
 character. What did His manhood contribute to 
 this great work ? For we still seem to need some- 
 thing, not indeed to show the value of this sacrifice, 
 for of that His Deity was the only cause, since 
 it made Him at once a fitting Priest and a suf- 
 ficient Victim ; but to show the participation of 
 mankind in its saving power. For man would not 
 have an especial interest in this work, unless He 
 who wrought it was the representative of huma- 
 nity. The promise was, that salvation should be 
 wrought through the woman's seed. What was 
 there then in Christ's manhood, which made His 
 sacrifice effectual ? 
 
 Now, this question leads somewhat further into 
 the inquiry, wherein lay the efficacy of Our Lord's 
 Atonement. But if it be asked whether it was a 
 necessary part of the counsels of God, the ques- 
 tion is one which we are plainly incompetent to 
 answer. In inquiring into the counsels of God, 
 our wisdom is not to go beyond what is written. 
 It has been asserted indeed by St. Anselm, the 
 great founder of the scholastic philosophy, that 
 44 Matt. iii. 17.
 
 THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST. 235 
 
 "it is not fitting that God should forgive sins 
 without punishment." 45 But so far as this posi- 
 tion is grounded on a priori views of the Divine 
 attributes, it is combated by later schoolmen, and 
 it is not sanctioned by those earlier writers, to 
 which the English Church is accustomed to refer. 
 Keither does it rest on any direct testimony of 
 Scripture. Looking, indeed, to the place which 
 is occupied by Christ's Atonement in the counsels 
 of God, and considering that His recorded acts are 
 built upon His infinite perfections, there is a plau- 
 sibility in the opinion, that what God has been 
 pleased to do, must have been prescribed by the 
 necessary laws of His unalterable nature. And 
 yet, perhaps, the more reverent course is to confine 
 ourselves to the mere consideration of what He 
 has revealed, without venturing to fathom His un- 
 searchable counsels. When St. Athanasius there- 
 fore notices the supposition, that even without 
 Christ's having had His dwelling among us, God 
 might by His mere word have freed us from the 
 curse, his objections to it are not founded upon a 
 priori considerations of what was required by God's 
 character, but upon His observed dealings in good- 
 ness and truth. " We must look," he says, " at 
 what was beneficial for man, and not calculate only 
 what was in the power of God." 46 And in his 
 work on Our Lord's Incarnation, he refers us not 
 
 45 Cur Deus Homo, i. 12. 
 46 Or. ii. con. Arian. sec. 68, vol. i. p. 536.
 
 236 THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST. 
 
 to the abstract justice of God, but to His adhe- 
 rence to His revealed declarations. " For it was 
 impossible that God should lie; and that when He 
 had made it a law that man should die if he trans- 
 gressed, He should afterwards allow His word to 
 be vain, and man to escape death, though he were 
 a transgressor." 47 "Whether God could have 
 saved the world by other means than the death of 
 Christ, consistently with the general laws of His 
 government, is a question," says Bishop Butler, 48 
 " rashly determined, and perhaps with equal rash- 
 ness contrary ways." 49 But while abstaining from 
 such rash conjectures, we may with confidence 
 
 47 De Incarn. vi. vol. i. p. 52. 
 
 48 Butler has been censured for this statement ; and it has been 
 stated, that independently of God's actual appointment, we 
 could be sure from our abstract notions of God's justice, that 
 except through Christ's sacrifice man could not be forgiven. 
 The only Scriptural evidence adduced for this assertion is St. 
 Paul's statement, "that He might be just, and the justifier of 
 him which believeth in Jesus." The interpretation, however, 
 which it is designed to give to this verse is highly questionable. 
 For, first, The inferential particle should be KatTrep and not ical : 
 That He might be just, although the justifier of him that be- 
 lieveth, &c. Accordingly, one of the writers who attempts to 
 put this meaning on the passage, renders it, " that He might be 
 just, and yet the justifier," &c. Secondly, The opposition 
 between just and justifier, evidently implies them to have a 
 correlative meaning. But "justifier of him which believeth," 
 plainly implies, that holiness at large is either given or ascribed 
 to the believer. " Just" therefore, must refer to God's holiness 
 at large, and not merely to distributive justice. The passage 
 must mean, that as God is holy, so He will give or impute the 
 same character to the believer. 
 
 49 Analogy, p. ii. c. 5.
 
 THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST. 237 
 
 assert the wisdom of what it has pleased God to 
 do, and find in His appointment a ground for admi- 
 ration and thankfulness. "For what Christ does, 
 this is what is best for mankind, and what could 
 happen in no other manner so suitable. And. what 
 is suitable and fitting, for this His providence 
 makes preparation." 50 So that we may safely 
 assert with Hooker, " The world's salvation was 
 without the Incarnation of the Son of God a thing 
 impossible; not simply impossible, but impossible, 
 it being presupposed that the will of God was no 
 otherwise to have it saved, than by the death of 
 His own Son." 51 This is not to say "what God 
 could or could not have done ;" but " what God 
 declares He has done, that only it asserts." 52 For 
 this is what the Angelic Song revealed ; that in 
 Christ God's glory and man's peace is united. 
 Here, therefore, is fulfilled the prophecy of the 
 Psalmist : " Mercy and truth are met together, 
 righteousness and peace have kissed each other. 
 Truth shall nourish out of the earth, and righ- 
 teousness hath looked down from heaven." 53 For 
 this was to be accomplished only through His 
 coming, through whom the Lord has " forgiven the 
 offence" of His "people, and covered all their sins." 54 
 AVithout pretending, therefore, to decide what ab- 
 stract justice might make necessary in the eternal 
 
 50 S. Athan. contra Arian. ii. 68. 51 Eccles. Pol. v. 51, 3. 
 
 5 - Magee on Atonement, note 17, vol. i. p. 176. 
 53 Psalin, Ixxxv. 10, 11. M Psalm, Ixxxv. 2.
 
 238 THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST. 
 
 counsels of the Most High, we may accept with 
 reverence the expression of His will. For we have 
 His own assurance that " it became Him in bring- 
 ing many sons unto glory, to make the Captain of 
 their salvation perfect through sufferings." 
 
 But how is it that by this act God's hatred for 
 sin is made so manifest ? Wherein is the sacrifice 
 of Our Lord such an illustration of it ? Why does 
 His obtaining forgiveness for us set forth the 
 Divine justice ? What meeting place is there be- 
 tween God's mercy and His truth ? This depends 
 plainly on the connexion between Christ and man- 
 kind. It is because He pleads for a race of which 
 He is the natural representative. He is not only 
 mediator on God's behalf towards men, but also as 
 man is He advocate for His brethren. He is the 
 "one Mediator between God and men, the Man 
 Christ Jesus." To be man at all, would give Him 
 an interest in our race; but that He is TJie Man, 
 the pattern of our race, the new type on which 
 it is founded, the second Adam this makes Him 
 the " one Mediator" for His brethren. " For since 
 by man came death, by man came also the resur- 
 rection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even 
 so in Christ shall all be made alive." The univer- 
 sality of death, shows that in some way we all 
 share the consequences of Adam's sin ; what pecu- 
 liar fitness were there in our forgiveness through 
 Christ, unless in a manner no less real we par- 
 ticipated in His nature ? For the application of
 
 THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST. 239 
 
 this gift, there needs indeed some mode of union 
 between every individual and Christ, as real as 
 that actual paternity, by which Adam acts on all 
 his children; and such a bond shall hereafter be 
 shown to exist in sacramental grace and Church 
 union. But the gift itself was purchased for hu- 
 manity at large, when its Head suffered in our 
 common nature : " For as by one man's disobe- 
 dience many were made sinners, so by the obedience 
 of one shall many be made righteous." 55 
 
 The force of Our Lord's Atonement is grounded, 
 according to these passages of Scripture, upon His 
 being the representative of man's nature. We pre- 
 tend not to conjecture whether the Divine justice 
 might have been otherwise satisfied: it is enough 
 that the course which it pleased God to adopt, 
 was to accept the satisfaction of one of Adam's 
 progeny. Therefore, not only was it essential to 
 Our Lord's Atonement that He should be clothed 
 in "a body," 56 but it was necessary that this 
 body should be the body of man. He not only 
 became flesh, but our flesh: "Forasmuch as the 
 children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also 
 Himself took part of the same." 67 So that we 
 may adopt St. Anselm's words, not grounding 
 them however on abstract reasoning, but on the 
 appointment of God. " If God had made a new 
 man, who was not of Adam's race, he would not 
 belong to that humanity which was born of Adam, 
 
 55 Romans, v. 19. * Heb. x. 5. 57 Heb. ii. 14.
 
 240 THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST. 
 
 and could not suitably satisfy for that nature to 
 which he did not belong. For since it was right 
 [i. e. God's ordinance] that man should satisfy for 
 man's fault, therefore he who satisfied must either 
 be the same with the sinner, or of the same race 
 with him." 58 But then it was not enough that He 
 should be a mere common specimen of the race, 
 for which He made expiation. Some persons speak 
 of Our Lord's death, as if it were a mere arbitrary 
 substitution ; 59 or as we read in history of royal in- 
 tercessors, who have succeeded in begging off con- 
 demned parties with whom they had no peculiar 
 connexion. But this is to lose sight of those 
 especial characteristics of the Son of Man, which 
 rendered Him the natural Mediator for His breth- 
 ren. If He had not been the Head of our race, in 
 
 58 Cur Deus Homo, ii. 8. 
 
 89 " I find myself more and more attracted towards the Divines 
 who occupy themselves much in setting forth the depth and 
 extent of sin, as a fact of human nature ; though, as you may 
 suppose, far from satisfied with the Calvinistic theories, as to the 
 divine purposes and the process of redemption. I do not find 
 Tholuck as full or satisfactory as I could wish on this last 
 matter : the Doctrine of Substitution appearing in him with too 
 much nakedness. But I am in hopes it may be shown that the 
 Doctrine of Substitution, when connected with the cycle of ideas 
 relating to Christ's Headship, and to the unity of our nature as 
 common to Him and us, issues in the one radical and com- 
 prehensive truth which man requires, and which Revelation on 
 so many sides sets forth ; and so to justify and interpret the 
 stupendous emotions, the prodigious revolutions of character, 
 the altered aspect of the world, and all the oracular breathings 
 of the Spirit, which are found in connexion with the doctrines 
 of Guilt and Atonement." Hare's Life of Sterling, p. 75. 
 O, si sic omnia!
 
 THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST. 241 
 
 whom Manhood was set forth in its widest and 
 most universal character, He would not have been 
 so exactly fitted to be that perfect sacrifice, in 
 which humanity at large finds its propitiation. A 
 story is sometimes adduced, as illustrating Our 
 Lord's Atonement, of a King who sacrificed one of 
 his own eyes to save his son from the threatened 
 penalty of blindness. The cases are not exactly 
 analogous ; since the penalty denounced was not 
 merely the pain of present mutilation, but the be- 
 reavement of permanent blindness. But its force 
 depends plainly on the voluntary submission of a 
 party, who by natural law was qualified to repre- 
 sent the offender. A parent is naturally fitted to 
 answer for his child. For where had been the 
 justice of the case, if the King had by bribe or 
 violence obtained some substitute, with whom his 
 son had no natural connexion ? It was because 
 Christ, therefore, was the Head and Father of man's 
 race, that He bore in like manner not part, but all 
 its punishment. For "He is the propitiation for 
 our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins 
 of the whole world." He is " the Lamb of God, 
 which taketh away the sin of the world." And 
 that, because " He is the first-born of every crea- 
 ture," 60 "the beginning of the creation of God." 61 
 For " if there had been anything in our nature 
 which He did not take upon Him, it would not 
 have been redeemed." 62 
 
 60 Col. i. 15. 61 Rev. iii. 14. Damasc. de Fid. Orth. vol. i. p. 212. 
 
 R
 
 242 THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST. 
 
 This truth may be illustrated by a singular 
 suggestion of St. Anselm, 63 as to the reason why 
 the fallen Angels could not be redeemed. Man- 
 kind, he says, though consisting of many indi- 
 viduals, are bound together by that common tie of 
 nature, which connects all with a general parent. 
 So that there was room for the introduction of that 
 nobler member into their common family, by whom 
 compensation has been made for the deficiencies of 
 the rest. But the Angels, though of one general 
 nature, have no such common bond as could enable 
 one individual to save others. Whatever may be 
 thought of this theory, it is at all events asserted, 
 that Our Lord became incarnate in our nature, 
 because it was not Angels but mankind that He 
 came to save. 64 His taking our flesh is stated to 
 be the essential preparative for His saving our 
 nature. " He was made a little lower than the 
 Angels, that He might taste death for every man." 
 So that we may conclude, in the words of Dean 
 Field, "as all fell in Adam, the root and be- 
 ginning of natural being, who received the trea- 
 sures of righteousness and holiness for himself, 
 and those that by propagation were to come of 
 him ; so their restoration could not be wrought 
 but by Him that should be the root, fountain, 
 and beginning of supernatural and spiritual being, 
 in whom the whole nature of mankind should be 
 found in a more eminent sort than it was in Adam ; 
 63 Cur Deus Homo, ii. 21. 64 Hebrews, ii. 16, 17.
 
 THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST. 243 
 
 as, indeed, it was in the second Adam, ' of whose 
 fulness all men receive grace for grace.' And this 
 surely was the reason, why it was no injustice in 
 God to lay upon Him the punishments due to 
 our sins, and why His sufferings do free us from 
 the same." 65 
 
 65 Field on the Church, v. 11.
 
 244 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 OF OUR LORD'S ACTS OF MEDIATION SUBSEQUENTLY TO 
 HIS ASCENSION, AND FIRST OF HIS INTERCESSION. 
 
 OUR LORD'S acts of Mediation subsequently to His 
 Ascension may be considered, according to the 
 division employed in the previous Chapter, as they 
 regard God and as they regard man. On those 
 who share His lower nature He is ever acting by 
 His Presence and His Grace, while towards God 
 the Father He acts as their Mediator by His Inter- 
 cession. This last office is the subject of inquiry 
 in the present Chapter. 
 
 But before entering upon it, the writer would fain 
 express that deepening awe with which every step 
 in this sacred inquiry impresses his own mind. 
 For when, leaving that higher nature of the Ever- 
 Blessed Trinity, and those separate parts of Our 
 Lord's character which were first considered, we ap- 
 proach the application of these great realities to 
 the salvation of mankind, the subject in reality to 
 be contemplated is that wonderful chain, by which 
 God's goodness has united Heaven and Earth 
 that condescension which could stoop from the
 
 CHRIST AN ABIDING INTERCESSOR. 245 
 
 height of Heaven to the manger and the Cross 
 and that marvellous interdependency which can 
 bind together the eternal nature of self-existent 
 Godhead and the daily actions of man's common 
 life, and make the one of these assist and be essen- 
 tial to the other. Who can meditate on this stu- 
 pendous example of power and mercy, and not 
 exclaim with the Patriarch, to whom in vision it 
 was once presented : " Surely the Lord is in this 
 place, and I knew it not?" 1 Who is there but 
 must desire to share in the admiration and reve- 
 rence of the Angelic Hosts ; seeing that " God 
 created all things by Jesus Christ, to the intent 
 that now unto the principalities and powers in 
 heavenly places, might be known by the Church 
 the manifold Wisdom of God?" 2 
 
 Now, it is an essential part of this great work, 
 that He who first bore our nature during His 
 sojourn upon earth, was afterwards exalted with 
 the same man's being into heaven : " Thou sittest 
 at the right hand of God in the glory of the 
 Father." " This same Jesus," who was our Me- 
 diator upon earth, "is taken up into Heaven." 3 
 By this means it is that we have a Mediator 
 above that our nature 4 has been introduced into 
 God's higher courts that as the Son of God is 
 interested in our doings upon earth, so are we 
 
 1 Genesis, xxviii. 16. 2 Ephesians, iii. 10. 3 Acts, i. 11. 
 4 " Unde ergo ibi sederaus, si naturam nostrum in Christo non 
 ibi habemus." Vigil, c. Eut. iv. 9.
 
 246 CHRIST THE MEDIATOR 
 
 concerned^ in the actings of the Son of Man in 
 heaven. Such a consequence did Our Lord de- 
 clare would follow from His Ascension : " I go to 
 prepare a place for you." 6 " Father, I will that they 
 also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where 
 I am, that they may behold My glory, which Thou 
 hast given Me." 6 And the efficacy of His inter- 
 ference on man's behalf is grounded on the perma- 
 nency of the office which He discharges above : 
 " He is able to save them to the uttermost that 
 come unto God by Him, seeing He ever liveth to 
 make intercession for them." 7 This is the function, 
 then, which our great Mediator performs in heaven : 
 " we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ 
 the righteous." 8 And this was the completion of 
 that work, for which He had been marked out by 
 ancient prophecy ; for after having borne the " sin 
 of many" He "made intercession for the trans- 
 gressors." 9 
 
 Now, since Our Lord's Intercession is part of 
 His work as Mediator, both of those natures which 
 pertain to Him must be engaged in this service of 
 mercy for mankind. For that He was Mediator, 
 was shown not to be the mere exercise of an office 
 which any could undertake, but to result from that 
 real conjoining of man to God, which arose from 
 His uniting in one person the nature of each. For 
 there is " one Mediator between God and men." 
 
 5 John, xiv. 2. 6 John, xvii. 24. 7 Hebrews, vii. 25. 
 
 8 1. John, ii. 1. 9 Isaiah, liii. 12.
 
 AN ABIDING INTERCESSOR. 247 
 
 What the manhood contributes to this work is to 
 speak on our behalf, to be the representative of our 
 nature, inasmuch as " we have not an High Priest, 
 which cannot be touched with the feeling of our 
 infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we 
 are, yet without sin." Thus does Our Lord fulfil 
 the office of the Pattern Man, because, by the con- 
 stitution of His nature, He was really the Pattern 
 of our race. Now, to act on our behalf towards 
 God is to discharge a Priest's 10 function, and a 
 Priest implies an offering ; but it is still His man's 
 nature which furnishes forth the victim which is 
 presented, as well as the Priest who offers it. For 
 what He pleads before God is that perfect sacrifice 
 of His own body, which He offered once for all 
 upon the Cross for the transgressions of a world. 
 And with these functions of His man's nature does 
 His Godhead perpetually co-operate, by conse- 
 crating His man's nature to be a perpetual Priest, 
 and by rendering His sacrifice an inestimable offer- 
 ing. For He is an " High Priest, separate from 
 sinners, and made higher than the heavens," be- 
 cause He is " the Son, who is consecrated for ever- 
 more;" 11 and because "through the Eternal Spirit 
 He offered Himself without spot to God" He 
 " entered in once into the holy place, having ob- 
 tained eternal redemption for us." 1 Thus then 
 He who is personally God and man, acts through 
 His manhood as the perpetual High Priest for His 
 10 Heb. v. 1. " Heb. vii. 26, 28. 12 Heb. ix. 12, 14.
 
 248 CHRIST THE MEDIATOR 
 
 brethren, and for ever pleads that perfect sacrifice 
 of Himself, which He shared our nature to offer. 
 And thus is He represented in the Book of Reve- 
 lations, where "a Lamb as it had been slain" 13 is 
 described as standing before God's throne, and as 
 the perpetual object of worship to the ransomed in 
 heaven. So that Our Lord's Incarnation sets forth 
 Heaven and Earth as being the real counterpart of 
 that which was dimly shadowed out by the Jewish 
 Ritual. For " of the things which we have spoken, 
 this is the sum ; we have such an High Priest, who 
 is set on the right hand of the throne of the Ma- 
 jesty in the heavens" who " hath obtained a more 
 excellent ministry, by how much also He is the 
 Mediator of a better covenant ;" and who " for this 
 cause is the Mediator of the Xew Testament." 
 " For Christ is not entered into the holy places 
 made with hands, which are the figures of the true, 
 but into heaven itself, now to appear in the pre- 
 sence of God for us." 14 
 
 But however clearly these truths are stated in 
 Scripture, there is peculiar difficulty in bringing 
 them as an existing reality before the mind. Past 
 and Future are great words, and the changes which 
 they necessarily involve are so strange and event- 
 ful, that it seems not inconceivable that the great 
 work of our Redemption should have been wrought 
 in the one, and that the awful hour of Judgment 
 should await us in the other. That events, in 
 
 13 Revelations, v. 6. 14 Hebrews, viii. 1, 6 ; ix. 15, 24.
 
 AX ABIDING INTERCESSOK. 249 
 
 themselves improbable, will occur at some time or 
 other in the infinite lapse of time, is readily ad- 
 mitted. But that now, at this very moment, while 
 the tide of events is pursuing its uninterrupted 
 course, there should be such great things trans- 
 acting in which we have a present part, it is almost 
 impossible to realise. This is one of those cases, in 
 which to look at things invisible as an actual ob- 
 ject, external to the mind, is so difficult. When 
 we see the ordinary frivolity of man's life, we can 
 hardly feel his condition and interests to be in 
 reality of such serious import. To connect his 
 doings with those wonders of the world unseen, 
 which Scripture tells us are going on at the same 
 moment, is like dovetailing the games of childhood 
 into the serious business of life. Our reason revolts 
 at a process which " the course of this world" so 
 plainly contradicts. Thus does the Atheism of 
 practical life re-act against our Doctrinal Confes- 
 sions. If prayers were offered daily in all our 
 churches, and if the perpetual ministration of holy 
 things witnessed to a living belief in the nation's 
 mind, men's feelings might be more in accordance 
 with the declarations of Scripture ; but at present 
 they look at the actings of Christ Our Lord as 
 exerted either at the beginning or the end of the 
 system they live in. His present interference they 
 limit to that communication with man's inner 
 thoughts, which seems the natural manner in which 
 a Spiritual Being acts upon us ; and that things are
 
 250 CHRIST THE MEDIATOR 
 
 daily going on around us, by which our position 
 and interests are actually affected that Christ's 
 Intercession is truly taking place above, and that 
 the ordinances of the Church are our means of par- 
 ticipating in it they cannot bring their imagination 
 to admit. Christ's interference they suppose must 
 respect something larger and more important than 
 the ordinary wants of man. It belongs to those 
 days of wonder when heaven and earth shall be 
 confounded, as when His feet stood formerly on 
 the Mount of Olives, and when all nations shall 
 behold Him at the crack of doom. 
 
 When the ancient philosophers contemplated 
 this material firmament, its matchless beauty, its 
 unvarying laws, its incalculable extent, they felt 
 unable to subordinate things so majestic to the 
 impotence of mankind. And their feeling certainly 
 was not unnatural, for "one in a certain place 
 testified, saying, What is man that Thou art mind- 
 ful of him, or the Son of Man that Thou visitest 
 him?" 15 Hence does Aristotle rate that knowledge 
 which concerns the external world, " cselique vias 
 ac sidera monstrat," more highly than what relates 
 to man, because the subject of this last is so in- 
 ferior. This is in reality much the same feeling 
 which has rolled back upon us in modern days, 
 through the practical Heathenism of civilized life. 
 And its only antidote is that which once dashed 
 to pieces the Dagon of ancient Idolatry, when it 
 15 Hebrews, ii. 6.
 
 AN ABIDING INTERCESSOR. 251 
 
 was enshrined in all the glory of earthly pomp in 
 the great temple of the Roman Empire. For that 
 which shows the real dignity of man's nature, and 
 corrects those opinions of his insignificance which 
 unaided reason not unfitly suggests, is the Incar- 
 nation of Christ. And thus does it prepare us for 
 that truth of Our Lord's Intercession, which other- 
 wise our imagination could hardly accept. For 
 thus is heaven and earth set before us as one 
 mighty temple, wherein the Son of Man is dis- 
 charging His work of Advocacy for our race. And 
 low as men may be fallen through sin, yet since 
 the Son of God did not disdain to take our nature, 
 there is no other thing which we may not believe 
 that He will effect for our sakes. Thus is Christ's 
 work of Mediation grounded upon that self-origi- 
 nating nature of the Ever-Blessed Godhead, which 
 (p. 177) is the basis of all existence. For this 
 world, with its diversified contrivances and never- 
 ending activity, is but the shadow and reflection of 
 that Divine Being by whose will it exists. And in 
 this Blessed Godhead is there truly that diversity 
 of Persons, on which the functions of Mediation 
 and Intercession depend. And for their exercise 
 was the world created. For " the Lord hath made 
 all things for Himself." And especially was this 
 the object of man's being, "forasmuch as he is the 
 image and glory of God." 16 For "this people 
 have I formed for Myself they shall show forth 
 
 16 I. Corinthians, xi. 7.
 
 252 CHRIST THE MEDIATOR 
 
 My praise." That He might exercise, then, this 
 His Sacred Office, did the Son take our nature. 
 And, therefore, that the universe should be built 
 upon this principle that the Eternal Son should 
 be for ever discharging this work that man should 
 be thought worthy of so much consideration that 
 the Second Person in the Ever-Blessed Trinity 
 should first sacrifice Himself for our sakes, and 
 then for ever act the part of our Intercessor all 
 this is to be attributed not to man's deserts, but to 
 " the depth of the riches of the wisdom and know- 
 ledge of God: how unsearchable are His judg- 
 ments, and His ways past finding out." 17 
 
 The only true reality, therefore that which at 
 this moment all men ought to remember the fact 
 in which the whole world has a common interest 
 on which those who read and he who writes are 
 alike dependent which affects every age, state, 
 and country which obtains for all an interval of 
 trial and a hope of pardon is that the Son of God 
 is even at this very moment at the right hand of 
 the Father, pleading the merits of His death as the 
 prevailing Intercessor for His brethren. And yet 
 the transitory affairs of life appear to us of over- 
 whelming importance; the achievements of indi- 
 viduals and the prosperity of nations occupy every 
 thought ; and the tide of corrupt passion flows on 
 in the very sight of heaven. The reason of course 
 is, that our weak faith is insufficient to master our 
 17 Romans, xi. 33.
 
 AN ABIDING INTERCESSOR. 253 
 
 corrupt nature. Yet something must be attributed 
 also to the erroneousness as well as to the weak- 
 ness of faith ; and those two classes of error, which 
 re-appeared continually in ancient times as abstract 
 misconceptions of Our Lord's nature, will be found 
 to re-assert their influence in that practical unbe- 
 lief which is characteristic of modern times. The 
 heresies which in ancient days interfered with the 
 true belief in Christ were founded on a forgetful- 
 ness of one or other of those natures, on which 
 His Mediation depended; so that Jesus was not 
 truly God according to the Arian, or the Christ 
 not really man, according to the Sabellian hypo- 
 thesis. Just the same alternation of errors may 
 be found in the present day, either contrasted 
 with one another, if we consider their speculative 
 origin, or agreeing, if we regard their practical 
 effect, as a denial of that real work of Our Lord's 
 Mediation, to which both are equally opposed. 
 The Socinian or Arian tendency of modern days 
 either looks upon Our Lord as having been always 
 a mere man, or supposes, at all events, that though 
 intrusted formerly with a Divine power for that 
 work of Atonement which He descended to effect, 
 yet that His Godhead is now swallowed up again 
 in the Father's glory, that His work of Mediation is 
 over, and that our sole relation to Him at present 
 is to depend, and reflect with gratitude, on His 
 past work, to believe that it is our ground of 
 salvation, and to contemplate those lessons and
 
 254 CHRIST THE MEDIATOR 
 
 that example whereby He lives among us as a 
 man upon earth. This last species of Arianism, as 
 entertained by those who call themselves Chris- 
 tians, is nearly identical with that Sabellian heresy 
 which is attained by moving in an opposite direc- 
 tion, from a denial of the real Manhood of Christ. 
 So that it was truly remarked by the late Mr. 
 Blanco White, who made unhappy trial of both 
 these errors, under that practical form in which 
 they are at present predominant, that Sabellianism 
 is only Socinianism in disguise. For the Sabellian 
 theory is, that there exists no real diversity of 
 Persons in the Ever-Blessed Trinity; but that for 
 the sake of a temporary economy, and during the 
 season of His acting towards men upon earth, it 
 pleased HIM who commonly calls Himself the Eter- 
 nal Father, to be known under the names of the Son 
 and of Christ. His presence upon earth therefore, 
 however its particular events may be explained, 
 must have arisen from the mere indwelling of 
 Divine power in some fleshly habitation, and could 
 not be that personal and permanent 18 union between 
 God and man, which is witnessed by the Church 
 (p. 167). Now this notion is manifestly incon- 
 sistent with a belief, that at this present moment 
 man is God and God is man, and therefore, that 
 our Mediator is for ever pleading the merits of that 
 
 18 One of the heresies condemned by S. Greg. Naz. (Ep. i. ad 
 Cledonium, p. 739) is, " sanctam carnem nunc depositam esse, 
 nudamque ac corpore vacuam divinitatem esse, &c."
 
 AN ABIDING INTERCESSOR. 255 
 
 sacrifice, which in His own identical Person He 
 effected on the Cross. For in truth, according to 
 this theory, there is no pleading of man's nature 
 with God: the Son is merely a title substituted 
 for His Father's name during the mediatorial 
 government of the Church the reality of His acts 
 is evaporated and a practical unbelief in His opera- 
 tions is justified by His real non-existence in the 
 world of external realities. So necessary is the 
 true Doctrine of the Blessed Trinity to the real 
 acceptance of the Mediation of Christ. And what 
 countenances the practical unbelief of the age, is 
 a too prevalent doctrinal unsoundness. Where the 
 reality of Our Lord's Mediation is firmly held, and 
 He is believed to be an actual Person other than 
 the Eternal Father, yet of one nature with Him, 
 who is truly making Intercession for His brethren 
 by the perpetual pleading of His crucified body at 
 the right hand of God, there is a ground-work for 
 men's belief in the objective existence of things un- 
 seen, which cannot be altogether inefficacious. 
 
 It is for the setting forth of this truth, that the 
 Scripture statements respecting Our Lord's present 
 work as God and Man in His seen and unseen 
 kingdom have been provided. For not only has 
 He been beheld by mortal eyes in His place of 
 glory for St. Stephen saw the " Son of Man," 
 Christ according to His human nature, " standing 
 on the right hand of God;" 19 not only did St. Paul 
 19 Acts, vii. 56.
 
 256 CHRIST THE MEDIATOR 
 
 hear Him declare His identity with that body of 
 the Church with which His manhood unites Him 
 " why persecutest thou Me ;" but in the Book 
 of Revelations is displayed at large that Christian 
 Ritual which unites heaven and earth. For what- 
 ever interpretation be adopted of that part of the 
 Book of Revelations which relates to events on 
 earth whether with the school of Mede it be sup- 
 posed a continuous narrative of the future or 
 whether it be regarded as a set of pictures, re- 
 peatedly fulfilled in the successive relations of the 
 Church and the world its description of things 
 above is plainly a vision of the same truth which 
 in the Epistle to the Hebrews is set forth argu- 
 mentatively, that the whole Jewish Ritual was an 
 "example and shadow of heavenly things." 20 Its 
 fourth chapter, therefore, discovers to us the hea- 
 venly state, exactly as it was typified by the pre- 
 sence of Jehovah in the wilderness with the camp 
 of Israel. The Living Beings who represent the 
 whole Christian congregation are described as sur- 
 rounding the Throne of God, just as the tribes of 
 Israel, with their corresponding emblems, encircled 
 the Tabernacle of the congregation. In front of 
 the Throne, where was placed the altar on which 
 the lamb of the daily sacrifice was perpetually pre- 
 sented, "stood a Lamb as it had been slain." 21 
 Within the Jewish Tabernacle, as afterwards within 
 the Temple, the first compartment was the Holy 
 20 Heb. viii. 5. 21 Rev. iv. 6 ; v. 6.
 
 AN ABIDING INTEKCESSOE. 257 
 
 Place, where incense was perpetually offered. It 
 was separated only by a veil from the most Holy 
 Place, of which the main characteristic was the 
 Mercy-seat, the especial place where the Shekinah 
 appeared. And so too we have in heaven for the 
 offering of incense, " the golden altar which was 
 before the Throne," 22 The Mercy-seat, indeed, 
 was separated from the altar of incense which 
 stood before it, by the veil of the Temple. But 
 the omission of this veil in the description of the 
 heavenly Temple in the Book of Revelations, is 
 exactly accordant with its general explanation of 
 the Jewish Ritual. For it separated between the 
 outer Tabernacle, which was a symbol of God's 
 dwelling among men, and the inner, which typified 
 His heavenly presence. So they are explained in 
 the Epistle to the Hebrews, where the first is said 
 to be " a figure for the time then present," that is, 
 a type of God's presence, as it was vouchsafed to 
 the nation which was appointed to serve Him ; 
 while the second was a type of "heaven itself," 23 
 whither Christ entered through the sacrifice of 
 Himself. Now, the breaking down of the separa- 
 tion between heaven and earth was the very thing 
 which was effected by Christ's death, whereby we 
 have " boldness to enter into the holiest by a new 
 and living way, which He hath consecrated for 
 us through the veil, that is to say, His flesh." 
 Therefore, not only was the veil of the Temple 
 22 Revelations, viii. 3. a Hebrews, ix. 9, 24.
 
 258 CHRIST THE MEDIATOR 
 
 rent at the hour of His sacrifice, as a sign of what 
 was passing, but the graves w r ere opened, and many 
 bodies of Saints which slept, arose and attended 
 upon His Resurrection, as a proof that when He 
 had "overcome the sharpness of death," He had 
 opened " the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers." 
 Thus was exhibited in fact, what in the Book of 
 Revelations is shown in figure, that the prayers 
 which are offered on earth can ascend to heaven, 
 through the path which has been opened for them 
 by Christ their Intercessor. And, therefore, when 
 " the prayers of all Saints" were offered upon " the 
 golden altar which was before the Throne," no 
 veil 24 obstructed their access, but "the smoke of 
 
 24 Here we see the explanation of what has sometimes been 
 alleged to be an error in the Epistle to the Hebrews, that the 
 altar of incense is not spoken of as connected with the Holy 
 Place, but is represented as appertaining to the Most Holy. 
 Our translators, like the Vulgate, seem to have designed to 
 meet the difficulty, by employing the word Censer (Heb. ix. 4) 
 for that which the old Italic rendered the Altar of Incense. 
 But Ovpiavrjptov is the word employed by St. Clement for the 
 Altar of Incense (Strom, v. p. 665), and it seems incredible that 
 all mention of the altar should be omitted. Now, to leave out 
 of account all higher considerations, how can it be supposed that 
 a writer so conversant with the Jewish Ritual as the author of 
 this Epistle, could either be silent or mistaken respecting one of 
 its most essential features ? But let it be considered that the 
 writer was contemplating the Jewish service through that 
 reality which it was intended to represent, and therefore that 
 he viewed the oiferings which were laid upon God's altar, as 
 they might be viewed after the veil was done away in Christ, 
 and the altar of incense would, in truth, pertain to the Mercy- 
 seat before which it was placed, and not to the outer sanctuary 
 in which it was situate.
 
 AX ABIDING INTERCESSOR. 259 
 
 the incense which came with the prayers of the 
 Saints ascended up before God." 
 
 That the scene described in the Book of Reve- 
 lations represents the collective service of God's 
 people, is affirmed by St. Irenaeus, a most adequate 
 witness of what was understood to be the intention 
 of St. John's vision. " There is an altar," he says, 
 " in heaven, for to it our prayers and oblations are 
 directed; and a Temple, as John says in the Reve- 
 lations, ' the Temple of God was opened in heaven ;' 
 and there is likewise a Tabernacle, for ' the Taber- 
 nacle of God is with men.' " 25 And the same view 
 appears to have been entertained by all the earliest 
 writers, who everywhere supposed the Holy Place, 
 or outer division of the Tabernacle, to have been 
 symbolical of the state of God's people upon 
 earth first, in their Jewish form, and afterwards 
 in their Christian character. " Midway between 
 the veil and the external covering, where the 
 Priests only might enter, lay the altar of incense, 
 symbolical of this present world and its state. 
 This place lying midway between the most holy 
 place and the external court of the people, they 
 [i. e. the Jews] speak of as intervening between 
 heaven and earth." 26 Such was the view which 
 men would naturally take of it, while the way into 
 the holiest of all was not yet open, and while the 
 Jewish worship alone kept up the hope of allying 
 
 25 Revelations, xi. 19 ; xxi. 3. S. Irenteus, iv. 18, 6, p. 252. 
 26 S. Clement's Stromata, v. p. 665.
 
 260 ' CHRIST THE MEDIATOR 
 
 earth with heaven. "But Christ being come, an 
 High Priest of good things to come, entered in 
 once into the Holy Place." So that "we have 
 boldness and access with confidence by the faith of 
 Him." And, therefore, says Origen, "that outer 
 sanctuary I suppose to be a type of the Church in 
 which we are at present placed, while we are in the 
 flesh." 27 So that the prayers of men are per- 
 petually ascending to God, not only for the sake 
 of that victim, who is ever set forth " a Lamb as 
 it had been slain" before God's throne, but like- 
 wise because the veil, by which heaven and earth 
 are naturally divided, is rent asunder in His flesh. 28 
 And thus a real service is continually going on, in 
 which our Mediator is pleading the merits of that 
 crucified body which He offered for our sakes. 
 
 Now, by what means we take part individually 
 in this offering shall be shown hereafter, and what 
 are the services for which the Intercession of Christ 
 obtains acceptance. The thing at present con- 
 sidered is that Intercession itself. It is a true 
 work going on from day to day, from which all 
 human supplications derive their value. " The 
 prayers of all Saints" are effectual, because they 
 are presented "upon the golden altar," which is 
 "before the throne." So that the Christian ser- 
 vice throughout the world resembles the Jewish, 
 in being a national Ritual. " The holy Church 
 throughout all the world doth acknowledge Thee." 
 27 Origen on Levit. Horn. ix. 9, vol. ii. p. 243. * Heb. x. 20.
 
 AX ABIDING INTERCESSOR. 261 
 
 But the Christian nation is not limited like the 
 Jewish by earthly pedigree; neither is the one sex 
 debarred from the same fulness of approach which 
 is conceded to the other : " There is neither Jew 
 nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is 
 neither male nor female, but ye are all one in 
 Christ Jesus." 29 And this one Christian people 
 has likewise one mother city, where its collective 
 offering is presented on its behalf. But its capital 
 is not on earth, but in heaven, for "Jerusalem 
 which is above is the mother of us all." 30 And it 
 has one Priest, who "because He continueth ever 
 hath an unchangeable Priesthood." 31 And it has 
 a single victim, who has made " one perpetual sa- 
 crifice" (so should the words be rendered) "for 
 sins." 32 And therefore has the Church been di- 
 rected by His express command, to offer all prayers 
 for His sake. For thus is that Mediation main- 
 tained, which constitutes Him the real Priest and 
 the only victim. When He was upon earth, those 
 w r ho saw Him addressed to Him requests as one 
 man does to another. They addressed themselves 
 to His man's nature, as His manhood could then 
 be approached. But now this mode of access is 
 over, and yet the truth of His Mediation implies 
 that it is only through Him who is man that we 
 have access to God. Therefore we are to address 
 God in prayer, for God is the unseen object of our 
 worship, but we are to address God only through 
 29 Gal. iii. 28. Gal. iv. 26. 31 Heb. vii. 24. * Heb. x. 12.
 
 262 CHRIST THE MEDIATOR 
 
 Him whose Intercession as man is the ground of 
 our hopes. " Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father 
 in My name, He will give it you." To approach 
 God in any other manner, would be to claim such 
 merit for our own prayers, as would imply that 
 the Mediation of Christ was superfluous. For if 
 we could approach God by ourselves, we should 
 not need the intervention of Him, who became man 
 for our sakes. Therefore, to believe in Christ's 
 Mediation, is to believe that through His manhood 33 
 alone can the Father be addressed. Even what 
 He Himself bestows on us as God, He bestows 
 for the sake of that man's nature, which gives Him 
 unity with our race : " Whatsoever ye shall ask in 
 My name, that will I do, that the Father may 
 be glorified in the Son." 34 
 
 Thus it is, then, that we give effect to Our 
 Lord's Mediation ; that we recognize it as an 
 actual work, which He is discharging for us both 
 as God and Man. To this all prayer is relevant 
 on this all worship depends. The Church's ser- 
 vice goes on from year to year, as His Inter- 
 cession is perpetually made and perpetually ac- 
 
 33 On this principle was built the practice of the African 
 Church, which, while addressing prayers to the Son at other 
 times, prescribes : " Cum Altari assistitur, semper ad Patrern 
 dirigatur oratio." Con. Garth. 3, Can. 23, Hard. 1, p. 963. 
 
 Mr. Maskell (Ancient Liturgy of the Church of England, 
 p. 32) gives the reason from Card. Bona, " quia Missa repras- 
 sentatio est ejus oblationis, qua Christus se Patri obtulit." 
 34 John, xvi. 23 ; xiv. 13.
 
 AN ABIDING INTERCESSOR. 263 
 
 cepted. And we supplicate for it by our belief 
 in His present acts, and by our knowledge of 
 His present nature. Every prayer which we con- 
 clude in His name, is as much an appeal to His 
 man's nature, as though in Psalm or Litany we 
 were to number all His limbs, and recount all 
 the circumstances of His Passion : " By the mys- 
 tery of Thy Holy Incarnation ; by thy Holy 
 Nativity and Circumcision ; by Thy Baptism, 
 Fasting, and Temptation ; by Thine Agony and 
 Bloody Sweat ; by Thy Cross and Passion ; by 
 Thy precious Death and Burial ; by Thy glorious 
 Resurrection and Ascension; and by the Coming 
 of the Holy Ghost : 
 
 "GooD LORD DELIVER us."
 
 264 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 OUR LORD S SPIRITUAL PRESENCE AS MEDIATOR 
 WITH MEN. 
 
 OUR LORD'S acts on our behalf towards God, since 
 His Ascension into heaven, are comprehended in 
 Holy Scripture under the name of His Interces- 
 sion. His actions as Mediator towards man may 
 in like manner be summed up in the single term of 
 His Presence. For so He has Himself taught us 
 in the last words of St. Matthew's Gospel, leaving 
 it as a sufficient warrant and charter for those who 
 were commissioned to " make disciples of all na- 
 tions," that " I am with you always even to the 
 end of the world." All the blessings which Our 
 Mediator bestows, are comprehended in this one, or 
 consequent upon it. The efficacy of Christian 
 prayers is because He is in the midst ; so identified 
 is He with His people, that the prediction of the 
 Old Testament that He should receive gifts, is de- 
 clared in the New to have been fulfilled at His Ascen- 
 sion, because then He gave them; 1 and the pecu- 
 liar blessing conferred by the gift of the Holy 
 1 Ephesians, iv. 8; Psalm, Ixviii. 18.
 
 OUR LORD'S SPIRITUAL PRESENCE. 265 
 
 Ghost, is explained to be His own return : " I will 
 not leave you comfortless, I will come to you." 2 
 For on His Presence who is Mediator between God 
 and Man is our whole life dependent; the winds 
 may rage, the waters swell, but while He is in the 
 ship it cannot perish; those who are assured of 
 their union with Him, have the only pledge of 
 safety : " My Father which gave them Me is 
 greater than all, and no man is able to pluck them 
 out of My Father's hand." This great truth, then, 
 of Our Lord's Presence with His people, we pro- 
 ceed in some feeble manner to set forth ; and like 
 the ointment which was poured upon His sacred 
 body, may this service be accepted, not according 
 to its intrinsic value, but as a token of reverence 
 and of worship. 
 
 Since it has been revealed to us that in Our 
 Lord two distinct natures have been conjoined in 
 one Person, to inquire what is meant by His Pre- 
 sence among men, of necessity involves the con- 
 sideration how far each nature contributes to it. 
 For since He is Man as well as God, there must be 
 a presence of the inferior as well as of the higher 
 nature ; and since it was for the very purpose of 
 Mediation that He united them, so long as either is 
 excluded, it is impossible to estimate the full ex- 
 tent of His office. So that it is necessary to ask 
 what is meant by that peculiar Presence of Christ, 
 which He exercises as the God-man. It is not 
 2 John, xiv. 18.
 
 266 CHRIST'S SPIRITUAL PRESENCE 
 
 enough to say that Christ is a Divine Being, who is 
 present in some manner or other, since this would 
 not be to advance beyond the simplest truth of 
 natural religion. This might only be the Sabellian 
 custom of calling God by the name of Christ, with- 
 out discriminating those conditions under which the 
 Second Person in the Ever-Blessed Trinity has been 
 pleased to reveal Himself. To believe in God's ex- 
 istence is to believe in an Infinite Being, who must, 
 therefore, in some manner or other be everywhere 
 at hand. But this falls far short of believing in 
 Christ as a Mediator. The doctrines of revealed 
 religion are those which we seek ; and it will not 
 suffice, therefore, to rest in such thoughts of a Di- 
 vine Presence as the mere religion of nature will 
 supply. This might consist with a disbelief in the 
 reality of those external gifts of grace, on which 
 man's regeneration is dependent. We must pass 
 beyond this to " the full assurance of understand- 
 ing, to the acknowledgment of the mystery of God, 
 and of the Father, and of Christ." 3 This mystery 
 it was the very object of Scripture to reveal, and 
 there will be points in it, therefore, by which the 
 interests of the simplest Christian will be affected. 
 Our object is not to settle any abstract questions 
 respecting Christ's nature, but only to assert that 
 there is such reality in His Presence, as the doc- 
 trine of His Mediation involves. The points to be 
 established are : First That according to Scrip- 
 3 Colossians, ii. 2.
 
 AS MEDIATOR AMONG MEN. 267 
 
 ture, Christ's predicted Presence is His Presence as 
 Man, as well as His Presence as God. Secondly 
 That the Presence of Christ, according to His 
 human nature, is a spiritual not a carnal Presence. 
 Thirdly That to be the agent whereby Christ is 
 thus present is the peculiar office of God the 
 Holy Ghost. Fourthly That hereby mankind re- 
 ceives those spiritual blessings, which the Head 
 and Pattern of the renewed race has made His 
 own manhood the channel for communicating to 
 His brethren. 
 
 I. Now, the promise of His perpetual Presence 
 was not given to Our Lord's Disciples after His Re- 
 surrection only, but it had also been communicated 
 previously, as St. John informs us, for their support 
 in His season of humiliation. The promise was, 
 that He who was taken from them should come 
 back : " I will not leave you comfortless, I will 
 come to you." This was the especial advantage, 
 which they were to receive through the influence 
 of the Comforter : " I will come again and receive 
 you unto Myself." 4 And this was a promise which 
 the residue of the world should not share ; it was 
 the peculiar privilege, as it was the peculiar hope of 
 Our Lord's chosen followers: "A little while and 
 the world seeth Me no more, but ye see Me ; be- 
 cause I live, ye shall live also." Our Lord's decla- 
 ration, therefore, could not have referred to that 
 coining as Judge, in which all men will have an 
 4 John, xiv. 18, 3.
 
 268 CHRIST'S SPIRITUAL PRESENCE 
 
 equal share. Neither could it be fulfilled during 
 that interval of forty days which followed His Re- 
 surrection, because He goes on to say, that "we 
 will come unto him and make our abode with him." 5 
 His promises look to the restoration of that which 
 was about to be lost to them the presence, name- 
 ly, of Our Lord according to His human nature. 
 They seem not to be adequately fulfilled by that 
 mere presence of Deity, of which no part of space 
 can ever be divested. In this sense Our Lord 
 never left them, 6 and could never return. That 
 which went away and came again must in some 
 way or other have had relation to the human sub- 
 stance, to which departure and restoration properly 
 belong. And, accordingly, when the promise of 
 perpetual Presence was given before His Ascension, 
 it was directly grounded on that new authority, 
 with which, according to His man's nature, He was 
 invested : " All power is given unto Me in heaven 
 and in earth. Go ye, therefore, and make disciples 
 of all nations ;" " and Lo, I am with you alway, 
 even unto the end of the world." 
 
 Again, that Our Lord's Presence has especial re- 
 ference to His human nature, may be inferred from 
 the limitation, which binds it to places, times, and 
 modes of action. It pertains to the very essence 
 of Deity to be everywhere ; and, therefore, when 
 
 5 John, xiv. 19, 23. 
 
 6 " Ibat per id quod homo erat, et manebat per id, quod Deus 
 erat." S. Aug. in Joan. 78, 1.
 
 AS MEDIATOR AMONG MEN. 269 
 
 Our Lord said, " where two or three are gathered 
 together in My name, there am I in the midst of 
 them," His words connect themselves with that 
 other nature, according to which alone it was pos- 
 sible that He should be absent. 
 
 But it will naturally occur as objections both to 
 this statement and to that expectation which might 
 have been built, as is alleged, upon the promise to 
 the Apostles : First, that in the gift of the Holy 
 Ghost the coming of a Divine Person is plainly 
 promised ; and secondly, that under the ancient 
 covenant the Almighty bestowed His help in such 
 particular places, times, and manners, on His chosen 
 people, as to justify the expression, " My presence 
 shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest." 7 
 These considerations, however, will be found only 
 to substantiate what has been advanced. Leaving 
 the first for the present, it is sufficient to say in 
 regard to the second, that one essential condition 
 of the Doctrine of Mediation is, that whatever 
 means of access w y ere afforded men in former times, 
 cither by Temple, Prophet, or Angel, have all been 
 concentrated under the Gospel Covenant in the 
 manhood of Christ. For in Him as " the Son of 
 Man," 8 we see the true Jacob's Ladder, whereby 
 the Angels hold intercourse with earth ; so that 
 since His Incarnation, their ministrations have had 
 reference either to His natural body, or to His 
 body mystical, the Church. 9 And He is the one 
 
 7 Exodus, xxxiii. 14. 8 John, i. 51. 9 Rev. xxii. 9; Epli. iii. 10.
 
 270 CHRIST'S SPIRITUAL PRESENCE 
 
 Prophet 10 of the New Covenant, and His flesh is 
 " the true Tabernacle which the Lord pitched and 
 not man." And, therefore, that God should have 
 spoken " at sundry times and in divers manners," 
 does not interfere with the truth that in the Gospel 
 Covenant His promises are all centred in the Pre- 
 sence of that "one Mediator, the Man Christ Jesus." 
 It is not meant that God could not connect His 
 blessings with particular persons or places, but that 
 to do so, was to employ created media as instru- 
 ments of His mercy, and that all such media have 
 been superseded by the one Person of the Incarnate 
 Son. In his day was Moses a Mediator ; the Priests 
 were Mediators ; the Angels exercised an inter- 
 mediate ministry. But all these only exercised a 
 function by way of office, which in the fulness of 
 time was taken in its completeness by Him, who, 
 by the constitution of His nature, was the true and 
 real Mediator between God and Man. So that 
 what happened beforetime, was subordinate to that 
 which was actually fulfilled in the Incarnation of 
 Christ; and it was in His Person who could say 
 primarily, "the Father is in Me, and I in Him," 11 
 that " the Tabernacle of God" was "with men." 12 
 
 And further, it must be considered that those 
 interventions which were allowed in earlier times, 
 were through the power and agency of the same 
 uncreated Word, who has concentrated all the 
 functions of Mediation in His human body, since 
 
 10 Heb. i. 1. " John, x. 38. 12 Bevelations, xxi. 3.
 
 AS MEDIATOR AMONG MEN. 271 
 
 that day when by an Angel He announced His ap- 
 proach. His previous selection therefore of places, 
 times, and persons, is no ground for doubting, but 
 rather countenances that rule, which it has been 
 His will to adopt since He became manifest in the 
 flesh. It is not of moment to the general argu- 
 ment, whether on those earlier occasions He spoke 
 to men directly, or employed the intervention of 
 inferior beings as instruments of His will. The 
 first appears to have the opinion of some of the 
 most ancient writers ; 13 since the time of St. Au- 
 gustin, the assertion that the law was " received by 
 the disposition of Angels," 14 has been taken usually 
 in its literal sense. Perhaps both opinions may be 
 well founded, and the Uncreated Angel, who had 
 appeared to Moses at the Bush, may have given 
 place after the transgression of the Israelites to the 
 Created Angel, 15 who subsequently guided them. 
 Some such change in the manner of their direction 
 is expressly recorded. That it was an Angel who 
 subsequently appeared to Daniel 16 is manifest, since 
 he " speaks of Michael as his fellow," and such was 
 probably the leader of the Lord's Host, 17 who was 
 beheld by Joshua. 18 But, however this point may 
 be decided, it was plainly the Eternal Word who 
 was present, whether by vision or by His ministers, 
 
 13 Tertullian ad. Marc. ii. 27 ; ad. Prax. 14 & 16 ; Just. Dial, 
 cum Tryphone, 56-60. 14 Acts, vii. 53. 
 
 15 Exod. xxxiii. 2, 3. 16 Daniel, x. 5-14. 17 Josh. v. 13. 
 
 18 This is maintained by Dr. Mill, with his usual learning and 
 ability, in his " Christian Advocate's Publication" for 1841.
 
 272 CHRIST'S SPIRITUAL PRESENCE 
 
 since He it was, who even in former times had His 
 " delights with men." And since His Incarnation, 
 He has concentrated in His man's nature whatever 
 opportunities of union with him were before pos- 
 sessed. To Himself, as Man, and not " unto the 
 Angels," did He put in subjection that coining dis- 
 pensation 19 of the Gospel which we now possess. 
 And, therefore, whereas in earlier time those minis- 
 tering beings were received by men with such signs 
 of reverent salutation, as the inferior might well 
 pay to the superior creature, as the examples of 
 Manoah, 20 and Daniel, 21 if not of Joshua 22 declare ; 
 yet was similar submission refused by the Angel 
 whom St. John beheld, because " I am thy fellow- 
 servant, and of thy brethren the Prophets, and of 
 them which keep the sayings of this book." 23 So 
 that now whatsoever has the character of worship 
 is to pass through that one channel, which through 
 the human nature of the Eternal Word has been 
 opened to mankind. By God's Presence was in- 
 tended in former times whatever opportunity of 
 intercourse was afforded through those earthly in- 
 struments of Mediation, which He was pleased to 
 adopt as His temporary representatives among men. 
 But now a new mode of Mediation has been sub- 
 stituted for all other conditions either of time or 
 place. And the efficacy of prayers is grounded 
 upon the assurance of that peculiar Presence, which 
 
 19 Ileb. ii. 5. * Judges, xiii. 20. 21 Dan. x. 15. 
 
 22 Joshua, v. 14. a Rev. xxii. 9.
 
 AS MEDIATOR AMONG MEN. 273 
 
 through His human nature Our Lord vouchsafes, 
 because it rests upon the reality of His Mediation : 
 " If two of you shall agree on earth as touching 
 anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for 
 them of My Father which is in heaven. For where 
 two or three are gathered together in My name, 
 there am I in the midst of them." To refer this to 
 His Divine nature alone, would be to neutralize 
 the efficacy of His Mediation, since it is His cha- 
 racter as Man which has rendered Him the coun- 
 terpart of those means of access which before ex- 
 isted. And since it is as Mediator that He is 
 present among men, His Presence must plainly be 
 through that human nature which He has taken as 
 the means of union between heaven and earth. 
 
 II. But though Our Lord's Presence be the 
 Presence of His man's nature, it is yet a spiritual 
 and not a carnal Presence. Christ is present with 
 His people and present as man, but He is present 
 not by material contact, but by spiritual power. 
 Though that human nature which is material as 
 well as immaterial, may not be left out when we 
 speak of His Presence as Mediator, yet His Pre- 
 sence is brought about through the power of that 
 other nature, which is wholly immaterial and Di- 
 vine. For when His Incarnation joined Manhood 
 and Godhead together, it left the essential proper- 
 ties of each undestroyed. What these properties 
 are, we may in some measure conclude from the 
 experience of our own being. For from our own 
 
 T
 
 274 CHRIST'S SPIKITUAL PKESENCE 
 
 nature 24 we gain a knowledge of two modes of ex- 
 istence, which we describe respectively as body and 
 spirit. We call that bodily which is present in 
 place and limited by outline ; and of this kind of 
 existence our senses either take note, or we feel a 
 conviction that, if they were subtile enough, they 
 would be able to take note of it. That other kind 
 of existence, of the reality whereof we are equally 
 persuaded, but which is free from such conditions, 
 we speak of as spiritual. And we have a convic- 
 tion respecting the modes of action, which belong 
 to each of these kinds of existence, which is not to 
 be called a consequence of the definition which has 
 been assigned to them, but is part of the original 
 idea, which the name either of body or spirit ex- 
 presses. For respecting the first, as Tucker ob- 
 serves, it is " an uncontroverted maxim and self- 
 evident truth," " that nothing can act or be acted 
 upon where it is not." 25 This appears to be a portion 
 of what is intended, when we say that bodies are 
 present in space. And therefore even in respect to 
 such influences as gravity, w r e feel a conviction that 
 there must be what he expresses as " some medium 
 passing between the agent and the patient." The 
 actings of spirit on the other hand, are not shackled, 
 so far as we know, by any such law. To suppose 
 them subject to it would, in fact, be to maintain 
 that spirit is present in place, which is contrary to 
 
 24 Vigil, c. Eutych. v. 6. 
 28 " Light of Nature," vol. ii. p. 1, c. 5.
 
 AS MEDIATOR AMONG MEN. 275 
 
 our whole idea of its nature. And therefore when 
 Our Lord by His word healed persons who were at 
 a distance from Him, none ever hesitated to assign 
 His actions to a spiritual power, because they were 
 obviously independent of any material medium. 
 There may be other qualities in each nature which 
 we do not discern, but this is what men commonly 
 mean to express by body and spirit. Our know- 
 ledge of either is derived from the fact, that each 
 man is a link between these two dissimilar king- 
 doms. For one is as real as the other, and though 
 our acquaintance with them is gained in different 
 ways, yet it rests ultimately on the same principle 
 of inward consciousness. The existence of what is 
 material cannot, properly speaking, be proved by 
 experiment, for experiment only proves that cer- 
 tain impressions are made upon our senses ; and 
 what is to assure us that these impressions have 
 counterparts in the external world ? The irresis- 
 tible conviction of our own mind is our assurance. 
 And from the same source, according to the saying 
 of Descartes, cogito ergo sum, have we the as- 
 surance of our spirit's existence. 
 
 In this manner it is, then, that we become con- 
 versant with these two worlds of matter and of 
 spirit, our chief knowledge of which is, in truth, 
 only a conviction that the one is a reality, existing 
 without and within our body and our mind, just as 
 much as the other. Now, we learn from Holy 
 Writ, that in Christ our Mediator there is that
 
 276 CHRIST'S SPIRITUAL PRESENCE 
 
 man's nature in which these two principles of mat- 
 ter and spirit exist together, and also that nature 
 of God which is wholly immaterial. For " God is 
 a Spirit." And in Christ these two natures retain 
 each their perfect essence, though each co-opera- 
 ting towards the execution of His Will. For 
 though glorified, it is yet with a man's body that 
 He has risen and ascended. So He assured His 
 Disciples after His Resurrection : " Handle Me and 
 see, for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye 
 see Me have." " We nothing doubt," says Hooker, 
 " but God hath many ways, above the reach of our 
 capacities, exalted that body, which it hath pleased 
 Him to make His own." 26 And what may be 
 within the capacity of human bodies we know not. 
 St. Paul was caught up into the third heaven; 
 whether it was in the body or out of the body, as 
 he knew not, others cannot affirm. The mira- 
 culous appearances, therefore, of Our Lord's body 
 to His Disciples after His Resurrection, are not 
 inconsistent with the reality of His corporeal frame. 
 But we are expressly told that at His Ascension 
 Our Lord's body went up into heaven, as into a place 
 which it will inhabit, subject to the conditions of 
 material existence, till the Last Day : " This same 
 Jesus which is taken up from you, shall so come in 
 like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven." 
 For " the heaven must receive" Him, "until the 
 times of restitution of all things." In this abode 
 26 Eccl. Pol. v. 54, 9.
 
 AS MEDIATOR AMONG MEN. 277 
 
 accordingly was He beheld by St. Stephen in his 
 hour of martyrdom. To assert of this Body which 
 ascended into heaven, that it had no material con- 
 ditions different from those which belong to simple 
 Deity, would be the error of Eutyches, who main- 
 tained that the properties of Our Lord's Manhood 
 were altogether lost in His Godhead. Now, " there 
 is no proof in the world strong enough to enforce 
 that Christ had a true body, but by the true and 
 natural properties of His body. Amongst which 
 properties, definite or local presence is chief." For 
 if His material presence could be in heaven and 
 also upon earth, then, as Hooker expresses it, 
 " hath the majesty of His estate extinguished the 
 verity of His nature." 27 And to this our Church 
 refers, when she asserts that to be " in two places 
 at once" is against the '''truth of Christ's natural 
 Body." She does not enter into the metaphysical 
 properties of substance; but since Our Lord is de- 
 clared to have a natural body consubstantial with 
 ours, to fix the place of that body in heaven is the 
 same thing as to declare that its material presence 
 is removed from earth. 28 " Make thou no doubt or 
 question of it," saith St. Augustin, " but that the 
 Man Christ Jesus is now in that very place from 
 whence He shall come in the same form and sub- 
 stance of flesh which He carried thither, and from 
 
 27 Eccl. Pol. v. 55, 6. 
 
 28 " Quando in terra fuit caro, non eratutique in coelo. Et nunc 
 quiain cceloest,non estutique in terra." Vigil.c. Eutych.iv.14.
 
 278 CHRIST'S SPIRITUAL PRESENCE 
 
 which He hath not taken nature, but given there- 
 unto immortality. According to this form He 
 spreadeth not out Himself into all places. For it 
 behoveth us to take great heed, lest while we go 
 about to maintain the glorious Deity of Him, which 
 is man, we leave Him not the true bodily substance 
 of a man." 29 Since Our Lord's body then is in 
 heaven, and since it belongs to the truth of His 
 manhood that, in regard to its material operations, 
 it should be subject to the conditions which dis- 
 criminate bodily from spiritual substance one of 
 which is to act where they are it follows that 
 though Our Lord's presence upon earth as Medi- 
 ator is not independent of His nature as man, yet 
 that it is brought about by His Divine and imma- 
 terial nature; that its medium of operation is not 
 material contact, but spiritual power. 
 
 We are assured moreover by Our Lord Himself, 
 that the removal of His bodily substance into heaven 
 would be a step which should lead to that spiritual 
 Presence which He has since vouchsafed. After 
 declaring the fact that His man's body would be 
 the medium through which He would convey hea- 
 venly gifts ("for My flesh is meat indeed, and 
 My blood is drink indeed;" "this is the bread which 
 cometh down from heaven") He proceeds to repre- 
 sent His spiritual Presence as consequent on His 
 Ascension into heaven : " What and if ye shall see 
 the Son of Man ascend up where He was before. 
 29 St. Augustin, in Hooker, Eccl. Pol. v. 55, 6.
 
 AS MEDIATOR AMONG MEN. 279 
 
 It is the Spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth 
 nothing." " When the Son of Man," says St. Leo, 
 " betook Himself to the glory of His Father's 
 Majesty, He began in some ineffable manner to be 
 nearer by His Divine power, for the very reason 
 that, according to His humanity, He was removed 
 further off." And therefore it was, he adds, that 
 Mary Magdalen might not touch Him before His 
 Ascension : " I would not have you come to Me 
 in bodily wise, nor recognize Me by carnal touch : 
 I put you off to something higher, I prepare for 
 you something greater: when I am ascended to 
 My Father, then you shall touch Me in a more true 
 and perfect manner, when you shall lay hold of 
 that which you do not touch, and believe that 
 which you do not behold." 30 
 
 Whether we look, then, to the declarations of 
 Scripture respecting the departure of Our Lord's 
 body from earth to heaven, or to what He tells us 
 of the source of that influence which He there 
 exerts, we must conclude that the Presence of Our 
 Mediator, though not independent of His fleshly 
 nature, is brought about by the intervention of that 
 Divine nature which is irrespective of material con- 
 tact and of contiguity of place. It only remains 
 to observe further, that such spiritual Presence is 
 not less real than that which is material, depending 
 only on another mode of existence, which has its 
 own being and its own laws. Some persons sup- 
 30 S. Leo, Sermon Ixxii. 4.
 
 280 CHRIST'S SPIRITUAL PRESENCE 
 
 pose that nothing is real, except what is sensible ; 
 and, therefore, that Christ's real Presence is not 
 identical with His spiritual Presence that those 
 who assert one, deny the other. Their mistake 
 arises from the circumstance, that language is 
 founded upon terms, which are supplied to us by 
 our observation of the world of sense, so that the 
 operations of mind can only be expressed by ana- 
 logies and figures. But what is figurative is the 
 expression not the thing expressed. The word 
 spirit is derived from " spiro," to " breathe or 
 blow," in consequence of the analogy, pointed out 
 by Our Lord Himself, 31 between the more subtile 
 part of the material world, and that world which is 
 immaterial. But because the word " spirit" is a 
 metaphorical term, derived in the Latin and Greek 
 languages from the action of the breath, we are not 
 to infer that there is no such principle in man as an 
 immaterial soul. The necessary deficiencies of lan- 
 guage do not derogate from the certainty of those 
 existences to which our consciousness witnesses, 
 and which lead us up by the shortest track to the 
 very throne of God. " For God did not make our 
 spirits and depart from them, but they are of Him 
 and in Him." 32 And unless spirit be something 
 less real than body, spiritual presence is not less 
 real than bodily presence. All that can be as- 
 serted of it is, that it is of a different nature and 
 regulated by a different law. Bodies are present 
 31 St. John, iii. 8. 32 S. Aug. Con. iv. 12, 1.
 
 AS MEDIATOR AMONG MEN. 281 
 
 by contiguity of place spirits by influence or 
 power. When we speak, therefore, of Our Lord's 
 spiritual Presence, the word Presence which we 
 employ is a figurative term certainly, because it is 
 borrowed from the world of matter ; but it is not 
 the less a reality, that some peculiar influence or 
 power of our Mediator, the God-man, is exerted 
 through the intervention of His Deity, in those 
 places, times, and manners, to which His Presence 
 is pledged in the Kingdom of Grace. 
 
 Neither is this Presence merely that He is an 
 object to men's thoughts, as Jerusalem was present 
 to David from the Land of Hermon. The reality of 
 Christ's Presence depends on Himself, not on those 
 He visits. It had been an unmeaning promise to 
 His Disciples, that His Presence should return to 
 them through the power of the Holy Ghost, had 
 He designed only that through the exertion of 
 their mental faculties they might think of Him 
 who was departed. In this sense how is Christ 
 present more than any Angel in light ? We are 
 speaking not of men's actings towards Him, but 
 of His actings towards them, since His Ascension 
 into heaven. As He acts for them by intercession 
 with the Father, so are we assured that He acts 
 towards them by His Presence with power. What 
 is meant by His office as Mediator, unless through 
 the annexation of the Divine to the Human nature, 
 the latter has in itself some real influence inde- 
 pendently of our thoughts ? And this is the answer
 
 282 CHRIST'S SPIRITUAL PRESENCE 
 
 to the assertion, that since a body must either be 
 present in any place, or not present in it, therefore 
 Christ's body must either be materially present in 
 the consecrated elements at the Holy Eucharist, or 
 we must allow that His Presence is merely figura- 
 tive. Doubtless it were so, if His body were a 
 human body alone ; but because He is Divine also, 
 it has likewise that other medium of communica- 
 tion which does not depend upon local contiguity, 
 but upon spiritual power. Even the sun, because 
 its influence is more wide than its actual limits, 
 while it is at rest in its place in the sky, is present 
 upon earth by the effluence of its beams. But 
 that Sacred Manhood which was created for the 
 service of the Mediator between God and men, in 
 which were stored up " the treasures of wisdom and 
 knowledge," that from it " grace and truth" might 
 flow forth into the whole race of man, has a real 
 medium of presence through the Deity which is 
 joined to it : so that it can be in all places and 
 with all persons not figuratively, but in truth 
 not by material contact, but by spiritual power. 
 And while its material place is among the armies 
 of heaven, its spiritual presence is among the inhab- 
 itants of the earth, when, how, and wheresoever is 
 pleasing to its own gracious will. 
 
 III. It has been asserted, then, that the Presence 
 of Christ is the Presence of His man's nature ; and 
 again, that this Presence is brought about not by 
 material contact, but by spiritual power. Now, it
 
 AS MEDIATOR AMONG MEN. 283 
 
 was for the very purpose of uniting men in this 
 wise to their great Mediator the man Christ Jesus, 
 that the gift of the Holy Ghost was bestowed. 33 
 It is His especial office that those in whom He 
 takes up His dwelling are joined by grace to 
 that man's nature, which by personal union is one 
 with God. This point it is which must next be 
 considered. 
 
 The gift of the Holy Ghost is declared in Holy 
 Scripture to proceed directly from that Blessed 
 Mediator, who "when He ascended up on high, 
 led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men." 
 What He received in that He was human, that 
 He had power to give, because He was Divine. 
 The consecration of His man's nature, made it the 
 fountain from which grace should flow forth into 
 His brethren. So soon as that exaltation of hu- 
 manity, which it gained by His Incarnation, was 
 perfected by His consequent Obedience, He be- 
 stowed as Mediator that renewing power which 
 the Third Person in the Ever-blessed Trinity was 
 the willing agent to convey. And this is why 
 God the Holy Ghost can be spoken of as coming 
 to men, who otherwise, like each Person of the 
 Almighty Three, leaves no portion of space or 
 duration of time unoccupied by His Presence. 
 
 33 " The flesh of the Lord," says St. Athanasius, meaning 
 thereby His Humanity, "is a quickening Spirit, because it 
 was engendered by the quickening Spirit ; for that which is 
 born of the Spirit is spirit." De Incarnat. et c. Jlrian. 16, 
 vol. i. p. 883.
 
 284 CHRIST'S SPIRITUAL PRESENCE 
 
 Now this gift, as the Psalmist predicts, Christ as 
 Mediator was to receive, that afterwards, according 
 to the saying of the Apostle, He might bestow 
 it upon men. 34 For "being by the right hand of 
 God exalted, and having received of the Father 
 the promise of the Holy Ghost, He hath shed 
 forth this, which ye now see and hear." And 
 therefore is this Blessed Person of the co-equal 
 Trinity spoken of as sent by the Mediator, be- 
 cause through His exaltation does the Mediator 
 participate by gift in that universal dominion, 
 which as the Eternal Son He participated by na- 
 ture : " If I go not away, the Comforter will not 
 come unto you; but if I depart, I will send Him 
 unto you." " He shall glorify Me, for He shall 
 receive of Mine, and shall show it unto you. All 
 things that the Father hath are Mine." It is as a 
 result therefore of Our Lord's Mediation, that we 
 receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, which He, who 
 shares the Eternal Godhead, bestows on those to 
 whom He has condescended to be a brother. 
 
 And the purpose for which this gift is bestowed 
 falls entirely within the limits of the Mediation of 
 Christ, since its object is that those whom He elects 
 to be His own, may be joined to that manhood 
 which He has consecrated. The office of the Holy 
 Ghost in the Gospel Kingdom is that men may be- 
 come the sons of God by grace by their union 
 with that man who is the Son of God by nature. 
 34 Compare Psalm Ixviii. 18, and Ephesians, iv. 8.
 
 AS MEDIATOR AMONG MEN. 285 
 
 For as we are men by natural alliance with that 
 first man, Adam, who by reason of His creation is 
 called God's son, so we are renewed men only if we 
 are joined by supernatural union to that second 
 man, the new Adam, who is God's Son by nature. 
 Through this means do spiritual graces descend 
 from God, the fountain of life, into man's being. 
 And in this gracious work it has been the pleasure 
 of God the Holy Ghost to co-operate. " Although 
 the Holy Ghost or Third Person in the Trinity," 
 says Dr. Jackson, " doth immediately and by per- 
 sonal propriety work faith and other spiritual graces 
 in our souls, yet doth He not 'by these spiritual 
 graces unite our souls or spirits immediately unto - 
 Himself, but unto Christ's human nature." 35 And 
 so says St. Athanasius, that "the Spirit is the 
 Unction and the Seal, whereby the Word anoints 
 and seals all things." 36 And for this we have Our 
 Lord's express assurance, in that the perpetual 
 Presence which He promised to His servants, and 
 which has been shown to be the Presence of His 
 man's nature, is declared by Him to be the imme- 
 diate consequence of the coming and work of the 
 Holy Ghost. For this perpetual Presence is de- 
 clared to be the result of that departure according 
 to the flesh, whereby He ascended to His Father's 
 glory to receive gifts for men. Christ is perpetually 
 present, because being raised to the right hand of 
 power, He is perpetually conferring those spiritual 
 
 35 Jackson's Com. on Creed, xi. 3, 12. M Ep. i. ad Scrap. 23.
 
 286 CHRIST'S SPIRITUAL PRESENCE 
 
 gifts, of which His manhood has become the foun- 
 tain to His brethren. And this He promised to 
 His Disciples as the result of His temporary de- 
 parture : "A little while and ye shall not see Me ; 
 and again a little while, and ye shall see Me, be- 
 cause I go to the Father." "All the best inter- 
 preters are decided that the reference is not to Our 
 Lord's bodily Resurrection, with which the words, 
 ' because I go to My Father,' are inconsistent ; we 
 must rather understand the ' seeing again,' as in St. 
 John, xiv. 19, of the inward and spiritual working 
 of Christ." 37 And hence we have the interpretation 
 of the tenth verse of the same chapter : " When 
 He (the Comforter) is come, He will convince (or 
 instruct) 38 the world of sin, and of righteousness, 
 and of judgment." " Of righteousness, because I 
 go to My Father, and ye see Me no more." The 
 instruction concerning righteousness is made to 
 depend on that exaltation of the Mediator into 
 heaven, whereby His man's nature has become the 
 fountain of grace. Thus are the lessons of righ- 
 teousness conveyed to mankind by the Holy Ghost. 
 This Blessed Spirit becomes the agent through 
 which that sanctified humanity of the Son of God 
 exerts its renewing influence upon the defiled hu- 
 manity of His brethren. " The Spirit testifies as 
 of sin, so of righteousness, because it reveals how the 
 
 37 Olshausen on John, xvi. 16. 
 
 38 e'Xe'ty^cn/, Tholuck observes in loco, implies the allied signi- 
 fications of conviction, blame, instruction.
 
 AS MEDIATOR AMONG MEN. 287 
 
 Saviour, though departed in body, works unseen in 
 the renewal of the inner life." 3 
 
 That it should be the office of the Holy Ghost to 
 unite men in this manner to the humanity of Christ, 
 is the result therefore of His co-operating in that 
 Mediatorial function, which the Eternal Son became 
 Incarnate to undertake. To regard the actings of 
 the Holy Ghost as directed into any other channel, 
 would be to suppose that there was some other name 
 than that of Christ given under heaven, whereby 
 we might be saved. Its real tendency would be to 
 substitute the Holy Ghost in place of the Son, or 
 rather to maintain, that whereas the work of men's 
 government and salvation was at one time discharged 
 by God under the name of Christ, at a later period 
 there was a new title adopted, and the same Being 
 re-appeared under the name of the Holy Ghost. 
 And thus we should be led back into the same 
 system of Sabellianism, which has been before 
 exhibited, and the real existence of the Three 
 Persons in the Blessed Trinity would be lost sight 
 of. True it is that it has been the will of God 
 the Holy Ghost to co-operate with the Word in 
 the work of man's salvation, without always ex- 
 plaining to us what is due to one of these Blessed 
 Persons, and what to the other. 40 At the Incar- 
 nation of the Son of God, it was the Holy Ghost 
 who overshadowed His Virgin Mother ; and yet 
 
 39 Olshausen on John, xvi. 10. 
 40 Vide Preface to St. Hilary, 57-68.
 
 288 CHRIST'S SPIRITUAL PRESENCE 
 
 " Wisdom hath builded" itself a house out of the 
 materials of man's nature. Again, Christ " by the 
 Eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to 
 God." And there is a perpetual co-operation be- 
 tween these Divine Persons, in that while Christ 
 is the " one Mediator between God and men," the 
 Holy Ghost is that " one and the self-same Spirit," 41 
 through whom His Mediation becomes effectual. 
 Christ is the one " name under heaven given among 
 men, whereby we must be saved." But in this 
 salvation men have part through "the Comforter, 
 which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will 
 send in My name." So that while Christ is the 
 Head of the body, the Holy Ghost is that living 
 soul by which all its parts are bound together. 
 " For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one 
 body." As Christ was "quickened by the Spirit," 42 
 so it is asserted of ourselves, that " if we have been 
 planted together in the likeness of His Death, we 
 shall be also in the likeness of His Eesurrection." 
 So that St. Austin asserts, "what our spirit or 
 life is to our limbs, such is the Holy Ghost to 
 the members of Christ, that is, to His body the 
 Church." 43 And therefore whether we regard the 
 influence of the Second Person in the Ever-Blessed 
 Trinity, or the co-operation of the Third, it is the 
 purpose alike of each to join us to that manhood 
 of Christ Our Lord, whereby He has become 
 
 41 I. Corinthians, xii. 11. c I. Peter, iii. 18. 
 
 43 In Preface to St. Hilary, sec. 78.
 
 AS MEDIATOR AMONG MEN. 289 
 
 Mediator for our race. And St. Gregory com- 
 plains of it as an error of the Apollinarians, that 
 they interpreted the words, " we have the mind of 
 Christ," as though they referred to His Deity 
 alone, whereas they have reference, he says, to 
 that purified humanity of the Son of God, which 
 was set forth as a model to His brethren. 44 For if 
 this principle of interpretation be forgotten, the 
 Second Person in the Blessed Trinity must needs 
 be confounded with the Third, as by the Sabellians 
 both the Second and the Third are confounded 
 with the First. Xow, the distinction between the 
 offices of these two Blessed Persons is real, and not 
 merely technical or artificial, because it proceeds 
 from that Personal diversity, by which they are 
 really distinguished. And therefore to neglect it, 
 as St. Athanasius 45 complains, would be to make 
 the Blessed Trinity a mere trick \_u\pi 7ratms], a 
 system of names without truth. And since the 
 
 44 Ep. II. to Cledonius, sec. 6. 
 
 45 " For the name of the Son and of the Spirit would be put 
 an end to, when their purpose was fulfilled. And the whole 
 system of the Gospel would be a mere trick, exhibited in name 
 and not in truth. And since according to this theory the name 
 of the Son would be lost, the grace of Baptism would be lost 
 along with it. For it is a Baptism in the name of the Son. 
 And what will follow but the destruction of the whole creation ? 
 For the "Word came forth that we might be created, and through 
 His coming forth we exist. And, therefore, if He is lost again 
 in the Father, as the Sabellians represent, we too shall cease to 
 be. For on this principle all is to return to its original estate, 
 and with the office of the Son, they must annihilate His Crea- 
 tion." Or. iv. c. Arian. 25. 
 
 U
 
 290 CHRIST'S SPIRITUAL PRESENCE 
 
 proper diversity of Persons in the glorious God- 
 head is the real beginning of all creaturly existence, 
 and the basis of all thought, the final result of this 
 error would be to resolve everything into a mere 
 abstract Theism, and to absorb all existence into 
 its primary source. 
 
 IV. We come now to that point on which this 
 whole Chapter is dependent What is the especial 
 end and purpose of that union with the man's 
 nature of the Son of God, which it is the office of 
 the Holy Ghost to bestow ? Such union has been 
 shown to be the real meaning of that Presence with 
 men, which was promised as the result of Our 
 Lord's Ascension to the Father. For this Pre- 
 sence is not irrespective of His man's nature ; yet 
 not a Presence in place or by material contact ; its 
 medium of operation is that spiritual power, which 
 the manhood derives from personal union with 
 Deity. But yet the question recurs, what is the 
 object of this Presence ? And unless this point be 
 clearly understood, every other part of the inquiry 
 is useless. The mere technical assertion of such a 
 dogma, irrespective of any influence upon man's 
 condition and conduct, would be arbitrary and 
 artificial. So that it would partake of the repul- 
 siveness which naturally attaches to all doctrinal 
 assertions, when they are put forth merely for the 
 purpose of completing a theological system, or of 
 supporting established institutions. In a case so 
 serious as this, men cannot yield their assent to
 
 AS MEDIATOR AMONG MEN. 291 
 
 the mere child's-play of logical subtilty ; and still 
 more are they indignant, if sacred considerations 
 are made subservient to mere worldly ends. Con- 
 science and the unseen world ought not to be dealt 
 with as legal fictions. Man's individual account is 
 so much more important than the mere perpetua- 
 tion of the best scheme of government, that if this 
 be all which is aimed at in authorized formularies, 
 they are of trivial moment when put in competition 
 with the realities of grace and holiness. Men are 
 perfectly right in feeling more interest in what con- 
 cerns personal religion than in any doctrinal con- 
 siderations, so long as our salvation depends upon 
 the first, and the second only contributes to the 
 quiet administration of the Church and the country. 
 Such is the case respecting many disputes which 
 unhappily divide Christians. And this it is which 
 makes what are called Church and State questions 
 offensive to serious minds. They are naturally 
 averse to sacrifice the eternal interests of Christ's 
 Kingdom to its mere temporal organization. No 
 doctrines, therefore, or usages can be felt to be 
 really important, which do not rest immediately 
 upon what is sacred and Divine. And if the truth 
 of our union with the manhood of Christ Our Lord 
 be worth attending to, it must be in consequence 
 of its connexion with the individual hopes and in- 
 terests of men. 
 
 Now, this connexion depends upon that leading 
 feature in Our Lord's human character, that He
 
 292 CHRIST'S SPIRITUAL PRESENCE 
 
 was not a man, but the man ; the Son of Man, that 
 is, in whom the collective character of the race 
 found its representative ; the Pattern of our Being ; 
 its new Head ; who came once in the fulness of 
 time "to gather together all things" in Himself. 
 For through Him was that higher nature 46 intro- 
 duced into our fallen race, by which its ancient 
 deterioration may be corrected. From which cir- 
 cumstance it follows, that salvation is not attained 
 by human efforts, but by the gift of God. For it 
 was not only that Christ exhibited the natural qua- 
 lities of manhood in their most perfect state, but 
 that He conferred upon it a power which was above 
 nature. Through the union of Godhead and Man- 
 hood in His single Person, there was infused into 
 that humanity, which He shared with us, such grace 
 as sufficed for the whole generation of His kindred. 
 That so we might be " made the sons of God, as 
 He the Son of Man ; we made partakers of His 
 Divine, as He of our human nature." 47 For this 
 reason the work of Mediation depends upon that 
 union with the Manhood of Christ, to which " by 
 one spirit" we are admitted. For the union of 
 mankind with Christ is not a mere imitation the 
 following a good model the fixing our thoughts 
 upon One who has shown in the clearest manner, 
 
 46 " Non enim superare possemus peccati et mortis auctorem, 
 nisi naturam nostram ille susciperet, et suam faceret, quern nee 
 peccatum contaminare, nee mors potuit detinere." S. Leo, 
 Ep. 24, 2. 
 
 47 Bishop Andrews's Fourth Sermon on the Nativity.
 
 AS MEDIATOR AMONG MEN. 293 
 
 how God may be served and men benefited it is 
 an actual and a real union, whereby all renewed 
 men are joined to the second, as they were by 
 nature to the first Adam. This union cannot be 
 explained away in the kingdom of grace, unless it 
 is first explained away in the kingdom of nature. 
 Unless " sin standeth" only " in the following of 
 Adam, as the Pelagians do vainly talk," holiness 
 must involve not the mere imitation, but the put- 
 ting on, of the man Christ Jesus. By what means 
 the relation is maintained, is in each case an inex- 
 plicable mystery ; the natural alliance which takes 
 place by descent being not less wonderful than that 
 supernatural alliance which is brought about by re- 
 generation. To analyze the law of family affinity 
 is as much beyond our powers, as to understand 
 how " as many as have been baptized into Christ, 
 have put on Christ." The first is that transmission 
 of the nature of our common ancestor which causes 
 us to be what we are ; the second is that spiritual 
 Presence of the manhood of Christ, by union with 
 which we become what it is given to us to be. The 
 one of these is in Holy Writ set against the other, 
 " for as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all 
 be made alive." As the one has its influence both 
 on soul and body, so has the other. The pheno- 
 menon which is presented by nature is, that it has 
 pleased God to make the race of mankind depen- 
 dent on the maintenance of a perpetual succession 
 of beings, in each of whom the original type re-
 
 294 CHRIST'S SPIRITUAL PRESENCE 
 
 appears under one or other of innumerable modifi- 
 cations, while yet that normal limit is never over- 
 passed, by which the race is separated from other 
 organized forms of existence. This unity of form 
 we refer to that law of descent from a single parent, 
 which appears to extend throughout the whole 
 animal kingdom. That it applies to mankind we 
 are assured on Scriptural authority, since we read 
 that " God has made of one blood all nations of 
 the earth." And that principle on which depends 
 the sameness of forms in transmitted life we call 
 nature. It is not meant that in the individuals of 
 the series there is anything distinct from that which 
 makes up their separate personality ; but whereas 
 in the artificial combinations of human thought, 
 " all classifications," as Dugald Stewart 48 observes, 
 " are to a certain degree arbitrary ;" the forms of 
 organized life on the other hand, are fixed by an 
 unvarying external rule, and their classification 
 therefore is not arbitrary. The Nominalists appear 
 to be right in asserting respecting the mere results 
 of human abstraction, that " it does not follow that 
 the distinctive quality of a class is more essential 
 to the existence of each individual, than various 
 other qualities which we are accustomed to regard 
 as accidental." In the case of those things which 
 possess organized life on the contrary, that which 
 gives [or ought to give] its distinctive name to the 
 
 48 " Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind." P. i. 
 c. 4, sec. 2 ; vide supra, p. 43 & 186.
 
 AS MEDIATOR AMONG MEN. . 295 
 
 class is really essential to the existence of each in- 
 dividual. Our ignorance of the hidden nature of 
 being may render it impossible for us to pronounce 
 what this characteristic condition is ; but we can 
 at least go so far as to refer it to that law of 
 descent, which preserves the uninterrupted succes- 
 sion of every primary pair. So that the principle 
 of nature owes its existence to the fact that every 
 tribe is set forth in its leader, that all races have 
 their type, that the limits of the class are expressed 
 in its model, and that throughout God's world 
 there is a law of hereditary transmission and family 
 headship. 
 
 Xow, this rule which God has made the law of 
 nature, is transferred by Revelation to the Kingdom 
 of grace. For here too we see a Pattern Man, who 
 comes in as the type of restored, as our earthly 
 father of fallen manhood. He brings with Him 
 from above a pure and perfect, as the other trans- 
 nutted a corrupt and debilitated nature. And in 
 this case likewise, the character of the race is de- 
 pendent upon its Head. For He is "the first- 
 begotten of the dead," " the first-born of every 
 creature." For " the first man Adam was made a 
 living soul, the last Adam was made a quickening 
 spirit." "As is the earthy, such are they also that 
 are earthy ; and as is the heavenly, such are they 
 also that are heavenly." Through Him is given 
 back that perfect image of God, wherein man was 
 originally made. " As we have borne the image of
 
 296 CHRIST'S SPIRITUAL PRESENCE 
 
 the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the 
 heavenly." " For the form of God," says St. Basil, 
 " is not like that of man ; it is a living form, a 
 truly moulding form, and it fashions every thing 
 which receives it into the image of God." 49 Our 
 salvation therefore does not depend merely on our 
 own efforts, on the self-dependent exertions of men 
 to cure their inherent evils, but on the external 
 influence of that Head of our race, who mercifully 
 conforms His brethren to His own likeness. So 
 that it is only by a real union with this New Man, 
 that we can eradicate those evils which attached 
 themselves to our race, through the transgression 
 of the old. As true, certain, and extensive as our 
 inherence in the one, must be our adherence to 
 the other. Upon this union depends our right as 
 well in that work of redemption which He effected 
 on the Cross, as in that work of Intercession which 
 He is performing in heaven. For though Christ's 
 death sufficed for the sins of the whole world, yet 
 what right can we claim in Him, unless we are of 
 the number of those for whom He shall hereafter 
 say, " behold I and the children whom God hath 
 given Me." For however widely the benefits of 
 His death may be extended, yet "they who are 
 called received the promise of eternal inheritance." 
 It is for His sheep that " the Good Shepherd giveth 
 His life." There may be unknown effects upon 
 the whole race of man, which may attend this great 
 49 Ad. Eun. v. p. 302 [Gamier].
 
 AS MEDIATOR AMONG MEN. 297 
 
 event, but that which is revealed looks especially 
 to those who are fashioned into a new race, through 
 the overflowing- into their nature of that inexhaus- 
 tible stream of grace, which wells forth from the 
 humanity of Christ their Head. For " of His ful- 
 ness have all we received, and grace for grace." 
 Now, this reality of union with Christ is further 
 evidenced, because He not only " was delivered for 
 our offences," but "was raised again for our jus- 
 tification." Our salvation, that is, depends upon 
 the gifts which He bestowed, and the Intercession 
 which He has ascended on high to present. And 
 this Intercession is especially offered for His people. 
 So it was expressly declared just before He entered 
 upon this part of His work of Mediation. " I pray 
 for them : I pray not for the world, but for them 
 which Thou hast given Me." " Neither pray I 
 for these alone, but for them also, which shall be- 
 lieve on Me through their word." And therefore 
 Christ's acts of Mediation are connected through- 
 out the Epistles with " the Church, which is His 
 body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all." 
 For He " loved the Church, and gave Himself for 
 it," and He is " the Saviour of the body." These 
 passages indicate that our share in the benefits 
 which Christ attained, depends on that union with 
 Himself which He has bestowed upon us. And 
 this union does not mean merely the union which 
 He has with our nature, but the union which we 
 have with His. It depends not merely upon His
 
 298 CHRIST'S SPIRITUAL PRESENCE 
 
 being a man, but the Head of that family of men, 
 who are joined to Him by grace. It does not arise 
 from His having enabled humanity to put forth all 
 its strength, but from His having endowed it with 
 those higher powers w r hich Deity bestowed. The 
 whole seed of man had fallen, when He came into 
 it with that pure and perfect being, which by 
 reason of His being God He never tarnished, and 
 thus formed a new race out of the ruins of the old. 
 So that when He declares Himself to be the vine, 60 
 He speaks of that human nature into which all 
 Christian men are engrafted. 
 
 The assertion then of Our Lord's Presence ac- 
 cording to His human nature, and of our real 
 union with the manhood of Christ, is no technical 
 or unnecessary dogma, but that pregnant fact on 
 which is built our present regeneration and our 
 future hope. Herein is revealed to us the mys- 
 
 40 Vide S. Athan. Sermo Major de Fide. Mont. Coll. Nova, 
 ii. 18. S. Aug. in Joan. 80, 2. " St. Cyril reproveth their 
 speeches, which taught that only the Deity of Christ is the vine, 
 whereupon we by faith do depend as branches, and that neither 
 His flesh nor our bodies are comprised in this resemblance. 
 For doth any man doubt but that even from the flesh of Christ 
 our very bodies do receive that life, which shall make them 
 glorious at the latter day, and for which they are already ac- 
 counted parts of His blessed body ? Our corruptible bodies 
 could never live the life they shall live, were it not that here 
 they are joined with His body, which is incorruptible, and that 
 His is in ours as a cause of immortality a cause by removing 
 through the death and merit of His own flesh, that which hin- 
 dered the life of ours. Christ is therefore both as God and as 
 man that true vine, whereof we both spiritually and corporally 
 are branches." Eccles. Pol. v. 56, 9.
 
 AS MEDIATOR AMONG MEN. 299 
 
 terious truth, that He whose counsels were un- 
 alterably fixed before the worlds began, has been 
 pleased in the kingdom of grace to adopt that pre- 
 cedent, which His wisdom had sanctioned in the 
 kingdom of nature. For as the creation of the 
 sons of men was not simultaneous or immediate, 
 but one was chosen to be their common parent, so 
 is the world's renewal committed to a common 
 Head, into whom all the children of grace must, 
 one after another, be incorporated. Thus, as St. 
 Paul expresses it, was Adam " the figure of Him 
 that was to come." And as the perfection of na- 
 ture was displayed in the one, so was the perfec- 
 tion of grace exhibited in the other. For " the 
 first man is of the earth earthy, the second man is 
 the Lord from heaven." The principle of such 
 mode of action is, that in the model or type those 
 things should be displayed in their completeness, 
 which are afterwards to be transferred in their de- 
 gree to the transmitted forms which are derived 
 from it. Therefore, in Christ's manhood dwelt the 
 fulness of grace, as the plenitude of nature in 
 Adam. For what reach of observation could be 
 wanting to him, to w T hom the knowledge of all 
 animal life w r as intuitive ; and what power of intel- 
 lect could be deficient in him, in whom the gift of 
 language was an original endowment? The \vords 
 of the poet do but go along with our natural 
 feeling 
 
 " Adam the goodliest of his sons since born."
 
 300 CHRIST'S SPIRITUAL PRESENCE 
 
 And the records of antiquity express the same con- 
 conviction, for " Seth and Sem were in great hon- 
 our among men, and so was Adam above every 
 living thing in the creation." 51 If we look accord- 
 ingly to the mere gift of physical strength, we find 
 him to have withstood, longer than any other who 
 is on record, the approach of bodily decay. Taking 
 sixty-five as the period of that ripeness of age in 
 which Adam was created and none of the ante- 
 diluvian Patriarchs became more early a father 
 Adam's life would be equivalent to nearly one 
 thousand years. Thus was nature set forth in its 
 perfectness in a single type, before it was multi- 
 plied in its feeble possessors. 
 
 But far more is the same principle exhibited in 
 the Kingdom of Grace. " For if through the of- 
 fence of one many be dead; much more the grace 
 of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, 
 Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many." It was 
 to set forth a perfect pattern of renewed humanity 
 that Our Lord became incarnate, " for with power 
 He created the w r orld, but restored it by obedience." 
 By this means was perfected that example of human 
 nature, which from the time of its conception was 
 without weakness or defilement. But this perfec- 
 tion it had, not like Adam from the mere absence of 
 guilt, but from the presence of that Deity with 
 which it was personally one. That exhaustless 
 grace, which was to be the principle of life to the 
 81 Ecclesiasticus, xlix. 16.
 
 AS MEDIATOR AMONG MEN. 301 
 
 whole renewed family, had its fountain and well- 
 head in the manhood of the Son of God, before it 
 was portioned out to the innumerable generations 
 of His spiritual progeny. And thus " being made 
 perfect, He became the author of eternal salvation 
 unto all them that obey Him." To this end was 
 His man's nature so sorely exercised, that it might 
 be the seed of life to all His members. So much 
 He Himself tells us respecting His human nature, 
 declaring that He purified it, that it might be a 
 fit source of grace for all men : " For their sakes 
 I sanctify Myself, that they also might be sanctified 
 through the truth." And this sanctifying truth 
 is no other than that Divine Being, who applies 
 the virtue of His own manhood to His servants : 
 " Sanctify them through Thy truth, Thy Word is 
 truth." So that by union with His humanity does 
 He bestow upon all the members in their degree, 
 that which pertains perfectly to the Head of the 
 body by nature. As St. Athanasius expresses it, 
 the Eternal " Word was not weakened by taking 
 a body, as though for Himself He needed to re- 
 ceive grace, but rather He deified that which He 
 put on nay, He graciously bestowed it upon the 
 family of men." 52 Thus did His humanity become 
 " the leaven of the whole lump," that through itself 
 it might "sanctify the whole race of man." 53 It 
 w T as the city set on a hill, 54 in which all the kindred 
 
 52 Con. Arian. i. 42. M S. Gregor. Naz. Horn, xxxvi. 89. 
 
 * St. Hilary, on Matt. iv. 12.
 
 302 CHRIST'S SPIRITUAL PRESENCE 
 
 of the renewed are inhabitants. For this reason is 
 " the fellowship of the Holy Ghost" the very con- 
 summation of the Church's blessing, as implying 
 that through His power all renewed men have 
 communion with the body of Christ and with one 
 another. " Through spiritual food," says St. Leo, 
 " is this blessing received and taken, so that by 
 that heavenly nourishment we are transformed into 
 the very flesh of Him, who by His Incarnation 
 adopted ours." 55 It seems scarcely needful to put 
 in the caution, that the benefits of election to be 
 one with Christ, are forfeited by those whose indi- 
 vidual will is not conformed to the influence of the 
 Divine nature. The caution however is well ex- 
 pressed in a passage ascribed [unduly] to St. Cy- 
 prian : " The Sacraments in themselves cannot lose 
 their virtue, nor does the Divine majesty withdraw 
 itself in any way from its mysteries. But though 
 the Sacraments allow themselves to be taken and 
 handled by unworthy men, yet such persons can- 
 not be partakers of the Spirit. Therefore, are 
 these gifts the savour of life to one, of death to 
 another." 56 What is needful therefore is expressed 
 by the holy Apostle : seeing that " our life is hid 
 with Christ in God," let us "kill our members which 
 are upon the earth," that "when Christ which is" 
 our " life shall appear," we " also may appear with 
 Him in glory." 
 
 55 St. Leo, quoted in Poynet's Diallect. p. 101. 
 56 De Casna Domini.
 
 AS MEDIATOR AMONG MEN. 303 
 
 The necessity then of Christ's Presence accord- 
 ing to His humanity, rests upon His being that 
 Pattern Man, in whom renewed manhood shone 
 forth in its brightest colours, by reason of those 
 supernatural endowments with which it was in- 
 vested. So that it is essential that we should be 
 as truly united to Him by grace, as we were to the 
 first Adam by nature. And this supernatural per- 
 fection of the human character was set forth in His 
 whole earthly pilgrimage. If Adam showed the 
 strength of our nature by multitude of days, the 
 new man " in a few years fulfilled a long life." His 
 childhood was " wiser than His teachers ;" as He 
 passed through every age, He sanctified each; 57 He 
 glorified every relation of man's life ; and purified 
 that material world which man had polluted. 58 
 Was there in Adam the undiminished strength of 
 natural life in the Man Christ there was the gift 
 " to have life in Himself," even for the quickening 
 
 57 S. Iren. ii. 22, 4 ; iii. 18, 7. S. Greg. vol. 3, pt. 2, p. 6. 
 
 58 " Our conception being the root, (as it were) the very 
 groundsill of our nature that He might go to the root, and 
 repair our nature from the very foundation, thither He went : 
 that what had been there defiled and decayed by the first Adam, 
 might by the second be cleansed and set right again. He was 
 not idle all the nine months He was in the womb ; but then and 
 there He even eat out the core of corruption, that cleft to our 
 nature and us, and made both us and it an unpleasing object in 
 the sight of God. And what came of this ? We that were ab- 
 horred by God were by this means made beloved in Him. He 
 cannot, we may be sure, account evil of that nature, that is now 
 become the nature of His own Son His now no less than 
 ours." Bishop Andrews, Sermon ix. on the Nativity.
 
 304 CHRIST'S SPIRITUAL PRESENCE 
 
 of others. His miracles were but the outbreak of 
 that innate vitality, which will quicken the bodies 
 of all men at the Last Day. Diseases, those mimic 
 likenesses of death, fled before Him even in His 
 passage through the world : " I must do cures to- 
 day and to-morrow, and the third day I shall be 
 perfected." This mastery over the enemies of life 
 was a natural indication that in Him was its prin- 
 ciple of conservation. And even more wide than 
 the rational kingdom was His exercise of power, as 
 though, perhaps, to harmonize with that myste- 
 rious law which has bound man to the inferior as 
 well as the superior creation, and which shows the 
 relation which matter has to mind. Those mira- 
 cles which are least accordant with our expectation, 
 such as affected the animal or vegetable world, 89 
 may have been designed to prove that, as corrup- 
 tion can spread upwards from the lower forms of 
 being, even till it mingle itself with the life of 
 man, so in Him was there a contrary principle, 
 which could spread downwards from its seat of 
 empire into the lowest stages of existence, and 
 which (though used indeed for purposes of punish- 
 ment) would not be less powerful to preserve than 
 to destroy. 
 
 And now, therefore, may we draw the conclu- 
 sion to which this whole Chapter conducts us, and 
 affirm that Our Lord's acts of Mediation towards 
 men, as well as -His Intercession with the Father, 
 59 St. Matthew, viii. 32 ; xxi. 19.
 
 AS MEDIATOR AMONG MEX. 305 
 
 are a present fact in the world of life, and not a 
 mere fictitious representation. To be accounted 
 the bond of union between different natures is to 
 discharge the part of a Mediator to be their real 
 bond of union is to be one. Now, Christ did not 
 undertake this office as a legal fiction ; He is the 
 " One Mediator," because in Him Godhead and 
 Manhood were really united. And if He has still 
 the same character, it must be in fact and not in 
 name Godhead and Manhood must still be con- 
 nected by His actual intervention. While He is 
 one by nature with the Everlasting Father, He 
 must be one also by grace with those inferior 
 members to whom He has vouchsafed to become 
 Head, that He might be the " Saviour of the 
 body." For the gifts of grace do not become less 
 necessary through the lapse of ages : every gene- 
 ration of Adam's children has equal need of that 
 external principle of supernatural renewal, which 
 flows from the humanity of the Son of God into 
 His brethren. The acts of His human, must con- 
 tinue therefore as certainly as those of His Divine 
 nature, and consequently that Presence of His 
 manhood, whereby " we are members of His body, 
 of His flesh, and of His bones." Thus does the 
 truth of His Mediation imply our actual union 
 with His man's nature. We may employ the 
 argument by which St. Paul shows that the intru- 
 sion of the Jewish Law could not supersede the 
 more comprehensive Covenant which had been 
 
 x
 
 306 CHRIST'S SPIRITUAL PRESENCE 
 
 already pledged to Abraham. " A mediator is 
 not a mediator of one, but God is one." Media- 
 tion i. e. implies of necessity the presence of two 
 parties ; if God's holy nature consents to be joined 
 to ours, the very terms imply that the actual union 
 of our inferior being must be included. So that 
 if Christ be still Mediator, there must be the per- 
 petual presence among us of His man's nature, 
 whereby He who is one with the Father becomes 
 one also with His brethren. The chain is not 
 complete, unless as certain as His union with the 
 one, is His communion with the other. And if 
 this truth be forgotten, there awaits us the danger 
 of those two alternate heresies, between which, no 
 less than in ancient days, the Church's doctrine is 
 our road of safety. For if Christ's manhood be not 
 truly present with us, then does our reference to 
 Him become a mere union with Deity at large, and 
 not a specific relation to Him who was crucified. 
 And why can it be thought, that He whom we 
 serve does not now employ towards us the inter- 
 vention of man's nature, save because it is main- 
 tained that He does not now net as man is not as 
 really man, as He was in the days of His humilia- 
 tion? His manhood is supposed to be something 
 which we read of in books, and remember as a 
 proof of His condescension, but which is not now 
 acting upon us through the world of spirit. And 
 what then must be thought of that body which 
 suffered on the Cross, but that either it was a ere-
 
 AS MEDIATOR AMONG MEN. 307 
 
 ated substance, invested by God's mercy with more 
 than mortal power and goodness, that it might 
 accomplish that sacrifice which was needed for man- 
 kind which is the Arian hypothesis or else that 
 the Father of all displayed Himself in man's form 
 by a transient and occasional manifestation, and 
 (that work being over) has again retreated into the 
 abyss of His unapproachable Godhead? And this 
 is the more subtile heresy of Sabellius. On either 
 hypothesis Christ might, indeed, be nominally an 
 object of worship, because set forth by the Eternal 
 Father as an image (p. 165) in which man might 
 reverence His perfections, as the Heathen adored 
 the representations of their gods. But the worship 
 which on the Arian or Sabellian supposition is due 
 to Christ, would only be that secondary honour 
 which was assigned Him by the will and appoint- 
 ment of the Father not such primary allegiance as 
 is due by nature to the co-equal image of God. 
 So that He who in the body of a man suffered on 
 the Cross, would not be the very same Being who 
 reigns by His own right in heaven. And thus the 
 reality of our Lord's Mediation would be lost. 
 For this depends on that personal diversity in 
 the Ever-Blessed Trinity which allows of a per- 
 sonal union between God and man. Unless this 
 be conceded, He who died for us on the Cross 
 is not truly the self-same Being who makes inter- 
 cession for us in heaven. "It is Christ that died, 
 yea, rather that is risen again, who is even at the
 
 308 CHRIST'S SPIRITUAL PRESENCE 
 
 right hand of God, who also maketh intercession 
 for us." This truth is our only safeguard, as well 
 against the refined infidelity of an intellectual 
 heathenism, as against the superstition of a vulgar 
 idolatry. For to what would the Arian suppo- 
 sition lead men, save to trust in the Mediation of a 
 created being, and thus to reverence the creature 
 rather than the Creator. And this was the very 
 stain of Pagan worship. And what is the tendency 
 of Sabellian error, save to lose sight of any mode 
 of Mediation, and in the pride of intellect to betake 
 itself to the abstract contemplation of God? And 
 the result in this case would be the bare Theism of 
 the philosophic, or the dreamy Pantheism of the 
 poetic mind. Against such errors, then, the Church 
 opposes that truth of Christ's Presence as man, 
 which results from the reality of a Divine Mediator. 
 Christ is truly present with His people both as God 
 and man : the Presence of the one nature is secured 
 by the power of the other. Thus has man's nature 
 been raised above itself, because endowed in His 
 Person with a grace which is supernatural. And, 
 therefore, can the child of the Church Catholic look 
 with confidence in the hour of trial to the Presence 
 of its Head. His supplications are not offered to 
 any created Mediator, nor yet to any mere Spirit of 
 the Universe an indefinite abstraction of fancy 
 for God is in Christ, reconciling to Himself the 
 world. To Him can prayer ascend with confi- 
 dence : Come, Thou Lord of life, Thou lover of
 
 AS MEDIATOR AMONG MEN. 309 
 
 souls, in the truth of Thy man's nature, with the 
 perfectness of Thy man's sympathy, come and join 
 Thyself to my soul, that I also may be joined for 
 ever to Thee. " As for me, I will behold Thy pre- 
 sence in righteousness, and when I awake up after 
 Thy likeness, I shall be satisfied with it."
 
 310 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 CHRIST IS PRESENT WITH MEN IN HIS CHURCH 
 OR BODY MYSTICAL. 
 
 THE nature and importance of Christ's Presence 
 has been exhibited in the preceding Chapter. He 
 is present with His people through His man's na- 
 ture; not however by material contact, but by 
 spiritual power. And through this Presence does 
 He act as the Head of the renewed race as the 
 second Adam of restored humanity. The question 
 which next suggests itself is, by what means man 
 may profit through this great blessing; how each 
 individual may obtain a part in that work of Medi- 
 ation, which was wrought in Expiation on the 
 Cross ; which is still discharged by Intercession in 
 heaven ; and whose sphere of operation is as ex- 
 tensive as that Presence upon earth, which the 
 God-man vouchsafes through spiritual power. For 
 this end something is wanting plainly on our part, 
 as well as something on the part of God. But the 
 qualifications which are required on our part the 
 efficacy of faith, the importance of love will not 
 be touched upon in this place, because they belong 
 to a different inquiry. For these pertain to man,
 
 CHKIST PRESENT IX HIS CHURCH. 311 
 
 who is the subject in whom religious feelings exist; 
 though they be God's gift, yet they are a gift 
 which exists within and not without us; their na- 
 ture and importance follow from consideration of 
 our inward constitution. On the circumstance that 
 each man has a true personal existence, and that to 
 each is committed the awful power of choosing or 
 refusing Christ, depends the necessity of individual 
 faith and love for each man's salvation. But on 
 this question we are not at present occupied : what 
 is said here refers to what is done without, not to 
 what is done within us; to Christ as a real being 
 external to our thoughts, as the object of our faith 
 who exists outside of our minds. For it was at 
 first proposed to treat the objective not the subjec- 
 tive part of religion ; not to inquire what changes 
 were necessary in man, who is the subject of re- 
 ligion, but to show that there was an object above 
 and around man, the reality of whose existence it 
 was essential to believe. This object is Christ Our 
 Lord : " Christ who died, yea, rather who is risen 
 from the dead, who is also at the right hand of 
 God, who also maketh intercession for us." And 
 since His Intercession and the Presence of His 
 man's nature are realities existing outside of our- 
 selves not mere fancies, but actual objects ex- 
 ternal to us it is necessary to ask in what way 
 these general advantages are so consigned to in- 
 dividuals, that they may be the separate portion 
 of single souls. The question is, not what is ne-
 
 312 CHRIST IS PRESENT IN HIS 
 
 cessary on our part, whether faith or love, but what 
 is the condition or quality in these external realities 
 themselves, which renders them available for our 
 individual apprehension. 
 
 Now, on this subject it may be said in general, 
 that our union with the manhood of Christ, or our 
 participation in His Presence, is brought about in 
 our union with the Church, which is His body 
 mystical. It is not that one of these is a means 
 or channel through which we approach the other, 
 but that since the two processes are identical, it is 
 impossible to divide them. For that which joins 
 men to Christ's mystical body the Church, is their 
 union with His man's nature ; and their means of 
 union with His man's nature is bestowed in His 
 Church or body mystical. This will become more 
 evident, when it is shown that the Sacraments, 
 which are the means of binding us to the mystical 
 body of Christ, derive their efficacy from the in- 
 fluence of His body natural. And hence the im- 
 possibility of answering a question which is some- 
 times asked, whether men are joined to Christ by 
 being joined to His Church, or joined to His 
 Church by being joined to Him. It would be a 
 parallel question to ask, whether we were sharers 
 in Adam's nature because we were men, or men 
 because we were sharers in Adam's nature. The 
 two relations hang inseparably together. By the 
 mystical body of Christ, is meant the whole family 
 of those who by the Holy Ghost are united in
 
 CHURCH OK BODY MYSTICAL. 313 
 
 Church ordinances to His man's nature. Our real 
 union with each is what gives us a part in the 
 other. 
 
 This intimacy of union between Christ and the 
 Church may be gathered in the first place from the 
 direct words of Scripture. Why should the Church 
 be called a body, and especially why should it be 
 called the body of Christ, did not some relation 
 bind it to that body of Christ, which came into ex- 
 istence at His Incarnation? It may be answered, 
 that the Church is spoken of as a body, because 
 thought of as a whole through the abstracting 
 power of reason. Yet why should it be called the 
 body of the Lord ? The subjects of an earthly 
 Prince might be spoken of as making up together 
 the body of his realm, but who would call them 
 the body of their King ? Yet such language is 
 repeatedly employed, and under various forms, re- 
 specting Christians in Holy Scripture. The very 
 harmony of its metaphorical expressions implies, 
 that they rest upon some real relation. When 
 Christ declares Himself the vine, and His people 
 the branches, this is because the trees of the field 
 have an organized life. If the Church is His bride, 
 this is because the marriage bond savours so 
 strongly of an actual union. So that a real, and 
 not merely a metaphorical conjunction must be de- 
 signed, w r hen we read, " ye are the body of Christ, 
 and members in particular." 
 
 NOW T , since the mention of " body " leads us
 
 314 CHRIST IS PRESENT IN HIS 
 
 plainly to the human part of Our Lord's being (for 
 God is a spirit), therefore whatever relation is im- 
 plied in the application of this term to the Church, 
 must plainly connect it with Our Lord's human 
 nature. And the manner in which St. Paul trans- 
 fers what is applicable to Our Lord's actual body 
 to His body mystical, implies that the one of these 
 is truly dependent on the other. Thus does the 
 natural affection which each man bears to himself, 
 pass on into Our Lord's affection to His people : 
 " No man ever yet hated His own flesh, but nou- 
 risheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the 
 Church. For we are members of His body ; of 
 His flesh, and of His bones." " This is a great 
 mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the 
 Church." And, therefore, He is " the Head, from 
 w r hich all the body by joints and bands" has " nou- 
 rishment ministered." And so identified is the 
 man Christ Jesus and His spiritual members, that 
 the name which belongs individually to Him, is 
 used for them in their collective character. Hence 
 He who, as the Apostle tells us, " gave gifts unto 
 men," was Himself, as the Psalmist expresses it, 
 their receiver. When St. Paul is arguing that the 
 promise to Abraham was not pledged to all the 
 races which descended from him, but to one only 
 of the families of which he was parent, he compre- 
 hends the spiritual progeny of Abraham under the 
 name of Christ : l " For as the body is one and hath 
 
 1 Vide supra, p. 23. The same interpretation is given to 
 Galatianc, iii. 16, by St. Augustin on Psalm cxlii. 3.
 
 CHURCH OR BODY MYSTICAL. 315 
 
 many members, and all the members of that one 
 body being many are one body, so also is Christ." 
 It seems unquestionable, therefore, that some real 
 relation must bind together that body natural which 
 He took by His Incarnation, and His body mys- 
 tical the Church, so that our union with the one 
 must be a ground of union with the other. 2 
 
 The intimate connexion by which the natural 
 body of Christ is bound to His body mystical, be- 
 comes still more evident if we advert to one pecu- 
 liar characteristic, which the one derives from the 
 other. What is the cause and import of that unity 
 of the Church, which is directly asserted in Holy 
 Writ, and which has been delivered to us as so 
 fundamental a doctrine of our faith, as to be made 
 an Article of the Creed ? " There is one body and 
 one spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your 
 calling." Unless St. Paul's words are to go for 
 nothing, there must plainly be some reason why 
 
 2 " The Church is in Christ, as Eve was in Adam. Yea by 
 grace we are every of us in Christ and in His Church, as by 
 nature we are in those our first parents. God made Eve of the 
 rib of Adam. And His Church He frameth out of the very 
 flesh, the very wounded and bleeding side of the Son of Man. 
 His body crucified and His blood shed for the life of the world, 
 are the true elements of that heavenly being, which maketh us 
 such as Himself is, of whom we come. For which cause the 
 words of Adam may be fitly the words of Christ concerning His 
 Church, ' flesh of my flesh, and bone of my bones,' a true native 
 extract out of mine own body. So that in Him, even according 
 to His manhood, we, according to our heavenly being, are as 
 branches in that root out of which they grow." Eccles. Pol. 
 v. 56. 7.
 
 316 CHRIST IS PRESENT IN HIS 
 
 this unity in the Church's external form is put forth 
 in so emphatic a manner. Or again, " we, being 
 many, are one body in Christ." And this unity of 
 the Church's body has in all ages been esteemed 
 essential to Christian belief. The assertion of it, 
 as an original Article of the Creed, is the testimony 
 of that universal community, which Christ Our 
 Lord promised to guard from fatal error. It would 
 have been to corrupt the principles of the Gospel, 
 if the collective voice of Christians had proclaimed 
 among its fundamental verities what was either 
 false or futile. Yet if the unity of the Church 
 were nothing but that those who bear the same 
 name may be classed together, as we bestow the 
 name of Platonists on those who followed the dis- 
 ciple of Socrates, its assertion as a doctrine would 
 be altogether unmeaning. But suppose that some- 
 thing further is designed: on what can it be de- 
 pendent ? Was it merely an arbitrary rule, im- 
 posed as a technical restraint upon the extension 
 of the Christian body ? Could it be meant to 
 shackle its advance by subjecting it to such re- 
 stricting conditions as at present interfere with the 
 growth of the Church of Christ, in many countries 
 where it receives State assistance ? If such a thing 
 could be thought possible, yet the absence of any 
 original rules for the Church's general government, 
 shows that it was not attempted. By a noiseless 
 and simultaneous growth did it spring up like Solo- 
 mon's temple in the beauty of holiness, till it filled
 
 CHURCH OR BODY MYSTICAL. 317 
 
 the mighty precincts of the Roman Empire. For 
 three centuries at least, there was no reference for 
 purposes of government to any earthly head, while 
 yet the Church's body seemed as though it were in- 
 stinct with a single soul. From whence could come 
 this marvellous co-operation? Its inconsistency with 
 the acts of men bespeaks at once its Divine pa- 
 rentage. The Church is one because it is the body 
 of Christ, and because it is quickened by His Spi- 
 ritual Presence. Through spiritual life does His 
 Body natural act upon mankind, and become ger- 
 minant of that which is called His Body Mystical, 
 from its relation to Himself. It was predicted that 
 u He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, 
 and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His 
 hand. He shall see of the travail of His soul, and 
 shall be satisfied." In this manner it was that He 
 should " divide the spoil with the strong." Thus 
 has God made Him u the first-born among many 
 brethren." Christ's Humanity, that stone cut out 
 of the mine of man's nature without his co-opera- 
 tion, has swelled up into a mountain. Its cement- 
 ing principle is that quickening influence of the 
 second man, by which He lives in all His members. 
 Thus do they trace to Christ's manhood their spi- 
 ritual life, as to Adam their natural parentage. 3 
 
 3 " The only sure anchor of all our hopes for a joyful resur- 
 rection unto the life of glory, is the mystical union which must 
 be wrought here on earth betwixt Christ's human nature, glo- 
 rified, and our mortal and dissoluble nature. The Divine 
 nature, indeed, is the prime fountain of life to all, but though
 
 318 CHRIST IS PRESENT IX HIS 
 
 We need not wonder then that the Church's 
 unity is declared to be a fact, and that its confession 
 is a fundamental doctrine. That the Church is one 
 body results from organization, not from enactment ; 
 it is Christ's body, wrought out through the sacrifice 
 of that manhood, which he offered on the Cross. 
 From the oneness of His body which is slain, re- 
 sults the oneness of His body which is sanctified. 
 Neither is the profession of the Church's unity the 
 mere admission of an external appearance, but the 
 belief in an inward verity. It is to recognize the 
 presence of that spiritual power, which spreads 
 itself from Christ Our Lord throughout all mem- 
 bers of His mystical body. In this presence con- 
 sists their life : "If any man have not the spirit of 
 Christ, he is none of His." " But if the Spirit of 
 Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in 
 you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall 
 also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that 
 dwelleth in you." From this central source, then, 
 flows all the life of renewed humanity. And that 
 its being and harmony might have their origin in 
 the highest of all perfections, and be truly the re- 
 flection upon earth of w r hat is heavenly and divine, 
 therefore its principle of connexion is a counterpart 
 here below of that primary union, which existed 
 before all creation, and which is the grand type 
 
 inexhaustible in itself, yet a fountain whereof we cannot drink, 
 save as it is derived unto us through the human nature of 
 Christ." Jackson's Comment, on Creed, xi. 3, 10.
 
 CHURCH OR BODY MYSTICAL. 319 
 
 and cause of concord and law. For the Mediator 
 promised to be in His servants, even as He Himself 
 is the seat of that mysterious indwelling of the 
 Eternal Father, whereby the w r hole Blessed Trinity 
 is united in the never-ending perfection of an actual 
 oneness : " I in them, and Thou in Me, that they 
 may be made perfect in one." And again, " that 
 they all may be one ; as Thou, Father, art in Me, 
 and I in Thee, that they also may be one in Us." 
 Not, of course, that we can speak of that union in 
 which men partake, as the same with that ineffable 
 union which binds together those Three Blessed 
 Persons who are numerically one. 4 We can affirm 
 only that the union in Christ which exists among 
 men, has borrowed something from the ineffable 
 union of the Divine nature. 5 As the perfection of 
 God's Being is the true cause and source of every- 
 thing perfect which the world exhibits, so in the 
 oneness of the renewed family in Christ we discern 
 traces of that mysterious unity which underlies all 
 things. " At that day ye shall know that I am in 
 My Father, and ye in Me, and I in you." And 
 therefore "our fellowship is with the Father, and 
 with His Son Jesus Christ." For the whole Three 
 Persons of the Blessed Godhead take part in that 
 work of mercy for which the Mediator became 
 Incarnate. For the Holy Ghost, as St. Augustin 
 expresses it, " acts through the whole Church, as 
 
 4 Vide Fourth Lateran Council, Can. ii. Hard, vol. vii. p. 18. 
 5 St. Ambrose de Fide, iv. 10, 128.
 
 320 CHRIST IS PRESENT IN HIS 
 
 the soul in all the members of one body." 6 And 
 " the Father Himself loveth you ;" while the Son 
 is " Head over all things to the Church, which is 
 His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all." 
 Thus does unity stoop down from the higher to 
 the lower nature, and the Church on Earth is the 
 true and real manifestation of the Kingdom of 
 Heaven. Not that our union in spirit with God 
 has superseded or taken the place of that personal 
 oneness, whereby in Christ Our Lord the manhood 
 is united to God. This were the Sabellian heresy, 
 which would represent the Deity as manifesting 
 Himself only in three relations, whereof each suc- 
 ceeded and superseded its predecessor. For the 
 union of Godhead with manhood in Christ is a real, 
 perfect, and lasting union, of which the union of 
 Christ with men is the appointed effect. So that 
 these mysterious relations are cumulative and not 
 consequent only, leading down by successive steps 
 to things on earth from things in heaven. 7 
 
 6 Sermo cclxvii. 4. 
 
 7 This wonderful chain of connexion is set forth by Lord 
 Bacon in his Confession of Faith : " The Word did not only 
 take flesh, or was joined to flesh, but was made flesh, though 
 without confusion of substance or nature : so as the Eternal Son 
 of God and the Ever-Blessed Son of Mary was one Person so 
 one, as the Blessed Virgin may be truly and catholically called 
 Dcipara, the Mother of God so one, as there is no unity in 
 universal nature, not that of the soul and body of man so per- 
 fect ; for the Three Heavenly Unities, whereof that is the 
 second, exceed all natural unities ; that is, the unity of the 
 Three Persons in the Godhead ; the unity of God and man in 
 Christ ; and the unity of Christ and the Church the Holy
 
 CHURCH OR BODY MYSTICAL. 321 
 
 Thus does the impulsive wave of heavenly con- 
 cord extend itself to the race of man, from its 
 primary source in the bosom of incommunicable 
 Godhead. To assert the truth of Christ's Pre- 
 sence the reality of that union which binds the 
 whole mystic body of His Church to the manhood 
 of the Incarnate Word is to maintain the reality 
 of His Mediation, and the absolute necessity of 
 that bond by which heaven and earth are united. 
 For it is a necessary result of the cardinal truth 
 of the Christian system the truth, i. ., that all 
 gifts and blessings are introduced into our race 
 through the intervention of that nobler member, 
 who connects it with the Almighty. And herein 
 is the Christian scheme of Mediation opposed to 
 that theory of Eationalism, which rests upon the 
 capacities of nature. The principle of Eational- 
 ism is, that man's improvement may be effected 
 through those gifts which God bestowed upon him 
 by creation, inasmuch as sufficient means of inter- 
 course with the Supreme Spirit were provided by 
 the law of his nature. Whereas the Church deals 
 with man as a fallen race, whose original means of 
 intercourse with God have been obstructed, and 
 which needs a new and supernatural channel for 
 the entrance of heavenly gifts. And this channel 
 
 Ghost being the worker of both these latter unities ; for by the 
 Holy Ghost was Christ Incarnate, and quickened in flesh ; and 
 by the Holy Ghost was man regenerated, and quickened in the 
 spirit." Work*, vol. iii. p. 123. 
 
 Y
 
 322 CHRIST IS PRESENT IN HIS 
 
 has been provided through the Man Jesus Christ. 
 In His person did Godhead enter manhood, that 
 through this one perfect type of humanity, it might 
 " leaven the whole lump." Thus does the law of 
 grace supersede the law of nature. If man had 
 never fallen, to inherit the nature of the first Adam 
 had been a sufficient means of communion with 
 God. But because the natural means of commu- 
 nication have been cut off, that supernatural union 
 is requisite which we obtain by participating the 
 nature of the second Adam. Now, it is for the 
 diffusion of this renewed and renewing manhood, 
 that those media have been provided, whereby the 
 Son of Man communicates Himself to His bre- 
 thren. All the ordinances of the Church, its hal- 
 lowed things, places, and persons its worship and 
 sacraments are a series of instruments whereby 
 the sanctified manhood of the Mediator diffuses 
 itself as a life-giving seed through the mass of hu- 
 manity. Thus does He continue to effect that 
 work through His man's nature, which He avowed 
 to be the very object of His earthly being : " for 
 their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also might 
 be sanctified through the truth." And for this 
 office are external media as requisite, as were body 
 and limbs to the truth of His human being. As 
 He could not be a man without that substantial 
 existence which revealed Him to the senses of 
 mankind, so He could not be the Head of the 
 Body Mystical, without the use of those actual
 
 CHURCH OR BODY MYSTICAL. 323 
 
 media of intercourse, whereby He unites His living 
 members to Himself. 
 
 The importance, then, of external ordinances re- 
 sults from that fact on which Christianity is depen- 
 dent, that through the Incarnation of the Mediator, 
 the corrupted race of man has been regenerated by 
 a heavenly nature. Yet this gracious provision is 
 often received with repugnance by those for whose 
 benefit it is intended. Many who are called Chris- 
 tians, and who profess to value above all things 
 the Mediation of Christ, consider themselves ac- 
 tually injured, because this "new and living way" 
 has been opened to them " through the veil, that is 
 to say His flesh." The opportunity of approach- 
 ing God through the Man Christ Jesus, which is 
 given to them through the ordinances of His mys- 
 tic body, seems an encroachment on that right of 
 access which they before had, through the free ex- 
 ercise of their own thoughts. Before a country is 
 marked out by roads, any one may make his own 
 way through w r oods and over commons to the royal 
 dwelling ; but the institution of highways abridges 
 the previous liberty of approach. This seems to 
 be the feeling of many in regard to the Mediation 
 of Christ. They wish to approach God in their 
 own way, as mind speaks to mind, without resort- 
 ing to that circuitous method, which requires their 
 union with the Church. But the appointment of a 
 Mediator with the Father does not diminish men's 
 means of access, unless the opportunity of ap-
 
 324 CHRIST IS PRESENT IN HIS 
 
 proach, which existed before, is denied them. Now, 
 since the Gospel is offered only to those to whom 
 it is communicated [for " how shall they hear with- 
 out a preacher,"], the condition of persons to whom 
 Mediation is unknown remains unaffected by its an- 
 nouncement. Wherever graces appear in the chil- 
 dren of men, we know that they come down only 
 from the " Father of Lights," and we rejoice that 
 
 " Light can find its way 
 To regions furthest from the fount of day." 
 
 Such influence was visible in former times among 
 men who were blinded by ignorance, and it may 
 be found at present among men who are blinded 
 by prejudice. And yet it is impossible to deny 
 that those who reject the Doctrine of Mediation, 
 now that it is revealed, are in danger of rejecting 
 Christ. For what is their conduct in reality, but 
 the very crime which is forbidden in the Second 
 Commandment ? The First Commandment inhi- 
 bited the substitution of other Gods, Baal or Ash- 
 taroth, in place of Jehovah. The Second forbade 
 to worship Jehovah in other ways than that which 
 was " ordained by Angels in the hand of a Me- 
 diator." It was the place of this Mediator, Moses, 
 which the Golden Calf was intended to supply. 
 The crime of Israel was, that when the Most High 
 had appointed a mode of access, men thought that 
 they could approach Him better through their own 
 inventions. And what else is the result, when men
 
 CHURCH OR BODY MYSTICAL. 325 
 
 think that they can reach over the God-man, the 
 one channel of intercourse between earth and hea- 
 ven, and address themselves by a shorter and more 
 direct approach to God ? This course may be 
 adopted without professed disbelief in Christ, if 
 men neglect that channel of approach which He 
 has opened to the Father. For the notion of com- 
 muning with God, the Eternal and Infinite Spirit, 
 through the immediate action of our own spirits, 
 independently of that mode of coming to Him 
 which has been provided through the manhood of 
 Christ, tends to a denial of the whole principle of 
 His Mediation. What does it matter whether men 
 call the object of their worship Christ, and profess 
 belief in Him, if the only thing to which they 
 direct their thoughts, is the ultimate and incom- 
 municable Godhead ? What more remarkably dis- 
 tinguishes the Mediator from the Father and the 
 Holy Ghost than that they are not, whereas He is, 
 personally united to manhood. So that in ap- 
 proaching Him, we cannot overpass His man's 
 nature it is our natural channel of communion 
 with Him. What is addressed directly by man's 
 spirit to the Ultimate Spirit of the Universe, is not 
 addressed to Christ, or if addressed to Him in 
 name, it is not addressed to Him as Mediator, but 
 only through His general participation in the na- 
 ture of Godhead. 
 
 Here then lies the error of those who, like the 
 Quakers, reject or at least undervalue those exter-
 
 326 CHRIST IS PRESENT IN HIS 
 
 nal means, whereby the Son of Man unites Himself 
 to His spiritual members. The disuse of Sacra- 
 ments is only one point in that general system, 
 which looks rather to the actings of our own mind 
 than to the agency of an Incarnate Mediator. 
 Now, without judging individuals, who must stand 
 or fall to their own master, it may safely be affirmed 
 that the ultimate tendency of this system, however 
 it may retain the phraseology of the Gospel, is 
 to substitute natural religion for revealed. Our 
 irresistible conviction respecting the acting of 
 spirits leads us to conclude that the thought, 
 wish, and conviction of our own minds is at all 
 times present as an object to the all-wise Spirit 
 of God. Do our souls then desire to hold inter- 
 course with the great primary Spirit of the Uni- 
 verse, there needs, so far as nature tells us, no 
 intervening link : what exists as an intellectual 
 reality in us, is a real object to the knowledge 
 of the Most High. But to build on such inter- 
 course as this, is to rest only on those principles 
 which belong to us by creation. It is to employ 
 mere natural means for intercourse with God. So 
 that to make it an objection against the Church 
 system, that its media of communion are not sim- 
 ple, natural, and immediate that they do not 
 commend themselves to human judgment, but tax 
 our faith, and introduce something external be- 
 tween us and God is in reality to complain that 
 the system of nature has been superseded by the
 
 CHURCH OK BODY MYSTICAL. 327 
 
 system of Mediation. For when Christ's manhood 
 was made a bridge 8 between heaven and earth, 
 whereby the purity and exaltation of the Divine 
 nature might be brought into contact with the in- 
 firmity and defilement of ours, an external channel 
 of communication was substituted for the imme- 
 diate intercourse of mind with mind. So long as 
 man's mind speaks immediately to the Universal 
 Mind which pervades all things, its inner actions 
 are realities in themselves, which are contemplated 
 at once by the Supreme Essence ; but if there be a 
 Being external to us, through whom all intercourse 
 must pass a single Being, characterized by all 
 the reality which depends on material existence 
 then must something be superadded to those mere 
 inward actions of faith and love, which are all that 
 nature could point out as the means of intercourse 
 between one spirit and another. This new medium 
 of intercourse, this channel of communication be- 
 tween earth and heaven, has been provided exclu- 
 sively by His gift, who of His free mercy undertook 
 to be Mediator between God and man. The road 
 of access which is opened to us in the system of 
 the Church's ordinances is not in any degree of our 
 making : we need to use, but we do not contribute 
 at all to prepare it. The work of Mediation is 
 Christ's work from beginning to end : when He 
 took our nature, He did it by actual union when 
 
 8 " 2i>, o rrjv ryrjv icat TOV ovpavov rye(j)vpwaas TW cvytu) aov aw[j.<ni. n 
 
 S. Greg. Thaum. in Pet. de Inc. ii. 9, 3.
 
 328 CHRIST IS PRESENT IN HIS 
 
 He joins His members to Himself, they are really, 
 though by immaterial and spiritual influence, en- 
 grafted into His purified humanity. His members 
 have actually "put on the new man," and "as 
 many as have been baptized into Jesus Christ have 
 put on Christ." 
 
 It would be unjust, of course, to attribute to the 
 whole body of Quakers any conscious design of 
 rejecting Christ : their notion no doubt is that He 
 is present to their thoughts, and in this way they 
 suppose that they make Him their means of access. 
 But this is to forget that the principle of His 
 Mediation is not that His man's nature is the ulti- 
 mate object of worship, but that it is the sole road 
 of approach to the Father. His Manhood is " the 
 door" through which we are admitted to His God- 
 head. When the Church system is opposed to 
 that of Eationalism, the actions of His manhood 
 are in reality opposed to those of our own spirits. 
 The channel of union which has been provided 
 through grace is opposed to that which existed by 
 nature. What is needed, therefore, is some real 
 agency on His part, whereby this merciful inter- 
 vention may be effected. He must actually stretch 
 forth the hand of His humanity towards us, before 
 we can effectually stretch forth the hand of faith 
 towards Him. Adam is not merely an object to 
 men's thoughts, like the Angels of God ; he is 
 bound to his descendants by the true but unknown 
 tie of paternity : if Christ our Mediator be the
 
 CHURCH OR BODY MYSTICAL. 329 
 
 second Adam, there must be as real an influence, 
 by which all His members must hold to His man's 
 nature. And if this union is not brought about, 
 as Bationalists suppose, through those means which 
 had their existence through Creation, it must be 
 effected through media which are beside and foreign 
 to nature. That spiritual power, whereby His 
 humanity becomes the seminal principle of His 
 body mystical, must act through such supernatural 
 agency as it pleases Him to adopt. So that the 
 ancient writers, as Bishop Taylor says, speak of 
 " the Blessed Sacrament" as " the extension of the 
 Incarnation." No wonder, then, that in the palmy 
 days of the Quaker sect, when its principles were 
 fully developed, their denial of those ordinances 
 whereby the God-man discharges His office of 
 Mediation should have led them into expressions 9 
 inconsistent with any belief in His real existence. 
 The characteristic doctrine of the Gospel, that God 
 and man were permanently made one in the Person 
 of Christ, was superseded by a dreamy notion of 
 the abstract intercourse between the minds of faith- 
 ful men, and the governing Mind of the Universe. 
 The tendency of such a system is to substitute 
 Rationalism for the Gospel; in place, that is, of 
 the Revelation through a Mediator, to fall back 
 
 9 " George Fox says that if there be any other Christ but He 
 that was crucified within, He is the false Christ. This Christ 
 that was risen and crucified within devils and reprobates make 
 a talk of Him without." Leslie's Snake in the Grass, Sfc., 
 sec. 10, p. 67.
 
 330 CHRIST IS PRESENT IN HIS 
 
 upon the universal revelation of nature. And since 
 the Doctrine of the Incarnation for the first time 
 revealed the personal character of God, Ration- 
 alism itself is but the entrance to that deeper abyss 
 of Pantheism, towards which the rejection of the 
 sacramental system has a tendency to conduct. 
 
 The custom, therefore, of putting inward acts 
 of faith and love in place of those external means 
 whereby Christ vouchsafes to join men to His 
 manhood, is in reality to make these the channel 
 of mediation instead of Him ; it is to set up idols 
 in our hearts, and thank them for our deliverance 
 from the house of bondage. Those who do not 
 go so far as directly to abandon the appointed 
 means of grace, must be on their guard lest a 
 measure of the same evil should be incurred by 
 undervaluing them. 10 For whatever derogates from 
 
 10 An instance may be afforded by the ordinance of Confir- 
 mation. Among its benefits must be ranked the opportunity 
 afforded, at a most critical period of life, for confirming the 
 promises of childhood. Such an act, conscientiously discharged 
 in the presence of many witnesses, has no little tendency to 
 strengthen good resolutions ; and since all good acts must be 
 suggested as well as favoured by God, we may safely speak 
 of the inward resolution as dependent on His spiritual succour. 
 Now, this account of Confirmation, if regarded as a partial view 
 of the service, would be fitting enough ; but if considered to be 
 the whole of its benefits, it would resolve an ordinance of the 
 Gospel into a mere Rationalistic act. For, according to this 
 view of things, the candidates come to confirm themselves in the 
 Bishop's presence [or, perhaps, to confirm the Bishop in the 
 belief of their good intentions], instead of being brought, as the 
 Prayer-book directs, "to lie confirmed by him" The sole 
 object is the ratification of their vows ; the added assurance of
 
 CHURCH OR BODY MYSTICAL. 331 
 
 the sacramental system, has the effect of depre- 
 cating that union with God which we have by 
 grace, and therefore of casting us on that union 
 which existed by nature. This is the virtual 
 tendency, when inward seriousness the necessity 
 of w r hich in itself cannot be too earnestly main- 
 tained is supposed to dispense with those external 
 means, whereby Christ allies Himself to His mem- 
 bers. The remark applies of course not to those 
 who are debarred the use of such means, but to 
 those by whom they are deemed superfluous. It 
 was a sublime exhortation of the ancient Platouist, 
 " to fly to the solitary Deity in the solitude of 
 our own spirit." But that which in a Heathen 
 was a pious reaching forth after light, would be 
 an impious rejection of it in a Christian. For 
 
 their intention to perform what at Baptism was promised. The 
 efficacy of the service rests altogether upon the acceptableness 
 of their previous prayers, and the sincerity of their present pur- 
 pose, which, according to God's natural mode of dealing with 
 men, are met by a corresponding blessing. What converts this 
 act of natural religion into a Christian rite is, that through the 
 instrumentality of His minister, the New Head of man's race 
 receives His younger members into closer union, and confirms 
 those graces, which at Baptism have already flowed into them 
 from Himself. Thus is a natural mode of converse with God 
 exalted into a means of supernatural union. Unless this truth 
 be admitted, unless Christ be discerned to be truly present 
 through the agency of His servants, to bless in the laying on of 
 hands, and to communicate through external means that super- 
 natural life, of which His humanity is the source, wherein does 
 this act differ from any other, whereby responsible agents pledge 
 themselves to serve God, and what especial benefit is there in 
 Christian Confirmation ?
 
 332 CHRIST IS PRESENT IN HIS 
 
 what renders man's responsibility so great, is the 
 greatness of the gift which is offered to his accept- 
 ance. To careless men this is the great argument 
 against the Church-system : they would rather 
 live at a lower stage of accountableness they 
 shrink with horror from the real indwelling of this 
 Holy God. But it will be otherwise with devout 
 minds. Let them once feel the reality of Christ's 
 Presence, and they will not again take up with a 
 religion of shadows. All which is needful for such 
 persons, is to understand that to admit the Church 
 or Sacramental system, is only to believe the 
 reality of those acts whereby the God-man dis- 
 charges His work of Mediation. However jealous 
 they are of the formalism of their own hearts, 
 and however watchful against spiritual careless- 
 ness, they cannot be afraid of resting too much on 
 the Mediation of Christ, and of esteeming too highly 
 His Presence by the Spirit. For the Holy Ghost, 
 as He came at Pentecost with power, and as His 
 dealings by grace are discriminated from the 
 general actings of the Great Spirit of the Uni- 
 verse, has a peculiar function and office in the 
 Gospel Covenant. And since it has been His will 
 that those gracious strivings whereby He renews 
 all hearts should be consequent on the Mediation 
 of Christ, therefore to leave out of account that 
 perfect manhood whereby the new Head of our 
 race acts upon His members, is to dispense also 
 with the specific operations of the Blessed Com-
 
 CHURCH OR BODY MYSTICAL. 333 
 
 forter. So that the whole system of Mediation 
 would be passed by in this method of approach, 
 as though the spirit of man could by direct, self- 
 originating, immediate impulse commune with the 
 Almighty. If men say, that what they trust is 
 not their own spirit, but something bestowed upon 
 them by God, yet still it is something within them- 
 selves something, 
 
 " Which if heaven gave it, may be termed their own." 
 
 For they look to some chain of intercourse, which, 
 starting from themselves, communicates directly 
 with the Most High. What is this in truth but 
 to fall back upon those endowments of man's spirit 
 which he has by creation upon the natural powers 
 of the soul and thus to pass by Christ the Me- 
 diator in our access to God ? " There were of the 
 old Valentinian Heretics," says Hooker, " some, 
 wiiich had knowledge in such admiration, that to it 
 they ascribed all, and so despised the sacraments 
 of Christ, pretending that as ignorance had made 
 us subject to all misery, so the full redemption of 
 the inward man, and the work of our restoration, 
 must needs belong unto knowledge only. They 
 draw very near unto this error who, fixing wholly 
 their minds on the known necessity of faith, imagine 
 that nothing but faith is necessary for the attain- 
 ment of all grace." 11 " We are to believe and ac- 
 11 Eccles. Pol. v. 60, 4.
 
 334 CHRIST IS PRESENT IN HIS 
 
 knowledge that as God the Father doth neither 
 forgive nor vouchsafe reconciliation, but for the 
 merits and satisfaction of His only Son ; so neither 
 will He vouchsafe to convey this or any other 
 blessing unto us, which His 'Son hath purchased 
 for us, but only through His Son : not only through 
 Him as our Advocate or Intercessor, but through 
 Him as our Mediator that is, through His Hu- 
 manity, as the organ or conduit, or as the only 
 bond by which we are united and reconciled unto 
 the Divine nature." 1 
 
 The views of these two great writers, always 
 esteemed among the highest authorities in the 
 English Church, have been strikingly illustrated 
 since they wrote, by some circumstances in the 
 history of the sect which has been referred to. In 
 the case of the Quakers, whose opinions were 
 avowed with greater consistency than is found in 
 many of their partizans, may be seen by what sure 
 steps a forgetfulness of Our Lord's office as Me- 
 diator, and of those sacramental ordinances, where- 
 by He unites men to Himself, leads persons who 
 least design it to errors respecting His nature. If 
 this result is not always reached, it is because those 
 who live in the atmosphere of a Christian country, 
 derive a large portion of their opinions from the 
 standard which obtains around them. No one 
 seems to have less anticipated such consequences 
 than George Fox, when he first yielded to the im- 
 12 Jackson's Comm. on the Creed, xi. 3, 12.
 
 CHURCH OR BODY MYSTICAL. 335 
 
 pulse to head a party. It was among the fermen- 
 tations which issued in the Great Rebellion, when, 
 as he complained in his last moments, " the out- 
 ward Christians " were " broken up into many 
 sects," 13 that he was impelled to look within himself 
 for the principle of unity. The times peculiarly 
 inclined earnest men to such a course. Never was 
 religion more overlaid by hypocrisy, or truth more 
 lost in contentiousness. The Puritan Divines had 
 explained away the meaning of Gospel ordinances, 
 while they insisted zealously on their formal ob- 
 servance. Now, it is so contrary to the genius of 
 Christianity, to attach primary weight to what is 
 purely technical, that Fox 14 can hardly be censured 
 
 13 Sewel's History of Friends, vol. ii. p. 492. 
 "Fox's mode of argument was the same with that of all 
 persons who deny that God's grace is a guide to the collective 
 Body of Christ a firm persuasion, namely, that it was vouch- 
 safed to himself in preference to others. " As he was walking 
 in a field on a First-day morning, it was discovered unto his 
 understanding, that to be bred at Oxford or Cambridge was 
 not enough to make a man to be a minister of Christ. At 
 this he wondered, because it was the common belief of 
 people ; but for all this, he took this to be a Divine revelation, 
 and he admired the goodness of the Lord, believing now the 
 ordinary ministers not to be such as they pretended to be. 
 This made him unwilling to go any more to Church." SeneVs 
 History, i. p. 17. He now threw himself with effect on that 
 principle of sympathy, which is equally conducive to the growth 
 of truth, or the extension of error ; and which renders earnest- 
 ness and confidence no less contagious than bodily diseases. 
 At Sedberg " he preached for several hours, showing that the 
 Lord was come to teach His people Himself, and to bring them 
 off from all the world's ways and teachers to Christ, the true 
 teacher and the true way to God. Moreover, he showed the
 
 336 CHRIST IS PRESENT IN HIS 
 
 for supposing that if the Sacraments and public 
 worship were merely forms, they could not be 
 essentials of the Gospel. Is it less unlikely that 
 the command to observe the Eucharist should be 
 metaphorical, than the ordinance itself? Doubt- 
 less this earnest man did not discern that his 
 teaching would turn men away from Christ, or 
 interfere with the " one Mediator between God and 
 men." Yet that such was the real tendency of his 
 system is apparent even from the report of his 
 friendly historian, whose object is to show that he 
 maintained the common truths, which are received 
 among Christians. The basis of his instruction is 
 stated to have been, "that every man is enlight- 
 ened with the Divine light." 15 And in corrobora- 
 tion of this assertion (though their real proof could 
 be only their own inward consciousness), he and 
 his followers perpetually referred to the declara- 
 
 declining state of the modern doctors and teachers, and ex- 
 horted the people to come off from the temples made with 
 hands, and wait to receive the Spirit of the Lord, that they 
 might know themselves to be the temples of God." " Having 
 refreshed himself at noon with a little water out of a brook, he 
 went and sat down on the top of a rock hard by the chapel, 
 intending to have a meeting there. At this people wondered, 
 because they looked upon the Church as a holy place, requisite 
 for worship. But George Fox told them afterwards, that the 
 ground whereon he stood was as good as that of the steeple- 
 house ; besides, we find that Christ Himself did preach on a 
 mountain, and also at the sea-side. In the afternoon, he spoke 
 about three hours, directing all to the Spirit of God in them- 
 selves." Sewel's History, vol. i. p. 88, 89. 
 15 Sewel's History, ii. 575.
 
 CHURCH OR BODY MYSTICAL. 337 
 
 tion, " that was the true light, which lighteth every 
 man, that cometh into the world." 16 This passage, 
 which refers in reality to the Incarnation of Christ, 
 and consequently to the gifts bestowed upon His 
 brethren through participation in Him as Mediator, 
 they interpreted of an immediate indwelling of 
 Godhead in the whole body of mankind. But the 
 true light, which at the creation of man's race had 
 bestowed on Adam the perfect light of His own 
 image, the faint remains of which make up that 
 light of nature which has shone since in every 
 man's bosom, had, in the fulness of time, come 
 Personally into the world, the Son of God. To 
 confound this peculiar gift, which was bestowed on 
 humanity through the Incarnation of Christ, with 
 that general influence of the Divine Spirit, which 
 all men inherit from their creation, is virtually a 
 form of Rationalism. For it is to merge the gifts 
 
 16 St. Augustin shows that such an interpretation of St. John, 
 i. 9 (as maintained by the Pelagians), interferes with the reality 
 of Christ's Mediation. The Greek, he observes, might be ren- 
 dered : " That was the true light, which lighteth every man by 
 coming into the world." De Pecc. Mer. i. 25. The trans- 
 lation of Tholuck and Olshausen is equivalent in effect, but less 
 exact perhaps ; " the true light, which lighteth every man, was 
 coming into the world." 
 
 The erroneous interpretation of Fox was approved by Blanco 
 "White, when a Socinian. "Christianity must carry its own 
 proof in its reasonableness, in its agreement with the light within 
 
 us, as the original Quakers very properly asserted This 
 
 light of the conscience is what Christ and the original Apostles 
 called the Spirit, which was to lead the Disciples into all the 
 truth." Life, vol. ii. p. 230.
 
 338 CHRIST IS PRESENT IN HIS 
 
 of grace in the gifts of nature. But suppose that 
 to escape this danger the name of the Holy Ghost 
 is introduced; that His present influence is repre- 
 sented as the fulfilment of God's general promises 
 to humanity. Yet even then, unless the manhood 
 of the one Mediator is regarded as the fountain 
 and well-head of those gifts, which the Comforter 
 distributes to Christ's members, Rationalism is only 
 disguised under the kindred heresy of Sabellianism. 
 For in this case the work of the Holy Ghost is 
 represented as something which supersedes the 
 work of Christ, as though the same Being, who 
 once dwelt in Christ's manhood, dwells instead 
 thereof in the manhood of individual Christians. 
 The Doctrine of Our Lord's Mediation is, that 
 through the communication of His human nature, 
 its quickening gifts are bestowed according to their 
 measure upon His members below : to suppose 
 these gifts therefore to be obtained by God's im- 
 mediate indwelling, without such communication, 
 is to pass Him by in our approach to God. This 
 is the exact result of the Sabellian heresy, which 
 usually represents the Almighty as having had 
 three successive modes of dwelling upon earth: 
 first, in His ancient worship, then in the Humanity 
 of Christ, and, that mode of dwelling being termi- 
 nated, in the minds of men. These are supposed 
 by the Sabellians to be three successive economies ; 
 three several temples, as it were, in which the same 
 Person has been pleased to display Himself. Thus
 
 CHURCH OR BODY MYSTICAL. 339 
 
 is the real action of the Three Persons in the 
 Blessed Trinity explained away, and the mystery 
 of the Godhead evaporates in three successive rela- 
 tions of the same Being towards mankind. On 
 this principle, the Sacraments, as Fox asserted, 
 may well be dispensed with, " because Christ the 
 substance" is "come:" 17 the purpose, that is, of 
 His Incarnation, is supposed to be completed, and 
 the dispensation of the Spirit is alleged to leave 
 nothing for His man's nature to perform. Xeither 
 need we wonder at what otherwise would seem the 
 strange delusion, that James Naylor should declare 
 himself to be actually Christ, and that many of 
 his brethren should so regard him. There seems 
 little reason for doubting that the opinions, a few- 
 years later attributed to them by Leslie, were 
 not uncommon among the early Quakers. " The 
 Quakers," he asserts, "say Christ took flesh, but 
 no otherwise, as they explain it, than as angels 
 assumed bodies, or as He (Christ or the Word) 
 did inspire or dwell in Prophets or holy men of 
 old ; though they allow (not always) that Christ 
 did inspire the person of that man Jesus in a higher 
 measure than other men. But they deny any 
 proper Incarnation of Christ, that is, that He was 
 made flesh, or that He and Jesus w r ere one Person. 
 Yet they allow Jesus to be called Christ, from the 
 dwelling of Christ in Him ; but for the same reason 
 they take the name of Christ to themselves, and 
 17 Sewel's History, ii. p. 580.
 
 340 CHRIST IS PRESENT IN HIS 
 
 say that it belongs to them as well as to Jesus." 18 
 These statements show that the Quakers had 
 already adopted the Sabellian 19 hypothesis re- 
 specting Our Lord's nature ; and the prevalence 
 of avowed Socinianism among them in later days 
 is a still more manifest indication of the result 
 which attends the abandonment of the Sacramental 
 system. 20 
 
 The example of the Quakers shows by what in- 
 evitable sequence the neglect of Our Lord's office 
 as Mediator, leads to heresies respecting His nature. 
 Two writers of the present age, each the head of 
 a theological school, may be cited as an evidence 
 that inadequate views respecting His nature, have 
 a corresponding connexion with a low estimate of 
 the gifts of grace. The sentiments of Professor 
 Schleiermacher are apparent from a statement, for 
 which its antithetical form probably has gained the 
 wider acceptance, that " Catholicism is that system 
 which represents the relation of the individual to 
 Christ to be dependent on his relation to the 
 
 18 " The Snake in the Grass," sec. x. Leslie's Works, 
 vol. ii. p. 67. 
 
 19 Mr. Clarkson attributes direct Sabellianism to the Quakers. 
 After stating what are the offices of the Holy Ghost, he says, 
 as the result of their hypothesis : " Christ, as He held the 
 offices contained in the proposition, was the Spirit of God." 
 History of Quakerism, ii. 224. 
 
 20 That Socinian opinions predominated among the Quakers 
 was commonly affirmed by the late Mr. Gurney, himself a 
 member of their body, though an able and zealous opponent of 
 that form of error.
 
 CHURCH OR BODY MYSTICAL. 341 
 
 Church ; Protestantism that which represents the 
 relation of the individual to the Church to be de- 
 pendent on his relation to Christ." 21 This contrast 
 is put forward by Schleiermacher as containing the 
 characteristic distinction between the two leading 
 parties who call themselves Christians. But the 
 very statement of such a contrast involves a vir- 
 tual denial of the spiritual nature of the Church. 
 For if the Church be really Christ's "body, the 
 fulness of Him, that filleth all in all," then its spi- 
 ritual or invisible action is inseparable from the 
 right use of its visible ordinances, and it becomes 
 impossible to contrast things, which are actually 
 identical. It would be an analogous question, as 
 was observed, to ask whether we were men by 
 being joined to Adam, or were joined to Adam by 
 being men. It is Christ's manhood which binds 
 men through sacraments to His mystic body. So 
 that to give effect to this contrast, the Church 
 must be supposed to be only a human system, 
 devised for the more convenient working of reli- 
 gion among men, and not the presence of Christ's 
 manhood, acting spiritually on all who are en- 
 grafted into Himself. How is it then that a writer 
 who enters so deeply into some parts of the Chris- 
 tian system, and is regarded as their chief authority 
 by a large portion of what are considered the more 
 orthodox Germans, should have adopted a prin- 
 ciple, which implies a complete denial of the spi- 
 21 Der Christliche Glaube, i. 24, p. 132.
 
 342 CHRIST IS PRESENT IN HIS 
 
 ritual life of the Church ? The answer may be 
 learned from the account of Schleiermacher's opi- 
 nions given by his countryman, Dorner. Schleier- 
 macher, he says, finds fault with the expression, 
 that the Son of God has taken man's nature into 
 the unity of His Person. For this would be to 
 make the Personality of Christ dependent on the 
 Personality of the Second Person in the Divine 
 Godhead, and consequently on the Doctrine of the 
 Trinity. Such a notion accordingly would be in- 
 consistent with the Sabellian theory. 22 
 
 Here, then, we see clearly to what we must attri- 
 bute Schleiermacher's low estimate of the spiritual 
 nature of the Church. He could not suppose it to 
 be the mystical body of the Eternal Son, united by 
 spiritual presence to His glorified humanity, be- 
 cause there was wanting in his system that sub- 
 stratum for such a doctrine, which the truth of the 
 Trinity could alone supply (p. 164). If the same 
 
 22 " The Christians' inward consciousness" (for this, and not 
 the presence of the Holy Ghost with the body of the Church, 
 is Schleiermacher's criterion, whether for proving the truth of 
 Scripture, or for explaining it) "this inward consciousness," 
 he says, "does not compel us to think of the acting of the 
 Redeemer in any other way, than as His Spirit more and more, 
 by organizing and influencing humanity, diffuses in an ever- 
 increasing sphere its action and its life. Christ, as a historical 
 person, has, according to his view, no other significance, than as 
 His example is the means of propagating that spirit which He 
 has infused into the community." "In this manner, then, the 
 personal existence in which Christ appeared, loses all its impor- 
 tance so soon as it has transplanted itself into others." Darner's 
 Person Christi, first ed. p. 508, 523.
 
 CHURCH OR BODY MYSTICAL. 343 
 
 tendency is to be found in the teaching of Arch- 
 bishop Whately, his probity and public spirit, as 
 well as his high station, are a sufficient guarantee 
 that it is not from any intentional rejection of the 
 authorized declarations of the Church. Neither 
 does the writer pretend to conjecture how far the 
 Archbishop may be conscious of the tendency of 
 that system, the results of which are visible in his 
 works. But though it would be unfair to charge 
 individuals with holding the logical consequence of 
 their assertions, there can be no injustice in showing 
 how one peculiarity in a school or writer involves 
 another as its natural complement. This may be 
 seen in the case of Archbishop Whately, whose 
 views of the Church are in exact accordance with 
 what might be anticipated from his opinions respect- 
 ing the Blessed Trinity, 23 and respecting Christ Our 
 
 23 God, says the Archbishop, is " revealed to us in three cha- 
 racters (which was anciently the ordinary sense in our language 
 of the word ' person') as standing in three relations to us." 
 Sernwns on Various Subjects, 1835, p. 203. 
 
 " The Latin word ' persona' signified originally a mask, 
 which actors wore on the stage ; the word came to signify the 
 character itself, which the actor played; and afterwards any 
 character, real or assumed, which any one sustained : as, e. g. in 
 a passage of Cicero, where he is describing the process by which 
 he composed his pleadings, by imagining himself in the place of 
 his opponent, and of the judge, as well as his own : ' Tres per- 
 sonas unus suscipio meam, adversarii, judicis.' We should 
 render this by saying, ' I assume these three characters,' or ' I 
 place myself in these three situations.' " " Persona, in its clas- 
 sical sense, was naturally adopted by Theologians to distinguish 
 the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in the Blessed Trinity, 
 so as to imply the unity of the Divine Being, who is all and
 
 344 CHRIST IS PRESENT IN HIS 
 
 Lord. For the word Person, as used in respect to 
 the Blessed Trinity, means merely, according to 
 the Archbishop, some new relation or character as- 
 sumed by the same Being. He says, accordingly, 
 that " in respect of the sacrifice of Christ, and of 
 the spiritual gifts poured out on the Disciples, it 
 was the same thing in relation to them as if there 
 had been really three distinct Beings." 24 And 
 again, " Our Lord took care to indicate that the 
 Comforter the Disciples are to expect is no other 
 than Himself under another character." 25 
 
 It is not here inquired how far these assertions 
 accord with the statements of Scripture, or the 
 teaching of the Church of England." 26 But they ac- 
 
 each of these ; and the word Person was adopted by our Divines 
 in the same sense. In this sense its difference from Person as 
 commonly employed is most important. Whatcly's Logic, first 
 ed. 1826, p. 292. 
 
 In later editions this note is considerably lengthened, so that 
 its statements appear in a less concentrated and naked form. 
 But nothing indicates that Archbishop Whately designs to recall 
 his previous assertions, which indeed he has virtually repeated 
 in subsequent sermons. 
 
 24 Sermons, 1835, p. 202. * Ditto, p. 197. 
 
 26 The sentiments of Sabellius are recorded by Theodoret, 
 Dial, ii., on Heretical Fables (cited in Radcliffe's Creed of St. 
 Athanasius Illustrated, p. 85) : " Sabellius the African, of Pen- 
 tapolis, introduced this heresy. He said that the Father and 
 the Son and the Holy Ghost were one Person, and one Person 
 bearing three names ; and he calls on the same, sometimes as 
 the Father, sometimes as the Son, and sometimes as the Holy 
 Spirit ; and that in the Old Testament, He gave laws as the 
 Father ; but in the New, He was incarnated as the Son ; and 
 that as the Holy Spirit he sat upon the Apostles." 
 
 The Sabellian tenets are not only denied in the Athanasian
 
 CHURCH Oil BODY MYSTICAL. 345 
 
 count clearly enough for the view which is adopted 
 by Archbishop Whately respecting the Church of 
 Christ. His respect for the declarations of Scrip- 
 ture leads him to assert strongly its claim to au- 
 
 O / 
 
 thority : what is wanting in his system is a due 
 estimate of its ordinances as means of grace. Xow, 
 if God's Presence as Mediator has been succeeded 
 by His Presence as the Holy Ghost, the Church 
 can no longer be characterized by its relation to 
 Christ, as His mystic body united by the spiritual 
 action of His man's nature to Himself. So that 
 those who do not, as did the Quakers, deny its ex- 
 istence, are thrown upon the fact that it is a social 
 system for the advance of religion, established 
 under God's sanction, and conducive in various 
 ways to those purposes of improvement, for which 
 God bestows His help on individuals among men. 
 Thus is the present action of the one common 
 Mediator lost sight of, and the Church, instead of 
 being a means of grace, becomes simply a scheme 
 of government. The consequence when men are 
 led, like Archbishop Whately, by the plain words 
 of Scripture to take a high view of Church autho- 
 rity, 27 is to infuse harshness and technicality into 
 the Gospel system. The Kingdom of Christ seems 
 
 Creed, but are censured by name in the first Canon of the 
 Council of Constantinople, one of the four General Councils, 
 whose decrees by our present law (1 Eliz. c. 1, s. 3G) afford a 
 criterion of heresy. 
 
 27 Vide the passages quoted from Whately's " Kingdom of 
 Christ" in the next Chapter.
 
 346 CHRIST IS PRESENT IN HIS 
 
 as though it was designed to limit the gifts of His 
 grace rather than to extend them. The Church as- 
 sumes the austerity of a Sabine mother rather than 
 the affectionate loving-kindness of the daughter of 
 Zion. Since its ordinances are not coincident with 
 the means of grace, but something besides and be- 
 yond them, the question naturally arises, "is not 
 the life more than meat and the body than rai- 
 ment?" So that men's natural instinct testifies 
 against the maintenance of authority, while the 
 precepts of Scripture forbid its abolition. 
 
 Such are some of the evils of forgetting the real 
 nature of the Church's being our union, namely, 
 with the manhood of Christ in His mystic body, 
 together with His true Presence and continued 
 Mediation. These doctrines, it may be observed 
 in conclusion, are also our right security against 
 substituting the Church as a formal system in place 
 of its Head ; and they afford the best answer to the 
 intricate questions respecting Church communion 
 and Church obedience. So long as the Church is 
 regarded as an external system, based on certain 
 laws and administered by certain leaders, it can 
 never fail to enlist a measure of that party spirit 
 which belongs to man's nature, and thus to draw 
 away attention from the holy purposes for which it 
 was instituted. The only safeguard against this 
 danger is the due subordination of its external 
 framework to its internal principle; and the con- 
 stant recognition that its life depends, not on the
 
 CHURCH OR BODY MYSTICAL. 347 
 
 gifts of government but on the gifts of grace. If the 
 essence of the Church's existence be that certain 
 men have a right to rule, and teach, and minister, 
 whether they be chosen by the free voice of the 
 congregation, imposed by government, or delegated 
 by the Apostles, there is such large opening for 
 cabal and dispute, that love and peace and Christ's 
 presence will soon be lost in the din of party strife. 
 The Presbyterian platform offers as good footing 
 to the spirit of partizanship as the system of Epis- 
 copacy ; and the Pilgrim Fathers of Massachusetts 
 were as ready to persecute as Boniface or Hilde- 
 brand. But let the essence of the Church's exist- 
 ence be felt to be Christ's presence let it be 
 remembered that His manhood is the true seed of 
 the renewed race, and that through spiritual pre- 
 sence it bestows its life-giving power on all the 
 members of His mystic body let every other 
 question be dependent upon these let them take 
 their place, as of subordinate importance, and as 
 merely contributing to this great result and what 
 room is there for discord between Christ and the 
 Church, when the Church is Christ Himself mani- 
 fest in His mystic body? "For no man ever yet 
 hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth 
 it, even as the Lord the Church." The theorist 
 may be unvisited by the sun's warmth while he 
 discusses its nature, or the poet while he describes 
 its brilliancy; but how can we lose sight of his 
 glorious beams by going forth to walk in the sun-
 
 348 CHRIST IS PRESENT IN HIS 
 
 shine? And so long as this Divine principle is 
 kept fully in view, it can hardly fail to soften and 
 elevate those whom it influences. So that if the 
 harshness of party-spirit be not cured, it may at 
 least be abated. 
 
 There are those indeed who forget that by Christ 
 is meant that " one Mediator between God and 
 men," who unites these two natures, and is to be 
 approached therefore through that manhood, where- 
 by He allies Himself to our race. Their wish is for 
 such communing with the Spirit of the Universe as 
 may be maintained by each individual spirit in the 
 separate temple of the heart. To set forth Christ 
 the Mediator as our only road of access to the Most 
 High, is supposed by them to encumber our ap- 
 proach. This is to renounce Christianity for Ra- 
 tionalism, and to prefer the system of nature to the 
 system of grace. For if the doctrine of Mediation 
 be accepted at all, the results which it involves 
 must be accepted also. And, therefore, to main- 
 tain that the outward means of grace, whereby we 
 are united to the manhood of Christ, are not less 
 necessary than those emotions of our own, which 
 have their seat within, is not to put the Church in 
 stead of Christ, but to protest against men's putting 
 themselves in the place of their Redeemer. To 
 speak of inward seriousness as necessary, is only to 
 testify the truth of each man's separate responsi- 
 bility ; but to speak of it as superseding outward 
 means, is to do away with the office of the " one
 
 CHURCH OR BODY MYSTICAL. 349 
 
 Mediator." The individual life of each man's spirit, 
 as opposed to the carelessness of a thoughtless 
 walk, is the very treading down of Satan under our 
 feet ; but to contrast it with the value of Gospel 
 ordinances is to deny Christ to depose Him from 
 His office of a Mediator and to set up idols of 
 intercession in our own hearts. 
 
 Again, the recollection that Christ's Spiritual 
 Presence is the Church's life, is the answer to all 
 questions respecting Church Communion. For the 
 Church's being depends on union with Him ; its 
 well-being on union with all His members. The 
 latter is as essential to its perfect state as that holi- 
 ness of life, which Christ likewise entreated for all 
 His members ; the Church's completeness, there- 
 fore, cannot be attained without both the one and 
 the other. But as we see holiness of life to be too 
 often wanting in its present season of warfare, so 
 also is the perfect unity of the whole Christian 
 body. That which cannot be dispensed with the 
 loss of which would be its death is that union 
 with Christ on which depends its claim to be the 
 Lord's Body. While this continues, the several 
 members of Christ are in truth united to one 
 another, whether they discern it or no ; because 
 they are united to the common Head of the Body. 
 So that " if one member suffer, all the members 
 suffer with it ; and if one member rejoice, all the 
 members rejoice with it." And the same principle 
 must be our guide respecting all questions of
 
 350 CHRIST IS PRESENT IN HIS 
 
 Church-obedience. For Church-obedience depends 
 on the authority to bless, not on the power to 
 govern. Its rule is not coercive, but parental ; it 
 stands on the communication of gifts, not the 
 enactment of penalties. This is what makes per- 
 secution alien to its nature ; so that such harshness 
 is abhorred by men's instinct, even if their reason 
 does not condemn it. Thus in the world of grace, 
 as in that of nature, is affection the root of duty ; 
 and men's relation to the Church of their Baptism 
 is built on that fundamental law, which is the basis 
 of social life. Our Catechism, therefore, rests re- 
 ligious as well as temporal authority on the Fifth 
 Commandment, and deduces from it the obligation 
 to obey spiritual as well as temporal masters. For 
 " Jerusalem which is above is the mother of us all." 
 Hence the rule of Church-obedience is limited only 
 by that original duty of obedience to God, which 
 cannot be superseded by any subsequent obliga- 
 tion. Such considerations suggest at once what 
 are men's relations to Christ's body in that state or 
 place where God's Providence has fixed them, and 
 also what they owe to the more extended system, 
 in which it is their blessing to have an individual 
 share. Towards their own mother Church they 
 owe not only obedience in things lawful, but also 
 reverence and thankfulness. So long as she con- 
 tinues to bless, they may not cease to obey. There 
 are those who speak of themselves as the Church's 
 friends, forgetting that a term, which might be ap-
 
 CHURCH OR BODY MYSTICAL. 351 
 
 propriate if employed by the holy Angels, is the 
 extreme of irreverence, when employed by sinful 
 men respecting the Mystical Body of Christ their 
 Saviour. For it implies ignorance of their filial re- 
 lation to the Church of Christ. Hence the com- 
 mon opinion that men are at liberty to join any 
 religious community, where statements are pro- 
 pounded, and where practices are pursued, which 
 harmonize with their feelings. And hence men's 
 attachment to their own part of the Church's body 
 is measured less by their obedience to its rules, 
 than by their professed aversion to other systems. 
 
 All these errors result from a forgetfulness of the 
 central truth, that the Church of Christ is His 
 Body ; His Presence its life ; its blessing the gift 
 of spiritual union with His man's nature. Where 
 this is given, there is opened for men the gift of 
 life, and state of salvation. Our duty towards that 
 portion of it, in which our lot is cast, arises from 
 love to itself, not from hatred to others ; the lines 
 of our heritage are marked out by affection and not 
 by antipathy. For in it lies our actual participa- 
 tion in the Mediation of Christ. Through Him 
 only who is both God and man is there access to 
 the Father. For such has been the appointment of 
 His sovereign wisdom, " that so in the person of a 
 Mediator the true ladder might be fixed, whereby 
 God might descend to His creatures, and His crea- 
 tures might ascend to God." 28 
 
 28 Bacon's Confession of Faith, u. s.
 
 352 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 OF COMMON WORSIIir AS A MEANS OF UNION WITH 
 THE MYSTICAL BODY OF CHRIST. 
 
 THE actings of Christ Our Lord since His Ascen- 
 sion have been stated to be : first, His Intercession 
 on man's behalf with God the Father, and secondly, 
 His Spiritual Presence through His man's nature 
 with His brethren. And this Spiritual Presence of 
 the man Christ Jesus has been shown to be vouch- 
 safed in His Church, whereby " we are members of 
 His body; of His flesh, and of His bones." For 
 men are joined to His body natural which was 
 slain, in His body mystical which is sanctified. 
 The question which next arises respects the means 
 of union with that mystical body in which men 
 have title to the privileges of the Gospel. Of these 
 the first and most comprehensive is common wor- 
 ship. This point must now be established. The 
 considerations which lead to it are : 
 
 First The nature of common worship. 
 
 Secondly The grounds of its necessity. 
 
 Thirdly The place which it occupied in the 
 Jewish system.
 
 WORSHIP A MEANS OF UNION. 353 
 
 Fourthly Its connexion with the Doctrine of 
 Mediation. And hence follows, 
 
 Fifthly the necessity of an ordained Ministry 
 and public Ritual. 
 
 I. The very nature of common worship shows 
 its efficacy in maintaining our connexion with the 
 mystical body of Christ. For what is it but the 
 voice and action of the Christian Community, 
 which, if it has life, must by such symptoms show 
 that it lives? Every organized body has some 
 mode of giving expression to that pervading prin- 
 ciple, which renders it a whole. A tree puts forth 
 leaves; animal life discovers itself by sound and 
 motion. This is that simple method of rendering 
 homage to God, which the Psalmist ascribes to the 
 whole visible creation. And if the Church be not 
 a mere aggregation of men, who meet by accident 
 within the same precincts, but the living exponent 
 of a spiritual power, which renders it Christ's mys- 
 tical body, then that quickening energy, with 
 which it is instinct, must have some means of 
 utterance. And since its office is not only towards 
 men whom it gathers for their own benefit into 
 its fostering bosom but likewise towards Him, 
 whose " praise is in the great congregation ;" there- 
 fore its first object must be that the inhabitants of 
 this lower world, " with Angels and Archangels, and 
 with all the company of heaven" should "laud and 
 magnify His glorious name, saying Holy, Holy, Holy, 
 Lord God of Hosts, heaven and earth are full of 
 
 Aa
 
 354 COMMON WORSHIP A MEANS 
 
 Thy glory." Now, if this be the Church's chosen 
 function, to partake in it must be our first means 
 of exercising our Christian privilege, and of claim- 
 ing our portion in that Mystical Body of Christ 
 wherein we are members. 
 
 II. How deeply this feeling was implanted from 
 the first in the Christian community, appears from 
 the grounds on which the importance of public 
 worhip has always rested. Its indispensable neces- 
 sity must have arisen from the nature of the case, 
 inasmuch as it did not arise from positive enact- 
 ment. No positive command to meet for united 
 worship occurs in the New Testament, except that 
 incidental one in the Epistle to the Hebrews, which 
 cannot have been relied upon in the Western 
 Church, by which in early times the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews was not received ; and yet the first Chris- 
 tians not only encountered every danger, but, what 
 was a still a stronger proof of their conviction, they 
 violated those civil laws to which they usually paid 
 such prompt obedience, rather than forego the 
 privilege of that common worship, whereby each 
 man maintained his part in the fellowship of his 
 Saviour. How could they be justified in disobey- 
 ing Caesar, unless their duty to God had been 
 peremptory and unquestioned? But it stood on no 
 direct command of Scripture. It must have rested, 
 therefore, on the very nature of the case on the 
 connexion of this service with those general duties 
 and privileges, which are set forth as the first prin-
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 355 
 
 ciple of the Christian life on the necessity of 
 union with Christ, as the new Head of the re- 
 deemed race on the common obligation to honour 
 God more than man it must have been the very 
 act by which men professed themselves Christ's 
 servants, and claimed membership in the mystical 
 body of the Crucified. The very publicity and 
 danger of the deed makes the weight which was 
 attached to it the more manifest. Instruction could 
 be given by books or by single conference. The 
 consecrated elements might be carried round singly 
 to those who desired to partake them. But when 
 the Roman Law 1 had expressly forbidden the 
 meetings of religious bodies, the common worship 
 of the Christians became, as Pliny expresses it, the 
 very "sum of their crime." 2 It was forbidden 
 therefore during the Dioclesian persecution, even 
 under the mild rule of Constantius; 3 and its per- 
 mission is the main point expressed in the tolera- 
 ting edict issued by Galerius 4 just before his death. 
 Yet in the face of all this opposition, the Christian 
 Church never intermitted its united worship; the 
 duties which it could not perform in public and 
 during the day, were discharged secretly and during 
 the hours of darkness ; it retreated into the heart of 
 the earth, and maintained itself in catacombs and 
 
 1 The proofs are collected by Gieseler, i. 12, notes C & D, 
 vol. i. p. 31, 32. Trajan renewed the law against e-raipeiat, 
 A. D. 99. 2 Epis. Lib. x. 97. 
 
 3 Lactantius de morte Persecutorum, c. 15. 4 Ibid. c. 34.
 
 356 COMMON WORSHIP A MEANS 
 
 the abodes of the dead, that it might issue forth 
 when its season was come, and publish in the face 
 of the sun those benedictions in which it calls on 
 heaven and earth to partake. 
 
 III. The importance of common worship as our 
 means of union with the body of Christ is further 
 manifested, if we consider wherein lay the peculiar 
 privileges, which were enjoyed by the Jews. Their 
 peculiar blessing was plainly that covenanted access 
 to God, which was allowed to them alone of an- 
 cient nations. " What nation is there," said Moses, 
 " who hath God so nigh unto them, as the Lord 
 our God is in all things that we call upon Him 
 for." The wide distance which separates man from 
 his Maker, was not bridged over indeed so effec- 
 tually as since God has become man and man God, 
 but a foundation was laid for this wonderful bond 
 of union. For the first time in God's dealings with 
 mankind was there a nation chosen to receive the 
 privilege of accepted prayer. Private prayer there 
 had been, doubtless, from the first: the instinct 
 which leads men to pray in time of distress seems 
 a sufficient sanction for it. And family prayer 
 had probably commenced in the household of Seth, 
 when " men began to call on the name of the 
 Lord," and had since continued in the tents of the 
 Patriarchs. But this usage had rested on natural 
 instinct or individual communication; it was per- 
 sonal or family ; it was not relevant to any peculiar 
 promise, or any public institutions ; it belonged to
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 357 
 
 that Patriarchal state, in which the Most High was 
 pleased to favour His dutiful followers by single 
 and especial manifestations. Under this rule did 
 Enoch, Job, and Abraham, walk with God. But 
 this rule waxed insufficient when, with the in- 
 creasing extension of mankind, those lights which 
 they possessed in early times were withdrawn. 
 Hence the censure passed by Our Lord upon the 
 Samaritans, who thought their practice justified 
 because their " fathers worshipped upon this moun- 
 tain :" " Ye worship ye know not what ; we know 
 what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews." It 
 was not in the doctrines of a pure Monotheism that 
 the Samaritans of that age were wanting. Their 
 habit was to address themselves to the Father of 
 all, through the unaided service of their own devo- 
 tion. But they worshipped they knew not what, 
 because they had no certainty of acceptance. 
 " Salvation is of the Jews." To them only belongs 
 the assurance that the Father of all will hear them. 
 This means of access no other nation possessed. 
 They had the "lively oracles" which afforded an 
 intercourse with the Almighty. 
 
 Xow, on what was this intercourse dependent? 
 It could not rest only on a conviction of the exist- 
 ence of Jehovah ; in this respect they were not 
 superior to their Fathers, the Patriarchs, even if 
 they surpassed their contemporaries. That which 
 marked them out as God's people was the national 
 Ritual, by which they were assured of access to
 
 358 COMMON WORSHIP A MEANS 
 
 Him. The road indeed was narrow, painful, and 
 circuitous ; and yet it was a road of approach to 
 God. All right of drawing near Him was through 
 their nation. Their family union conferred on each 
 individual in their tribes a pre-eminence which was 
 enjoyed by no other people. " All the earth is 
 mine," declared Jehovah, but "ye shall be unto 
 Me a kingdom of Priests, and an holy nation." 
 Royalty lies in high descent, and Priesthood in 
 that peculiar consecration, which marks men out 
 to draw near to the presence of God ; and both 
 these qualities centred in that whole society, all 
 whose members were so much more favoured than 
 the residue of mankind. The consciousness of this 
 pre-eminence was felt, when the High Priest was 
 observed to bear on him the symbols of the whole 
 world, when he entered into the holy place, because 
 he was the representative of the whole creation. 5 
 If this were so, he was the type of Him who 
 stretched out His sacrificing arms upon the Cross, 
 that He might in truth embrace the Universe. In 
 this wise were the Jews favoured above the rest of 
 men. And this privilege they enjoyed through 
 their participation in those public acts, which were 
 the especial privilege and work of their nation. It 
 was not that each individual Jew found his way 
 to God through his individual excellency; but he 
 had a claim to participate in that public service 
 by which His nation was brought nigh to the 
 5 Philo quoted in Dorner's Person Christi, vol. i. p. 48.
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 359 
 
 Almighty. The national Ritual was a bond of 
 union which gave the individual a vantage ground 
 in his approach to God. That general communing 
 of his spirit with the Great Author of the universe, 
 which was all that the Heathen man enjoyed, was 
 sanctioned and exalted by the mediatorial charac- 
 ter of the public Ritual, in which the Jewish nation 
 had a common interest. The priesthood of Aaron 
 did not derogate from the general privilege, which 
 made Israel at large a royal Priesthood ; it was the 
 very basis on which their blessing rested it was 
 the provisional appointment of that mediatorial 
 office, by which God and man were bound toge- 
 ther ; the typical representation of that true High 
 Priest, who is the perfect Mediator between earth 
 and heaven. Therefore to reject the Jewish Ritual 
 during that period, when it was the appointed 
 means of foreshowing Him who was to come, 
 would have been in reality to reject Christ, and 
 to slight the efficacy of His Mediation. So that 
 when Korah maintained that the separate priest- 
 hood of every individual Israelite dispensed with 
 the necessity of that national Ritual, which antici- 
 pated the Mediation of Christ, it pleased God by 
 immediate judgments to show who should " come 
 near to offer incense before the Lord." Thus was 
 it plainly seen what was that channel of Mediation, 
 through which individual prayers should ascend to 
 heaven. And as such the holiest and most spiri- 
 tual Israelites used it. Their ardent aspirations to
 
 360 COMMON WORSHIP A MEANS 
 
 God were grounded always on that peculiar privi- 
 lege of approach, which had its central and conse- 
 crating point in their national Ritual. Such as vo- 
 luntarily neglected those means of confederation, 
 whereby men maintained their portion in the pub- 
 lic service, were cut off from God's people. But 
 those who by involuntary hindrances were pre- 
 cluded from actual association with their brethren, 
 were not left to that mere feeling after an unknown 
 helper, which was all that the Heathen possessed ; 
 their thoughts travelled to their native land, they 
 associated themselves in spirit to that national wor- 
 ship which God had made the channel of heavenly 
 gifts, and thus they claimed their part in the col- 
 lective privilege of the nation. Thus did David in 
 spirit go " with the multitude" from the " land of 
 Jordan and the hill Mizar." Thus did Daniel pray, 
 "his windows being open in his chamber towards 
 Jerusalem." This was the very principle of the 
 Jewish service, which extended to those who were 
 in distant lands, as well as to those who, being 
 gathered in the Temple's courts, "were praying 
 without at the time of incense." " They knew 
 much better than the Heathen that God's throne 
 of Majesty was in heaven, and yet were to tender 
 their devotions unto Him as extraordinarily present 
 in His temple or sanctuary." 6 For the principle of 
 a public Ritual does not depend on the actual pre- 
 sence of men, which may be interrupted by the 
 
 6 Jackson's Works, xi. 3, 11.
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 361 
 
 accidents of our weakness, but on that actual pre- 
 sence of God, which He vouchsafes through His 
 appointed means of intervention. The voluntary 
 neglect of such opportunities on our part would be 
 to despise the privilege of intercourse with God. 
 It would be to prefer our own means of access to 
 those which the appointed Mediator bestows. If 
 we have a true belief that the privilege of union 
 with God is bestowed through those especial chan- 
 nels of intercourse which He has Himself ordained, 
 we shall make such efforts as were made by the 
 early Christians to use them. For the whole value 
 of such a service depends on the reality of those 
 blessings which God bestows, as He unquestionably 
 bestowed them in former times on those who wor- 
 shipped towards His mercy-seat, and as since the 
 Incarnation of Christ, they have been pledged in 
 fuller measure to those who make up together the 
 mystical body of the Lord. 
 
 IV. Now, this leads us to discern why such 
 especial importance should be attached to common 
 worship in the Church of God. For since Christ 
 Incarnate is the real priest, through whom all 
 Jewish service was effectual His body the real 
 victim, His members the true temple therefore 
 to suppose that individual piety dispenses with the 
 necessity of participation in the Church's collective 
 acts, is the same thing as if a Jew had maintained 
 that it superseded the necessity of participation in 
 the ancient Ritual. Communion with the Church
 
 362 COMMON WORSHIP A MEANS 
 
 in its united acts of worship brings men into the 
 same relation to Christ, the one true and abiding 
 Mediator, which was gained in their degree for the 
 men of old time, by participation in that typical 
 and imperfect service, which was maintained through 
 the continual offering of the Levitical sacrifices. 
 As a Jew could not approach God save through 
 the intervention of the expected Messiah, so cannot 
 a Christian save through the mediation of the Mes- 
 siah who has been manifested. The single prayers 
 which were offered by the pious Jew in the solitary 
 temple of his heart, ascended to God because, 
 through the privilege of the nation, heaven and 
 earth were bound together. And the solitary wor- 
 ship of the fervent Christian is not effectual through 
 its private merit, but by virtue only of that inter- 
 cession which is offered for the elect at large, and 
 of that sacrifice, in which the whole Christian Body 
 has common interest. To rest therefore on the 
 mere separate intercourse of man with his Maker, 
 on the private aspirations of the individual soul, 
 would be to pass by the intervention of Christ as 
 something unnecessary, and to set up our own spirit 
 as the Mediator through whom the Father of all 
 could be approached. And this would be an idol- 
 atry which all Christian men would abhor. Yet is 
 this virtually the effect when personal devotion, the 
 importance of which cannot in itself be too much 
 enforced, is represented as a rival to that participa- 
 tion in the public ordinances of His Church, whereby
 
 OF UXIOX WITH CHRIST. 363 
 
 God is approached through Christ. True it is that 
 all Christian men are Kings and Priests, and thus 
 have immediate access to God. But then this ac- 
 cess must be in Christ it depends on their charac- 
 ter as members of His body it is because that Me- 
 diation is complete which in Jewish times was im- 
 perfect because God and man have been made one 
 in Christ. The Jews likewise were all a royal priest- 
 hood, but this did not neutralize the necessity of 
 that public Ritual, whereby every individual had 
 privilege of approach. Neither does the privilege of 
 single Christians interfere with the necessity of that 
 Mediation of Christ, on which it is dependent. 
 "Albeit the temple of Jerusalem, wherein God's 
 people only were to worship, were long since de- 
 molished ; yet the sanctuary, wherein they were to 
 worship God, is rather translated or advanced from 
 earth to heaven than destroyed ; for it was God's 
 presence that made the temple, and that is more 
 extraordinary in Christ's body, than ever it had 
 been in Solomon's temple." 7 
 
 But then the question recurs, why is this refe- 
 rence to Christ Our Lord especially connected 
 with His public service ? Why is it not satisfied 
 by that mere regard which is paid to Him singly, 
 by those who do not choose to associate them- 
 selves with their fellow-creatures ? Cannot men's 
 hearts travel forth towards Him as their God in 
 privacy and seclusion ? There have been many 
 7 Jackson's Works, u. s.
 
 364 COMMON WORSHIP A MEANS 
 
 who have professed to worship Christ singly, 
 through the mere exercise of their private faith ; 
 and this is the real principle of all those Separa- 
 tists, who, like the Quakers, have no sacramental 
 union, and by whom common worship has been 
 exchanged for simple teaching. Now, the reason 
 why such a system is a disparagement of Our 
 Lord's Mediation, is because His Mediation does 
 not depend merely on our calling ourselves by 
 His name, or on our entertaining certain feelings 
 towards Him ; but results from that actual rela- 
 tion, which He condescended to assume towards 
 us, when He took our nature into abiding union 
 with His own. His Mediation is a reality, external 
 to ourselves, and not a mere matter of our own 
 imagination. It is not enough to say that we gain 
 certain blessings by resorting to that Divine Being, 
 who happened once to be upon earth as though 
 He accidentally undertook the office of speaking in 
 our favour ; but His Mediation is the consequence 
 of that permanent character, which He was pleased 
 to adopt by assuming manhood. He thus became 
 the Head of the renewed family, who offered Him- 
 self a sacrifice on behalf of the whole, and through 
 whom all graces devolve upon the rest ; and, there- 
 fore, by a certain singular fitness was He marked 
 out to be the representative of His brethren. So 
 that towards the completeness of His work, it was 
 essential that those for whom He spoke should be 
 as truly bound to His manhood, as by descent they
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 365 
 
 were to their original parent. For this work was 
 expressly declared to be undertaken on behalf of 
 His mystical body. It is for those who believe on 
 Him through His Apostles' words, and who are 
 " one as we are one," that He intercedes with His 
 Father. His advocacy results from His being 
 " Head over all things to the Church, which is His 
 body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all." 
 Would we have part, then, in His Intercession as 
 Mediator, we must be members in that " family in 
 heaven and earth," which is called after His name. 
 This membership involves federal union with the 
 collective Church : to be a member is to be a part 
 of a body, because the existence of parts implies 
 the existence of a whole. And, therefore, the 
 notion of a mere individual relation to Our Lord, 
 independently of that social tie which binds us to 
 Him as a part of His mystic body, would lead, 
 when followed into its results, to the virtual denial 
 of that office, which He discharges as man : Christ 
 would be viewed, according to the Sabellian theory, 
 as a mere name or relation, under which in this 
 present Dispensation the Father of all has pleased 
 to reveal Himself; and His actual intervention as 
 a Person, other than the Father and the Holy 
 Ghost, and as co-operating through that nature 
 which He took of the Virgin, in the great work of 
 bringing many sons unto salvation, would be prac- 
 tically forgotten. 
 
 The permanency, therefore, of Christ's Mediation,
 
 366 COMMON WORSHIP A MEANS 
 
 together with the importance of His present inter- 
 ference, is the true point which is asserted when 
 the necessity of the Church's office is maintained. 
 But if a present work is transacted on our behalf 
 in the Gospel Kingdom, through the merit of 
 Christ's ascended manhood, some means must be 
 appointed, through which His brethren may par- 
 take its benefits. A system of worship upon earth 
 is the necessary correlative to a work of interces- 
 sion in heaven. The one implies the other. And, 
 therefore, in that early age of the Church, when 
 Our Lord's Mediation was felt to be the life of the 
 Christian community, there was an universal and 
 unqualified assertion, that as certainly as Christ's 
 sacrifice was pleaded effectually above, it was like- 
 wise truly participated in Gospel ordinances, and 
 that those things which were done on earth in the 
 Church's united acts, made part of that grand sac- 
 rifice which has its consummation in heaven. So 
 that while all other parts of the Christian Ritual 
 were spoken of as sacrificial in their character, that 
 service by which men especially participated in the 
 Mediation of Christ, because they are most truly 
 bound by it to His mystic body, i. e. the Eucharist 
 or Lord's Supper, was called emphatically the 
 Christian sacrifice. And this is an act which, by 
 its federal character, involves the necessity of that 
 united worship, whereby men partake in the collec- 
 tive privileges of the Church of God. "Irenseus 8 
 8 S. Irenaeus, iv. 18, 2.
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 367 
 
 tells me," says our own Mede, 9 "there were offer- 
 ings there, i. e. in the Old Testament ; there are 
 also offerings here, i. e. in the New Testament ; 
 there were sacrifices among the people, i. e. the 
 Jews ; there are sacrifices also in the Church." 
 And after mentioning that the Holy Communion 
 was commonly called a sacrifice, " it would be in- 
 finite," he adds, " to note all the places and authors 
 where and by whom it is thus called.'' He con- 
 tents himself therefore with citing those authors, 
 by whom it was so described in the life-time of the 
 Apostles. In justification of this mode of speaking, 
 St. Irenaeus adduces that prophetic description, 
 which had been given by Malachi of the services 
 of the Christian Church : " From the rising of the 
 sun even unto the going down of the same, My 
 name shall be great among the Gentiles; and in 
 every place incense shall be offered unto My name, 
 and a pure offering." Now, the one of these things, 
 incense, is explained by St. John to typify the 
 prayers of Saints ; the pure offering, therefore, 
 must on its part have something to indicate. 
 Accordingly, it was understood to be the "new 
 oblation of the New Testament, which the Church 
 receiving from the Apostles offers throughout the 
 whole world to God." 11 An oblation which is 
 
 9 " That the Christian Service is an Oblation proved by the 
 Fathers." Mede's Works, B. ii. c. iv. p. 361. 
 
 10 Rev. v. 8. St. Augustin calls the Lord's Prayer " quotidi- 
 anum spiritale quodam modo incensum." De Nat. et Grat. 33. 
 
 11 S. Iren. iv. 17, 5.
 
 368 COMMON WORSHIP A MEANS 
 
 thus explained by Mede : " We are wont to con- 
 clude our prayers with, Through Jesus Christ Our 
 Lord. And this is the specification, whereby the 
 worship of a Christian is distinguished from that of 
 the Jew. Now, that which we in all our prayers 
 and thanksgivings do vocally, when we say through 
 Jesus Christ Our Lord, the Ancient Church in her 
 public and solemn service did visibly, by represent- 
 ing Him, according as He commanded, in the sym- 
 bols of His body and blood. AVhat time, then, so 
 fit and seasonable to commend our devotions unto 
 God, as when the Lamb of God lies slain upon the 
 holy table; and we receive visibly, though mysti- 
 cally, those gracious pledges of His blessed body 
 and blood? This was that sacrifice of the ancient 
 Church the Fathers so much ring in our ears the 
 sacrifice of Praise and Prayer through Jesus Christ, 
 mystically represented in the creatures of bread and 
 wine." 12 * 
 
 These assertions respecting the Holy Communion 
 involve the two following conditions: First, that 
 this ordinance should be allowed to be as truly a 
 sacrifice as any of those ancient rites to which that 
 tenn was commonly applied either in Scripture or 
 by men ; secondly, that its efficacy should be rested 
 wholly upon that sacrifice of Christ upon the Cross 
 once for all, which forms the basis of His Media- 
 tion. The first of these conditions is implied in 
 the language of the early Church respecting the 
 12 Mede, ubi sup. ii. 2, p. 357.
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 369 
 
 Blessed Eucharist : it follows from the fact that 
 "we have an altar," 13 and that "this" is "our 
 sacrifice." 14 The second results from the reality of 
 that system of Mediation, whereby man is recon- 
 ciled to God. The principle of this Mediation was, 
 that He who undertook it partook truly of both 
 natures, so that He was at once God's representa- 
 tive among men, and man's advocate with the 
 Creator. And in this character, what valuable 
 thing could He offer to God but the sacrifice of 
 Himself? His sanctified humanity was the only 
 pure thing which could be gathered out of the mass 
 of corrupted mortality. And, therefore, no earthly 
 accessions could increase its amount or enhance its 
 value. If its value were not infinite, it would not 
 suffice to atone for all sins ; if its amount were not 
 unbounded, it would not take in all offenders. To 
 this sacrifice, therefore, no acts of ours can con- 
 tribute anything; our hundred pence, if we could 
 offer them, would add nothing to the value of His 
 ten thousand talents. So that the only ground on 
 which the Holy Communion can have that cha- 
 racter of a sacrifice, which has been assigned to it, 
 must be through its participation in the central 
 work of Mediation, the offering, i. e. of the body of 
 Jesus Christ once for all. 
 
 But how can the Eucharist or Christian sacrifice 
 be an "offering of the body of Jesus Christ;" since 
 " Christ dieth no more," but " hath entered in once 
 
 13 Hebrews, xiii. 10. u Communion Service. 
 
 Bb
 
 370 COMMON WORSHIP A MEANS 
 
 into the holy place, having obtained eternal re- 
 demption for us?" So that the body of Jesus 
 Christ which He took of the Virgin, that through 
 its sanctification 15 He might sanctify the mass of 
 humanity, has its material place in heaven, " until 
 the restitution of all things." This body, there- 
 fore, cannot die again, nor can its material place 
 be other than at God's right hand: yet must this 
 be the very body which we present to the Father ; 
 for were it aught besides, our dependence would 
 not be on that anointed first-fruit 16 of man's nature 
 which, that it might be the instrument of Media- 
 tion, was made personally one with God. The 
 offering must be made, then, in a manner not 
 incompatible with the truth that the thing offered 
 "ever liveth;" and again, that according to its ma- 
 terial place, it " is ever at the right hand of God." 
 Now, this is the exact manner in which the sacri- 
 fice of Christ is declared to be presented before 
 God : as in reference to time past He was " the 
 Lamb slain from the foundation of the world," so 
 there "stood a Lamb as it had been slain" before 
 the throne, in the vision of the utmost future. So 
 that our offerings derive their value from the same 
 source which gave their efficacy to the ancient 
 sacrifices. For thus is Christ consecrated " a Priest 
 for ever," and His offering is "a perpetual sacri- 
 
 15 John, xvii. 19. 
 
 16 " Totam nostram massam assumpsit, factus primitite 
 
 nostrse naturae." Anas. Sin. Or. 3. Bib. Max. Pat. ix. 932. 
 Vide S. Athan. de Inc. et c. AT. 12, vol. i. 879.
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 371 
 
 fice." 17 " The substance or matter of the sacrifice" 
 of Christ, says Dr. Jackson, " is of the same force 
 at this day to remit sins, that it was of whilst it 
 was offered ; for His human nature was consecrated 
 by death and by His bloody passion, to be a sacri- 
 fice of everlasting virtue, to be the continual pro- 
 pitiation for our sins." 18 
 
 Now, it is because what is pleaded above as the 
 ground of our acceptance is that true manhood 
 which was taken for the purpose of Mediation by 
 the Son of God, that the Eucharist, rather than 
 any other part of the Church's Ritual, is declared 
 to be the Christian sacrifice. For " as often as ye 
 eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show the 
 Lord's death till he come." Through its character 
 of a Sacrament, as shown in the next Chapter, does 
 the Holy Communion connect us with that slain 
 Humanity of the Incarnate Word, which is present 
 by spiritual power in holy ordinances. Through 
 this bread and this cup, that which is offered as a 
 true sacrifice in heaven, is present as a real though 
 immaterial agent in the Church's ministrations. So 
 that what is done by Christ's ministers below, is a 
 constituent part of that general work which the 
 one great High Priest performs in heaven : through 
 the intervention of His heavenly Head, the earthly 
 sacrificer truly exhibits to the Father that body of 
 Christ, which is the one only sacrifice for sins; 
 each visible act has its efficacy through those in- 
 17 Hebrews, x. 12. 18 Works, x. 55, 6.
 
 372 COMMON WORSHIP A MEANS 
 
 visible acts of which it is the earthly expression ; 
 and things done on earth are one with those done 
 in heaven. 
 
 But though the body of Jesus Christ, present 
 materially in heaven, and present in holy ordi- 
 nances through spiritual power, supplies the Chris- 
 tian sacrifice with its whole intrinsic value, yet 
 those things which are contributed by His brethren 
 obtain acceptance by union with Him. To this 
 circumstance the prayer and praise of Christians 
 owe all their right to be admitted as a portion of 
 the Christian sacrifice. 19 For the virtue of the 
 Mediator's service extends itself to that of all His 
 brethren. And so is it likewise with those elements 
 of bread and wine, which are presented to God as 
 a sample and first-fruits of His creation, that they 
 may afterwards be set apart by consecration to be 
 the means whereby that Mediator who has sanc- 
 tified this whole defiled universe, may distribute 
 Himself to men. These elements, therefore, like 
 the prayers of men, cannot be an acceptable offer- 
 
 19 The only way in which men can make part of a valuable sa- 
 crifice is, that they are regarded as parts of Him, through whom 
 only they are accepted. On this ground does St. Augustin speak 
 of the Christian sacrifice as consisting of " multi unum corpus 
 in Christo." But then it is because the Church is a part of that 
 victim which is truly acceptable : " quod in ea re quam offert 
 ipsa oiferatur." And this offering is presented by our High 
 Priest above, as a part of His continual Intercession : " Efficitur, 
 ut tota ipsa redempta civitas, hoc est congregatio societasque 
 sanctorum, universale sacrificium offeratur Deo per sacerdotem 
 magnum, qui etiam se ipsum obtulit in passione pro nobis, ut 
 tanti capitis corpus essenius." De Civitate Dei, x. 6.
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 373 
 
 ing, except so far as they have received His hal- 
 lowing presence, who corrects the evils of the Fall. 
 But when Malachi described the sacrifice of the 
 Christian Church, he looked plainly to some higher 
 object than the mere material value of these pre- 
 liminary offerings. For as incense typifies, but is 
 not prayer, so the " pure offering" could not be the 
 literal Mincha, or meat-offering, but that true sacri- 
 fice of which it was typical. And to what did all 
 Jewish rites refer but the one real Mediator ? So 
 that the oblation which Malachi contemplated, 
 must have been that true Mincha, that hidden 
 Manna, the body of Jesus Christ which was offered 
 once for all. This it was which He declared should 
 be presented in every place from the rising to the 
 setting of the sun, by those Priests and Levites 
 whom the Gentile 20 Church should substitute for 
 the ancient ministrants. 
 
 The account which has been given of the Eu- 
 charist will seem to some to make it too real a 
 sacrifice, while to others it will seem wanting in 
 reality. The latter will say that if the efficacious 
 part of the Eucharistic offering is performed by our 
 great Mediator in heaven if the thing of value 
 which is presented before God has already been 
 brought into the heavenly temple then that which 
 remains to be done upon earth can only be a sym- 
 bolical, and not a real offering. And they fear, 
 therefore, that no great importance will be attached 
 20 Malachi, i. 11 ; Isaiah, Ixvi. 21.
 
 374 COMMON WORSHIP A MEANS 
 
 to that portion of the work, in which Christ's 
 earthly servants are ministrants. But the state- 
 ments which have been made are involved imme- 
 diately by the central fact of the Doctrine of 
 Mediation, that no perfect offering can be found 
 among men except that manhood which was per- 
 sonally united to God. And that Christ's human 
 body should have its material place in heaven, does 
 not interfere with that influence which it has by 
 spiritual power ; or diminish therefore the sacred- 
 ness of those elements or means whereby men par- 
 ticipate its presence. For if to rest its efficacy on 
 Christ's work above, is incompatible with the opi- 
 nion that the Eucharist is a true sacrifice, then must 
 this name be denied to the Passover also. What 
 was the real virtue of the Passover, but that 
 through its participation men had part in that ac- 
 ceptance which the Mediator effected ? The lamb 
 slain upon earth was not of intrinsic value, but that 
 " Lamb slain from the foundation of the world," in 
 whose effectual atonement it gave Israel partici- 
 pation. To the heavenly temple, therefore, do 
 those ancient writers direct our thoughts, who 
 speak most strongly of the reality of the Christian 
 sacrifice. " There is an altar in heaven," says St. 
 Irenaeus, " for to it our prayers and oblations are 
 directed." 21 And therefore he speaks of " the 
 Word" 22 Christ, according to His man's nature 
 as the oblation which is offered to God. A similar 
 21 S. Iren. iv. 18, 6. ffl S. Iren. iv. 18, 4.
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 375 
 
 statement is made by St. Ambrose : "On one side 
 is the shadow, on another the representation, on a 
 third the truth. The shadow is in the Law, the 
 representation in the Gospel, the truth in heaven. 
 In former times sacrifices consisted of lambs and 
 calves : now Christ is offered, but He is offered ac- 
 cording to His man's nature, according to that 
 being in which He is receptive of suffering ; and as 
 Priest He offers up Himself as the ransom of our 
 offences ; He does it here in representation, He 
 does it in truth there, where He mediates in the 
 Father's presence as our Intercessor." 23 
 
 The real point in dispute, therefore, supposing all 
 verbal questions excluded, is whether that which 
 is done in common worship, and especially in its 
 crowning act, the Holy Communion, is done merely 
 within man himself, in the region of his own feel- 
 ings and intellect, or whether, besides this, it be 
 something which belongs to the whole Church, 
 which extends not only to earth but to heaven, 
 of which the agent is not only the man who sup- 
 plicates on earth, but the Church's Head who 
 supplicates in heaven. And this turns on the 
 point whether man's salvation depends on a real 
 work, external to ourselves, which our great Advo- 
 cate is still carrying on by His Intercession, and 
 through the pleading of His slain humanity. 24 So 
 
 23 S. Arabros. de Officiis Ministrorum, i. 48, 248. 
 24 " Besides the infinite value, we are to acknowledge," says Dr. 
 Jackson, " the infinite or everlasting efficacy or operative virtue
 
 376 COMMON WORSHIP A MEANS 
 
 that we fall back upon the original matter of 
 controversy, whether we are to accept the Church's 
 Doctrine, that Our Lord's Incarnation is a truth, 
 or the Sabellian opinion, that it is a fictitious repre- 
 sentation. Let Christ be believed to be truly 
 God and man, pleading for us the merits of that 
 human nature, which He has consecrated through 
 His Godhead, and there must be reality in those 
 means whereby we are continually associated to 
 that sanctified humanity, in union with which is all 
 our hope. It is the certainty of this communion 
 the truth that on its media is our life dependent, 
 because the thing with which we are thus con- 
 nected is our life itself which was so zealously 
 contended for by those contemporaries of the 
 Apostles, to whom Mede refers, when they asserted 
 the reality of a sacrifice and therefore of a priest- 
 hood in the Church of Christ. For if there be 
 such importance and reality in the work which is 
 done by Christ, then the means whereby we par- 
 ticipate it must be real and important. Through 
 
 of this bloody sacrifice of the Son of God. Suppose the Son 
 of God, immediately after He had paid the ransom for our sins, 
 or in that instant in which He said Consummatum est, ' all is 
 finished,' had deposed or laid aside the human nature, in which 
 He was conceived and born to the end and purpose that He 
 might die in it (or according to it), His offering or sacrifice had 
 been of value infinite, in that it could purchase so universal a 
 pardon at God's hands for all sinners, and for all sins. Yet if 
 He had laid aside the human nature immediately after His 
 suffering, the everlasting efficacy of this infinite sacrifice had 
 been cut off." iWorks, x. 55, 6.
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 377 
 
 fear of a different error, many persons in later 
 times, who never doubted the reality of this work, 
 have used different language. 25 Their anxiety has 
 been merely to exclude the notion, that human 
 acts have any value, except through the sacrifice 
 of Christ. But this truth is so far from being 
 incompatible with the assertion of a priesthood and 
 a sacrifice by the primitive Fathers, that it is the 
 very ground upon which they based its impor- 
 tance. They maintained the reality of those means, 
 whereby we are joined to Christ, for the purpose 
 of showing that we cannot be saved, except through 
 His " perpetual sacrifice." Now, since Christ's 
 work is the work of the Great Head of renewed 
 humanity for all His brethren, therefore the means 
 whereby we hold to Him are an actual participation 
 in His sacrifice. A sacrifice is not participated 
 only by the sacrificing Priest, but by all those who 
 have a right in the action 26 which is performed, and 
 a hope through the offering which is accepted. 
 " Behold Israel after the flesh : are not they which 
 
 25 This is TVaterland's explanation of the fact, that Hooker 
 says " sacrifice is now no part of the Christian ministry," and 
 that we have " properly now no sacrifice." " I presume he 
 meant by proper sacrifice, propitiatory. In such a sense as 
 that he might justly say, that sacrifice is no part of the Church 
 ministry, or that the Christian Church has no sacrifice. But I 
 commend not the use of such new language, be the meaning 
 ever so right: the Fathers never used it." The Christian 
 Sacrifice Explained IVaterlantfs TVorks, viii. 169. 
 
 26 " Indubitatum est .... ipsos fideles praesentes una cum sa- 
 cerdote offerre." Van Espen, quoted bg JlfaskeU, Ancient 
 Liturgy, p. 69.
 
 378 COMMON WORSHIP A MEANS 
 
 eat of the sacrifices partakers of the altar?" Both 
 laity, therefore, and priesthood 27 have a share in the 
 Christian sacrifice the one as participating in the 
 virtue of the gift, the other as further contributing 
 by their ministry to its common participation. 
 Therefore, though it be a necessary result of our 
 acceptance through the work of a Mediator, that 
 the same party should be both Priest and Victim 28 
 though looking at that meritorious act, on which 
 man's acceptance is dependent, there is but one 
 Priest and one sacrifice in Heaven and Earth we 
 yet may fitly apply the name both of Priests and 
 sacrifices to those media, whereby that act which is 
 continually pleaded in the Heavenly sanctuary is 
 participated by surrounding multitudes. Neither 
 can we speak too highly of the value of what is 
 effected by Christ's earthly ministers, provided we 
 render them subservient to that perfect sacrifice of 
 Himself which can receive no augmentation. 
 
 Why then is it that the existence of a Christian 
 Priesthood, and a Christian sacrifice, have been 
 questioned by those who never doubted the reality 
 of Christ's Intercession and Atonement as an actual 
 work external to ourselves ? Two things have 
 been principally alleged : first, that their assertion 
 
 27 " As Christ, in virtue of His sacrifice on the Cross, inter- 
 cedes for us with the Father so does the minister of Christ's 
 priesthood here ; that the virtue of the eternal sacrifice may be 
 salutary and effectual to all the needs of the Church, both for 
 things temporal and eternal." Taylor's Worthy Communi- 
 cant, i. iv. 4. M S. Aug. de Trin. iv. 14.
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 379 
 
 is inconsistent with the privilege of Christians; 
 and secondly, that it is incompatible with the pre- 
 rogative of Christ. These objections shall be con- 
 sidered in their order. 
 
 To be " Kings and Priests" has been declared in 
 Scripture to be the privilege of individual Christians. 
 For to them more signally than to Israel of old has 
 been given that right of access to God, which is at 
 once a royal privilege and a priestly function. 
 This is the meaning of that " sacerdotium lai- 
 corum" which was claimed in primitive times for 
 all Christians. But on what does this title depend? 
 It results solely from the fact that all members of 
 the family of Christ are associated in their degree 
 in those privileges, of which the Pattern Man was 
 perfectly possessed. The abundance of super- 
 natural grace which belonged to Him by right was 
 sufficient to ennoble all His brethren. Their title, 
 therefore, is no individual birthright no natural 
 superiority to the residue of mankind but that 
 those privileges, which belong to the Head of the 
 Church by right, belong to His members by favour. 
 On this ground similar titles were bestowed even 
 upon the Jewish people, because their prospective 
 participation in the promised Mediator gave them 
 some portion in His honours. Now, if this be the 
 ground of that claim which is made for individual 
 Christians, how can it be interfered with by that 
 medium of intercourse with Christ, on which its 
 very existence is dependent? For it is to Christ,
 
 380 COMMON WORSHIP A MEANS 
 
 as man, that the title belongs of right, in which all 
 Christians claim to participate. Now, it is for the 
 very end of providing a channel of intercourse with 
 the man's nature of Christ, that all Church ordi- 
 nances have been provided. Their professed pur- 
 pose is to add members to His body. So long, 
 then, as the Christian Sacrifice and Priesthood are 
 merely made a means of union with the manhood 
 of Christ, they cannot interfere with the privilege 
 of individual Christians. As the same terms of 
 royalty and priesthood, when applied in their de- 
 gree to the Jewish nation, were rendered available 
 through the efficacy of that national Ritual, where- 
 by the whole people was united to God, so the 
 existence of such common worship as involves the 
 reality of a Christian Priesthood, is the very means 
 of their maintenance in the Church of Christ. The 
 simple name of a Christian Priesthood cannot be 
 objected to, as incompatible with the right of 
 Christians, for otherwise, to monopolize the title of 
 king would be equally inconsistent with their 
 kingly honour. So that such Priesthood and such 
 sacrifices in the Church of Christ as are the means 
 of maintaining the connexion between Christ and His 
 brethren, are no disparagement to their birthright, 
 but supply the very basis on which it is dependent. 
 We come then to the other objection. Is the 
 continuance of a sacerdotal system incompatible 
 with the prerogative of Christ? Those who deny 
 that a priesthood and sacrifice exist under the
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 381 
 
 Gospel, suppose that they interfere in some way 
 with the propitiatory office, which is admitted on 
 all hands to belong exclusively to Christ. But why 
 are they supposed to interfere with it? If, indeed, 
 Christ's work was entirely concluded when He was 
 upon earth if when he had removed certain dis- 
 abilities which attached to man's position, He left 
 men to find their way to heaven as they could, 
 with the help perhaps of that general influence of 
 the Great Spirit of the Universe, in which all ages 
 and nations have believed then indeed no place 
 is left for the present action of a sacerdotal system. 
 But this would be to renounce belief in Christ's 
 " continual sacrifice" to explain away the reality 
 of His Intercession, and the truth of His nature 
 and to forget that He retains that manhood where- 
 by He has become the new Head of our race. 
 Now, if Christ is still maintaining a real intercession 
 if He still pleads that sacrifice, in the merit 
 whereof we must partake if we would be truly 
 joined to His man's nature then is there ample 
 place for that sacerdotal system, by which some 
 actual thing is to be still effected, and in which 
 some agents must be still employed. Now, this it is 
 which is asserted by St. Ignatius and St. Irenaeus, 
 when they maintain that there exists an altar and a 
 sacrifice in the Church of Christ. They maintain 
 the reality of those acts of Christ, in which we par- 
 ticipate through the intervention of His ministers. 
 So that the real dispute is whether anything is still
 
 382 COMMON WORSHIP A MEANS 
 
 done by the God-man in His Gospel Kingdom ; or 
 whether, as the Sabellians maintain, His work is 
 over, and His office at an end. For if anything is 
 still transacted, so that for its participation there 
 need certain acts, and the service of certain agents, 
 we have an exact precedent in the Jewish system 
 for bestowing the name of sacrifice and priesthood 
 upon the media which are thus employed. 
 
 Now, to this it may be replied, that the Jewish 
 system was a temporary provision, which was 
 superseded by the Gospel. The High Priest, it 
 may be said, stood formerly in the place of Christ ; 
 and therefore now that the true Priest is come, a 
 typical Priest would not only be superfluous but 
 intrusive. Such is the common argument ; but 
 such is not the argument employed by the writer 
 to the Hebrews. His assertion is, not that the 
 Levitical Priesthood was so real and efficacious, 
 that had it continued, the Priesthood of Christ 
 would have been supererogatory ; but on the con- 
 trary, that had Christ's Priesthood, like the Leviti- 
 cal, been only earthly and typical, there would have 
 been no use in the transition from the one system 
 to the other. " If He were upon earth He should 
 not be a Priest, seeing that there are Priests, that 
 offer gifts according to the law." Christ is asserted, 
 therefore, to be a Priest not after the order of 
 Aaron, but after the order of Melchizedec. And 
 the reason why the Jewish Ritual has passed away, 
 is because now that the True Sacrifice is offered,
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 383 
 
 the media of commemoration have taken the place 
 of the media of prediction. Had there been more 
 than this in the Jewish Ritual, how could the 
 Apostles have continued to observe it ? Had it in- 
 terfered with the work of Christ, it would not have 
 been enough to leave it to die away under the light 
 of the Gospel. It would not have been sufficient 
 for St. Paul to teach men not to trust ; he must 
 have forbidden any to practice it. But every privi- 
 lege, which has been bestowed in God's two great 
 Dispensations, has flowed into them from that 
 central fact of the Mediation of Christ, which has 
 been the quickening principle of both. For on it 
 alone both the Old and New Testament were de- 
 pendent, and in its blessings the old and new Elec- 
 tion, though in different degrees, have been par- 
 takers. Neither could inferior officers or means in 
 either Covenant supersede that Mediation of Christ, 
 to which they were subordinate. Their sole purpose 
 was to carry it out, to turn men to it, to unite them 
 into such system and harmony, that they might 
 profit by the blessings which it conveys. This is 
 all which can be done by the ministers of Christ's 
 Church ; and all which could be done by the min- 
 isters of God's temple. And the very reason why 
 we put the priestly office under the Law in a line 
 with the ministerial office under the Gospel why 
 we assert that if the title of Priest could be given 
 fitly to the first, it belongs also to the second is, 
 that otherwise we should place men on the same
 
 384 COMMON WORSHIP A MEANS 
 
 level with Christ, and derogate from His peculiar 
 character. For to allow this distinction would be to 
 assign too little to the Mediation of Christ, and too 
 much to the priesthood of men. It were to assign 
 too little to Christ to say merely, that when earthly 
 Priests had been long offering their insufficient 
 sacrifices, He appeared in the fulness of time to 
 offer that which was perfective and complete. 
 Christ's office as Priest is the consequence of His 
 nature : it differs in kind from the same work or 
 title as discharged by others ; it cannot be referred 
 to the same rank, or compared with things which 
 are incommensurable with it. Any persons who 
 discharge an office which has reference to God, and 
 who present to Him what is offered by men, may 
 be called Priests (as was Melchizedec, because a 
 type of Christ), but this no more places them in 
 the same class with Christ, than the title of Son as 
 bestowed upon Him, assimilates Him to the par- 
 takers in earthly sonship. That He is called Son 
 and Priest in Scripture is no reason for degrading 
 Him to the class of earthly Priests, or earthly 
 children. For His priestly office flows directly 
 from that conjunction of two natures, whereby He 
 is Mediator between God and man. This rendered 
 Him by nature such a real representative of our 
 race towards God, as earthly Priests can be only 
 by office and appointment. Except for this true 
 conjunction of Godhead and manhood, no accept- 
 able offering could be rendered by man to God.
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 385 
 
 As He is the only channel through whom graces 
 flow from God to man, so is He the only medium 
 through which worship ascends from man to his 
 Maker. This is the very cause for that system of 
 the Church, whereby men are truly united to Him, 
 and have a real share in His Intercession. Now, 
 to assert that if Priests existed under the second as 
 under the first Covenant, His sole and inalienable 
 office would be impaired, is to allow that the Aaronic 
 Priests are to be put in the same class with Him, 
 and that they executed a function, which He after- 
 wards discharged. The perpetuation of a corre- 
 sponding office could not interfere with the work of 
 Christ, unless the priesthood of the sons of Aaron 
 would have interfered with Him. And thus is He 
 degraded to a mere functionary who exercised a 
 certain work by appointment, instead of being that 
 great High Priest, who is our Mediator by nature. 
 And as this is to assign too little to Christ, so it 
 is to assign too much to men. For if the Aaronic 
 Priesthood is looked at in itself, and independently 
 of Him, how could it do anything towards man's 
 salvation ? It is a general declaration that it is 
 " not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats 
 should cake away sins." The importance then 
 which was assigned to the Jewish law, and the 
 benefits which were derived from it, show that it 
 was only relevant to Christ that its force de- 
 pended on the constant application of Christ's 
 merits that its object was to bring men into union 
 
 c c
 
 386 COMMON WORSHIP A MEANS 
 
 with Him and that except with this reference it 
 was a splendid fiction. 29 This assertion is as true 
 respecting those media of communion which were 
 used before the time of Christ, as respecting those 
 which have been employed since His Advent; for 
 it is only through " the Lamb slain from the foun- 
 dation of the world," that the offerings of men, 
 whether before or since, could be acceptable. If 
 it be said therefore that a Christian priesthood is 
 needless, because the work of Mediation is dis- 
 charged by Christ alone; the answer is, that such 
 an argument proves a Jewish priesthood to have 
 been useless also. If it be added that a Christian 
 priesthood interferes with the sole merits of Christ, 
 by providing another way of approaching God, 
 why then did not the Jewish priesthood the same ? 
 
 29 The contrary notion has led to the opinion adopted by 
 some German Rationalists, in order to get rid of the predictions 
 of Christ in the Old Testament, that all which the Prophets 
 had in their minds in their description of the Christian cove- 
 nant, was that the purer system of Monotheism was to be dif- 
 fused among the Heathen by the Jewish nation. "Rosen- 
 miiller," says Gesenius^ on Isaiah, xlix., "finds here the ex- 
 pansion of the idea that the people of Israel was hereafter to be 
 the Instructor of the Heathen, and to spread true religion in 
 the earth. He cites Isaiah, Ixi. 5, 6, according to which all 
 Israelites were hereafter to be Priests, and Joel, iii. 1, which im- 
 plies that in the golden age, they were all to be Prophets." Com- 
 ment, vol. iii. p. 123. The mistake has arisen from forgetting 
 that the office of Prophet or Priest whether under the old or 
 new Covenant, is not distinct from the true exercise of these 
 offices by the Pattern Man, but is included in it, and is its 
 earthly expression. All Priests and Prophets are mediators by 
 office so long as HE acts and speaks in them, who is Mediator 
 by nature.
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 387 
 
 If men answer that the latter was specially ap- 
 pointed to show beforehand the Lord's death, is 
 not a system of ministering equally required to 
 fulfil the allotted office of showing "the Lord's 
 death till He come." 30 But in truth, neither the 
 one nor the other office has any tendency, when 
 rightly viewed, to lead men away from Christ, 
 their only object being to conduct men to Him. 
 The Manichees indeed, who thought the ancient 
 law a mischievous obstruction, which shut men out 
 from the Good Spirit of the Universe, might enter- 
 tain similar notions of the system whereby men are 
 united to the body of Christ. 31 But those w r ho 
 
 30 Sacrifice, " as practised before the time of Christ, may 
 justly be considered as a sacramental memorial, showing forth 
 the Lord's death till He came ; and when accompanied with a 
 due faith in the promises made to the early believers, may rea- 
 sonably be judged to have been equally acceptable with that 
 sacramental memorial, which has been enjoined by Our Lord 
 Himself to His followers for the shorting forth His death until 
 His coming again" Magee on Atonement, i. 61. This state- 
 ment is no doubt correct, in that it puts the sacrificial system 
 under the law in the same line with that under the Gospel ; but 
 to speak of the former as " equally acceptable" with the latter 
 is to forget " that they without us" w r ere " not made perfect." 
 " The ministration written and engraven in stones" was not so 
 favoured doubtless as " the ministration of the Spirit." 
 
 31 That which Rationalists dislike in the Old Testament is 
 that it represents the system of Mediation as an advance on the 
 system of nature. Now, if man had access to God through the 
 natural intercourse of mind with mind, as Adam had before the 
 Fall, any step towards the system of Mediation would be a 
 derogation from the prerogative of nature. For what would 
 Priest and Altar be, but an intrusion which obstructed the 
 natural intercourse of the mind with its unembodied Creator ? 
 Hence, Socinians represent the Law, together with the whole
 
 388 COMMON WORSHIP A MEANS 
 
 admit the divine authorship of that law under 
 which the ancient Priests ministered to Christ by 
 type and sacrifice, need not doubt that the minis- 
 tration of public officers in His Church, may in 
 like manner enable men to profit by His Media- 
 tion. There is nothing in the privilege of Chris- 
 tians, nor in the work of Christ Our Lord, incon- 
 sistent with such intervention. It is an intervention 
 which unites, and does not separate. For it is 
 obviously essential to that common and united 
 worship, which has been shown to be the appointed 
 means of union with the mystical body of Christ. 
 So that an ordained ministry and public Ritual 
 may be concluded to be required of necessity in 
 the Church of God. 
 
 V. It has been shown that it is nowise incon- 
 sistent with the Doctrine of our Lord's Mediation, 
 that the Christian ministry should equally with 
 the Jewish be called a priesthood, and that its 
 service should equally be styled a sacrifice. And 
 it has been stated what is that true and only 
 
 system of Mediation to which it conducted, as a concession to 
 the infirmities of an uncivilized age, which could not rise to the 
 level of an intellectual religion. And even those Christian 
 writers who reject the sacramental system of the Church, are 
 led to speak of " the Law and Levitical arrangement" as " in- 
 troduced in God's anger" [Bunsen's Kirche der Zukunft, p. 77], 
 as though it were a diminution of that means of intercourse 
 with God, which men before possessed. For since the sacra- 
 mental system is the complete and full expression of that pre- 
 sence of an Incarnate Mediator, of which the Levitical scheme 
 was the preliminary shadow, it is impossible that those who 
 reject the one should do justice to the other.
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 389 
 
 sacrifice, on the pleading whereof depends the office 
 of both systems; the one by typical representa- 
 tion the other by sacramental union. As yet, 
 however, nothing has been adduced but reasons 
 for expecting a Christian ministry to exist; it is 
 necessary to show further the fact of its existence. 
 Now, it is essential to notice what it is which 
 Scripture declares on this subject, and on what it 
 is silent. The existence of a public Ritual and 
 Ministry it declares either expressly or by impli- 
 cation: their nature, order, and mode of appoint- 
 ment are less clearly expressed. The existence of 
 a public ministry follows (independently of various 
 historical and incidental statements in Scripture) 
 from that central portion of the Christian Revela- 
 tion, with which we are particularly engaged. 
 For the Doctrine of Our Lord's Incarnation, which 
 is the beginning and end of the Gospel, declares 
 to us that the renewal of man's nature is effected 
 through union with the manhood of Christ. All 
 the supernatural gifts of grace were first concen- 
 trated in this representative of the human race 
 and Head of the Christian family [vide cap. 10], 
 that from His manhood they might afterwards 
 flow forth for the replenishment of His brethren. 
 Again, this union is declared to be vouchsafed to 
 us in that mystical body of Christ Our Lord, in 
 which all Christians are engrafted [vide cap. 11]. 
 Again, our mean of partaking in the mystical body 
 of Christ, has been shown (in the present Chapter)
 
 390 COMMON WORSHIP A MEANS 
 
 to be participation in its common actions. Those 
 common actions, therefore, are essential to the 
 effect of the Incarnation of Christ. And if there 
 be public acts, there must be public agents: a 
 ministry or system of some sort or other must be 
 essential to the existence of that collective order, 
 whereby individuals become members of the body 
 of Christ. What is asserted then as a Scriptural 
 truth and necessary doctrine is, that some public 
 order and worship, with all \vhich it implies, must 
 for ever exist in the Church of God. And by 
 common worship is not to be understood that 
 Christians have the right of meeting together, and 
 those who please the right of uttering their minds 
 (a thing which here is neither affirmed nor denied), 
 but that the Church of Christ, regarded as a whole, 
 has certain duties incumbent on it towards God 
 that those duties involve united worship, common 
 action, a public service, and arise from that col- 
 lective character, which is stamped on the whole 
 Christian community by its spiritual union with the 
 body of its Incarnate God. To forego this re- 
 lation is to leave the high ground of the Christian 
 Revelation, and to descend to the uncertainty of 
 mere natural religion. It is to rest on that imme- 
 diate relation to God through the intercourse of 
 mind with mind, which belonged to unfallen man, 
 but which since the Fall can only be restored 
 through the intervention of a Mediator. So that 
 to suppose the individual duties of religion to be
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 391 
 
 anterior to common worship or independent of it, 
 is virtually to abandon the Mediation of Christ. 
 For all the private prayers, thoughts, actions of 
 Christians, depend on that union with Christ Our 
 Lord, which is attained through the communica- 
 tion of His man's nature. And He communicates 
 it through those public acts, whereby the Great 
 Head of the Christian body joins all its members 
 to Himself. 
 
 Now, when it is further demanded by whom are 
 these public acts done, in what circumstances, 
 under whose presidence and authority, we can only 
 refer to the practice of the Church, as she has been 
 guided "into all truth" by the Holy Ghost, and 
 to the example which was set by the Apostles. It 
 has been God's will that in this as in many other 
 cases, the New Testament should not comprise 
 such an exact code of laws as was afforded by the 
 Old. That the several Books which compose the 
 New Testament are inspired, and that they con- 
 tain the rule of our faith, are facts of which we are 
 assured, because it was always so held by the 
 Apostles and their successors, although no such 
 statement occurs in Holy Writ. That worship 
 should be solemnized especially on the first day of 
 the week, so that we are authorized to depart from 
 the letter of the Fourth Commandment, rests on 
 the same authority. We have no other proof that 
 children are fit partakers of the one, or women of 
 the other sacrament. In all these cases we take as our
 
 392 COMMON WORSHIP A MEANS 
 
 guide the example of the Apostles. In like man- 
 ner must we act in regard to the nature and mode 
 of that public agency, whereby the united acts of 
 the Christian community have their expression. 
 That such united action exists, and that there 
 must be a public system of worship, we believe on 
 the authority of Scripture, and because they are 
 indissolubly bound to the highest doctrines of 
 religion. And the existence of such a system, 
 even in the opinion of those who are least inclined 
 to rest the Church's being on any doctrinal basis, 
 involves the necessity of agents, by whom it may 
 be conducted. " Any one who sanctions a so- 
 ciety," says Archbishop Whately, " gives in so 
 doing his sanction to those essentials of a society, 
 its government, its officers, its regulations. Ac- 
 cordingly if Our Lord had not expressly said any- 
 thing about ' binding and loosing,' still the very 
 circumstance of His sanctioning a Christian com- 
 munity, would necessarily have implied His sanc- 
 tion of the institutions, ministers, and government 
 of a Christian Church." 32 Since the existence, 
 then, of a system of common worship is a truth of 
 Scripture, and since it implies the existence of a 
 ministry, all that remains is to ask the nature and 
 constitution of that ministry ; and if on this sub- 
 ject Scripture has given us no express rule, yet as 
 in the other cases mentioned, some guidance may 
 be derived from the example of the Apostles. 
 32 " Kingdom of Christ," p. 151.
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 393 
 
 This accordingly has been the course adopted 
 by the English Church. She prefaces her enforce- 
 ment of the rule of Episcopacy by declaring that 
 " it is evident unto all men diligently reading the 
 Holy Scripture and ancient authors, that from 
 the Apostles' time there have been these orders of 
 ministers in Christ's Church : Bishops, Priests, and 
 Deacons." As we trace back from the present 
 time, we find this rale to have universally prevailed 
 among the spiritual predecessors of our present 
 ministry. Each generation has professed to receive 
 its commission from Christ through the interven- 
 tion of the preceding one. Even Archbishop 
 Whately allows, that " The existence of such an 
 order of men as Christian ministers, continuously 
 from the time of the Apostles to this day, is per- 
 haps as complete a moral certainty as any historical 
 fact can be." M And when we draw near its foun- 
 tain, we have the direct testimony of Tertullian, 
 who lived shortly after St. John, that its first rank 
 had its commission handed on to it by that Apostle 
 of Christ j 34 and St. Ignatius, St. John's contem- 
 porary, declares its intervention essential to the 
 validity of sacred ordinances. This is sufficient 
 ground for justifying the English Church in her 
 assertion of the Apostolical descent of the three 
 orders of ministers. It is a further question 
 whether this Apostolical successsion is essential, 
 and whether any break in it would impair the 
 33 " Kingdom of Christ," p. 222. M Tert. adv. Marcionem, iv. 5.
 
 394 COMMON WORSHIP A MEANS 
 
 validity of sacred rites. Such a question, however, 
 seems as needless as to ask whether the Church 
 could safely reverse the appointment of the Lord's 
 Day, or unsettle the observance of infant Baptism. 
 In all such cases to follow the Apostolic example is 
 plainly the right, because it is the safest course. 
 Since the purpose of a ministry is to keep up that 
 public order, whereby we hold perpetual com- 
 munion with the Lord's Body, any departure from 
 its constituted usage is a needless risk. It is 
 alleged, indeed, that to rest anything on the per- 
 petuation of a chain, which contains so many links, 
 is to subject our religious hopes to a painful un- 
 certainty. This is to forget that the Apostolical 
 succession only supplies those who believe it with 
 an additional security, over and above what others 
 possess. Since each Bishop has commission from 
 three of his brethren, its effect if traced back a few 
 generations, is to identify his individual authority 
 with that of the whole Episcopate of the Church. 
 Were it not that the same parties repeatedly con- 
 secrate, every Bishop would have two hundred and 
 sixteen spiritual predecessors in the fifth degree; 
 and it can scarcely be doubted, therefore, that by 
 going back a few years, his commission must have 
 been transmitted by the whole body of his fore- 
 runners. The feeling thus engendered may be 
 illustrated by that which prevailed among pious 
 Israelites, from the hope that Our Lord would 
 descend from them according to the flesh. Con-
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 395 
 
 sidering the vast number of ancestors which each 
 individual had in the twenty-seventh generation, 
 there can scarcely have been a Jewish parent in the 
 time of David, if we except those whose progeny 
 became absolutely extinct, who was not, according 
 to the flesh, a predecessor of Our Lord. So truly 
 was He the heir of the nation. And in like man- 
 ner there can scarcely have been a Bishop in the 
 Primitive Church much less could there be one 
 among the Apostles through whom every in- 
 dividual inheritor of the Episcopal office may not 
 trace his commission. Surely such a fact is not 
 calculated to weaken the feeling of the Church's 
 unity, or to relax that bond whereby all the members 
 of the Lord's Body are united to Himself. And if 
 it be said that there may in some case have been a 
 secret failure, which may have impaired some one 
 of the many parallel threads by which this bond is 
 rendered continuous, such a circumstance, instead 
 of being fatal to the general law, seems the very 
 exception for which some great Divines have con- 
 tended that an involuntary breach of this Apos- 
 tolical rule is not fatal to the Church's existence. 
 If we saw persons whose descent we were unable 
 to trace to Adam, but whose acts and character 
 showed an exact congruity with those of his 
 children, we should suppose that it had pleased 
 God in some way to us unknown, to amalga- 
 mate them with mankind. It would not be an 
 unnatural exercise of faith, to believe that God is
 
 396 COMMON WORSHIP A MEANS 
 
 pleased in like manner to supply the involuntary 
 deficiencies of those who desire to be identified 
 with His Church's existence. 
 
 But why, it may be asked, do we refer to this 
 Apostolical commission, if it be not expressly 
 affirmed to be essential? For the same reason that 
 we assert Christian ministers to be as truly Priests 
 as those of the first Temple, and that their offering 
 is as truly a sacrifice. It is possible that these 
 particulars might not be essential to the existence 
 of worship, and therefore to the reality of those 
 acts, whereby Christians claim their part in the 
 Body of Christ Our Lord. But, independently of 
 the fact that we have good authority for their asser- 
 tion, they contribute to a reverent estimate of those 
 public acts of the Christian Body, from which the 
 contrary tendency proportionably detracts. The 
 thing of moment is that common worship is a real 
 work, whereby the whole Christian community pre- 
 serves its right as the collective body of the Lord. 
 Its claim to a true life in Him is thereby asserted, 
 just as the privileges of Israel belonged to all who 
 had a part in its united Ritual. By this means are 
 we led to appreciate those external actions of the 
 God-man, on which His character of Mediator is 
 dependent. Nothing hinders, indeed, but that the 
 like results might have attended common worship, 
 though it had been God's pleasure that the public 
 officers, by whom it is directed, instead of being set 
 apart for their work, had been chosen out of the
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 397 
 
 mass for the occasion. But if common worship be 
 really of the moment which has been described, 
 such manner of selecting those who guide it could 
 not be esteemed so suitable as that which has been 
 handed down from the Apostles. Accordingly, 
 those who have adopted such an expedient, have 
 either begun or ended by depreciating the work 
 itself. Instead of being an office which has refe- 
 rence to God, and may therefore be properly called 
 sacred or divine, the task of ministering has before 
 long been looked upon only in its reference to man, 
 and as little else than that of an instructor. Thus 
 the notion of common worship passes away. The 
 collective sacrifice of the people's prayers is lost 
 sight of. So that beginning by neglecting the ex- 
 ample of the Apostles, men have ended by disbeliev- 
 ing their doctrines. The life of the Christian com- 
 munity as the Body of Christ, has been destroyed. 
 His Mediation, whereby God and man are united, 
 has been explained away into a mere natural re- 
 ligion. The necessity of being joined to His man's 
 nature has been forgotten. Such has been the 
 actual result in very many of those communities, 
 where the line of a living ministry has been broken. 
 And to add to this tendency, where the ancient 
 system of the ministry has been abandoned, the 
 ancient Ritual and Liturgy have commonly been 
 renounced. Here too the practice of early times, 
 so far as it can be attained, affords an useful ex- 
 ample ; especially in points of such leading moment
 
 398 COMMON WORSHIP A MEANS 
 
 as the ministering of Sacraments. But the material 
 point is that such form of service should be main- 
 tained as may testify to the collective character of 
 the Church's supplications. This is the very pur- 
 pose of a public Liturgy, which, by calling on the 
 people to bear their part, finds place for the service 
 of the whole community. Where this responsive 
 system of worship is lost, the nature of a public 
 service will soon be forgotten. Instead of regard- 
 ing the minister as a public servant, whose office is 
 to provide a centre of union for their collective 
 prayers, men will look to him mainly as a teacher, 
 whose office is not to address God but themselves. 
 The very place of assemblage, instead of being 
 known as God's " House of Prayer," will be as- 
 sociated with the recollection of some favoured 
 preacher. And the sure consequence will be a 
 forgetfulness of the peculiar relation which men 
 gain in common worship to Christ the Mediator, to 
 whom at that moment they should address them- 
 selves as members of the one mystical body in 
 heaven and earth, for which He is interceding at 
 His Father's right hand. 35 
 
 35 It must have been because this united system of worship 
 witnesses in so striking a manner to the collective existence of 
 Christ's body, that it was so early complained of by the enemies 
 of the English Church. Witness the objection made at Frank- 
 fort to the system of responding. The Church people, it was 
 said, "began to break that order which was agreed upon, in 
 answering aloud after the minister." Phenix, vol. ii. 72. See 
 also the irreverent remarks of Knox on the affecting appeals to 
 the man Christ Jesus in our Litany. Vide Letter to Calvin,
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 399 
 
 Nothing has more contributed to the growth of 
 that unbelief which has overspread many parts of 
 the Continent, than the evil which has been de- 
 scribed. For with the collective character of wor- 
 ship, that real life of the Church has been lost, 
 which depends on Christ's presence. The preser- 
 vation of this among ourselves has not been owing 
 merely to our attachment to great names or ortho- 
 dox expressions, however important ; for Christ 
 only can maintain that quickening spirit, which 
 He bestows through the ordinances of His grace. 
 From Himself must come the power which is 
 sought through those federal acts which unite men 
 in His mystical body. A neglect of those especial 
 means by which this union is effected, issues in a 
 practical undervaluing of the union itself. The 
 Incarnation of Christ ceases to be looked upon as 
 the source of His continual presence among men, 
 
 Plienix, ii. 65. The evil of yielding to such objections is set 
 forth by the Lutheran Olshausen. " The worship of the 
 Church," he says, " is an enduring sacrifice of thanks, which, 
 for His enduring sacrifice of atonement, is offered to Our Lord. 
 To this element of Prayer, the Romish Church had unduly 
 given an exclusive predominance : the Lutheran Church has as 
 unduly made it subordinate to the personal acts of the preacher, 
 and to his sermon, whereas the minister ought not to be con- 
 sidered merely as a preacher, but also as a real Liturgist, i. e. 
 as the organ through which the devotion of the congregation 
 is conveyed. Public worship accordingly consists of two dif- 
 ferent parts, the preaching of the Gospel, whether to convert 
 the unbeliever or instruct the Christian ; and the service of 
 supplication, the crowning act whereof is the Holy Eucharist, 
 the Church's great thank-offering, in which Christ's sacrifice of 
 Mediation is symbolically set forth."
 
 400 COMMON WORSHIP A MEANS 
 
 and a system of self-mediation grows up in its 
 place. The glowing words in which Scripture de- 
 scribes the privileges of Christians, are regarded as 
 something bestowed on them as individuals, as a 
 re-assertion of the claims of nature, and as though 
 by themselves they had access to God; whereas it 
 is only through their great Head that these bless- 
 ings devolve on them. The royal and priestly 
 nature has been shown not to belong to them in 
 themselves, but by union with Him who by His 
 Mediation has joined them to God. As fallen 
 humanity was first re-consecrated by union with 
 the divine nature in Christ our Head, so all con- 
 secrating virtue is bestowed upon His servants 
 through that union with Him, which belongs to 
 them as members of His mystical body. So that 
 to abandon the connexion which is maintained by 
 the public ordinances of His grace, is to renounce 
 that highest birthright of man's race, which is be- 
 stowed upon it through the Mediation of Christ. 
 It is a bold statement of Dr. Bisse, in relation to 
 the importance of daily service, that the "mother 
 Churches, the sure resting-place for the Ark of the 
 Covenant, before which the daily offering never 
 ceaseth to be offered morning and evening these 
 are our strength and salvation, and are of far greater 
 use and security to our people and to our land, 
 than all the watchfulness of our senators, or policy 
 of our ambassadors, or valour of our mighty men." 36 
 36 Rationale on Cathedral Worship, p. 53, 54.
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 401 
 
 What was present to his mind was, that by this 
 collective service is maintained our connexion with 
 that Mediation of the Son of God, from which flow 
 the highest privileges of humanity. This no doubt 
 is the Church's reason for requiring the public min- 
 istration of daily service, except when " reasonably 
 hindered," of all her clergy. And well were it if 
 all who take part in public prayer, and especially 
 all who worship in those central Churches, wherein 
 the whole diocese has a common interest, would 
 remember how high and responsible is the office 
 which they undertake. For not only those who 
 officiate, but all who take part in public prayer, are 
 thereby uniting themselves to that great work, of 
 which the Head and Leader is the Sou of God 
 Himself. This belongs to the laymen who present 
 prayers, as well as to the Priest whose office is to 
 give them united voice and utterance. If the High 
 Priest in ancient times bore with him into God's 
 presence the symbols of the whole world, and 
 claimed to be its common minister, much more 
 so does the Christian, the heir of the world, for 
 whose sake were the dispensations which are past, 
 and on whom the " ends of the world have come." 
 On this account is man emphatically called " the 
 creature" 37 in Holy Writ, because he is the heir 
 
 37 When God made the world He impressed the seal of 
 Creation upon man, as on a scrap of parchment one writes the 
 name and number of a whole year. Therefore is man called in 
 God's words " all Creation." St. Hildegard, as quoted in 
 Olshausen on St. Mark, xvi. 15. 
 
 Dd-
 
 402 COMMON WORSHIP A MEANS 
 
 and representative of God's creation. A lofty 
 title, but which One Only Individual bears in 
 Himself, and which, if others attempt to claim it 
 for themselves, will but minister to their more 
 signal overthrow. Those who seek to rule the 
 world by themselves, or who claim for themselves 
 its possession, do but demonstrate the imbecility 
 of worldly talents, and the instability of worldly 
 success. The heir of the world, the ruler of the 
 creation of God, is that Man only, whom a nature 
 which was above humanity marked out to be the 
 " first-born of every creature.'' In the elder son, 
 all the prerogatives of birthright were exclusively 
 inherent. To Him only do those titles belong of 
 right, which He bestows upon all His brethren 
 by favour. He is the sole King, the only Priest ; 
 but they are all heirs, so far as they are one with 
 Him, in a Kingly and Priestly line. That sacer- 
 dotal system, whereby we maintain communion 
 with His man's nature, instead of derogating, as 
 some have imagined, from the privilege of indi- 
 vidual Christians, is the very circumstance on 
 which their tenure rests. On the maintenance of 
 their federal union with Him depends their pre- 
 eminence. To let go this connexion, is to fall 
 back into the imbecility of their natural state. 
 Those public ordinances, therefore, through which 
 as Mediator He unites them to His own man- 
 hood, are the very life of theirs. To be found in 
 Him their representative is to share His honour,
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 403 
 
 because it is to share His nature. "For Thou 
 wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by Thy 
 blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and peo- 
 ple, and nation. And hast made us unto our God 
 Kings and Priests, and we shall reign on the 
 earth."
 
 404 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 OF SACRAMENTS, AS MEANS OF UNION WITH THE 
 MANHOOD OF CHRIST. 
 
 THE actions of Christ towards men since His As- 
 cension, have been said to be involved in the truth 
 of His Presence. His Presence has been explained 
 to be that spiritual presence of His manhood, 
 whereon all the functions of His Mediation depend. 
 It is vouchsafed in His body mystical, the Church ; 
 and the offices of common worship, speaking com- 
 prehensively, are the means whereby men partake 
 it. But there is one means of partaking it, so 
 specific, peculiar, and signal, as to need separate 
 notice namely, sacramental grace. 
 
 Something has already been said respecting the 
 Holy Communion as a sacrifice, a view, however, 
 of this sacred ordinance, of which its character as 
 a sacrament is the root. For it is by virtue of the 
 connexion into which it brings men with Christ, 
 that it forms the leading feature of our public 
 service, so that its relation to worship arises from 
 that which is the characteristic and original dis- 
 tinction of both Sacraments. There are other pur-
 
 SACRAMENTS A MEANS, ETC. 405 
 
 poses which they serve, and other views which may 
 be taken of them, but that circumstance on which 
 all the rest depend, and which especially connects 
 itself with the present inquiry, is that Sacraments 
 are " the extension of the Incarnation," 1 that 
 through these means we are united to the man's 
 nature of Christ. Other particulars which dis- 
 tinguish them are, First, that in Sacraments there 
 is the performance of a definite and peculiar act, 
 which is likely to engender in us peculiar prepara- 
 tion. Hence as our Article observes, they are 
 " badges or tokens of Christian men's profession." 
 Christian burial consequently is not allowed except 
 to those who have been partakers of the one, and 
 who have not been formally excluded from the 
 other Sacrament. Now, this circumstance may 
 not unfitly suggest the cautious preparation with 
 which we should approach rites, by which we are 
 especially dedicated to God's service. But this is 
 only a first, and as our Article is careful to observe, 
 only a partial estimate of Sacraments ; it rests their 
 use on our act only, not on that of God; it is 
 merely subjective, human, tentative, and though 
 useful as a direction to ourselves, falls far short of 
 the sublime views which Scripture opens respect- 
 ing these " holy mysteries." It is such conception 
 as a Socinian might entertain, but with which the 
 Christian mind could never be satisfied. 
 
 We pass on then to the second purpose which 
 1 Taylor's Worthy Communicant, i. 2.
 
 406 SACRAMENTS A MEAXS 
 
 our Article assigns to Sacraments, i. e. that they 
 are " not only badges of profession," " but rather" 
 " certain sure witnesses and effectual signs of 
 grace." Here, then, we have a divine, as before a 
 mere human meaning in these sacred ordinances. 
 They are not only subjective, as implying a feeling 
 in ourselves, but objective likewise, as implying 
 an act external to us on the part of the Almighty. 
 " Christ and His Holy Spirit with all their blessed 
 effects, though entering into the soul of man we 
 are not able to apprehend or express how, do 
 notwithstanding give notice of the times when they 
 use to make their access, because it pleaseth Al- 
 mighty God to communicate by sensible means 
 those blessings which are incomprehensible." 2 This 
 then is no doubt the peculiar end of Sacraments, 
 that they are channels to the faithful of those 
 supernatural gifts, whereby God renews the soul. 
 And herein their tangible nature has this peculiar 
 advantage, that it turns men's minds more com- 
 pletely to their Almighty Author, so that in times 
 of doubt they are a stable comfort, and yet in 
 times of steadfastness do not minister to pride. 
 Their advantage in time of doubt is, that their 
 ground is God's promise and not man's confidence : 
 so that they supply some fixed external standing- 
 place in those hours of dejection, when men's own 
 feelings are in most need of succour. In such 
 seasons comfort must come from without, for how 
 2 Ecclcs. Pol. v. 57, 3.
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 407 
 
 are inward doubts to be solved by the mind, whose 
 very complaint is doubtfulness ? In such mo- 
 ments, then, how inestimable that gift, whereby 
 " Thou dost assure us of Thy favour and goodness 
 towards us." And vet such succour contains this 
 
 v 
 
 antidote to pride, that whereas all inward move- 
 ments of man's soul, even though we admit them 
 to be God's works, may yet blend and confuse 
 themselves with our own agency ; on the contrary, 
 " where God doth work and use these outward 
 means, wherein He neither findeth nor planteth force 
 and aptness towards His intended purpose, such 
 means are but signs to bring men to the considera- 
 tion of His own omnipotent power, which without 
 the use of things sensible would not be marked." 3 
 This then being the main purpose of Sacraments, 
 and there being some peculiar advantages in the 
 very simplicity of the vehicles which God has 
 chosen for the communication of His gifts, we 
 may yet go further, and inquire how far they con- 
 nect themselves with His general dealings with 
 mankind, and whether this connexion supplies any 
 circumstances which explain what appears at first 
 sight their anomalous nature. For what indisposes 
 the minds of many to the doctrine of sacramental 
 grace, is that it seems so completely a matter of 
 arbitrary appointment. They require to discern 
 greater congruity between the effect attained and 
 the means of attaining it. We are used to see 
 3 Eccles. Pol. vi. 6, 11.
 
 408 SACRAMENTS A MEANS 
 
 cause and effect linked together by a chain of inter- 
 dependent circumstances ; and the gap between a 
 slight external act and a momentous internal alte- 
 ration is intolerable to our fancy. Say what men 
 will, the judgment revolts at it; man's faith is not 
 strong enough for such a trial. This is why all 
 the learned works which have been written on the 
 Sacraments fail to give confidence in their efficacy : 
 the unbelief which is vanquished in the study re- 
 appears in the world, and men acquiesce in the 
 formularies of the Church, but their reason remains 
 unsatisfied. What they need, as Hooker expresses 
 it after St. Augustin, is some "answer, such as 
 not only may press them with the bare authority 
 of custom, but also instruct them in the cause 
 thereof." 
 
 Now such a cause seems to be supplied by that 
 particular subject, with which we are at present 
 occupied. The importance of Sacraments rests on 
 the Incarnation of Christ, and on their being the 
 means through which His man's nature is com- 
 municated to His brethren. Let this be appre- 
 hended, and what offends men in their arbitrary 
 appointment will pass away. For since this is a 
 wholly supernatural work, we could not expect to 
 see it effected, except through some means specifi- 
 cally provided by God's peculiar appointment; and 
 the visible means employed are so far from ap- 
 pearing to be less suitable than any other, with 
 which the wisdom of God could have connected
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 409 
 
 the secret working of His power, that in several 
 respects we can discern them to be singularly 
 appropriate. If man's connexion with the Supreme 
 Being were the mere natural intercourse of mind 
 with mind if man were still, as Adam was before 
 the Fall, the perfect image of his Maker, then 
 indeed to introduce such media of communication 
 at all would be superfluous. And on this account 
 the Sacramental system is inconsistent with that 
 Rationalistic theory, which supposes that the divine 
 principle of holiness and truth is sufficiently pos- 
 sessed by nature. But allow the scheme of Media- 
 tion to be essential to man's recovery, let it depend 
 on union with that Personal Being in whom holi- 
 ness and truth became incarnate, and the Sacra- 
 mental system follows of course. In the mere 
 intercourse of mind with mind, Sacraments would 
 be an unnatural interruption : but they are exactly 
 suited to effect that union whereby the Divine 
 Head of man's race is bound to His fellows. Since 
 this union is itself foreign to the course of nature, 
 so must the media be by which it is effected; the 
 work cannot depend on their natural influence, but 
 on that influence with which they are superna- 
 turally endowed. And that those outward means 
 which we call Sacraments, are truly attended by 
 an inward effect, that what is done on earth in 
 holy mysteries, effects a real change in the whole 
 nature of those who are acted upon, is known to 
 us by the distinct declarations of God's word. We
 
 410 SACRAMENTS A MEANS 
 
 are told in plain and indubitable terms that Bap- 
 tism and the Lord's Supper are the means by 
 which men are joined to the body of Christ, and 
 therefore by which Christ Our Lord joins Himself 
 to that renewed race, of which He has become the 
 Head. So that, as St. Leo expresses it, " He that 
 is received by Christ, and that receives Christ, is 
 not the same after the laver of baptism as he was 
 before it, because the body of the regenerate person 
 becomes the flesh of the crucified one"* Xow, these 
 facts w T e learn from the express statements of St. 
 Paul. " For by one spirit are we all baptized into 
 one body." 5 And again, "we being many are one 
 bread and one body, for we are all partakers of 
 that one bread." 6 Herein it is expressly declared 
 that the one and the other of these Sacraments are 
 the peculiar means by which union with the body 
 of Christ is bestowed upon men. They are the 
 "joints and bands" whereby the whole body in its 
 dependence on its Head has nourishment minis- 
 tered. So that it is in the Church that union 
 takes place with Christ, the new Adam or repre- 
 sentative of our race, and it is by this actual union 
 with the new Adam, that the whole family of re- 
 newed men have that collective being, whereby is 
 derived to them their spiritual life. 
 
 And this, then, is the circumstance which puts 
 the main difference between Sacraments and those 
 
 4 S. Leo, Serm. xiv. de Pass. Dom. c. 6. 
 5 I. Corinthians, xii. 13. 6 I. Corinthians, x. 17.
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 411 
 
 other means of grace, wherein also we draw near 
 to God. The profit of all other means of grace 
 depends on that right of access to God, which 
 Christ the Mediator has dispensed. But the pur- 
 pose of Sacraments is to bind us to Him on whom 
 this right of access is dependent. Our prayers 
 and praises avail not, unless we are part of that 
 renewed race, which our great High Priest has 
 been pleased to identify with Himself, covering the 
 infirmity of their actions with the perfection of His 
 own. But it is through that union of His man's 
 nature with ours, which is compacted through the 
 Sacraments of His grace, that the Head of the 
 body is identified with its members. Thus it is 
 that the whole body is " fitly joined together, and 
 compacted by that which every joint supplieth." 
 So that Sacraments differ from all other means of 
 grace, in that whereas other things result from 
 union with Christ, they on the contrary conduct to 
 it. 7 Their pre-eminence depends on a real diversity 
 between their office and that of any other things 
 appertaining to divine service, because through 
 them Christ, the Head of mankind, joins Himself 
 to His brethren. 
 
 ' Sacraments, therefore, are not merely an acted prayer ; 
 neither is it their main function to teach by example, in which 
 case " where the word of God may be heard, which teacheth 
 with much more expedition and more full explication anything 
 we have to learn, if all the benefit we reap by Sacraments be 
 instruction, they which at all times have opportunity of using 
 the better mean to that purpose, will surelv hold the worse in 
 less estimation." Eccles. Pol. \. 57, 1.
 
 412 SACRAMENTS A MEANS 
 
 Sacraments, then, differ in purpose from other 
 means of grace, in that through them the Head 
 is united to its members. But why are they 
 especially employed for such an office? What is 
 that congruity which fits them for the work, and 
 what the suitableness which may be found in such 
 external portions of them, as address themselves to 
 our sense ? It is not for us, of course, to lay down 
 rules for the Omniscient, and yet we may contem- 
 plate with reverence what it has been His pleasure 
 to appoint. Now, since the peculiarity of Sacra- 
 ments is that they are not merely inward actions, 
 but that they touch likewise upon the external 
 world that they have, in fact, both " an outward 
 visible sign," and " an inward spiritual grace "- 
 this compound nature marks them out as a singu- 
 larly appropriate medium of intercourse between 
 things, which are themselves compound, i. e. man 
 who is to be renewed, and the Mediator whose 
 presence renews him. For thus it is that all 
 graces are communicated to mankind, flowing into 
 them from that manhood, which has been made the 
 fountain of grace through its personal oneness with 
 Deity. Now, man consists of a material as well as 
 an immaterial nature, and in body, soul, and spirit, 
 does he require to be renewed after the image of 
 Him that created him. It has not been an uncom- 
 mon feeling, that in the material clay of man's 
 composition lies all his vileness ; let him be eman- 
 cipated only from this, and the pure spirit would
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 413 
 
 expatiate in the freedom of its native refinement. 
 This was the inherent vice of the Gnostic system 
 [p. 135] ; it resulted from that erroneous phi- 
 losophy, which represented simple immensity as 
 the essence of Godhead, forgetful of those moral 
 conditions, whereby both through conscience and 
 revelation the Father of all has been pleased to 
 declare that His character is most adequately ex- 
 pressed. Thus are men blinded to the deformity 
 of sin, and to the hatefulness of that rebellion 
 against an holy God, which is the real degeneracy 
 of our state. An error this, which is best cor- 
 rected by remembering that Christ Our Lord took 
 our whole nature, and that our whole nature is to 
 be renovated in Him. " For if our flesh had not 
 admitted of redemption, the Word of God would 
 not have become flesh." 8 And because the terms 
 which are to be united are of this complex charac- 
 ter, it is not unnatural that the Sacraments, which 
 are appointed to unite them, should show by their 
 very constitution that even the material part of 
 manhood is not to be forgotten. " Hadst thou 
 been incorporeal," says St. Chrysostom, " God 
 would have given thee His gifts in a naked and 
 incorporeal manner. But since thy soul is joined 
 to thy body, the garb of sense is used in con- 
 veying a gift to thy mind." 9 Therefore does our 
 Church remind us, that by the baptism of Christ 
 " in Jordan," water was consecrated " to the mys- 
 8 S. Irenaeus, v. 14, 1. g Horn. 83, on St. Matt. xxvi.
 
 414 SACRAMENTS A MEANS 
 
 tical washing away of sin." The whole element, 
 in all its multiform variety, was freed by this sin- 
 gle use of it from the imputation of being naturally 
 impure. So does Irenaeus 10 maintain that all the 
 simple ingredients of man's life were purified 
 through their employment by that Head of our 
 race, who could not be defiled. To esteem man's 
 spirit something so much purer than his animal 
 nature, that its acts may in themselves find an 
 access to the Deity, which his material nature is 
 unworthy to share, is not very unlike the fanciful 
 heresy of the Gnostic Valentinus. The man Christ, 
 he supposed, having been moulded by the Demi- 
 urgus, or maker of the world, with his utmost 
 skill, had received, unknown to his Creator, the 
 seeds of a superior nature from the ultimate author 
 of all, which discovered themselves as he grew up 
 to the astonishment of the being who had pro- 
 duced him, and supplied the point of contact with 
 that divine spirit which descended upon Him at 
 His baptism. 11 There is something almost analo- 
 gous to this conception, in the belief that a part 
 of our nature has in itself a right of access to the 
 holy God, independently of that means of ap- 
 proach, which He has bestowed through Christ 
 upon the whole of it. For Christ Our Lord 
 vouchsafed to come in the perfection of our nature, 
 that all might be renewed. The representative of 
 
 10 S. Iren. iii. 11, 5. 
 11 Dorner's Person Christi, i. p. 377.
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 415 
 
 our race took our being in its completeness, that 
 it might be wholly sanctified. " For we could 
 not taste of incorruption and immortality, unless 
 we had first been united to that which is immortal 
 and incorruptible. But how should we be united 
 to that which was incorruptible and immortal, 
 unless He who was personally incorruption and 
 immortality had first been made the same with 
 ourselves, that so what was corruptible might be 
 swallowed up by incorruption, and what was 
 mortal by immortality, that we might receive the 
 adoption of sons ?" 12 The course then which God's 
 infinite wisdom was pleased to adopt was, that 
 since "the children were partakers of flesh and 
 blood, He also Himself" (in the Person of the 
 Eternal Son) " took part of the same." " He 
 summed up the lengthened series of mankind in 
 Himself, affording us salvation in that epitome 
 of our being ; that what we had lost in Adam, i. e. 
 to be after God's image and likeness, we might 
 recover in Christ." 13 Thus then was there "one 
 Mediator between God and men, the man Christ 
 Jesus." There was one common bond by which 
 these two infinitely distant parties might be united. 
 And this common term of union required to be 
 truly and really joined to each of the extremes, 
 which it was to couple to one another. It was 
 truly joined to Godhead by that Personal union 
 whereby Christ Our Lord was very God, of very 
 12 S. Iren. iii. 19, 1. 13 S. Iren. iii. 18, 1.
 
 416 SACRAMENTS A MEANS 
 
 God. The very nature of Godhead whole God 
 was in the Person of the Son of Mary united to 
 our flesh. " God was manifest in the flesh." All 
 glory, purity, perfection, power, of which Godhead 
 could not be emptied, were enshrined in a human 
 frame. Thus was there sown a seed of life and 
 immortality, which was to interpenetrate and per- 
 vade the whole nature of mankind. For this end, 
 as the man Christ Jesus was joined to Deity by 
 Personal union, so is He allied to His brethren of 
 mankind by sacramental grace. For " we are 
 members of His body ; of His flesh, and of His 
 bones." " This is a great mystery, but I speak 
 concerning Christ and the Church." Now, this 
 union of the Mediator with men, whereby are 
 transmitted to them those beams of glory which 
 were centred in His flesh, needs to be as true and 
 certain as that other union which He has with 
 Godhead, whereby its self-originating excellencies 
 were transferred into Himself. As the fountain has 
 its source in those unknown waters which issue 
 from the throne of God, so from the fountain do 
 the streams descend to water the earth. In the 
 union, then, of God's nature with manhood in the 
 Person of Christ, lies the cause of our union with 
 the man Christ Jesus by sacramental grace. If 
 the first be received as a true, real, abiding fact, 
 such as can be founded on that diversity of Persons 
 in the Ever-Blessed Trinity, which forms the basis 
 of the Christian system, the second also will be
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 417 
 
 looked at not as a mere figurative expression, but 
 as an actual operation. But let the first be denied, 
 as by Socinians, or by Sabellians be resolved into 
 a mere nominal transaction, and the reality of the 
 second must evaporate. Therefore does St. Atha- 
 nasius observe, that a denial of the Personality of 
 God the Son, of necessity involves a denial of the 
 grace of Baptism. 14 Or on the other hand, let our 
 hold on that union which couples men with Christ 
 be forgotten, and the functions of the Mediator 
 will become an office discharged by some manifes- 
 tation of the Divine Power, rather than the result 
 of God's actual oneness with our nature. So es- 
 sential is each link in this golden chain to the 
 integrity of the rest. 1 * 
 
 14 Or. iv. in Arian. c. 25. 
 
 15 The intimate connexion between Our Lord's humanity and 
 the sacramental system has been repeatedly evidenced by the 
 inclination of those who disparage the one to explain away the 
 other. So that in a belief of the sacramental system lies the 
 guard against that Rationalistic tendency, which was so solemnly 
 denounced by the beloved Apostle, as characteristic of Anti- 
 christ : " Every spirit that confessetb not that Jesus Christ is 
 come in the flesh is not of God." For it was long ago observed 
 by St. Irenseus, that the reality of the Mediator's influence in 
 the Holy Communion involved the reality of that manhood, 
 which it has been His gracious pleasure to share with ourselves. 
 Thus did he answer the Docetas, who, with the reality of Our 
 Lord's body, denied not only the truth of His sacrifice and 
 efficacy of His atonement, but also the future resurrection of 
 mankind. The line of argument adopted by St. Irena3us has 
 lately been employed by Archbishop Whately, but his contrary 
 premises land him unhappily in a contrary result. In the 
 passage alluded to, the Archbishop makes no reference to the 
 actions of Our Lord in time past ; he refers only to that present 
 
 E e
 
 418 SACRAMENTS A MEANS 
 
 Now, as the mean of this union between Chris- 
 tians and Christ, the wisdom of God has employed 
 the system of Sacraments. Visible things have 
 been taken, that with them might be associated 
 that inward power and grace, which is the living 
 principle whereby the one of these is bound to the 
 other. The union of the outward and visible sign 
 and the inward and spiritual grace make up the 
 Sacrament. " Neither is it ordinarily" God's " will 
 to bestow the grace of Sacraments on any but by 
 
 influence of the God-man, which no one can be expected to 
 admit, who resolves the mystery of the Blessed Trinity into mere 
 terms of relation. [Compare p. 168 and p. 343.] In speaking 
 of this present influence of the God-man, Archbishop Whately 
 mounts up from a denial of His efficacy to a denial of His ex- 
 istence. If the Sacraments be merely signs of spiritual power 
 at large, then, he argues, those things on which their peculiar 
 influence as Sacraments is grounded, are only emblematic of the 
 general efficacy of that Being on whom all spiritual action is 
 dependent. Therefore he says, " the bread and wine not only 
 are merely a sign, but are a sign of a sign ,- that is, they repre- 
 sent Our Lord's flesh and blood, and His flesh and blood again 
 are a sign of something else" (Sermons, p. 265). So that Our 
 Lord's flesh and blood, even if they existed formerly, have now 
 at all events no real existence. His actions as a partaker of our 
 nature have been suspended ; He is no longer the " one Me- 
 diator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." And the 
 Spirit is spoken of as that " of which His flesh and blood are 
 themselves the sign" (Id. p. 250). So that the especial efficacy 
 of that nature, which He assumed with a view to the work of 
 Mediation, is resolved into the mere general influence of the 
 Great Unembodied Spirit. Such is the result of denying the 
 efficacy of that sacramental system, through which the Humanity 
 of the Incarnate Son is the medium of bestowing spiritual gifts. 
 As its belief led the disciple of Polycarp to maintain the truth 
 of Christ's nature, so does its rejection involve those errors 
 against which Polycarp's instructor testified.
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 419 
 
 the Sacraments.'' 16 And besides other advantages 
 which have been stated to accrue from this ap- 
 pointment, there results from it this peculiar conse- 
 quence, that the intervention of a means of grace 
 which borrows its vehicle or organ from the external 
 world, is adopted in a case where that which consists 
 both of body and soul, namely, each individual of 
 the family of men, is to be joined to that Head or 
 Representative, who consists both of soul and 
 body. Now, because the first effect of union with 
 Christ is the removal of that defilement of our 
 whole being which sin had engendered, this process 
 commences with a rite, which speaks to the out- 
 ward eye of cleansing and purification. Again, be- 
 cause our subsequent life results from the continual 
 influx of grace from Him whose manhood has be- 
 come its storehouse, therefore our further acts of 
 union are through a means whereby our souls are 
 strengthened and refreshed " by the body and 
 blood of Christ, as our bodies are by bread and 
 wine." Thus significant is the sensible part of that 
 process, which having its beginning in the truth, 
 " The Word was made flesh," has for its con- 
 clusion, " that we might be made partakers of the 
 divine nature." Not that the connecting principle 
 which binds together mankind and their Head is 
 any material derivation. The things united, in- 
 deed, are on one side the whole constitution of man 
 as it exists in each individual, and whole Christ on 
 16 Eccles. Pol. v. 57, 4.
 
 420 SACEAMENTS A MEANS 
 
 the other. But that whereby they are joined is 
 the spiritual power by which it has been shown 
 that Christ acts upon His brethren. This power 
 has been shown to be immaterial, both by reference 
 to what it is, and by reference to what it is not. 
 (Cap. x.) For it was to be the mysterious agent 
 in this union, that the Third Person in the Ever- 
 Blessed Trinity vouchsafed His gracious concur- 
 rence on man's behalf. He came to join men to 
 Christ, to supply the loss which would else have 
 attended Our Lord's Ascension, that He who was 
 withdrawn according to His carnal propinquity, 
 might be brought more near by spiritual presence. 
 And the same thing follows from considering what 
 it has been shown, that Our Lord's mystical or 
 sacramental presence is not. It is not that local 
 presence of a material body which He maintains 
 in heaven. " Christ as man according to the body 
 is in a place and goes from a place, and w r hen He 
 comes to another place, is not in the place from 
 whence He came." 17 That this local presence, 
 therefore, of Christ's material frame is not upon 
 earth, is the very thing which is asserted, when it 
 is stated to be in heaven. 
 
 Here, then, it may be well to pause for a mo- 
 ment, in order to notice what is the exact point 
 which is, and what that which is not stated re- 
 specting the blessed Sacraments. I. It is not 
 affirmed then that their external or sensible parts 
 
 17 St. Aust. in Taylor's Real Presence of Christ, xi. 15.
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 421 
 
 are so raised above their natural nothingness, as by 
 their own. efficacy to produce a spiritual result. 
 In each Sacrament the outward sign is produced 
 by combining an appointed matter with certain 
 chosen words. Unless the words and matter are 
 properly combined (and hence arises the occa- 
 sion for such caution and needfulness 18 in their 
 ministration), there is no Sacrament. But neither 
 are these things aught by themselves but sounds 
 or elements, nor when duly combined, though of 
 course hallowed by being consecrated to a holy 
 use, do they cease to be in themselves elements 
 and sounds. For " Sacraments are not physical 
 but moral instruments of salvation." 19 This is 
 more readily admitted, perhaps, in the Sacrament 
 of Baptism than in that of the Lord's Supper. 
 Yet "the orthodoxal ancients use the same lan- 
 guage for expressing Christ's Presence 20 in Baptism 
 and in the Eucharist : they stick not to say that 
 Christ is present or latent in the water, as well as 
 
 18 Baptism requires that the element of water should be ap- 
 plied at tlie same time with the words of administration. 
 " Detrahe verbum, et quid est aqua nisi aqua." S. *Aug. in 
 Joan, 80, 3. Vide MaskelFs Holy Baptism, p. 136. The same 
 principle may be extended to the ordinance of Confirmation ; 
 the validity of which depends on the simultaneous concurrence 
 of certain words and of a certain action. 
 
 19 Eccles. Pol. v. 57, 4. 
 
 20 Fulgentius quotes a sermon of St. Augustin, Sermo. 272, as 
 proving " tune unumquemque fidelium corporis sanguinisque Do- 
 minici participem fieri, quando in Baptismate membrum corporis 
 Christi efficitur." Bib. Max. Patr. ix. 178.
 
 422 SACRAMENTS A MEANS 
 
 in the elements of bread and wine. Their meaning- 
 is, that neither of these elements or sensible sub- 
 stances can directly cleanse us from our sins, by 
 any virtue communicated into them or inherent in 
 them, but only as they are pledges or assurances 
 of Christ's peculiar presence in them, and of our 
 true investiture in Christ by them." 21 And as the 
 element in Baptism is on all hands allowed to con- 
 tinue water, so the element in the Holy Eucharist 
 is expressly called bread by St. Paul, even when 
 its sacramental use is referred to. And, indeed, 
 why should aught else be expected? The only 
 ground for questioning it must be, that Holy 
 Scripture declares the body and blood of Christ to 
 be our food in the Lord's Supper. Now, when we 
 speak of our Lord's body and blood, the very 
 words lead us of necessity to His manhood, to 
 that same bodily substance which w r as born of 
 the Virgin, and ascended into heaven after its 
 sufferings on the Cross. It being admitted, then, 
 by all believers that this body is present after 
 some real manner in the Holy Eucharist, those 
 who deny that the consecrated elements continue 
 to be materially bread and wine, must do so under 
 the idea that without derogating from the local 
 
 21 Jackson's Works, x. 55, 9. " It may suffice to believe," 
 says Dr. Jackson, in reference to the water of Baptism, " that 
 this sacramental pledge hath a virtual presence of Christ's blood, 
 or some real influence from His Body, concomitant, though not 
 consubstantiated to it, which is prefigured or signified by the 
 washing or sprinkling the body with water." Ibid. x. 50, 4.
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. * 423 
 
 presence of our Lord's body in heaven, the ele- 
 ments when consecrated become a part of His 
 material body and blood. Their reason for main- 
 taining it, if such an opinion is ever really main- 
 tained, must be first, the letter of Scripture, which 
 however all believers accept ; and secondly, an 
 impression that unless such transmutation is ad- 
 mitted, there can be no true belief in the efficacy 
 of Sacraments. But it follows from what has been 
 already stated respecting the nature of Our Lord's 
 presence First, that the consecrated elements, even 
 if they undergo a material change, have no more 
 tendency than without such change to produce 
 the real end which results from Sacraments ; and 
 secondly, that to rest on such a change is incom- 
 patible with a reference to Our Lord's ascended 
 manhood as that Head of the renewed race, with 
 whom it is the purpose of Sacraments to unite 
 us. For in the first place, suppose the conse- 
 crated elements to undergo some such change, 
 that they should be found to be, we know not 
 how, the material body of Christ. This would 
 no doubt give them great sacredness ; but how 
 would it minister towards the purpose of a Sacra- 
 ment? Why should we be the better for the 
 carnal devouring of Our Lord's body? What spi- 
 ritual efficacy would result from such a feast? 
 A spiritual efficacy, indeed, Our Lord's body has 
 on all those with whom according to its proper 
 laws of action it is brought into connexion ; but
 
 424 * SACRAMENTS A MEANS 
 
 would this action attend its material consumption? 
 Is there any relevance between union with the flesh 
 of the Son of Man and the carnal devouring Him ? 
 We are united to Adam by one means, to Christ 
 by another. The first is by the law of paternity, 
 the second by that of regeneration. Why should 
 we increase our relation to Christ by this carnal 
 banquet, any more than we should to Adam by 
 the eating of his flesh ? " As is our eating," says 
 Taylor, "so is the nourishing, because that is in 
 order to this." 2 * A spiritual effect of the manhood 
 of our Great Head must proceed through spiritual 
 action from His purified humanity. Sacraments 
 have been appointed as its medium of communi- 
 cation ; but if Baptism does not depend on the 
 natural effect of the elements which it employs, 
 why should the Lord's Supper ? Such a suppo- 
 sition at all events is not essential to a belief in the 
 sacramental system, and to a true acceptance of its 
 divine results. 
 
 But further it may be observed in the second 
 place, that to rest on a material transmutation in 
 the consecrated elements is, so far forth, to detract 
 from the influence of Our Lord's ascended man- 
 hood as Head of the renewed race. For its conse- 
 quence would be to turn our minds to the natural 
 effect of those sacred elements which we partake, 
 instead of building on the supernatural presence of 
 that ascended manhood, with which it should be 
 22 Of the real Presence of Christ, vii. 8.
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 425 
 
 our object to be united. The blessing in the one 
 case would be to be fed with heavenly food hi 
 the other to be united to a Divine person. 23 The 
 first of these would, according to the supposition, 
 be a blessing in itself, independently of the other. 
 So that the main object of Sacraments, their real 
 life, that which separates them from all other 
 means of grace that in and through them we are 
 joined to the true Head of man's race, and receive 
 those blessings which through a spiritual medium 
 He communicates in holy mysteries to all His 
 members would become a secondary considera- 
 tion. Accordingly, those ancient writers who most 
 insist on the real presence and action of Christ's 
 manhood in holy mysteries, declare plainly that 
 the human body and blood which are ascended 
 into heaven are not carnally consumed. And a 
 single definite denial of this kind is more decisive 
 in such a controversy, than a hundred passages 
 in which Our Lord's Real Presence in His Supper 
 is asserted; because these last consist as well with 
 the spiritual, while the first is incompatible with 
 the carnal presence of Christ. Such are two quo- 
 tations made by Bishop Poynet from St. Jerome 
 and St. Augustin. 24 The celebrated letter of the 
 
 a " "We are really joined to our common divine principle, 
 Jesus Christ Our Lord ; and from Him we do communicate in 
 all the blessings of His grace and the fruits of His passion." 
 Taylor's Worthy Communicant, i. 4, 2. 
 
 24 " Of this victim, which is offered in a wonderful manner 
 in commemoration of Christ, men may eat ; but of that which
 
 426 SACRAMENTS A MEANS 
 
 latter to Dardanus has already been cited, (p. 
 278.) 
 
 This reference to the real manhood of Christ, as 
 opposed to the conception that Sacraments produce 
 their effect through any efficacy inherent in their 
 elements, is warmly supported by our own Hooker : 
 " For of Sacraments the very same is true, which 
 Solomon's wisdom observeth in the brazen ser- 
 pent ' He that turned towards it was not healed 
 by the thing he saw, but by Thee, O Saviour of 
 all.' ' That which we commonly discern in the 
 course of nature, is a certain orderly series, wherein 
 
 Christ offered on the altar of the Cross in itself no man can eat " 
 (St. Hierom. in Poyncfs Diallacticon, p. 28). And again, St. 
 Augustin says, " it seemed to them a hard saying, except a man 
 eat My flesh, he shall not have eternal life. They took it fool- 
 ishly, they understood it carnally, and supposed that Our Lord 
 was going to cut off some portion of His flesh and give it them. 
 Therefore they said it is a hard saying. But if their hearts had 
 not been hard, they would have said, this cannot be uttered 
 without reason, there must be in it some secret mystery ; they 
 would have stayed with docility with Him, and have learned 
 what was learnt by those who remained. For when His twelve 
 Disciples had remained with Him after their departure, they 
 suggested to Him, as though grieving at the fate of the others, 
 that they were offended at His words, and were gone away. 
 But He instructed them, and said, it is the Spirit that quick- 
 eneth, the flesh profiteth nothing. The words which I have 
 spoken to you are Spirit and life. Understand spiritually what 
 I have spoken. This Body which you see you are not to eat, 
 nor to drink that blood, which shall be shed by those who 
 shall crucify Me. I have entrusted you with a certain mystery. 
 Understood spiritually it will give you life. Its celebration 
 indeed will be manifest to the senses, but its meaning will 
 address itself to the inner mind" (St. Aug. in Psalm 98). 
 25 Eccles. Pol. v. 57, 4 ; vi. 6, 9.
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 427 
 
 like results follow habitually from like premises. 
 Hence arises the instinctive belief, that in the con- 
 struction of this material universe, the Author of 
 our being works in constant reference to the laws 
 which He has Himself ordained. Thus we say 
 that food has a natural tendency to support life; 
 not that we understand the secret mechanism by 
 which it does so, but from observation of the facts, 
 we discern that the Almighty Dispenser has been 
 pleased to connect certain material agents with 
 certain physical effects. This is what we mean by 
 the course of nature. But we have no right to 
 assume that material substances when once created 
 are left to themselves, or that their action is the 
 effect of their inherent principles. All that we 
 can affirm is, that for material agents to produce 
 material effects is the natural order of things. 
 And on the same principle, that material agents 
 should be attended by spiritual effects belongs to 
 an order of things which must be supernatural. 
 But why should any one assert that in this case 
 the result is the effect of the agent itself, seeing 
 that even in that class of subjects which are most 
 strictly natural, no such assertion can be safely 
 made ? To affirm the truth of Christ's real pre- 
 sence, at all events, is not to attribute the efficacy 
 of Sacraments to the effect produced by the ele- 
 ments which are employed, in themselves, but to 
 trace it to the immediate power of that Divine Being, 
 with whom Sacraments bring us into connexion.
 
 428 SACRAMENTS A MEANS 
 
 II. The other of the two questions which have 
 been raised, requires to be no less guarded than 
 that which has been considered. We must remem- 
 ber not only what is not asserted respecting Sacra- 
 ments, but what is. That there is in them some 
 real influence and immediate power, results from 
 the actual presence of that Divine Being, who in 
 these sacred ordinances binds men by holy instru- 
 ments to Himself. This is the very reason for 
 asserting that the benefit of the Holy Communion 
 does not result from the natural fruitfulness of the 
 means employed, but from the actual presence of 
 the Being, with whom those means unite us. Much 
 less can we rest in the belief that these ordinances 
 are merely a lesson addressed to the senses, or that 
 the expressions used respecting them are only 
 metaphorical. For they rest on a basis external 
 to ourselves they depend on that which has a 
 real, tangible, objective, existence, i. e. Christ Our 
 Lord, as He has been exalted into heaven, and 
 by spiritual agency has become the Head of the 
 redeemed race. 
 
 For when spiritual presence is spoken of, there 
 are two notions which may suggest themselves. 
 Such presence may either be supposed to result 
 from the action of the mind, which receives an 
 impression, or from the action of the being who 
 produces it. The first would be a subjective and 
 metaphorical, the second is an objective and real 
 presence. We might think of a spectacle in Greece
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 429 
 
 or Asia, and lay hold of it by internal impulse, 
 as though it were present to our sight. But this 
 would only be a figurative and visionary presence, 
 because the movement would come altogether from 
 within, and would be wholly irrespective of any 
 action on the part of the object thought of. A 
 real presence on the contrary, is when there is 
 some object external to ourselves, which produces 
 upon us those effects, which result from its pro- 
 pinquity (vide p. 279). And such presence may 
 be said to be spiritual as well as real, when the 
 medium of communication, by which this external 
 object affects, or is present with us, is not material 
 contact, but spiritual power. Our reason, there- 
 fore, for asserting that spiritual presence in Sacra- 
 ments is a presence of the second and not of the 
 first kind; that it is actual not metaphorical real 
 not visionary is because it is the presence of 
 Christ, and results from what is revealed as the 
 result of His Incarnation. For though the two 
 natures, which dwell in Him, remain within those 
 limits, by which they are severally bordered, yet 
 they so far concur in His actings towards mankind, 
 that the inferior has received from the superior 
 that property of having " life in itself," which ren- 
 ders it the source of life to others. And this life 
 results from that spiritual presence of Our Lord's 
 manhood, which has its medium of communication 
 in the power of the Holy Ghost. When we speak, 
 therefore, of spiritual presence in Sacraments, what
 
 430 SACRAMENTS A MEANS 
 
 we refer to is not the vivacity of our spirits, which 
 are able to fancy what is not truly near, but that 
 spiritual power which was bestowed upon Christ's 
 manhood, when it was Personally united to God. 
 And therefore to disbelieve this spiritual presence, 
 to resolve it into a figure of speech, to transfer it 
 to the action of our own minds, would be equiva- 
 lent to the denial of Our Lord's real manhood; it 
 would be to explain away His existence, and sub- 
 stitute a Sabellian fancy instead of the Catholic 
 truth. And what would be the result, but that 
 the life-giving principle of holiness must have its 
 seat, not in Christ, but in our own minds ; and 
 therefore in effect that we should be our own 
 Saviours ? It may be asserted then respecting 
 both Sacraments, that their efficacy results from 
 that spiritual power by which Christ's manhood is 
 truly present; that in both of them some real ex- 
 ternal gift is bestowed upon mankind. That such 
 is the teaching of Scripture shall be shown by 
 what is said respecting each of them, as well as by 
 reference to their common character. 
 
 Baptism, then, is " a Sacrament which God hath 
 instituted in His Church, to the end that they 
 which receive the same might thereby be incor- 
 porated into Christ, and so through His most 
 precious merit obtain as well that saving grace 
 of imputation which taketh away all former guilti- 
 ness, as also that infused divine virtue of the Holy 
 Ghost, which giveth to the powers of the soul
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 431 
 
 their first disposition towards future newness of 
 life." 26 So that it is the especial purpose of Bap- 
 tism, that from that perfect fountain of grace and 
 holiness which is vouchsafed in the manhood of 
 Christ Our Lord, the blessings of forgiveness and 
 strength should be attained by every individual. 
 Thus by conjunction with the purity of the second 
 Adam, may be regained what was lost by the 
 transmitted defilement of the first. How should 
 this be sought for, but by union with Him from 
 whom was derived the guiding principle, which 
 shone originally in man's breast ? The image of 
 God, in which man was made, and which was 
 impaired by sin, has been shown to have resulted 
 from that illuminating power of God the Word, 
 which in fulness of time took up its personal 
 dwelling in our flesh. What means are there then 
 of recovering that which was lost, save by union 
 with Him, in whom the light which was intended 
 for each man in his degree has its perfect inhabi- 
 tation? We come to the fountain-head of light, 
 that our extinguished lamps may each one be 
 replenished. 27 The soul's regeneration, like the 
 
 26 Eccles. Pol. v. 60, 2. 
 
 27 " As the first man Adam was made a living soul, so the last 
 Adam was made a quickening spirit; a spirit of life to revive 
 the relics of God's image in men's souls, and by the reviving of 
 them to expel or blot out the expressions of Satan's image in 
 them. All this He doth in part even in this life in such as fear 
 and love Him. And in these two, to wit in the reviving of 
 God's image in us, and in the expunction and wiping out the 
 stain of sin (which is no other than the image of Satan), doth 
 our regeneration consist." Jackson's Works, xi. 21, 10.
 
 432 SACRAMENTS A MEANS 
 
 body's growth, is of course a protracted process, 
 which the whole of life is not too long to com- 
 plete. But what gives to Baptism its especial 
 character is, that in that holy rite this process is 
 begun. For then are men joined by heavenly 
 agency to Christ, that the life of their souls may 
 from that day forth have its development. Holy 
 Scripture speaks every where of union with Christ, 
 as that new creation in man's being, whereby the 
 forfeited likeness of the Word is given back. For 
 " if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature." 
 And " in Christ Jesus neither circumcision avails 
 nor uncircumcision, but the new creation." " In 
 Christ, that is in His Communion or Church," 
 says Olshausen, " the ancient divisions are unim- 
 portant; every thing there depends on the new 
 creation, upon that true regeneration, whereby 
 Christ the New Man is born within us." There- 
 fore St. Paul tells the Ephesians, " that ye put off 
 concerning the former conversation the old man, 
 and that ye put on the New Man, which, after 
 God, is created in righteousness and true holi- 
 ness." 28 To be created after God, is further ex- 
 plained to the recovery of the impaired image 
 of Christ : " Ye have put off the old man with 
 his deeds and have put on the New Man, which 
 is renewed in knowlege after the image of Him 
 that created him." 29 This perfect recovery of 
 Christ's image, is stated to be the very purpose of 
 28 Eph. iv. 22, 24. Col. iii. 10.
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 433 
 
 God's dealings with men in His Church : " For 
 whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate 
 to be conformed to the image of His Son." 30 And 
 " we all are changed into the same image." 31 
 
 But how is this restoration to be effected ? How 
 can God's image be created anew in the soul? If 
 man had never fallen, it had been sufficient to 
 inherit it: fallen as he is, there must be the gift 
 of a new life. 32 And this new life had its com- 
 mencement in the fact of the Incarnation. For by 
 it was a beginning made in the person of Him, 
 who was to be " the first-born among many bre- 
 thren." Then did Divine gifts take up their abode 
 in humanity, that from the Head they might be 
 distributed to all His brethren. For in the new 
 as in the old creation is He " the first-born of 
 every creature," " the beginning of the creation of 
 God." 33 All its subsequent ramifications are but 
 the result of the impulse which in His Incarnation 
 was bestowed. For, " He is the Head even Christ, 
 from whom the whole Body fitly joined together, 
 maketh increase to the edifying of itself in love." 
 
 30 Romans, viii. 29. 31 II. Cor. iii. 18 
 
 32 " That every thing in the process of salvation depends 
 ultimately on God's operation, which man on his part can only 
 in faith receive, depends on the very nature of the process of 
 regeneration. It is like a new creation; the regenerate are 
 God's making, created in Christ Jesus." Olshausen on 
 Ephesians, ii. 10. 
 
 33 So far as such terms refer to Our Lord's Godhead, they do 
 not relate to priority of time, as though He were a created being, 
 but they set forth the truth that He was Himself the type and 
 
 Ff
 
 434 SACRAMENTS A MEANS 
 
 Whereof, that men "might be made partakers of 
 the divine nature," is the wonderful result. This 
 work therefore, follows from union with Him, in 
 whom originated 34 the new creation of God. It 
 began with the Head, it extends itself to His mem- 
 bers; it began with the new Adam, it reaches on 
 to all His brethren. Thus is He in truth "made 
 a quickening spirit." Thus are we all " complete 
 in Him." 35 To suppose, then, that such a work 
 could commence from a spontaneous, inherent ac- 
 tion, would be the very heresy of Pelagius. The 
 flame requires to be kindled from without, that it 
 may burn within. There must be an external 
 action to which the inward movement must re- 
 spond. Renovation must have its root in Regene- 
 ration. There must be a gift antecedent to our 
 efforts. This gift is that first union with Christ, 
 whereon all communication of graces from Him to 
 us depends. Out of this beginning arises the whole 
 system of the Christian life. And this heavenly 
 
 pattern of the beings which He created. And so too when His 
 human nature is spoken of as the beginning of the new creation, 
 the order of causation, rather than the order of time, is the con- 
 dition contemplated. 
 
 U/5OS i][ia<3 ?y dei'a KarafBefttjKe ^apts, v^ovaa Kai a^ia^ovaa KUI 
 Soga^ovrra Kai OeoTroiovaa TIJV (frvaiv eV irpWTW ~XpiffTw. S. Cl/Tll 
 
 Thesaurus, xx. vol. v. p. 197. 
 
 Yifsoinai KO.I xpierai KUI a<yiaeTai Si' ijjias, iva Si' UVTOV Tpe~X"i] 
 e/s iravra'i ?y yapus, ws tjSi) boOciaa TIJ (pvaei, /cat \onrov okia 
 au)oju.evr) TW <yei/et. Id. 
 
 34 " Originem quam sumsit in utero Virginis posuit in fonte 
 baptismatis : dedit aquae, quod dedit matri," &c. S. Leo. Serm. 
 xxiv. 4. * Col. ii. 10.
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 435 
 
 impulse is expressly declared in Scripture to be 
 extended to us in Baptism : " As many of you as 
 have been baptized into Christ," says St. Paul, 
 "have put on Christ." 36 For "by one spirit are 
 we all baptized into one Body." 37 And in Baptism, 
 as the Apostle asserts twice over, that death to the 
 old nature takes place, whereby the new creation 
 in Christ is commenced. " We are buried with 
 Him by Baptism into death," 38 "wherein also ye 
 are risen with Him." 39 So that St. Peter says, 40 
 that " Baptism doth also now save us." 41 For Our 
 Lord Himself had taught that in this ordinance 
 lies the beginning of the spiritual life " except a 
 man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot 
 enter into the kingdom of God:" a passage 
 whereof Hooker reminds us, " that of all the an- 
 cient, there is not one to be named, that ever did 
 otherwise either expound or allege the place than 
 as implying external Baptism." 42 
 
 Since the statements of Scripture on this subject 
 are so precise, how comes it then that any persons 
 should have dissented from this universal opinion 
 of Our Lord's first disciples? The grounds of men's 
 objection appear to be two : First, an attachment 
 
 36 Gal. iii. 27. 37 1. Cor. xii. 13. * Romans, vi. 4. 
 
 39 Col. ii. 12. * I. Peter, iii. 21. 
 
 41 It is not of course, says Dr. Jackson, " the virtue or 
 efficacy of the consecrated water in which we were washed, 
 but the virtue of His blood, which was once shed for us, and 
 which by baptism is sprinkled upon us, or communicated 
 unto us, which immediately cleanseth us from all our sins." 
 Works, x. 55, 8. <* Eccles. Pol. v. 59, 3.
 
 436 SACRAMENTS A MEANS 
 
 to the idea introduced, or at least systematized by 
 Calvin, that grace is not given to any except those 
 who will finally be saved ; and secondly, the asser- 
 tion that no visible results attend on Baptism. The 
 difficulties which these considerations involve, in- 
 duce men to refer to such passages 43 of Scripture, 
 as express the full effect and ultimate consequence 
 of regeneration, i. e. victory over sin, and final per- 
 severance; and they infer that no gift has really 
 been bestowed in Baptism, unless these ultimate 
 consequences are discerned to be its effect. They 
 deny in effect that any seed has been sown, where 
 fruit is not brought forth. They deny that there 
 can be dead branches in the Christian vine. And 
 the language in which Scripture and the Church 
 speak of something as actually done in Baptism, 
 they consider to be merely a charitable hope that 
 something will be done hereafter a hope which, in 
 the majority of instances, they say is not borne out 
 by the result. Now, the passages of Scripture 
 which they cite, have in themselves no tendency to 
 show that in Baptism occurs no real work : for 
 they only speak of this work as one, the completion 
 whereof is the extinction of sin ; and which must 
 therefore spread itself through man's whole life. 
 But all that is asserted of Baptism is that since it 
 is our first means of union with the manhood of 
 Christ, the basis of our spiritual growth must be 
 laid in it. " Baptism doth challenge to itself but 
 
 43 I. John, iii. 9 ; v. 18.
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 437 
 
 the indication of those graces, the consummation 
 whereof dependeth on mysteries ensuing." 44 The 
 denial therefore that in Baptism, as rightly and 
 worthily participated, there is any real change made 
 in the recipient of the ordinance the assertion, 
 that the benefits ascribed to it are merely figura- 
 tive, contingent, occasional that they are spoken of 
 prospectively as something to be hereafter attained, 
 and not positively as something actually possessed 
 all this does not follow from any scriptural au- 
 thority ; the grounds for supposing it are men's 
 antecedent difficulties. And as to the first of them, 
 it is surely matter of surprise, that any traditional 
 attachment to the opinions of Calvin should inter- 
 fere with the direct assurances of God's word. For 
 it has been shown by Bishop Butler that the pre- 
 destinarian theory is never carried out so rigidly as 
 to preclude all the practical inferences to which it 
 is intellectually opposed. This is far from being- 
 undesirable, considering how imperfect an instru- 
 ment is man's understanding, and how much safer 
 in many cases is the appeal to conscience than to 
 argument. But those who can reconcile the doc- 
 trine of arbitrary decrees with the general invita- 
 tions of Scripture to repentance and faith, need not 
 object surely to allow that the gifts of grace may 
 be co-extensive with the ordinances of the Gospel. 
 For do not faith and repentance need grace as an 
 unavoidable pre-requisite ? Why, then, should men 
 " Eccles. Pol. v. 57, 6.
 
 438 SACRAMENTS A MEANS 
 
 deny the reality of Baptism, even if on their theory 
 it be " a seal perhaps to the grace of election before 
 received," seeing it is declared to be " to our sancti- 
 fication here a step that hath not any before it." 45 
 
 Neither is there reason why men should ground 
 their disbelief in the reality of Baptism on the small 
 results which they see it effect. The very prin- 
 ciple of faith is to admit that which sense does not 
 discern : " Blessed are they that have not seen, and 
 yet have believed." And it is hard to say how 
 much of the inefficacy of Baptism is due to the 
 popular unbelief, which prevents men from doing 
 justice to it. When children are not instructed in 
 the nature of the gift which they have received, 
 we cannot w r onder if it be allowed to be inoperative. 
 Its result might be very different if they were ac- 
 customed to expect those effects, which St. Cyprian 
 assures us resulted from his own baptism. He 
 speaks of his former difficulties ; and how powerless 
 he felt to escape those evil habits, which adhered 
 to his nature. " But," he says, " after that the 
 stain of former sins being washed away through 
 the water of the new birth, a light from above in- 
 fused itself into my acquitted and purified bosom ; 
 and after that, through a spirit drawn from above, 
 a new birth had made me a new man what was 
 doubtful began immediately in a wonderful manner 
 to receive confirmation ; what was shut to be 
 opened ; what was dark to be enlightened ; what 
 45 Eccles. Pol. v. 60, 3.
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 439 
 
 was impossible to be attainable." 46 But with this 
 disbelief in the reality of Baptism is joined an un- 
 reasonable estimate of the results, which, if real, 
 it might be expected to effect. For the gifts of 
 grace do not in any case supersede the respon- 
 sibility of mankind. Those who think most highly 
 of Baptism regard it only as the appointed means 
 for that union with Christ, whereby men may ob- 
 tain strength to serve Him. Baptism neither 
 exempts devout men from the necessity of a 
 watchful life, nor careless men from the necessity 
 of conversion. It is a reason why the watchfulness 
 of the one should be more unvaried, and the con- 
 version of the other more complete. To receive 
 gifts of grace is in itself no security against losing 
 them. In Adam himself, the image of God did not 
 preclude the possibility of disobedience. Much less 
 can this be expected in his descendants, on whom 
 the concupiscence of the will has been entailed by 
 his failure. It is sometimes forgotten that Baptism 
 does not determine what shall be men's future state, 
 but what is their present position. And herein 
 lies the defect of all hypothetical interpretations of 
 the language used respecting this holy ordinance. 
 For their purpose is to transform that, which is 
 essentially an assertion respecting a present fact, 
 into a supposition about the future. It is asserted, 
 for example, respecting every child who is re- 
 ceived into the Church after private Baptism, 
 46 Ep. ad Donatum, statim a Baptismo conscripta, Ed. Rigalt. p. 2.
 
 440 SACRAMENTS A MEANS 
 
 " that this child is by Baptism regenerate" As in 
 such cases no sponsors have been employed, the 
 validity of the ordinance cannot be attributable, as 
 has sometimes been imagined, to their faith. The 
 Church, of course, supposes it to result from that 
 reality of union with Christ's 47 manhood, whereby 
 those who were heirs of Adam's sinfulness become 
 heirs of grace. But what signification is assigned 
 to the words by those who deny that Baptism is 
 the appointed channel of grace? Some children, 
 say the parties in question, are no doubt regene- 
 rated at Baptism; it may be so in any individual 
 instance, and it is charitable to affirm that which it 
 is impossible to deny. And this, they observe, is 
 the course adopted by the Church respecting the 
 departed, concerning whose future condition, be- 
 cause unable to predict it, we express a charitable 
 hope. But to confound conjecture with assertion, 
 is to destroy the whole meaning of speech. Things 
 future, being from their nature uncertain to us, do 
 not admit of a positive affirmation. And in the 
 case of such present things as we feel to be dubious, 
 we cannot do more than express a hope, leaving it 
 to the result to clear up what is uncertain. Since 
 hope, then, is in its nature conversant with things 
 which are future or contingent, its expression is 
 compatible with the highest degree of uncertainty. 
 
 47 " Take the case of any child: if it is one with Christ already, 
 why is it baptized ? But if (as really happens) it is baptized 
 that it may be one with Christ, therefore until baptized it was 
 not one with Christ." S. Aug. de Pecc. Mer. i. 28.
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 441 
 
 In the most unpromising morning we may hope 
 that the sun will shine at noon. And respecting 
 the departed, supposing them to die in the Church's 
 communion, we can hardly do less than declare them 
 our brethren, and express hope that they sleep in 
 Jesus. And this, with thanks for their deliverance 
 from this world's miseries, is all that is expressed 
 by our service. What countenance is there here 
 for the positive assertion of a present fact, concern- 
 ing which we have no knowledge? It is obvious 
 what would be said respecting a man who asserted 
 unequivocally that the sun was shining at present, 
 and who afterwards justified himself on the ground 
 that he hoped it was, but possessed no means of 
 informing himself. And what else can be thought 
 of those who assert respecting every baptized child, 
 that " this child is regenerate," when they believe 
 in their consciences that in all probability it is not? 
 But to leave the Church's language, and come to 
 the positive effect of this system. It rests plainly 
 on the notion that the benefits of Baptism do not 
 depend upon the present act, but on the future 
 results which attend a devotion to God's service. 
 These no doubt are many and great. They asso- 
 ciate the party with Christians they suggest such 
 feelings as should attend an early dedication to 
 God, and thus lead to those efforts on the part of 
 man, which God's grace will doubtless meet with a 
 proportionable blessing. But in all this there is 
 one radical defect the need of some predisposing
 
 442 SACRAMENTS A MEANS 
 
 grace on the part of God, whereby the first move- 
 ment may be made towards holiness. For this the 
 Church refers us to Baptism. It considers this 
 first gift of life to be derived from that union with 
 Christ, which He originally bestows. What was 
 said to the disciples, not excluding the one on 
 whom the gift was conferred ineffectually, is in 
 Baptism uttered to all Christians : " Ye have not 
 chosen Me, but I have chosen you." The enslaved 
 will of man was first restored to its perfect freedom 
 in that great representative of our race, in whom 
 the concupiscence which Adam entailed upon his 
 descendants, was counteracted by the full influx of 
 God's spirit. The first of Adam's progeny, who 
 possessed that perfect liberty in which our original 
 parent was created, was the second Adam Jesus 
 Christ. Now, it is only through union with our 
 disenthralled representative, that we also can escape 
 bondage. " If the Son shall make you free, ye 
 shall be free indeed." Unless the beginnings of 
 the spiritual life are laid in this antecedent gift of 
 union with Christ, we pass over of necessity to the 
 Rationalistic principle which would attribute them 
 to that natural relation of the soul to God, which 
 it had by creation. A new birth, then, is needed 
 as preliminary to the first actings of the will, be- 
 cause upon it depends our admission into "the 
 glorious liberty of the children of God." And, 
 therefore, regeneration does not merely imply the 
 second birth of every individual, as opposed to his
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 443 
 
 primary birth by nature (though this doubtless is 
 referred to) ; but it also points to that state of 
 freedom in which man was originally created, but 
 into which every heir of Adam's sin requires to be 
 readmitted. This birth back again into the con- 
 dition in which man was made when he was 
 fashioned after God's likeness, is not complete till 
 his will has laid full hold on that freedom, into 
 which he was admitted by God's grace. There- 
 fore, the complete and general development of the 
 Christian Covenant is described by Our Lord as 
 " the Regeneration, when the Son of Man shall sit 
 upon the throne of His glory." For then shall the 
 ancient state be again perfectly possessed by those, 
 who "being made free from sin" have become 
 " servants of righteousness." But the beginning 
 of this work in every individual must be through 
 God's act, and not through the act of man, because 
 its very object is to give man the power of acting, 
 by the enfranchisement of the will from its heredi- 
 tary bondage. And the act whereby God bestows 
 this blessing is especially connected by St. Paul 
 with that Sacrament of Baptism, which Our Lord 
 Himself appointed : " According to His mercy He 
 saved us by the washing of regeneration and re- 
 newing of the Holy Ghost." But such a prelimi- 
 nary act on the part of God is negatived, when the 
 real, objective influence of Baptism is denied, and 
 it is asserted not to be the appointed channel of 
 grace. Hereby everything is thrown on man's
 
 444 SACRAMENTS A MEANS 
 
 part; and thus the Pelagian 48 doctrine is in reality 
 introduced, and man's salvation is made to depend 
 originally upon his own exertions. This is not the 
 meaning of many who deny that a new birth is 
 conferred in Baptism ; their intention is to refer 
 regeneration to the immediate act of God, and they 
 exhort the young to ask and desire it. But on 
 what are prayers and good desires to be built? To 
 say that it is on natural goodness were Pelagianism. 
 Yet if we are referred to God's grace, by what 
 event except Baptism 49 are those who are born in 
 sin entitled to it, previously to the first actings of 
 their understanding? What we are speaking of is 
 the case of those, who have not yet been able, by 
 any act of their own, to take part in that which is 
 necessary to their will's freedom. Yet what Chris- 
 tian parent but would associate prayers to God with 
 the very first lispings of infant speech? 50 Either 
 men must be prepared, then, to adopt the Pelagian 
 
 48 " Every mother hastening piously up with her infant son 
 says, 'Let it be baptized, that it may be saved.' Pelagius ob- 
 jects, ' How should it be saved ? There is nothing in it which 
 needs salvation.' " St. Jlug. Serm. clxxxiii. 8. 
 
 49 " Quod" (i. e. illuminari) " per sacramentum baptismatis in 
 parvulis fieri non dubitat mater Ecclesia, quse cor et os mater- 
 num eis praestat, ut sacris mysteriis imbuantur, quia nondum 
 possunt corde proprio credere ad justitiam, nee ore proprio con- 
 fiteri ad salutem." S. Aug. de Pecc. Mer. i. 25. 
 
 50 " The freedom of the will, which suffered detriment in the 
 first man," say the Fathers at Orange in their decrees against 
 Semi-Pelagianism, " cannot be repaired, except by the grace of 
 Baptism ; what was lost cannot be restored, except by Him who 
 was able to bestow it." Harduin, ii. 1099.
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 445 
 
 hypothesis, or their conduct to the young assumes 
 the presence of that very gift, which Baptism has 
 been appointed to convey. And the only alterna- 
 tive is such rigid adherence to the Calvinistic theory 
 as, by declaring Christian education needless and 
 impossible, would go counter to the instincts of 
 nature and the Word of God. 
 
 But it may be objected, are not the Heathen ex- 
 horted to prayer, as a preliminary to Baptism. 
 They doubtless are ; and in their case the appeal 
 rests upon that universal presence of the Word, 
 by which every man is in a measure enlightened. 
 Unless there were some remnant of that original 
 influence, which the Word exercised over His crea- 
 tures, no basis would exist for their first conversion 
 [vide p. 131-3]. But their prayers and efforts are 
 not built upon that union with Christ, which is the 
 principle assumed in Christian education. To deal 
 with Christians as heathen men should be dealt 
 with, is to shut our eyes to the freedom and ful- 
 ness of the Gospel ; it is to treat the "joint-heirs 
 with Christ" as though they were bondmen. The 
 principle of Christian education is avowed in the 
 Church Catechism, wherein every child is taught 
 to declare at the outset that in Baptism it was 
 made " a member of Christ." And after praying 
 for them that they "may ever remain in the num- 
 ber of" God's "elect children," we teach every 
 child to affirm that the Holy Ghost "sanctifieth 
 me, and all the elect people of God." This prin-
 
 446 SACRAMENTS A MEANS 
 
 ciple is consistently carried out by the Church, 
 for she limits the use of Christian burial to those 
 children, whose bodies have been consecrated in 
 Baptism by union with the Body of Christ. And 
 even those who have not the advantage of her 
 guidance proceed usually upon an analogous sys- 
 tem. For their plan of education is professedly 
 built on the plan of the Gospel, and on the 
 expected succour of the Comforter. And yet 
 how are men entitled to His Help, save by virtue 
 of the Mediation of Christ? And what right have 
 we to Christ's Mediation, unless we have been 
 brought into the same relation to the new man, 
 into which our birth brings us to the old one? It 
 were contrary to the whole theory of the Gospel, 
 to assume the existence in man of Christian graces 
 antecedently to their participating in the Media- 
 tion of Christ. And yet that Christian principles 
 are to be acted upon is the very foundation of the 
 Gospel scheme, seeing that it begins by assuming 
 a belief, the practical effect whereof is afterwards 
 to be developed. The existence, therefore, of an 
 external and objective mean, whereby we may in 
 the first instance be united to Christ, is the very 
 basis of subsequent obedience. And this is why 
 its denial is more plainly inconsistent with our 
 Ritual and Catechism, than with the Articles, in 
 which doctrines are abstractedly exhibited. For 
 the evil to which it leads is a practical denial of 
 the Gospel an undervaluing of that union with
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 447 
 
 Christ Our Lord, which is consequent upon His 
 Incarnation an over-estimate of human efforts 
 and such a tendency will conflict more plainly with 
 those parts of our established formularies, in which 
 our dependence upon Christ Our Lord and our con- 
 stant adherence to Him are actually exhibited. 
 
 In respect to the Lord's Supper, it may be 
 doubted whether the same amount of belief is 
 entertained on all hands as in Hooker's days was 
 universally prevalent. "It is on all sides," he 
 says, "plainly confessed, first, that this Sacrament 
 is a true and a real participation of Christ, who 
 thereby imparteth Himself, even His whole entire 
 Person, as a mystical head unto every soul that 
 receiveth Him, and that every such receiver doth 
 thereby incorporate or unite himself unto Christ as 
 a mystical member of Him; and secondly, that to 
 whom the person of Christ is thus communicated, to 
 them He giveth by the same Sacrament His Holy 
 Spirit to sanctify them, as it sanctifieth Him, which 
 is their Head." 51 In these words the union with 
 Christ's manhood by mystical participation is put 
 forth as the leading characteristic of this holy or- 
 dinance. But since the time of Hoadley a dif- 
 ferent system has become prevalent. The mere 
 human side of this Sacrament has been mainly 
 thought of: it has been considered to be a sermon 
 preached to the senses an act whereby we com- 
 memorate the death of Christ, and testify our reve- 
 51 Eccles. Pol. v. 67, 7.
 
 448 SACRAMENTS A MEANS 
 
 rence for His memory. This account of its uses, 
 to the exclusion of that deeper view, which is 
 founded on the application of Our Lord's Incarna- 
 tion to the wants of men, and on the necessity of 
 external grace, having been introduced by Socinian 
 writers, has since found advocates in the Church. 
 As Baptism is explained away into the mere ex- 
 pression of a charitable expectation, so the Lord's 
 Supper into a simple commemoration. How are 
 we to decide whether this holy service is to be 
 considered a divine rite or a human ordinance ; 
 whether it is the supernatural means, by which 
 whole Christ gives Himself to His people, or a 
 mere accommodation to the taste for acted ser- 
 vices ? The letter of Scripture surely represents 
 the eating and drinking of Christ's Body and Blood 
 to be a mystical means of obtaining heavenly bene- 
 fits. But those who question the apparent mean- 
 ing of such passages of Scripture, deny that the 
 sixth chapter of St. John can refer to an ordinance 
 which was instituted after the narrative which it 
 records. It is not here affirmed that the spiritual 
 communion of His members with Our Lord's man- 
 hood is confined to that holy feast, which is the 
 signal and peculiar means of maintaining it; but if 
 the participation of Christ in His Holy Supper be 
 not at all referred to in the sixth chapter of St. 
 John, then it is hard to see how Holy Scripture 
 could be intended for the instruction of ordinary 
 readers. For surely no simple persons, whose
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 449 
 
 minds were not pre-occupied by some theory, could 
 ever read that chapter without the most palpable 
 misconception. And how could St. John have de- 
 livered it to the Church, when the Holy Com- 
 munion had been habitually celebrated for half a 
 century, without taking care to guard it from such 
 obvious misapprehension ? But, in fact, that this 
 dialogue should have been prophetic of what was 
 to come is so far from an objection, that it is in 
 exact consistency with other parts of Our Lord's 
 instruction. How much did it contain, which even 
 " His Disciples understood not at the first ?" He 
 spoke of being "lifted up from the earth" He 
 promised "living water" He declared the neces- 
 sity of taking up the Cross and following Him: in 
 all these cases His prophetic words received their 
 interpretation from the event. 52 And the sixth 
 chapter of St. John contains a direct assurance 
 
 52 It is the especial characteristic of St. John's Gospel, that 
 with a pious care it gathers up those remaining fragments of 
 Divine teaching, which inspired Mediation revealed to be the 
 most real and pregnant secrets of that Gospel Kingdom, the 
 mysterious treasures whereof he had longer time upon earth 
 than his fellows to survey. Take, for instance, the repeated 
 declarations that lie who came in " fashion as a man," because 
 the Personal Word of God, was the " true light" of man's 
 nature a fact which Our Lord's hearers can hardly have 
 understood at the time, but which opens to us the secret things 
 of His kingdom in a manner which adds wonderfully to the 
 view supplied by the other Evangelists. For it connects itself 
 with that whole system of truths respecting the Incarnate 
 Word, which is the peculiar revelation of the Theological 
 Gospel. Vide St. John, i. 4, 5, 9 ; iii. 19 ; viii. 12 ; ix. 5 ; 
 xii. 35, 36, 46.
 
 450 SACRAMENTS A MEANS 
 
 that its meaning would not be apparent till Our 
 Lord's Ascension. " What and if ye shall see the 
 Son of Man ascend up where He was before." So 
 that we have express authority for interpreting it 
 by events which were to come. Hooker accordingly 
 points out to us how exactly what the Apostles 
 had " learned before that Christ's flesh and blood 
 are the true cause of eternal life" 53 was explained 
 by Our Lord's institution of the Holy Communion. 
 And as this is the natural conclusion which would 
 be adopted by untaught readers of Scripture, so is 
 it supported by the unanimous testimony of early 
 writers. "Both the Greek and Latin Fathers," 
 says Bishop Poynet, " refer the words of Our Lord 
 in the sixth chapter of St. John with great una- 
 nimity to the Sacrament of the Eucharist." 54 Our 
 Church sanctions the same interpretation in her 
 Ritual " then we eat the flesh of the Son of Man 
 and drink His blood, then we dwell in Christ and 
 Christ in us." As Dr. Jackson expresses it, " this 
 present efficacy of Christ's body and blood upon 
 our souls, or real communication of both, I find 
 as a truth unquestionable amongst the ancient 
 Fathers, and as a Catholic confession. They all 
 agree that we are immediately cleansed and puri- 
 fied from our sins by the blood of Christ ; that His 
 human nature, by the inhabitation of the Deity, is 
 made to us the inexhaustible fountain of life." 55 
 
 53 Eccles. Pol. v. 77, 4. 
 
 84 Diallacticon, p. 9. By J. Poynet, Bishop of Winchester, and 
 Chaplain to Archbishop Cranmer. ss Works, Book x. 55, 12.
 
 OF UXIOX WITH CHRIST. 451 
 
 One further argument for the reality of that 
 union with the body of Christ which is bestowed 
 in the Holy Eucharist, is supplied by the circum- 
 stances under which its observance was commenced. 
 On Our Lord's Ascension, His Disciples returned 
 to Jerusalem to wait for that gift of the Holy 
 Ghost, which was shortly to be dispensed. It had 
 been declared to be the work of the Blessed Com- 
 forter to provide some new and closer means of 
 union with that manhood of the Son, which was to 
 be withdrawn from mortal sense. By this means 
 He who in appearance departed, was in reality to 
 be brought more near. The new Head of the 
 renewed race, the second Adam of reformed hu- 
 manity, was about to provide that principle of 
 supernatural union, whereby all His members were 
 to be engrafted into Himself. Now, it is through 
 the Holy Communion that this connexion is espe- 
 cially maintained. Its great purpose is to bring 
 the members of Christ into mystic union with their 
 Head. Thereby does the manhood of Christ act 
 upon His brethren. In this circumstance surely 
 we have the reason why, during that first assem- 
 blage at Jerusalem, no mention is made of an 
 observance, which so soon as the Holy Ghost had 
 bestowed the fulness of His gifts, became the main 
 act of Christian worship. " These all continued in 
 one accord with prayer and supplication." But 
 no sooner had the life-giving medium been be- 
 stowed, than "they continued in breaking of bread,
 
 452 SACRAMENTS A MEANS 
 
 and in prayer." The Holy Communion, it seems, 
 could not have effect, till the pouring out of that 
 quickening spirit, 56 by which the members of Christ 
 mystical are attached to their Head. " The one 
 Holy Catholic Church and Communion of Saints, 
 did not begin to be in esse or bear true fruit, until 
 the effusion of the Holy Ghost, which is the soul 
 of the one Holy Catholic Church, or of the mys- 
 tical body of Christ." 57 But how different had it 
 been, if the Communion of Saints were only a 
 figurative expression, and the Holy Communion a 
 mere commemoration. When were the Disciples 
 more united by natural bonds than in this hour of 
 their desertion ? When were they more likely to 
 commemorate their Lord, than while His departure 
 was so fresh ? The Holy Eucharist cannot, there- 
 fore, have been a merely human rite ; its force was 
 not that it addressed their senses, and set forth 
 what they had lost; it depended for its efficacy on 
 that new gift of the Holy Ghost, whereby Christ 
 
 56 It may be alleged that the two disciples at Emmaus were 
 admitted to the full participation of that Eucharistic presence, 
 which is here affirmed to have been consequent upon the gift of 
 the Holy Ghost. But whatever it was to which they were 
 admitted, the case is plainly an excepted one, since it was the 
 act of Him, in whom the same gift dwelt personally, which was 
 about to possess a new medium of presence through the power 
 of the Holy Ghost. Before Our Lord's death, He told His 
 Disciples that the same presence had already been bestowed 
 through the Incarnation of the Word, which was afterwards to 
 be maintained through the Advent of the Comforter. "He 
 dwelleth with you, and shall be in you." 
 
 57 Jackson's Works, ix. 41, 3.
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 453 
 
 their Head came back to them with power; it was 
 their perpetual means of union with His glorified 
 humanity, their souls' food, the medium of the 
 body's immortality. 
 
 It remains only to recall that which has been 
 already stated, as applicable to both the sacred 
 ordinances which have been considered. The 
 reality of both of them has been maintained : it 
 has been affirmed that Baptism is not merely the 
 expression of a charitable hope ; that the Lord's 
 Supper is not a bare act of pious recollection. 
 The essential principle of each of them has been 
 shown to be union with the perfect manhood of 
 Christ Our Lord. Let it be remembered only in 
 conclusion, that to deny their reality is to assail 
 the great principle of the Mediation of Christ. For 
 the Doctrine of Our Lord's Mediation does not rest 
 only on the Divine power of Christ, as a partaker 
 in the nature of self-existent Godhead; it implies 
 also that, by associating man's nature to His own, 
 He has made created being the channel of His 
 gifts. Now, as the media through which these 
 gifts are dispensed to His brethren; as the ramifi- 
 cations, whereby His Divine nature distributes itself 
 on the right hand and the left, these two Sacra- 
 ments go together their importance is equal 
 their effect alike and to disparage them is to 
 derogate from that principle of action which the 
 wisdom of God has seen fitting to adopt. Every 
 attempt to explain them aw r ay, every contrivance
 
 454 SACKAMENTS A MEANS 
 
 for extenuating the real import of what they effect, 
 is a virtual detracting from the reality of that 
 objective and actual influence, which Christ the 
 Mediator is pleased to exert. Its tendency is to 
 resolve His actions into a metaphor, and His ex- 
 istence into a figure of speech. His specific and 
 personal agency as the Eternal Son, who in the 
 fulness of time conjoined Himself to man's nature 
 for the recovery of a fallen race, is merged in the 
 general action of that ultimate Spirit, whom none 
 but Atheists professedly reject. For the real ob- 
 jection against the Sacramental system does not 
 arise from any deficiency in its Scriptural authority, 
 which has been shown to be ample, but from the 
 abstract improbability that external ordinances can 
 be the means of obtaining internal gifts. Now, 
 this improbability rests on the circumstance that 
 the natural mean of connexion with God is the 
 intercourse of mind with mind, and consequently 
 that the intercourse through Sacraments is super- 
 natural. The connexion with God i. e. which man 
 received by creation, and which Rationalism affirms 
 to be sufficient for his wants, is more compatible 
 with men's natural position, than that new system 
 of Mediation which has been revealed in the Gos- 
 pel. But let the Doctrine of Mediation be admitted, 
 and it ceases to be an argument against the Sacra- 
 mental system that it does not accord with that 
 scheme of nature, which the Gospel professes to 
 supersede. And the Rationalistic argument against
 
 OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 455 
 
 these means of grace, is of equal avail against that 
 whole scheme of Mediation upon which they are 
 dependent. If the natural intercourse of mind with 
 the unembodied mind of the Creator supersedes 
 the necessity of Sacramental ordinances, does it not 
 supersede equally the humanity of Christ ? If man 
 has still that immediate communion with God, of 
 which Scripture affirms that the Fall deprived him, 
 what need is there of a Mediator between them ? 
 Thus does the objection mount up from earth to 
 heaven from Christ feeding men below through 
 Sacraments, to Christ mediating above by His 
 Atonement and Intercession. For " if we have 
 told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how 
 shall ye believe if we tell you of heavenly things?" 
 If the Sacraments be thus emptied of their mean- 
 ing, it is because the present actings of Christ as 
 the Son of Man are not appreciated; and the pur- 
 poses of His Incarnation are forgotten. And this 
 forgetfulness again may be traced to unbelief in 
 that real diversity of Persons in the Blessed Trinity, 
 in which all creaturly existence has its ultimate 
 root. Thus does a practical Sabellianism respect- 
 ing Christ's Person coincide with that Rationalistic 
 theory, by which the reality of His Sacraments is 
 disputed. And their surrender is fatal to the true 
 doctrine concerning Himself, even as the true doc- 
 trine of His nature sets the importance of these 
 instruments in a proper light.
 
 456 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 CHRIST AS MEDIATOR THE SOURCE OF HOLINESS 
 AND KNOWLEDGE TO MANKIND. 
 
 WE have now surveyed two stages in the wonder- 
 ful economy of man's salvation. The first was that 
 God became man ; the second, that the God-man 
 became one with His brethren. The first was the 
 union of two widely different natures by personal 
 alliance ; the second, the union of many brethren 
 with their connatural head by sacramental grace. 
 " God was in Christ reconciling the world unto 
 Himself"- here is the first; and the second is 
 " Christ in us the hope of glory." It remains only 
 to notice some consequences entailed on mankind 
 at large by this great event. Its full effects would 
 be too wide to speak of, and they blend themselves 
 with that subjective part of religion on which it is 
 not designed to enter in this place. For what is 
 meant by all personal and individual religion, but 
 that men receive, lay hold of, and rest upon that 
 Mediation of Christ, which has been set forth as the 
 central truth of the Gospel as an actual object 
 external to our souls. Here then nothing further
 
 CHRIST AS MEDIATOR, ETC. 457 
 
 can be done than to touch upon that common in- 
 fluence of this fact upon mankind at large, which 
 may in some sort be regarded also as an objective 
 and external truth ; since, like Mediation itself, it 
 assumes a collective character, and reacts, as an 
 outward mean of efficacy, upon individual minds. 
 
 Looking then at the effect of Christ's Mediation 
 on mankind at large, it may be affirmed to be the 
 producing principle of holiness and of knowledge. 
 These blessings might be bestowed upon men by 
 individual gift, as Abraham was called by peculiar 
 summons to be Father of the Faithful, or St. Paul 
 to be the Apostle of the Gentiles ; or they might 
 come like the Apostleship of St. Matthias, or the 
 royalty of Solomon, through the instrumentality of 
 others. Now the second of these is the mode which 
 is adopted respecting the gifts of the Gospel. They 
 come from the Head 1 to the members : they are 
 procured by Christ Our Lord for His earthly bre- 
 thren ; they are the privileges which He purchased 
 through the infinite desert of His perfect obedience. 
 We have no original right in them ; but by virtue 
 of our being engrafted into the Body of Christ, we 
 participate in them from Him. And since it is by 
 aggregation to the body of the faithful that we be- 
 come members of Christ, therefore our personal 
 blessedness is the result of that family union, which 
 gives us a share in its collective rights. "If 
 
 1 " Uluminatio quippe nostra participatio Verbi est, illius scili- 
 cet vitae, qme lux est hominum." iS. Aug. de Trin. iv. 4.
 
 458 CHEIST AS MEDIATOR 
 
 children, then heirs : heirs of God and joint heirs 
 with Christ." Thus do Gospel blessings proceed 
 from that which is general to that which is parti- 
 cular: first in the series is Christ the Mediator 
 then that family of mankind whom He associates 
 to Himself and lastly, each individual claimant of 
 those infinite privileges, which having been pur- 
 chased by our representative on behalf of manhood 
 at large, have become the right of its meanest par- 
 ticipators. The three stages in this wonderful pro- 
 cess are summed up in those mysterious words 
 wherein the Mediator, as the Head of mankind, 
 addresses Himself to the Almighty : " I in them, 
 and Thou in Me, that they may be made perfect 
 in one." God's presence in Christ is the beginning 
 of our regeneration : the union of all believers in the 
 one Body of Christ is its second stage : the third is 
 that influence of the Word on every individual heart, 
 which is bestowed through the public ordinances of 
 the Gospel. This process is not set down, of course, 
 according to the order of time, but according to the 
 order of causation. God calls individuals to enter 
 His Church before they are members of it ; but 
 when they are thus called, His gifts proceed down- 
 ward from that which is collective to that which is 
 individual : " Thou bearest not the root, but the 
 root thee." 
 
 And here, therefore, we have an example, how 
 "the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth 
 for the manifestation of the sons of God." For
 
 THE SOURCE OF HOLINESS AND KNOWLEDGE. 459 
 
 what is this but the fulfilment of those darling ex- 
 pectations of man's heart, which were noticed at the 
 beginning of this inquiry ? What has man been 
 reaching after, ever since his history commenced, 
 but such a regeneration ? He has looked for it on 
 the side of this world and on the side of the next 
 in politics and in religion in the social reconstruc- 
 tion of civil communities, and in the formation of 
 societies affecting the divine life ; and if he has 
 failed to find it, the ground of his disappointment 
 has not been want of earnestness or of intelligence, 
 but because from God only can descend power to 
 renew the earth. He only who made the world is 
 able to restore it. Yet these successive attempts 
 witness man's conviction, that collective must ever 
 be the basis of individual improvement that as 
 each man owes the gift of speech, the fruits of ex- 
 perience, the softening influences of civilization, and 
 all the other lights of this world, to the race of which 
 he is a coheir so the higher blessings of a perfect 
 existence are not to be acquired by individuals 
 through their single strength, but are God's gift to 
 His chosen family throughout the earth. 
 
 1. Those who reject revelation have often antici- 
 pated such results from the mere development of 
 civil society. Its growth and advancement promise, 
 as they say, such unlimited improvements, that its 
 prospective state may be regarded as that blissful 
 condition of mankind, which has been anticipated 
 by prophets, and recorded by chroniclers. Here,
 
 460 CHRIST AS MEDIATOR 
 
 they allege, is the Millennium of the one, and the 
 Golden Age of the other. And from this reformed 
 and exalted society there will flow to individuals 
 every blessing which their heart desires. Thus 
 does Strauss maintain that " the union of the divine 
 and human nature has its completion in the collec- 
 tive race of mankind." " This," he says, " is the 
 key of the whole Christian system ; and as the sub- 
 ject of all its assertions we must take not an indi- 
 vidual, i. e. Christ, but an idea a realized and 
 actual idea." 2 " This idea is humanity viewed col- 
 lectively : humanity is the union of two natures, it 
 is God incarnate." 3 " The history of man," says a 
 writer of our own, "is truly the Word of God." 4 
 This is but a more strong expression of that error 
 which lies at the root of every system, in which the 
 regeneration of mankind is expected from mere so- 
 cial attempts. For since God only can effect man's 
 regeneration, to look for it from human efforts, is 
 to suppose that in man himself lies the principle of 
 Deity. Such an opinion is closely allied to the 
 characteristic feature of Rationalism, the substitu- 
 tion namely of that relation to God, which we have 
 by creation and nature, in place of that which is 
 given to us through Mediation and Grace. Thus 
 are men looked upon as able to hold intercourse 
 
 2 Strauss Leben Jesu, sec. 149, vol. ii. p. 767. 
 
 3 On the other hand, says St. Austin : " Deus natura non 
 
 sumus ; homines natura sumus." " Deus itaque factus homo 
 
 Justus, intercessit Deo pro homine peccatore." De Trin. iv. 4. 
 
 4 Martineau's " Eastern Life," iii. 72.
 
 THE SOURCE OF HOLINESS AND KNOWLEDGE. 461 
 
 with God through the mere communing of mind 
 with mind ; and the Sacramental system, whereby 
 the Mediator associates man to Himself, is alleged 
 to be a needless interruption. But with what suc- 
 cess has the system of Rationalism been tried ? 
 Has not one experiment miscarried after another? 
 Are not social renovations of mankind invariably 
 defeated by the corruption of man's heart ? A de- 
 fective, disappointing, uncertain condition is proved 
 to be the necessary state of every society, which 
 is made up of those who are heirs to Adam's sin. 
 There is a barrier between them and perfection 
 which cannot be displaced ; and " though they toss 
 themselves yet can they not prevail ; though they 
 roar, yet can they not pass over it." For man 
 natural cannot get beyond that head and type of 
 his nature, in whom were summed up its virtues 
 and defects. In all forms of thought and action, 
 under every condition and sky, he is still but the 
 old Adam, and bears the burthen of his parent's 
 deficiencies and faults. And how then shall he 
 go beyond the normal representative of his race ? 
 He was born in Adam's image how shall he escape 
 it? How shall he rise to a higher nature than that 
 in which he was begotten ? Every race of animals 
 admits of improvement within its natural limits, 
 but the limits of the race may not be overleaped. 
 Adam must still reproduce himself in those who 
 are born his children. Only by the intervention of 
 some new nature could there be an exaltation of
 
 462 CHRIST AS MEDIATOR 
 
 the old one. And therefore all attempts at a social 
 regeneration of mankind have but witnessed to 
 man's wants, but not redressed them. 
 
 2. There seems more reason in the expectation, 
 that the religious associations of men might effect 
 the improvement of their race. For this is a testi- 
 mony to the conviction, to which false as well as 
 true systems of religion witness, that from God 
 alone must come man's recovery. Hence the con- 
 secration of a peculiar class of men to the especial 
 service of God, that thereby they might exercise a 
 purifying and hallowing influence on their worldly 
 brethren. This system, which prevailed among 
 most heathen nations, found its true expression in 
 that favoured family, which was selected by God 
 Himself to be to Him " a kingdom of Priests and 
 an holy nation." But favoured as the Jewish 
 people really were, they over-rated their privilege, 
 and over-estimated what it was given them to 
 effect. Their grand object was to witness to Him 
 w T ho was to come, and to keep up the memory of 
 His approach. But they supposed the object of 
 their calling to be those services which themselves 
 should render in the earth ; and Isaiah's predictions 
 respecting Gospel times, they interpreted of the 
 future glories of their own nation. Herein they 
 did but fall into the error by which many Chris- 
 tians are still possessed, who, in opposition to St. 
 Paul's w r ords, interpret the predicted supremacy of 
 Israel of some future exaltation of the carnal seed
 
 THE SOURCE OF HOLINESS AND KNOWLEDGE. 463 
 
 of Abraham, and not of that true Israel of the new 
 election the members of Christ. Such a notion, 
 prevalent in ancient as well as recent times, led 
 the Jews to apply the prophecies of the Old 
 Testament to their collective nation, and not to 
 Christ. 5 This error is mentioned by Origen : the 
 prophecies of Isaiah, a learned Jew assured him, 
 " did not refer to one individual, but to the whole 
 people." 6 The fifty-third Chapter of Isaiah was 
 interpreted to mean, that " Israel was not punished 
 for its own offences, but for the faults of the rest 
 of the world, and that the sins of all other nations 
 were laid upon it." 7 And the benefit which this 
 much-enduring people was expected to effect, was, 
 that at some future day, " Monotheism should by 
 its means gain a glorious victory over the Heathen, 
 and the knowledge of the one God should be 
 spread abroad by Israel and its inspired prophets." 8 
 
 5 Perhaps some countenance for the notion has been derived, 
 however unreasonably, from the Book of Ecclesiasticus ? Com- 
 pare, for example, Ecclesiasticus, chap, xxiv., with Proverbs, 
 chap. viii. Wisdom, which in the Book of Proverbs is a 
 Personal attribute of Deity, is set forth in Ecclesiasticus, as 
 embodied in His chosen people : " Let thy dwelling be in Jacob, 
 and thine inheritance in Israel ;" " I took root in an honour- 
 able people, even in the portion of the Lord's inheritance." 
 And we look vainly for impersonal manifestation of the Word, 
 when it is said of wisdom : " The first man knew her not per- 
 fectly; no more shall the last find her out" (S, 12, 28). 
 Susceptible as this beautiful Chapter is of a sound interpretation, 
 it may yet have been associated in the minds of Jews with their 
 popular error. 
 
 6 Orig. Cont. Celsum. 1. in Gesen. on Isaiah, vol. iii. 165. 
 7 Vide Kimchi and Jarchi, as cited by Gesenius, iii. 166. 
 
 8 Gesenius, iii. p. 164.
 
 464 CHKIST AS MEDIATOR 
 
 Thus did a work, which the nation at large was to 
 effect, absorb every thought. Israel was to achieve 
 a regeneration in the popular religions of the earth. 9 
 Thus did they forget the Great Head and Re- 
 presentative of Mankind, to whom it was the true 
 honour of Israel to minister. They looked to the 
 influence of their own tribes for a result which was 
 to follow only when that Shiloh came, to whom 
 should be the gathering of the nations. All in- 
 struments were in truth to be gathered together in 
 Him ; His people's honour was but to be a part of 
 Him : the privilege of Israel was that of it, accord- 
 ing to the flesh, " Christ came who is over all, God 
 blessed for ever." 
 
 And herein also lay the distinction of that race 
 of Prophets, to whom some later sceptics 10 would 
 
 9 To this expectation, though prepared, of course, to rest it on 
 its proper basis, St. Peter probably referred, when he exhorted 
 the Jews to repent in hope that the anticipated glories of their 
 nation might be realized, and " that the times of refreshing may 
 come from the presence of the Lord." d.cts, iii. 19. 
 
 10 Isaiah, according to Gesenius, speaks in the name of that 
 class of men to whom he belonged, and the commentator alleges 
 it as a striking indication of the truth of his interpretation, that 
 the Hebrew word which expresses the persecuted object in the 
 important passage, " for the transgression of my people was he 
 stricken," is neither singular nor plural, but a poetical form, em- 
 ployed usually to express some collective object. He would 
 translate the passage, therefore, "for the transgression of my 
 people was the stroke upon them" i.e. the prophets. "The 
 
 word lob for on 1 ? I refer," he says, " to the Servant of the Lord, 
 
 T VT 
 
 as a collective application, and consider it as a fingermark for 
 this interpretation, mh is usually employed with collective
 
 THE SOURCE OF HOLINESS AND KNOWLEDGE. 465 
 
 apply those declarations, which the carnal Israelites 
 interpreted of their nation. For the office of Pro- 
 phets, like that of Priests, derives its importance 
 from the influence of that real Mediator, who for- 
 merly as now was present with and for His people, 
 through the intervention of His earthly ministers. 
 And it was as shadows of Him, and as united to 
 Him, that all the Prophets " testified beforehand 
 the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should 
 follow. Unto whom it was revealed that not unto 
 themselves, but unto us they did minister the 
 things which are now reported." Thus was grace 
 to descend from the Mediator upon the collective 
 race. In Him alone were " all families of the earth" 
 to be blessed. The fulfilment of the ancient pro- 
 mise to Abraham was reserved for Him. What- 
 ever renovation was expected for society at large 
 was not to be attained through the religious in- 
 fluence of any priestly caste, any more than through 
 the natural influence of any civil institutions. In 
 Him and through Him only could it arise, in whom 
 
 words." Gesenius on Isaiah, liii. 8, vol. iii. p. 183. But why 
 was Isaiah a representative of the prophetic race more than any 
 of his brethren ? Or how was his death an atonement for the 
 transgression of others ? If this word is significant of anything, 
 it surely points out how the real representative of mankind was 
 to die on behalf of all His brethren. In Him, whether for life 
 or death, are all gathered together. He was by nature that 
 " anointed servant" of God, which others were only in type and 
 by office. He is Abraham's " seed," by whose single name the 
 collective race is designated : " For as the body is one, and hath 
 many members, And all the members of that one body being 
 many, are one body ; so also is Christ." 
 
 nh
 
 466 CHRIST AS MEDIATOR 
 
 God and man were united; who succoured our 
 race, by the infusion of a new and higher principle ; 
 who was the "one Mediator" to bring down to us 
 a divine life, and thereby to revivify the putrid 
 mass of corrupted mortality. 
 
 Only in Christ the Mediator, therefore, can be 
 fulfilled the hope of men's regeneration; and the 
 failure of all other attempts, whether on the side 
 of polity or of religion, leads us back finally to 
 Him. From Him proceed all the blessings of the 
 Gospel covenant : for " Grace and truth came by 
 Jesus Christ." The gifts, i. e. of holiness and 
 knowledge the first resulting from His grace, the 
 second from the communication of that truth which 
 has its fountain in Him are through His Media- 
 tion imparted to His brethren : " For this cause," 
 He says, " came I into the world that I should bear 
 witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the 
 truth heareth My voice." And communion with 
 Him is the very gift of righteousness, for " if Christ 
 be in you, the body is dead, because of sin ; but the 
 spirit is life, because of righteousness." These then 
 are the two gifts, proceeding from the Mediator, which 
 are the renewing principles of human society; so 
 far as they go, they effect the regeneration of man, 
 and accomplish those ends for which nature is 
 yearning. How far these gifts of Holiness and 
 Truth extend themselves, through what media, and 
 with what result, must be shortly noticed. 
 
 I. In God only is Holiness. To be the Holy
 
 THE SOURCE OF HOLINESS AND KNOWLEDGE. 467 
 
 One is emphatically His name. "Holy, Holy, 
 Holy, Lord God of Hosts," is what Angels and 
 Saints especially declare Him. From this natal 
 source does the principle of holiness extend itself 
 through the creation. " Ye shall be holy," is the 
 command addressed to Israel, " for I the Lord your 
 God am holy." But this blessing descends from 
 heaven to earth through Him alone, by whom 
 everything which is good is communicated from 
 the one to the other. " He that spared not His 
 own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how 
 shall He not with Him also freely give us all 
 things." Therefore, " as by one man's disobedi- 
 ence many were made sinners, so by the obedience 
 of one shall many be made righteous." Thus 
 from its primary fountain in eternal Godhead does 
 the blessing of holiness flow forth through the 
 "one Mediator" into the Mystical Body of Christ. 
 It diffuses itself as widely as the subjects of that 
 mediatorial empire, which He came to establish in 
 the earth. All have the promise of sharing it, who 
 belong to that spiritual kingdom, for which we 
 daily entreat Him in the words of His own prayer. 
 Here, then, is the real regeneration of man's so- 
 ciety. Thus is planted the root of happiness, be- 
 cause thus is gained the favour of God. Here is 
 the " kingdom of God among men ;" " the days of 
 heaven upon the earth." Thus is fulfilled the 
 Blessed Virgin's promise : " He shall reign over 
 the House of Jacob for ever, and of His kingdom
 
 468 CHRIST AS MEDIATOR 
 
 there shall be no end." This is no earthly king- 
 dom, because its principle of combination is the 
 invisible though living power of grace : yet there 
 results from it a real, lasting, operative, indivisible 
 society in part visible here on earth, though 
 reaching also into the unseen world extending 
 through all countries, though subject to none- 
 indifferent as to lineage, speech, or political insti- 
 tutions its sole means of union being that the 
 Manhood of Christ Our Lord makes one body of 
 all His members. For God " hath made Him to 
 be Head over all things to the Church, which is 
 His Body, the fulness of Him that filleth all 
 in all." 
 
 The effect of this work is as wide as the family 
 of Christians, to say nothing of those innumerable 
 ways in which the stream of God's mercy may 
 overflow and extend beyond the appointed channel 
 of His promises. For as Sodom would have been 
 saved by fifty righteous, so do we hear of a time, 
 when " but for the elect's sake," " no flesh should 
 be saved." Yet what is the merit of the elect save 
 their inherence in Him, whose perpetual Mediation 
 delays the execution of the sentence passed on our 
 common progenitor, which, by undertaking the 
 office of Mediator, He interfered to arrest? For 
 all the holiness of His Saints depends upon Him. 
 But though the effects of Our Lord's Mediation 
 are wide enough to take in all inheritors of the 
 nature to which He united Himself, its proper
 
 THE SOURCE OF HOLINESS AND KNOWLEDGE. 469 
 
 reference is to those who are united to Him. The 
 work of His Mediation has been shown to consist 
 first of that Sacrifice and Intercession, whereby 
 He once suffered on man's behalf, and whereby 
 He continually pleads for His people. On these 
 acts depends that holiness of the Body of Christ, 
 on account whereof the name of the Holy Church 
 especially belongs to it. For that holiness which 
 is perfect must be the imparted holiness of Christ 
 Our Lord, whereby He is " the Saviour of the 
 Body." Whereas the infused holiness of grace, 
 though perfect in itself, is a " treasure in earthen 
 vessels." But Christ "loved the Church, and 
 gave Himself for it, that He might sanctify and 
 cleanse it with the washing of water by the Word : 
 that He might present it to Himself a glorious 
 Church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such 
 thing; but that it should be holy and without 
 blemish." This, then, is that perfect righteousness 
 of Christ's Atonement, which He imparts to His 
 Body. To this only St. Paul trusted, praying 
 that he might " win Christ and be found in Him, 
 not having mine own righteousness, which is of 
 the law, but that which is through the faith of 
 Christ." But a further gift is needed to render 
 men " meet to be partakers of the inheritance of 
 the Saints in light." For to retain an unbelieving 
 heart and impure affections in the midst of this 
 holy brotherhood, would be to defile the temple 
 of the living God. Its proper members are those
 
 470 CHRIST AS MEDIATOR 
 
 who are " rich in faith, heirs of the kingdom which 
 God hath promised to them that love Him." To 
 what purpose are men " translated into the king- 
 dom of His dear Son," if they are found at last to 
 be of those " children of the kingdom," who " shall 
 be cast out into outer darkness?" 
 
 Besides, therefore, the imparted holiness, which 
 belongs to true members of the Mystical Body of 
 Christ, through His Intercession and Death, there 
 needs that infused holiness which is produced in it 
 by His Presence through the Spirit. For as the 
 first part of Our Lord's Mediation depends upon 
 the reality of His Death and Intercession, so does 
 the second upon the reality of His Presence. In 
 this manner does the Mediator work upon man- 
 kind : indwelling in the Church by grace through 
 His Sacraments. As an imparted holiness is the 
 indispensable cause of our acceptance, so is an in- 
 dwelling holiness also needed, because, without its 
 influence, none profit by the former. As the im- 
 parted holiness of Christ obtains for men that 
 "feast of fat things," which was the predicted 
 blessing of the Gospel, so is His indwelling holiness 
 that " wedding garment," without which they are 
 not worthy guests. The first, therefore, is in every 
 sense an external or objective blessing : the second 
 is an internal or subjective qualification of the 
 Body of Christ, which requires to be participated 
 by all its members. For thus it is that the whole 
 Church as a " building fitly framed together, grow-
 
 THE SOURCE OF HOLINESS AND KNOWLEDGE. 471 
 
 eth unto an holy temple in the Lord." And the 
 reason why the Baptism of Infants has ever been 
 esteemed so signal and indispensable a blessing is, 
 that it is God's appointed means for their first ad- 
 mission to the privileges of this mystic body. Its 
 virtue does not depend on the prayers of the spon- 
 sors, whose attendance in private Baptism is not 
 required, but on the life of that portion of Christ's 
 Church, into which they are admitted. For no 
 men, however faithful, can obtain salvation for 
 others through the merits of their prayers : " no 
 man can deliver his brother;" but the merits of 
 Christ are large enough to extend saving efficacy 
 through every living portion of His mystical body. 
 These two, then, an imparted and an infused ho- 
 liness, are communicated 11 " through the appointed 
 means and channels of grace," as Bishop Andrews 
 expresses it, to every living Christian, who, by 
 " holding the head," " by joints and bands, has 
 nourishment ministered." The first is that, in 
 which all the ransomed trust, saying, " Thou hast 
 redeemed us by Thy blood;" the second is that, 
 by which they obtain such "hope" as " maketh 
 not ashamed." To follow out the last, as it be- 
 comes the internal and subjective life of every 
 individual believer, would exceed the limits of this 
 
 11 "Legimus justificari in Christo qui credunt in eum, propteo 
 occultam communicationem et inspirationem gratice spiritalis, 
 qua quisquis haeret Domino unus spiritus est." S. Aug. de 
 Pecc. Mer. i. 10.
 
 472 CHRIST AS MEDIATOR 
 
 inquiry, to show how it assumes the forms of 
 faith and obedience faith which is "given" 12 to 
 us, and "obedience" to which men are "chosen 
 through the Spirit." 13 But that which gives such 
 importance to the agency of these inward prin- 
 ciples; the reason why they contribute, each in 
 their degree, to our salvation, is not their inherent 
 excellence, but that they are exalted through the 
 holiness of Him, to whom they unite us. From 
 Him alone flows all the indwelling as well as all 
 the imparted holiness which pervades His mys- 
 tical body. When we offer Him the service of 
 faith, obedience, and love, we offer that which is 
 not only derived from HimselfJ but is only pure, 
 if it is absorbed in the infinite amount of His per- 
 fect sacrifice. This union the Holy Ghost secures 
 by maintaining our fellowship with Him. There- 
 fore did the Apostle desire " that the offering up 
 of the Gentiles might be acceptable, being sancti- 
 fied by the Holy Ghost." 14 For our actions have 
 their consecrating virtue from Him: our prayers 
 are hallowed by Him: "all things come of Thee, 
 and of Thine own have we given Thee." 
 
 II. As God is the source of holiness, so is He 
 likewise the fountain of knowledge. To be the 
 simple and original depository of all truth is among 
 the mysterious laws of His inscrutable existence. 
 Therefore, did He declare Himself to His ancient 
 people as "a God of Truth." By this character 
 12 Philip, i. 29. 13 I. Peter, i. 2. " Rom. xv. 16.
 
 THE SOURCE OF HOLINESS AND KNOWLEDGE. 473 
 
 do the Prophets describe Him : " Thy counsels of 
 old are faithfulness and truth." And in like man- 
 ner has He been pleased to reveal Himself in the 
 Gospel Covenant, for " this is the message which 
 we have heard of Him, that God is light and in 
 Him is no darkness at all." And this light it 
 pleased God to introduce into our lower world, 
 when He created man as the image of His own 
 perfections. The very chiefest excellence of which 
 character was that immediate intercourse which 
 man's mind possessed with the Divine Unembodied 
 Mind, of which it was the earthly reflection (p. 65). 
 The loss of this direct irradiation from the fountain 
 of light, was the greatest of those evils, which be- 
 fell men through the Fall an evil which could not 
 have been remedied, save through the mercy of 
 that Being, who restored our forfeited inheritance, 
 by bestowing it on us again in Himself. For " this 
 is life eternal to know Thee, the only true God, 
 and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent." Thus 
 hath " God, who commanded the light to shine out 
 of darkness, shined in our hearts to give the light 
 of the knowledge of the glory of God" that glori- 
 ous light of Deity, which God bestowed through 
 the image of it, which is reflected " in the face of 
 Jesus Christ." When God, therefore, mercifully re- 
 vealed Himself to fallen man, it was through that 
 same Mediator, through whom the gift of holiness 
 had originally been bestowed upon His creatures. 
 The one Mediator, who had been the primary cause
 
 474 CHRIST AS MEDIATOR 
 
 of all Divine light to humanity, by whom, and in 
 whose image mankind was made, condescended to 
 become their instructor. u The true light, which 
 lighteth every man, was coming into the world." 
 For this purpose it was necessary that He should 
 first receive as man what He afterwards transmitted 
 to His brethren. " My doctrine," He says, " is not 
 Mine, but His that sent Me." Thus does the In- 
 carnation form the basis of every portion of the 
 Mediator's office. The unbounded store of Divine 
 truth was transfused into His man's nature : in 
 Him were "hid all the treasures of wisdom and 
 knowledge." This belonged to Him by reason of 
 His oneness with that centre of light, wherein truth 
 has its fountain. And it was bestowed upon Him, 
 that He might be a light to man's nature; that 
 His body mystical might be filled with that light, 
 through grace, which belonged to Himself by na- 
 ture. " I am come a light into the world, that 
 whosoever believeth on Me should not abide in 
 darkness." 
 
 This gift of knowledge, like that of holiness, is 
 both an imparted and an infused or "engrafted" 
 gift: bestowed from without upon the faithful, as 
 an object of contemplation ; and communicated like- 
 wise to the body of the Church, as an internal prin- 
 ciple of teaching and guidance. With both these 
 is the mystical Body of Christ filled that as man's 
 acceptance is through that holiness which he has by 
 15 St. James, i. 21.
 
 THE SOURCE O HOLINESS AND KNOWLEDGE. 475 
 
 union with the Head, so from the same source may 
 he be "renewed in knowledge after the image of 
 Him that created him." For Divine knowledge is 
 the impress and reflection of Him who is personally 
 " the truth." The imparted knowledge which the 
 Son of God has bestowed upon His Church is that 
 whole system of the Gospel, which formed the sub- 
 ject matter " of all that Jesus began both to do and 
 teach." This " Gospel of the kingdom of God" 
 "the Gospel" which St. Paul afterwards "received 
 not after men, nor of men, but by the revelation of 
 Jesus Christ," which he declares so irrevocable, that 
 what was contrary to it might not be admitted, 
 though it was avouched by himself, " or an angel 
 from heaven" was not any of those four written 
 histories which now bear the name of Gospels. 
 For none of these documents were in existence, 
 until after that system was fully matured, which is 
 at present conveyed to us through all of them. 
 " The Gospel" then, which St. Paul affirms that 
 he "received" and "preached," is that complete 
 system of the Christian faith, respecting which he 
 reminds the Thessalonians, that "ye received it 
 not as the word of men, but as it is, in truth, the 
 Word of God." This is the external, objective, 
 imparted knowledge, "the Mystery of the King- 
 dom of God," which it has pleased the Mediator to 
 make known either by His own immediate agency, 
 or through the intervention of His servants. The 
 infinite and unsearchable Truth which had its ori-
 
 476 CHRIST AS MEDIATOR 
 
 ginal being in the Person of the Word, was set 
 forth for the contemplation of mortals. By those 
 who " know in part and prophecy in part," such an 
 object must of course be imperfectly understood 
 and thought of defectively. Yet is this the only 
 means whereby the unattainable glory of the 
 Great King can be communicated to His creatures. 
 " The only-begotten Son, which is in the bosom of 
 the Father, He hath revealed Him." It is as a 
 Personal Being, therefore, communicating with us 
 through those functions of soul and body, which 
 He has vouchsafed to share with ourselves, that 
 the Eternal Word discovers Himself. But so far as 
 the knowledge which He communicates is clothed 
 in earthly words, it is as capable of being conveyed 
 to those to whom it comes in books, as it was to 
 those to whom it addressed itself through their 
 hearing. Therefore were men who "had perfect 
 understanding of all things from the very first" 
 moved " to write in order," that subsequent gene- 
 rations might " know the certainty of those things, 
 wherein" they had "been instructed." Thus did 
 it please Him, who made Himself visible only to 
 the men of one generation, to " pour out doctrine 
 as prophecy, and leave it to all ages for ever." 
 The fact, that this treasure of objective truth is 
 enshrined in Holy Writ, is proved, independently 
 of internal witness, by the same evidence which 
 assures us of the existence of such persons as Our 
 Lord's Apostles. For those who speak of them as
 
 THE SOURCE OF HOLINESS AND KNOWLEDGE. 477 
 
 the witnesses from whom they received the Chris- 
 tian faith, and as their guides to its practices and 
 institutions, refer also to the written depository of 
 their sentiments, as containing that body of Divine 
 truth for which they contended. A consecutive 
 line of testimonies might be adduced, in proof that 
 Holy Scripture was understood to have been handed 
 down by Our Lord's Disciples to their successors, 
 as that complete system of external truth, which 
 through the one Mediator was delivered from God 
 to man. It thus contains the objective body of 
 Divine teaching, and the final 16 scheme of Reve- 
 lation. 
 
 16 A single testimony only shall be cited out of the innu- 
 merable list, botli on account of its distinctness, and because it 
 occurs in an author, whose words have been sometimes supposed 
 to have a different tendency. " It has been a matter of grave 
 dispute," says St. Optatus to the Donatists, " whether Baptism 
 in the name of the Trinity, admits of being repeated. You say 
 it may ; we say it may not : between your may, and our may 
 not, the minds of men waver and are at sea. Let no one pin 
 his faith on you or on us : we are both partizans. Let us refer 
 to a judge. And yet if the judge be a Christian, he will not be 
 free from partiality. We must look abroad, then, for a judge ; 
 but if we take a Pagan, he will not be conversant with Chris- 
 tian mysteries ; if we take a Jew, he will be an enemy to 
 Christian Baptism : we shall hardly find a judge, therefore, 
 upon earth we must look to heaven. And yet why should we 
 knock at the gates of heaven, when we have a testament in 
 the Gospel ? For in this instance we may rightly illustrate 
 heavenly by earthly things : the case is like that of a person 
 who has several sons ; as long as the father is present, he him- 
 self gives directions to each of them ; as yet no testament is 
 necessary. So Christ, as long as He was present upon earth 
 (although there is a sense in which He is still present), gave 
 every necessary command, according to the occasion, to His
 
 478 CHRIST AS MEDIATOR 
 
 Thus has the permanent deposit of Christian truth 
 been consigned to us by Him, who brought it to us 
 from heaven. Having concentrated all knowledge 
 in His own manhood, He afterwards diffused it 
 among His brethren. Thus were the striking words 
 of Ecclesiasticus illustrated ; the " brook became a 
 river," and the "river became a sea." He who 
 took our nature was mercifully pleased to impart 
 that knowledge of which He was the well-head. 
 He might say in its fullest sense, respecting the 
 merciful labours of His human economy, " behold 
 that I have not laboured for Myself only, but for 
 all them that seek wisdom." Those holy words, 
 which we know by the name of Scripture, were 
 either spoken directly by Himself, in that body 
 which He took to be one of ourselves, or they were 
 uttered by men whose faculties were exalted through 
 that spiritual power, which by His mediation He 
 procured from God for man. So that He is both 
 "the power of God, and the wisdom of God." 
 Those secret depths of the Divine wisdom, which 
 
 Apostles. But [it happens now] as though the earthly father, 
 when he felt himself on the verge of death, fearing lest after his 
 removal disputes should arise between the brothers, should call 
 for witnesses, and transfer his will from his dying breast to 
 enduring tablets : then if a dispute should arise among the 
 brethren, there would be no need of going to his tomb, but 
 the testament would be referred to ; he who lay tranquil in the 
 grave would speak without voice from his tablets. The living 
 Father, whose disposition we are inquiring after, is in heaven ; 
 therefore as you would learn a man's will from his testament, 
 so let His be sought for from the Gospel." St. Optatus de 
 Schis. Donat. v. 3.
 
 THE SOURCE OF HOLINESS AND KNOWLEDGE. 479 
 
 are unfathomable to finite thought, were always 
 within the range of His personal knowledge. " And 
 of His fulness have all we received, and grace for 
 grace." By virtue, therefore, of His Mediation, 
 have those Divine truths, which were present to the 
 mind of God, been presented through the medium 
 of speech to the minds of mortals. This they still 
 are, since they have been written in a book, just as 
 much as when they sounded in men's ears. So 
 " the Fathers of Nice," says St. Leo, " live through- 
 out the world in their constitutions." 17 Much more 
 then is He, through whom Divine Truth came down 
 among men, to be looked upon as the present 
 source of that external, objective system of know- 
 ledge, to which His inspired Prophets and Disciples 
 have given expression in Holy Writ. 
 
 But His gift of knowledge was not confined to 
 an external truth : truth, like holiness, required 
 also to be infused into the inner nature of mankind. 
 Not only was the body of Christ enriched with that 
 imparted treasure of truth, the Holy Scriptures ; 
 but likewise with the engrafted principle whereby 
 it was able to comprehend them. The first was an 
 object committed from without to the Church's 
 keeping : the second was a gift of wisdom, bestowed 
 along with other graces on that collective body, 
 which the Head of the renewed race enlightened by 
 His presence. The first, therefore, was an objective 
 gift : something offered to the Church's contempla- 
 17 St. Leo, Ep. Ixxx. p. 299.
 
 480 CHRIST AS MEDIATOR 
 
 tion, which it has to maintain, defend, and treat 
 about; the second is a subjective gift to the Church, 
 that internal and guiding principle of understanding, 
 which it has to exercise upon the external truth 
 committed to its care. And these two gifts must 
 never be separated from one another. For they 
 come from the same source, and each of them is 
 essential to the full life of the other. Without the 
 external system of truth in Holy Writ, the Church's 
 mind would not have the advantages which are de- 
 rived from a written authority : without the internal 
 Word which enlightens the Body of the Church, 
 the sayings of Scripture would not be fully com- 
 prehended. Both kinds of knowledge are the result 
 of that economy of Mediation, whereby the Incar- 
 nate Son has exalted humanity, by uniting it into 
 one Body in Himself; and they contribute between 
 them to the complete acquisition of whatsover man's 
 nature has capacity to attain. 
 
 This close connection between the external gift 
 of God's Word, and the inward gift of a spiritual 
 discernment between the Word, that is, as pre- 
 sented objectively in Holy Writ, and as acting 
 subjectively throughout the Body of Christ is 
 evidenced as well by the name bestowed upon the 
 Mediator in Scripture as by the account of His of- 
 fice. For why should he be called the Word, save 
 with a view of showing how intimate is the relation 
 between those written oracles, in which God's will 
 is declared to us, and that Personal Word which
 
 THE SOURCE OF HOLINESS AND KNOWLEDGE. 481 
 
 abideth 18 in us? Thus do we learn that the Word 
 by which believers are "born again" is identical 
 with that, "which by the Gospel is preached." 19 
 When we read that " the Word of God is quick and 
 powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword," 
 "a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the 
 heart," we are not unnaturally reminded of that 
 mysterious depth of Holy Scripture, which adapts 
 it to all circumstances and times, so that none can 
 read it without perceiving how it searches the con- 
 science. And yet the meaning of the passage is 
 not exhausted by such an interpretation : it passes 
 on into the Personal acting of the great Being, 
 whose spiritual presence enlightens men respecting 
 the purpose of His own sayings, and reminds us, 
 that there is no " creature that is not manifest in 
 His sight, for all things are naked and opened unto 
 the eyes of Him with whom we have to do." 
 
 The same truth is discernible if we turn from the 
 name of Mediator to the consideration of His office. 
 For why has Holy Scripture its peculiar adapta- 
 tion to man's nature, save because it is His Word, 
 after whose image man was originally fashioned, 
 and who is Himself the " true light, which lighteth 
 every man?" Therefore, when we read it, we re- 
 cognize the higher rule of our original composition. 
 And His present office is declared in Holy Writ to 
 be the extension of that informing and enlightening 
 power, which He originally bestowed upon our 
 18 1. John, ii. 14. 19 1. Peter, i. 23, 25. 
 
 i i
 
 482 CHRIST AS MEDIATOR 
 
 nature. Thus only may man become capable of 
 comprehending God's truth. The perpetual agency 
 of the Living Word is needed to give effect to His 
 written declarations. "I am come," He says, "a 
 light into the world, that whosoever believeth in 
 Me should not abide in darkness." " As long as I 
 am in the world, I am the light of the world." 
 This enlightening office the Word was to exercise 
 in perpetuity through the power of the Holy Ghost. 
 " The Spirit of Truth will guide you into all truth :" 
 " for He shall receive of Mine, and shall show it 
 unto you." And, therefore, writes St. John, " the 
 anointing which ye have received of Him abideth 
 in you, and ye need not that any one teach you: 
 but as the same anointing teacheth you of all 
 things, and is truth, and is no lie." Here, then, 
 we have a part of that Mediatorial function, which 
 belongs to Him who condescended to take our 
 nature. And since His office of Mediator has im- 
 mediate reference to His mystical Body, to those 
 whom, through the spiritual presence of His man's 
 nature, He unites to Himself; to them, therefore, 
 and for their benefit, must be this enlightening 
 influence : the inward or subjective principle of 
 perception, which is derived from Him who is " the 
 way, the truth, and the life," must be infused into 
 that collective society, through which individuals 
 are associated to the manhood of Christ ; and their 
 portion in this inward teaching of the Word must 
 be brought about through their inherence in His
 
 THE SOURCE OF HOLINESS AND KNOWLEDGE. 483 
 
 Body. And so does St. Paul teach us, referring 
 the growth, stability, and knowledge of individual 
 Christians, to their adherence to that Body of 
 Christ, whereby the engrafted Word attains its 
 maturity. " He gave some, Apostles ; and some, 
 Prophets; and some, Evangelists; and some, Pas- 
 tors and Teachers ; for the perfecting of the Saints, 
 for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the 
 body of Christ : till we all come in the unity of the 
 faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, 
 unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature 
 of the fulness of Christ ; that we henceforth be no 
 more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about 
 with every wind of doctrine, by the slight of men 
 and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to 
 deceive ; but, speaking the truth in love, may grow 
 up into Him in all things, which is the Head, even 
 Christ^ It is the same Eternal Word, whose 
 Spirit inspired the Apostles and spake by the Pro- 
 phets, who still condescends to guide into truth 
 the whole Body of the Church; He dwells in it 
 subjectively through grace to renew and purify its 
 spiritual perceptions ; He infuses an engrafted prin- 
 ciple of knowledge, so that His written word 
 becomes a real light to its else darkened under- 
 standing. The Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the 
 root of David, prevails to open the Book and to 
 loose the seals. Thus is an engrafted brought to 
 bear upon an imparted knowledge both derived to 
 us from that Mediator whose immediate presence
 
 484 CHRIST AS MEDIATOR 
 
 supplies the one, as through the ministry of His 
 servants He has bestowed upon us the other. 
 
 Though the view which has been taken is fully 
 set forth in God's Word, it may, to some minds, 
 seem open to objection. That the external and 
 imparted Word of Scripture may be duly under- 
 stood, there needs, it is said, that infused influence 
 of its Divine author, which He communicates to 
 the Body of His Church. Scripture, therefore, 
 cannot be understood without a divine light : that 
 divine light is obtained for individuals through 
 their inherence in the Christian community. Now, 
 the privileges of reason may, perhaps, be alleged 
 to be infringed by the first assertion : those of in- 
 dividual enlightenment by the second. To assert 
 the necessity of a divine guidance may be thought 
 to derogate from reason; to suppose that its light 
 is communicated through Christ's collective Body 
 may be supposed fatal to the liberty of individuals. 
 Such are the two objections which may be adduced. 
 It will be seen in each case how dangerous is their 
 tendency if admitted without limitation, and that 
 their legitimate admission is not inconsistent with 
 the truth which has been asserted. And first to 
 consider the claims of reason. It is alleged, that 
 since Scripture consists of words and propositions, 
 its interpretation falls of necessity within the do- 
 main of reason. When we speak of Our Lord's 
 body as a material substance, we mean that it was
 
 THE SOURCE OF HOLINE.SS AND KNOWLEDGE. 485 
 
 an object to the senses of men : it might be seen 
 and handled: and to express the will of God in 
 language, is to submit it in like manner, it is con- 
 tended, to the reasoning faculties of mankind. So 
 that it is represented to be a sort of contradiction 
 in terms, to speak of a revelation which does not 
 appeal to the faculty of reason as the judge of its 
 contents. Let us first observe how far this prin- 
 ciple will lead, with a view of discerning, secondly, 
 by what limitations it is necessary to guard it. 
 
 1. To admit the exclusive authority of human 
 reason will be found to be fatal to the claims of 
 revelation : so that along with the inward and sub- 
 jective influence of an engrafted principle of divine 
 guidance, the imparted and objective truth of Scrip- 
 ture would also be overthrown. That some such 
 guide as reason must always be employed, follows 
 of necessity from the fact, that men are liable to 
 various impulses, which need, therefore, the direc- 
 tion of a controlling principle. Hence arises the 
 duty of private judgment the obligation, that is, 
 of weighing seriously the contending impulses, by 
 which the will is affected. Without such restraint, 
 men would be perpetually vacillating between con- 
 science and appetite. And their judgment of Holy 
 Scripture would be decided by the principle which 
 at the moment preponderated in themselves. To 
 maintain the due authority of reason, therefore, is 
 identical with an assertion of the responsibility of 
 mankind. But such authority as this is, on all
 
 486 CHRIST AS MEDIATOR 
 
 hands, attributed to reason. The Ultramontane 
 who disobeys his sovereign's law, or the soldier 
 who slays his brethren at its bidding, act in con- 
 formity with the results, to which their judgments 
 of Holy Scripture severally conduct: the latter 
 looks to the order to obey the King, whereas the 
 former supposes that he is commanded to obey the 
 successor of St. Peter. Whether their interpreta- 
 tions of Scripture be good or bad, they are at least 
 commended to each of them by their individual 
 reason. To respect the Church's authority, in like 
 manner, does not imply any rejection of the claims 
 of reason ; all which it assumes is, that men sup- 
 pose the Church's judgment of truth to be entitled 
 to their confidence. 20 The notion of reason then, 
 with which the admission of Church-authority is 
 inconsistent, must be something beyond this 
 something which not only assigns to each the duty 
 of judging, but asserts his absolute independence. 
 This is what appears to be designed by the right of 
 private judgment. To be free from all deference 
 for the opinion of others to be entitled to disre- 
 gard any motives or arguments, the force whereof 
 he does not himself appreciate to stand entirely 
 alone, an individual essence, responsible only for 
 such conclusions as find their way to him through 
 intellectual processes, which are understood and 
 
 w " Contra rationem nemo sobrius, contra Scripturas nemo 
 Christianus, contra Ecclesiam nemo pacificus senserit." S. 
 Aug. de Trin. iv. 10.
 
 THE SOURCE OF HOLINESS AND KNOWLEDGE. 487 
 
 approved by his own mind : this may be claimed 
 for each intelligent being as a right. If men's no- 
 tions interfere with the external security of others, 
 human laws will, of course, interpose for the pro- 
 tection of society; but mere opinions the inward 
 processes of the mind may be supposed to be left 
 so completely to each man's own discretion, that 
 he is not called upon to pay any attention to the 
 notions of others. 
 
 Xo doubt such a principle as this is inconsistent 
 with the admission of Church authority. For 
 though the Church has no earthly power of en- 
 forcing obedience, yet if she has " authority in 
 controversies of faith," there must be an authority 
 in her external judgments, which it must be the 
 duty of individuals to respect. But to what result 
 does the opposite system of absolute independence 
 conduct ? Since the office of reason is to draw 
 conclusions from premises, the nature of its con- 
 clusions must be determined by that of its pre- 
 mises. Whence are its premises derived ? The 
 school of Locke replies that they owe their exist- 
 ence to the senses. The simple impressions, which 
 the senses supply, together with the multifarious 
 combinations which are derived from them, make 
 up those complex ideas, which, when drawn out 
 into a series through the active power of the mind, 
 are called a process of reasoning. Now if this be 
 the origin of our knowledge, and if the mind may 
 discard all considerations, which its own reason
 
 488 CHRIST AS MEDIATOR 
 
 cannot appreciate, what place is left for revelation ? 
 As the vessel cannot be lifted above the water 
 which floats it, so Holy Scripture cannot consist of 
 things, which are above the reach of the faculty, 
 which is its competent judge. Such is the result 
 of that theory, which, matured by Locke's subtiler 
 and more consistent disciple, Hume, may be called 
 the system of Sensualism. For by what sense do 
 we admit the knowledge of God and things divine ? 
 They do not enter by touch or sight, by hearing 
 or smelling. It is evident that on this hypothesis, 
 the absolute independence of reason is fatal to re- 
 velation, and the attempt to subject God's Word to 
 man's judgment results in the denial of His exist- 
 ence. So that along with the inward and sub- 
 jective influence of an engrafted principle of divine 
 guidance, the imparted and objective truth of Scrip- 
 ture would also be overthrown. 
 
 Even the opposite system, which may be called 
 Intellectualism, though more promising, will con- 
 duct in the end to a similar result. The profounder 
 Leibnitz, unsatisfied with the poverty of Locke's 
 hypothesis, suggested that besides the ideas which 
 flow in upon us from the senses, we must take ac- 
 count of the constitution of that agent which re- 
 ceives them. To Locke's principle, " nihil in 
 intellectu nisi quod prius fuerit in sensu," he added, 
 " nisi ipse intellectus." On this basis rests the far 
 deeper and more comprehensive school of Kant. 
 The philosopher of Konigsberg, following in a
 
 THE SOURCE OF HOLINESS AND KNOWLEDGE. 489 
 
 measure in Plato's steps, took the laws of man's 
 inner nature as an axiomatic foundation in his 
 search after truth. Yet here again the difficulty 
 recurs, how are we to find God and things divine? 
 A metaphysical proof of God's existence may no 
 doubt be derived from the inward laws of man's 
 constitution; and there is such a thing, according 
 to Kant, as " religion within the bounds of pure 
 reason." But let it be admitted that man is not 
 bound to believe anything which his own reason 
 does not apprehend, and what place remains for 
 revelation ? Whence is it to be derived how under- 
 stood in what manner authenticated? If the only 
 principle of truth lies within ourselves, whence shall 
 an outer rule approach us : if our inner powers are 
 supreme, how shall it supersede their action ; and 
 since a system of miracles lies wholly beside those 
 inward laws of thought which are the ultimate cri- 
 terion, how is it to be believed ? 21 It is not neces- 
 sary to trace the effects of this system in Kant and 
 his successors, or to refer to the well-known fact, 
 that they reduce revelation to the statement of such 
 truths as man's reason admits on other grounds: 
 
 21 Mr. Trench, on the Miracles of Our Lord, pp. 66, 68, 2nd 
 edition, has shown that there can be no satisfactory evidence for 
 them, unless men possess that predisposition to believe the fit- 
 ness of the Gospel scheme, which is among the first gifts be- 
 stowed by preventing grace upon the soul. This gift is bestowed 
 through natural conscience in such measure as to supply the first 
 step towards God : its subsequent development, through union 
 with the true fountain of light, grows in the renewed man into 
 the fulness of a spiritual understanding.
 
 490 CHRIST AS MEDIATOR 
 
 the recent words of an able and earnest-minded 
 countryman of our own, by whom this system had 
 been adopted, afford a sufficient specimen. " Ima- 
 gine," he says, " a man pretending to survey the 
 world, and all its wisest men, and to reconstruct 
 the age, and writing down.... that external, his- 
 torical testimony of God's revealed will is the only 
 true basis of moral science. As if all science is not 
 within, and all morality. And as if anything ex- 
 ternal could be the basis of anything within." 22 
 
 The last words show the effect of this system 
 on one, whose national instincts must have rebelled 
 against the total abnegation of a fixed external 
 standard of belief. But let the control of indi- 
 vidual reason be unchecked and unconditional, and 
 it must necessarily involve all the results which 
 are deduced from it by German philosophy. Each 
 man's inner judgment becomes the only truth, and 
 the divine realities which exist externally to us 
 melt away. And yet this conclusion is at variance 
 with those convictions of man's heart of which he 
 cannot divest himself. For the eternal laws of 
 nature reassert an influence, which the subtilties of 
 logic in vain oppose. So that the testimony of our 
 nature, and the wants of society bring back upon 
 us those external realities, which abstract reason 
 would discard, and compel us to deny its unre- 
 stricted influence. 
 
 2. But how can we find a limit to the principle 
 22 Sterling's Life and Remains, vol. i. p. 158.
 
 THE SOURCE OF HOLINESS AND KNOWLEDGE. 491 
 
 of reason, which without doing violence to its un- 
 questionable authority, may yet supply an opening 
 for those higher truths, which itself forbids us to 
 reject ? For on what does reason stand but the 
 principles of our nature, and how can nature sanc- 
 tion conclusions abhorrent to itself? Xow there 
 can be no responding to the aspirations of humanity, 
 unless we have some power of going out of our- 
 selves. Our individual reason is not large enough 
 to satisfy the cravings of our hearts. Each man 
 must pass beyond the narrow precinct of his own 
 thoughts he must come forth and commune with 
 heaven and earth, if he would appease the true 
 longings of his nature. Such communion with 
 things external to us is called Faith. This is its 
 definition in Holy Scripture : " Faith is the reali- 
 zing things hoped for, the putting to the proof 
 things not seen." 23 Even our acquaintance with 
 the material world depends on that conviction of 
 the truth of our senses, which is a species of faith. 
 But its main function is in the regions of the moral 
 and of the unseen. For it is the recognition of 
 that external law, which has its dwelling in the 
 bosom of God. It is not merely the tracing out 
 those conclusions, which are derivable from the in- 
 tellectual constitution of every individual, but the 
 actual communing with that external truth, 24 which 
 
 23 Hebrews, xi. 1. 
 
 - 4 " Knowledge properly is but our natural desire, or im- 
 planted blind love restored to sight ; and nature doth as it 
 were first grope after that, which at length she comes to see,
 
 492 CHRIST AS MEDIATOR 
 
 was pleased to have its reflection originally in man's 
 mind. Now, since it was the will of Almighty 
 Wisdom to form the first man after the model of 
 Himself, some traces of this perfect truth will be 
 found even in his fallen descendants. But faith is 
 not employed merely in the discovery of these 
 faint resemblances ; it is that divine principle of 
 which man has never been wholly deprived, where- 
 by the great Author of our nature restores to us 
 communion with Himself. 25 As a mirror does not 
 show us outward forms, because they existed pre- 
 viously in itself, though they may happen to have 
 been originally delineated on its surface, so Faith's 
 office is to admit that higher light, whereby man 
 may again give back the Divine image. And thus 
 is it a principle beside and co-ordinate with rea- 
 son 26 a principle by which the authority of reason 
 is limited at the same time that the stock of its 
 knowledge is enlarged, because a new and inde- 
 pendent condition is introduced into the conclu- 
 sions to which reason conducts. 
 
 and having seen desires to embrace." " As the seed since the 
 first creation doth still in order of nature go before the tree, 
 so doth knowledge always presuppose instinct or desire." 
 Jackson's Works, v. 51, 7. 
 
 25 " Supra animam intellectivam humanam necesse est ponere 
 aliquem superiorem intellectum, a quo anima virtutem intelli- 
 
 gendi obtineat Plato intellectum separatum, impri- 
 
 mentem in animas nostras, comparavit soli Sed in- 
 
 tellectus separatus, secundum nostrse fidei documenta est ipse 
 Deus." Summa. i. Q. 79, 4. 
 
 26 " Rationale est ut fides pi-aecedat rationem." S. Aug. Ep. 
 120, 3.
 
 THE SOURCE OF HOLINESS AND KNOWLEDGE. 493 
 
 But this principle of faith must itself be under 
 some control. It does not justify every one in 
 believing as he will. Unless there be some rule 
 and order in its operation, it will lose itself in the 
 vague and changeable lawlessness of individual 
 eccentricity. What, then, is its criterion ? By 
 what ruling principle is it directed ? Its limits 
 must be determined by that law which gives it 
 birth. Now its origin is that community of our 
 nature, whereby it is enabled to prescribe bounds 
 to each man's individual reason. If it be asked, 
 why men are not justified in adopting those con- 
 clusions to which their single consciousness con- 
 ducts ? why they should admit more, than by pro- 
 cesses within themselves they can ascertain and ac- 
 cept ? the answer is, that they do not stand alone, 
 that they are parts of a race, that He who made 
 them has established certain laws, which find a 
 response in their common nature, and has thus 
 fixed His impress on their collective being. Let 
 men be instructed in this community of mankind, 
 and they could have no difficulty in admitting that 
 those results, of which Faith assured them, were 
 the voice of the Creator. Starting from the fact 
 that they were all " the offspring of him that was 
 first made from the earth," they must conclude 
 that wisdom was " the breath of the power of God, 
 and a pure influence flowing from the glory of the 
 Almighty." 27 And Revelation witnesses that men's 
 ^ Wisdom, vii. 1, 25.
 
 494 CHRIST AS MEDIATOR 
 
 natural power of appreciating moral truth is the 
 gift of that Eternal Word, who never totally for- 
 sook the beings whom He had created. " In Him 
 was life, and the life was the light of men." This 
 is the deeper and divine cause for that community 
 and connexion of the souls of men, the natural and 
 apparent grounds of which have been already 
 stated (p. 46). But till this truth was revealed, 
 there existed only those arguments for the com- 
 munity of mankind, which observation suggested. 
 Yet these were enough to satisfy men of the ex- 
 istence of certain general laws, as speaking out of 
 the deeper recesses of a common nature. The rule 
 whereby each man's individual faith was to be 
 regulated, was prescribed by the verdict of that 
 collective being to which it owed its existence. 
 Thus did men " show the work of the law written 
 in their hearts, their conscience also bearing wit- 
 ness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing 
 or else excusing one another." 28 
 
 The breadth and importance of the rule thus 
 provided is shown by the works of heathen mo- 
 ralists. And yet how was the verdict of natural 
 conscience to be ascertained? For since men in 
 
 28 When Mr. Hume quotes approvingly the sentiment, that adul- 
 tery need not be considered a crime, unless it be felt to be an evil 
 by the party injured, the judgment of mankind condemns him 
 for neglecting that natural standard, which, independently of 
 any higher sanction, is provided by the inherent conviction of 
 his race. He is setting up his private judgment against a truth 
 which had commended itself to the faith of humanity.
 
 THE SOURCE OF HOLINESS AXD KNOWLEDGE. 495 
 
 general are swayed by passion rather than prin- 
 ciple, the conduct of the majority can be no cri- 
 terion of truth. The problem was to find the 
 perfect pattern of humanity, the representative of 
 those deep principles, which were imprinted in the 
 constitution of the race. Such an example, when 
 practically set forth, must command the respect 
 even of those against whose defects it testified. 
 For it is the nature of a race to put forth here 
 and there some peculiar type of its characteristic 
 qualities, to which its less distinguished examples 
 are gradually assimilated. In this respect the 
 works of genius illustrate the moral advancement 
 of mankind. Every man is not capable of origi- 
 nating those sublime conceptions, by which Xewton 
 unfolded the mechanism of the sky. The fervid 
 imagery of Milton has added thoughts, which, but 
 for him, might never have formed part of the intel- 
 lectual heritage of men. These and such prophets 
 of humanity have opened to us secrets, which it 
 belongs to ordinary faculties to comprehend, but 
 which they would have been unable to discover. 
 Xow, the same rule is applicable to man's moral 
 state. When Plato says that if virtue could be per- 
 sonally exhibited, all men must delight in her ; and 
 when Aristotle 29 makes it dependent on the imita- 
 
 - When Aristotle speaks of virtue in the abstract, he at- 
 tributes it rather to the race than to individuals, because each 
 individual is but an imperfect type of the principles which lie 
 hid in the race at large (Politics, iii. 7) ; but his practical mode 
 of attaining it is in every case the imitation of those, in whom the
 
 496 CHRIST AS MEDIATOR 
 
 tion of those, who have an intuitive perception of 
 her principles, they assume the existence of some 
 pattern and type of the race, which its other mem- 
 bers have capacity to recognize. To be conformed 
 to such models, to associate themselves to such 
 standards of excellence, is the duty of ordinary 
 men. Thus do they appreciate those principles of 
 right and wrong which they would have been un- 
 able to originate. But it is on Faith only that such 
 a rule of duty can depend. Those who will, may 
 always represent it as a mass of contradictions. 
 It presents no such distinct set of precepts as can 
 control the unwilling mind. It satisfies none but 
 those who possess that principle of belief, which 
 prepares them to admit the existence of an external 
 law. Such prepossession is a necessary condition 
 for the acceptance of revelation, "for He that 
 cometh to God must believe that He is, and that 
 He is the re warder of them that diligently seek 
 Him." But to reach forth in this manner after the 
 Creator's will, with an antecedent perception that 
 some rule of right has a real existence, is to make 
 Faith an original source of knowledge ; and, there- 
 fore, to limit the supremacy of individual reason, 
 by assuming the existence of higher truths than 
 
 intuitive perceptions of moral faith have been strengthened by 
 good conduct. &>? av 6 0/>oV*/ios opiaeie. Eth. JVic. ii. G. He 
 supposes the moral eye of the ypdvifio? to be an original source 
 of knowledge, through its inward intuition. Set Trpoae-^eiv TWI/ 
 ... (ftpovifiwf rat? avaTroF.eiKTois (fiaffeffi KO.I iiogats. Sta <yap TO 
 eXeiv CK riys efMreipias ofifia, opuxriv rtpxa** Eth. NtC. VI. 11.
 
 THE SOURCE OF HOLINESS AND KNOWLEDGE. 497 
 
 are attainable through the senses or intellect of 
 mankind. 
 
 The mere existence of Faith, therefore, as a neces- 
 sary pre-requisite to the acceptance of revelation, or 
 even to the admission of the moral government of 
 God, implies that some limit must be assigned to 
 individual reason. But is such natural faith, as is 
 our guide in unfolding the laws of Providence, a 
 sufficient guide also to the understanding of that 
 imparted Word which is communicated in the Scrip- 
 tures ? Is it sufficient for every one to study God's 
 Word by the light of his own conscience, without 
 the aid of that engrafted Word which is communi- 
 cated to the Body of the Church ? 
 
 Now, here must be borne in mind the characte- 
 ristic distinction between Christianity and Ration- 
 alism ; namely, that the second rests on that know- 
 ledge and those means of intercourse with God, 
 which we have by Creation, whereas the former 
 looks to the Mediation of our Incarnate Head. 
 For in Him we have the full expression of that 
 principle, after which Heathen teachers were reach- 
 ing in vain. He is the true pattern of our race, 
 the real type of humanity, the complete exemplifi- 
 cation of all those excellencies, which were reflected 
 in the pure nature of our original parent. This 
 perfection He exhibited, not merely, as Rationalism 
 would have it, through the happy tempering of His 
 natural qualities, but because in His Person there 
 entered into our race a supernatural power. For 
 
 Kk
 
 498 CHRIST AS MEDIATOR 
 
 thus was humanity made perfectly partaker of the 
 Divine nature ; in His Person were " hid all the 
 treasures of wisdom and knowledge." The facul- 
 ties which God gives to every one in such inferior 
 degree as is needed for the affairs of this life, dwelt 
 in such sublimated intensity as our understanding 
 is incapable of estimating, in Him to whom God 
 gave the Spirit without measure. And as in Him 
 was the only perfect pattern of humanity, so in 
 union with Him is the only real source of know- 
 ledge. 30 For not only did He give to Faith a 
 higher object in the revealed truths of the Gospel, 
 but He exalted the principle of Faith itself through 
 that higher nature which He communicated to His 
 earthly members. " For by grace are ye saved, 
 through Faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the 
 gift of God." Thus are Christian Faith and Chris- 
 tian Reason no longer the natural judgment of the 
 children of creation, but the inspired judgment of 
 the children of grace. Through the union of each 
 individual with the Pattern of Humanity, are his 
 natural qualities exalted. His inferior faculties are 
 re-moulded on the perfect type of manhood. If the 
 influence of natural excellencies could minister to 
 the first birth of Faith, and thus extend the con- 
 clusions of reason, what may not be expected from 
 real oneness with Him, in whom Faith was swal- 
 lowed up in sight, and reason matured into intel- 
 lectual intuition? 
 
 30 " Apprenons de la verite increee et incarnee notre veritable 
 nature." Pascal's Thoughts. [Fauffere] vol. ii. 104.
 
 THE SOURCE OF HOLINESS AND KNOWLEDGE. 499 
 
 And yet here too, as in the province of natural 
 faith, indi vidual judgments must be regulated by 
 some controlling principle. For even the conclu- 
 sions of holy and good men are liable to be in- 
 fluenced by private eccentricity. The Scriptures 
 may be misunderstood as well as the laws of Provi- 
 dence. Yet the truth itself is one and unalterable, 
 however variable and fallacious are the opinions of 
 men. Its reflection must be sought for, then, in 
 the judgment of the regenerate race, as the verdict 
 of natural conscience in the sentiments of collective 
 humanity. But since this higher reason is not built 
 upon the mere development of those faculties, which 
 by creation were imparted to our race, but on the 
 communication of grace from Him who is the foun- 
 tain upon earth of heavenly knowledge, therefore 
 its principle of reference is not to any human ex- 
 emplifications of goodness, but to that source itself, 
 from which man is made participant of the Divine 
 wisdom. So says the Apostle, referring the gift of 
 Christian perception to that mind of the Spirit, 
 which the natural man does not partake. It is be- 
 cause " we have the mind of Christ," that he claims 
 a power of " comparing spiritual things with spiri- 
 tual" for himself, and for those who shared with 
 him in the fellowship of the Lord's Mystic Body. 
 The Heathen had no further test for natural con- 
 science, than as individuals exhibited a fainter or 
 clearer example of that gift which had been be- 
 stowed originally upon man ; but the Christian
 
 500 CHRIST AS MEDIATOR 
 
 looks to that storehouse, which has been provided 
 in the manhood of our Divine Head, as the medium 
 through which wisdom must be expected, as well 
 as graces. It is from union, therefore, with that 
 collective body, through which Christ vouchsafes 
 His presence, that he anticipates the one as well as 
 the other. The gift of faith, the power of under- 
 standing, the inward light of a higher reason these 
 are among the blessings which Mediation obtains, 
 and which flow in perfection from Incarnate God- 
 head into the members of His Mystical Body. So 
 that we come back to the very position from which 
 we started, and find the proper limitation of reason, 
 in its exercise on things Divine, to be its subordina- 
 tion to that engrafted gift of heavenly guidance, 
 which the Mediator bestows upon the body of His 
 Disciples. For the authority of reason is limited 
 only by that principle of faith, which at the same 
 time enlarges its sphere of vision. The existence 
 of an infused, subjective gift of truth in the body of 
 Christ's Church, as the fit correlative and expositor 
 of that objective truth of God's Word, committed 
 to it in writing, turns out to be the exact condition 
 which gives full scope to individual minds. The 
 general action of the collective body on the ex- 
 ternal truth to which it witnesses, provides the 
 limits within, and by help of which the individual 
 thought can be profitably exercised. For the 
 security of individual judgment depends upon the 
 constant influence of that guiding principle which
 
 THE SOUHCE OF HOLINESS AND KNOWLEDGE. 501 
 
 comes from a higher power ; and this influence is 
 derived from the efficacy of that Mediatorial system, 
 which extends through the collective body of Christ 
 into individual minds. 
 
 This is what is meant, then, when the Church 
 system is opposed to that of individual reason. 
 The ultimate reference is to the great represen- 
 tative of man's race, as the only channel through 
 whom truth descends from God to man. In Him 
 alone is the perfection and standard of wisdom, 
 which as a Divine gift can be only obtained per- 
 fectly from a Divine giver. And the gift of truth, 
 being bestowed through His Mediation, must ex- 
 tend itself like His other blessings, to that body 
 of the Church, which is the seat of His life-giving 
 presence. Through union with this collective 
 body is the benefit communicated to individuals. 
 The guidance thus exercised over the Church at 
 large, the engrafted efficacy of the Word, supplies 
 each man with a fixed guide, which adds intensity 
 and confidence to his private meditations. Were 
 Scripture designed to teach worldly truths, the 
 capacities which were bestowed on men by Crea- 
 tion would render them competent students of its 
 pages especially if they sought that wisdom from 
 a higher Being, which, according to the principles 
 of nature, must be looked for from their Creator ; 
 but this would be only a Rationalistic study of 
 Scripture, which could not be expected to open 
 the deeper mysteries of the Word. The higher
 
 CHRIST AS MEDIATOR 
 
 truths of the Gospel, like its larger graces, are 
 among the gifts which are bestowed upon man 
 through Mediation; and it is only through those 
 means which associate us with the Body of Christ, 
 that we can discern and appreciate them. Thus 
 is man's spiritual eye opened to those fundamental 
 principles, which form the basis of all reasoning 
 respecting questions of Faith, and which occupy 
 the same place in the interpretation of Scripture, 
 which is held by the cardinal truths of morals in 
 respect to the practical affairs of life. 
 
 It is the absence of these primary principles 
 which renders so many persons incapable of dis- 
 cerning the beauty and reality of the Church 
 system, and thus leads them to wander in the 
 unsatisfying paths of private speculation. But 
 since the system of Mediation is an advance upon 
 that of Creation, the Church's judgment respecting 
 the meaning of Scripture, which is built upon the 
 first, must be preferred to that of private reason, 
 which is built upon the second. Its authority 
 rests upon the fact, that it is His mode of instruct- 
 ing us, from whom only issues true light. And yet 
 the Church's mind does not proceed on rules alien 
 to the course of private reason, but only higher and 
 more comprehensive. The preceding pages have 
 marked out the course, by which the wisdom of 
 God guided her from a recognition of the single 
 facts of revelation to " the full assurance of under- 
 standing, to the acknowledgment of the mystery of
 
 THE SOURCE OF HOLINESS AND KNOWLEDGE. 503 
 
 God, and of the Father and of Christ." In all this 
 is there an exact progress from cause to effect, 
 which the highest reason may admire, but which 
 Faith refers not to the mere process of human de- 
 duction, but to that infused Spirit of Truth, to 
 which pertains guidance as well as sanctification. 
 Thus does the line of truth ascend from the single 
 fact of our Lord's worship, till it loses itself in that 
 primary doctrine of the Trinity in Unity, which 
 is the basis of knowledge. And from this point 
 does it again pass downward, till the operations of 
 the interceding Word and sanctifying Spirit are 
 recognized as underlying the whole scheme of our 
 thoughts. This system, collected into Creeds, is 
 what gives fixedness and guidance to individual 
 minds. To enshrine such truths in Creeds is a 
 claim on the part of that collective body which 
 propounds them, to the engrafted influence of that 
 guiding Word by which only the Word written can 
 be surely elucidated. And the evils which result 
 from their neglect are a sufficient proof how essen- 
 tial is the one of these principles to the maintenance 
 of the other. In those parts of Christendom, and 
 among those individuals, by whom the Church's 
 judgment as expressed in Creeds is lightly thought 
 of, the paramount authority of God's Word as an 
 objective ground of truth is equally endangered. 
 The inspiration of Scripture, on which depends its 
 existence as the imparted record of objective truth, 
 is found to depend practically on the recognition
 
 504 CHKIST AS MEDIATOR 
 
 of that infused principle of judgment, which has 
 been asserted to belong to the Mystical Body of 
 Christ. 
 
 A few w T ords are needed respecting this remark- 
 able proof of connexion between the written and 
 the living Word. It has been matter of observa- 
 tion and surprise that our formularies should dwell 
 so much on the importance of the Holy Scriptures, 
 yet say not a word respecting their inspiration. 
 What is meant when we speak of them as inspired? 
 Various theories are afloat on the subject, yet nei- 
 ther the collective Church, nor our own branch 
 of it, have thought it necessary to offer an expla- 
 nation. These theories moreover are found to 
 prevail exactly in those quarters, in which the 
 Church's authority as a " keeper" as well as " wit- 
 ness" of Holy Writ is denied; as though to invent 
 some scheme of inspiration was the necessary cor- 
 relative of denying the existence of that living 
 Word, which guides men through Creeds, and has 
 been engrafted in the body of the Church. One 
 theory would hold Scripture to be good authority 
 for things divine, but not for things human. But 
 by what criterion we are to discriminate between 
 things human and things divine, is not determined. 
 Another supposes that conclusions were revealed 
 to the Apostles, which it was left to themselves to 
 develop and ascertain by the uncertain resources 
 of human reason. But how are we to separate 
 between the wheat and the chaff; between the
 
 THE SOURCE OF HOLINESS AND KNOWLEDGE. 505 
 
 Divine conclusions which we must believe and reve- 
 rence, and the human arguments, which we may 
 scoff at and reject ? Again, the notion that the 
 sacred writers were mechanical agents, whose 
 words were dictated by the Holy Ghost, has the 
 advantage at all events of promising to effect what 
 a theory of inspiration might be expected to attain. 
 Its maintainers however, besides demonstrating its 
 truth, should show how it harmonizes with what 
 history tells us of the formation of the Sacred 
 Canon. For since the Apostles were not always 
 mechanical agents, the cases in which they obeyed 
 so singular a law would require to be distinguished 
 by some unquestionable criterion from their usual 
 actings ; and what was thus cut off from their 
 common teaching, would need to be guarded by 
 an authority as distinct as that which originally 
 discriminated it. How far is this compatible with 
 the gradual admission of disputed books into the 
 Canon during a period of more than three centu- 
 ries ? It is not to the present purpose, however, to 
 question the accuracy of these theories of inspira- 
 tion, but to inquire why no theory at all is offered 
 to us by the Church. Xow the object of all such 
 theories is of course to maintain important truths, 
 which might otherwise be called in question. Some 
 article essential to man's salvation is rested upon a 
 particular text or expression, and unless this ex- 
 pression or text can be shown to be inspired, and 
 unless inspiration imply the truth of what is com-
 
 506 CHRIST AS MEDIATOR 
 
 municated, it is feared that the whole superstruc- 
 ture of Faith may be overthrown. When Bishop 
 Hampden is pressed by St. Paul's authority, "I 
 appeal," he says, "from Paul philosophizing to 
 Paul preaching." 31 Allow this principle, and since 
 St. Paul w T as arguing against Jews, who were 
 schooled in the system of atonement, why might 
 not his references to Our Lord's Mediation have 
 been only an argument ad liominem designed to 
 prove that on their own theory Jesus was the 
 Messiah ? How does this writer discriminate there- 
 fore between those assertions of St. Paul which we 
 must admit, and those which we may disbelieve? 
 Any logical proof then of the fundamentals of 
 religion requires that its basis should be laid in a 
 consistent theory of inspiration. Unless this foun- 
 dation is sound, the superstructure will be pre- 
 carious. If it be not fixed, equable, and coherent, 
 it must be bound together by such artificial con- 
 cretion, as may promise the solidity of a rock. 
 And the reason why the Church has never put 
 forth any theory of inspiration, is because building 
 on the rock itself, she stands in no need of such 
 factitious expedients. For when has she rested 
 her belief in the fundamentals of truth on any 
 logical deduction from individual expressions ? 
 Unfold the record of her public assertions, the 
 decrees of those four Councils of Nice, Constan- 
 tinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon (to say nothing 
 31 Bampton Lectures, 8th, p. 375.
 
 THE SOURCE OF HOLINESS AND KNOWLEDGE. 507 
 
 of that original one at Jerusalem), to which the 
 English law refers as her criterion of heresy, and in 
 which of them is any reference made to individual 
 expressions, as though the Church supposed that 
 the logical sequence of her doctrines was to be 
 demonstrated argumentatively to the intellect of 
 men ? To do so would have been to assign to 
 human reason the exact office, which has been 
 shown already to be inconsistent with the very 
 principles of revelation. Or to pass to our own 
 eighth Article, by which the authority of the three 
 Creeds is asserted. Is this article designed to be 
 a conclusion from admitted premises, or an appeal 
 to subsequent demonstration ? If it be the latter, 
 why is no demonstration offered ? Why are not 
 the passages adduced, by which the Church hopes 
 to conciliate the intellectual acquiescence of those 
 whom she desires to gain ? Her principle there- 
 fore is plainly the same with that of the Church 
 universal in all her determinations. The principles 
 which she lays down are accordant with Scripture ; 
 and her ground of confidence in her conclusions is 
 their consistency with that objective system of truth 
 which was once for all imparted to her by the 
 Holy Ghost. But she does not attempt to estab- 
 lish them by deduction from individual expressions, 
 because her appeal is not to human logic, but to 
 God's Spirit. The imparted objective truth of the 
 Word written, requires the engrafted subjective in- 
 fluence of the living Word as its expositor. Such
 
 508 CHRIST AS MEDIATOR 
 
 an endowment was always asserted for that com- 
 pany of faithful men, to whom was "revealed" 
 " the wisdom of God in a mystery," and in whose 
 name the Apostle asserts that " we have the mind of 
 Christ." We see an example of its mode of acting, 
 when a dispute arose whether it was expedient that 
 women should act as ministers. St. Paul decides 
 it, by referring not only to his own judgment, but 
 to that of the collective body, on which was be- 
 stowed the grace of spiritual comprehension : " If 
 any man seem to be contentious, we have no such 
 custom, neither the Churches of God." Therefore 
 does the Church refer to testimony, as showing 
 what was that view of the truths of Scripture, 
 which this living witness has always taken; and 
 to grace, as guiding the collective members of 
 Christ in the exposition of His Word. Not of 
 course that this higher medium of truth interferes 
 with such intellectual study of Holy Writ, as may 
 show its deep truth and perfect harmony. But 
 what supersedes the necessity of dependence on 
 mere human logic, is that efficacy of the Media- 
 tor's Presence, which alone is an adequate guide 
 to the comprehension of His imparted Word. So 
 that individuals are successful in the elucidation of 
 Scripture, not merely through the native shrewd- 
 ness with which God has blessed them, but be- 
 cause their natural powers are elevated by con- 
 nexion with that supernatural system, through 
 which they participate in Christ. Hence those
 
 THE SOURCE OF HOLINESS AND KNOWLEDGE. 509 
 
 many writers, by whom the marvellous richness of 
 Scripture has been illustrated : thus are the in- 
 dividual testimonies to Our Lord's nature enforced 
 by the dialectic vigour of Athanasius and Bull, 
 and the deep truths respecting His presence in 
 Sacraments expounded by the profound sagacity 
 of Hooker and Augustiu. Yet these writers refer 
 constantly to the " Analogy of the Faith ;" they 
 have no confidence in mere human logic when 
 illustrating God's Word written : their conviction 
 is plainly avowed that they need that teaching of 
 His living Word, which dwells through grace in 
 the body of those who are united to Him. And 
 among their many rich legacies to the Church, no 
 theory of inspiration is included. They were con- 
 tented with believing Scripture to be God's im- 
 parted Word, leaving undetermined that which He 
 has not been pleased to reveal, namely, what are 
 the exact intellectual limitations by which we may 
 discriminate His indestructible truth from the pe- 
 rishable clay of His earthly instruments. The set- 
 tlement of this question, absolutely essential to 
 those who would build their faith on mere logical 
 inference from the text of Scripture, was wholly 
 unnecessary to men who looked to a Divine inter- 
 pretation of its sacred words. For all such theories 
 of inspiration are devices for building up a system 
 of Divine truth by man's reason. They are bul- 
 warks, erected in the well-meaning but ineffectual 
 hope of rendering God's Word an available aux-
 
 510 CHRIST AS MEDIATOR 
 
 iliary, in battles which are to be waged with the 
 mere weapons of human logic. But Scripture, 
 like the ark in the camp of Israel, has been found 
 to give small advantage to those who thus employ 
 it. Such bulwarks have rather prejudiced revela- 
 tion than secured it. For its strength rests on 
 another principle. The Word written implies the 
 Living Word as its constant correlative : the one 
 receives, applies, interprets the other : the settle- 
 ment what questions are fundamental, and on what 
 basis they depend, lies too deep for man's unaided 
 understanding, and must be referred therefore to 
 the teaching of that Divine power, which is the ap- 
 pointed guide into all truth. 
 
 And if this statement seems to any one a dispa- 
 ragement from the authority of Holy Writ, let it 
 be observed that its contrary tendency may be 
 shown, not by argument only, but by experience. 
 For by whom is Holy Scripture treated with that 
 reverence which belongs to a divine revelation; and 
 in what quarters, on the other hand, has it either 
 been curtailed or rejected ? Have not such at- 
 tempts been made in the most flagrant and perti- 
 nacious manner, by those very parties by whom 
 the Church has been denied to possess that " au- 
 thority in controversies of faith," which our Article 
 ascribes to her ? With a belief in the engrafted 
 Word dwelling in the Body of Christ, all fitting 
 reverence for the imparted Word has almost inva- 
 riably been abandoned. What book of Scripture
 
 THE SOURCE OF HOLINESS AND KNOWLEDGE. 511 
 
 has not been rejected in some part or other of Pro- 
 testant Germany ? And the only bodies which 
 have retained that deep reverence for Holy Writ 
 so conspicuous in the early Church, have been 
 such portions of those who bear the Christian 
 name, as like it profess to recognize that influence 
 of the Living Word, which dwells in His Body 
 Mystical. 
 
 And here we may pass to the other objection, 
 which it was proposed to notice : the assertion i. e. 
 that God's illumination is wholly an individual gift, 
 and has no relevancy to that Body Mystical of 
 Christ Our Lord, through which its benefits are 
 said to be derived. But before entering upon this 
 subject, it will be well to pause for a moment, and 
 reiterate with somewhat more fulness what is the 
 exact point, which in the preceding pages has been 
 maintained. For there may be readers whom the 
 foregoing argument fails to convince, because it 
 seems at variance with their personal observation. 
 And when this is the case, demonstration may 
 silence men, but cannot satisfy them. And yet 
 what has been asserted is, in truth, nothing 
 more than is declared by St. Paul, that "the na- 
 tural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit 
 of God, neither can he know them, because they 
 are spiritually discerned." Xow, if we are to look 
 to grace for the gift of understanding, it must 
 needs flow in the channel of those blessings, which 
 the Mediator has brought down from heaven, and
 
 512 CHRIST AS MEDIATOR 
 
 its appointed course, therefore, will be through 
 that Body Mystical, which He unites to Himself 
 through the efficacy of His Body natural. But 
 against this statement rises up the philosopher on 
 one side, and the earnest-minded Christian on the 
 other ; and they point out numerous individuals, 
 not united, as they say, to Christ through His 
 Mystical Body, by whom the Word of God has 
 been studied, commented upon, and illustrated, 
 not only by their writings, but (which is far more 
 important) by their lives. The case of individual 
 enlightenment by God's Spirit shall be spoken of 
 shortly : at present let it only be observed, that 
 the existence of an infinite number of such cases is 
 freely admitted, and that the fact is not inconsis- 
 tent with what has been asserted in the foregoing 
 pages. To the philosopher it may be said, that 
 such measure of illumination as may suffice for the 
 first understanding of Holy Writ, was bestowed 
 according to the law of their creation upon all 
 men ; and if such great progress was made even by 
 Heathen moralists both in understanding and vir- 
 tue, how much more may be expected from those 
 who possess also the invaluable records of inspired 
 Scripture. But the Christian will look far higher 
 than this : he will assert, what no man can deny, 
 that love, faith, and obedience are found in large 
 measure among those who have never enjoyed the 
 advantage of being joined to Christ, through the 
 Sacraments of His Grace ; that their virtues often
 
 THE SOURCE OF HOLINESS AND KNOWLEDGE. 513 
 
 put to shame the vices of those who by adoption 
 are members of Christ's body; and also that their 
 excellencies must be the result of grace, because 
 they are professedly referred to Christ and His 
 Holy Spirit. And as he will infer from this cir- 
 cumstance that they possess the gift of a spiritual 
 understanding, so he will assert that their words 
 and writings often exhibit it. Yet what is there in 
 this, with whatever latitude it is admitted, which 
 negatives those distinct statements of Holy Writ, 
 wherein Christ the Mediator is stated to bind men 
 to Himself in His Body Mystical, through the 
 efficacy of that body natural, whereby He united 
 Himself to us ? Is it to be denied that God has 
 appointed a channel for His graces, because the 
 flood of His mercy overflows its banks? Doubt- 
 less these graces flow from that One Mediator, who 
 is expressly declared in Holy Writ to be the one 
 only name through whom comes salvation. And 
 wheresoever they are found, we thank God for 
 their effect. We recognize it as well in the under- 
 standing, whereby such persons enter into Scrip- 
 ture, as in the holiness, whereby they obey it. 
 
 Xow here, probably, men's objection will turn 
 round: if you admit, they say, what is sufficient 
 for our argument, you admit what is too much for 
 your own. Such an admission as this, it is as- 
 serted, is in reality the substitution of a new prin- 
 ciple; it is like those collateral streams, which in 
 short space change the bed of the great rivers of 
 
 Ll
 
 514 CHRIST AS MEDIATOR 
 
 the West. It may be replied, in the first place, 
 that to object on this ground to the plain testimony 
 of God's Word is one of those arguments from 
 man's ignorance, which, as Bishop Butler has 
 proved, are in their nature inconclusive. Many 
 reasons may exist, beyond the reach of our short- 
 sighted vision, why God may have seen fit to 
 provide an appointed mean of union with Christ, 
 with which in cases innumerable it may please 
 Him to dispense. But the existence and blessing 
 of the Divine System, of which Scripture tells us, 
 may in this case be discerned, however large our 
 allowance of co-existent exceptions. Nothing 
 shall be said at present of the gift of holiness, on 
 account of the difficulty of finding tests indicative 
 of collective morality ; and because what is under 
 consideration is the gift of truth. Now this bless- 
 ing is in fact maintained even in those exceptional 
 cases which have been adduced, through the me- 
 dium of that collective Body of Christ, to which 
 the gift of spiritual understanding has been pro- 
 mised. For w r hence come that belief in God's 
 imparted Word, and those first notions respecting 
 the scheme of Christianity, with which such per- 
 sons start on their independent march ? They get 
 these things from the general Body of Christ, 
 though ignorance, prejudice, or the scandal of the 
 Church's permitted sins, unhappily prevent them 
 from obtaining all the benefits which it is intended 
 to dispense. Hence the partial, self-conflicting,
 
 THE SOURCE OF HOLINESS AND KNOWLEDGE. 515 
 
 uncertain views which the best men of this class 
 commonly take of Scripture. That simple good- 
 ness is no barrier against this uncertainty, is suf- 
 ficiently shown by the continual conflicts in which 
 such men are engaged with one another. Their 
 conflicts differ essentially from those of Church- 
 men, because while the latter admit the authority 
 of that spiritual sense, into which the Church has 
 been guided by the Spirit (whatever difficulty may 
 exist at times in determining it), the disputes of 
 independent expositors of Scripture are without 
 umpire and without end. And yet the Church's 
 testimony supplies the very groundwork on which 
 they base their discussions; for all Christian inter- 
 preters must start of necessity from an admission 
 of Scripture's inspiration. But till it is explained 
 what is meant by the term Inspiration (and no 
 such solution has yet been found as may supply 
 the basis of a mere logical system of religion), all 
 private interpretations contain within them the in- 
 evitable seed of unbelief. They suffice probably 
 for those who, in a pious but limited view of 
 things, have first adopted them; but no sooner 
 do they pass into the hands of the next genera- 
 tion, than their consistency is put to the proof, 
 and they are found wanting in coherence. Hence 
 it happens almost invariably that such parties as 
 began by separating from the Church on one prin- 
 ciple, work their way to the opposite extreme of 
 error. The Puritan Xoncomformists who accused
 
 516 CHRIST AS MEDIATOR 
 
 the Church of not resting sufficiently on Christ, 
 were the ancestors of the present Socinian school, 
 by whom the Church is asserted to rest on Him 
 too exclusively. Germany, where men complained 
 so loudly because Scripture was not duly appre- 
 ciated, is the only country probably in the world, 
 where its authority has not only been denied, but 
 the very existence of its authors has been publicly 
 disputed. Against such errors what has made 
 head, but that inward belief in Scripture, and that 
 objective system of truth, which have lived in the 
 Church and through the Creeds? What a basis 
 have these things supplied even to those who were 
 least conscious of their obligation! How often 
 have the words of the Church sounded forth in 
 her public confession, while those who heard them 
 from the lips of the Minister knew not that the 
 Creeds thus promulgated were, in fact, the living 
 truths on which the faith of the whole land was 
 unconsciously dependent, and that many a private 
 speculator who fancied himself guided only by his 
 individual spirit, was thereby withheld from errors, 
 which would else be fatal to his peace. How much 
 greater has been the advance of heresy, how much 
 bolder the irreverent rejection of God's imparted 
 Word, where such testimony of His Word en- 
 grafted has not been a present witness. For thus 
 has the Church, in her raiment of sackcloth, been 
 testifying for centuries in the streets of that busy 
 and unbelieving world, which cannot bring itself
 
 THE SOURCE OF HOLINESS AND KNOWLEDGE. 517 
 
 altogether to reject, what its concupiscence will not 
 allow it to obey. But then, it is asked, why may 
 not this witness be merely inward and personal? 
 Suppose it admitted that reason is not competent 
 without grace to master things divine, why has 
 that grace any connexion with Christ's Body ? In 
 this case then, as before, the full tendency of the 
 notion of individual enlightenment must first be 
 exhibited, and it must afterwards be shown under 
 what qualifications it may safely be admitted. 
 
 1. To assume the existence of an individual illu- 
 mination, has not been an unfrequent or unnatural 
 reaction against that unsatisfying system, which 
 professes to subject God's word to mere reason. 
 Earnest minds are disgusted by the cold, hard, 
 critical, irreverent manner in which Scripture is 
 treated. Its dogmas are drawn out as logical 
 deductions by human intellect, and a respect is 
 demanded for them, which is only due to the wis- 
 dom of God. This system has prevailed to a 
 certain extent even in our own country : for its 
 unchecked predominance we must look to what 
 was called the orthodox Lutheranism of the seven- 
 teenth century. Against it there rose up George 
 Fox in England and Semler in Germany. The 
 argument of Fox and of all the early Quakers, was 
 that the letter of God's word was nothing, without 
 that guiding Spirit by which it was originally in- 
 dited. " Writing paper and ink," said Fox to 
 Baxter, " is not infallible." In like manner did
 
 518 CHRIST AS MEDIATOR 
 
 Semler protest, that a body like the German Pro- 
 testants could recognise no paramount authority in 
 its original founders, which could shackle in per- 
 petuity the minds of men. The formulas of Luther 
 and Calvin might be good, but it was for every 
 individual to judge of their goodness. He there- 
 fore agreed with Fox in looking for an individual 
 guidance, which both expected must come from 
 above. But what was the result of their theory? 
 In both cases it led to the denial or depravation 
 of that objective and imparted truth of Holy 
 Scripture, for which both in the first instance 
 seemed most anxious. " The only evidence," says 
 Semler, " for the divinity of a book, is inward con- 
 viction through the truths contained in it : this is 
 divine faith, which, by a somewhat obscure scrip- 
 tural expression, is called the testimony of the Holy 
 Ghost in the reader's mind." " In conformity with 
 this rule be expunged from the Canon, Solomon's 
 Song, Euth, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Chronicles, 
 &c." 32 
 
 If the conduct of the Quakers was not quite 
 so arbitrary, the result was nearly the same. 33 
 
 32 Tholuck's Vermischte Schriften. vol. ii. p. 56. 
 33 " What other sort of men that call themselves Christians," 
 writes Leslie, " have abused the Scriptures by the contemptible 
 names of Beastly Ware, Dust, Death, Serpent's Meat, &c." 
 Snake in the Grass, 7, vol. ii. p. 57. And if this be said to 
 refer to the letter of Scriptures as opposed to their inward 
 meaning, yet how is any great respect for them compatible with 
 the statement of Barclay, recorded by their friendly historian ? 
 " We utterly deny," he says, " that in true Christians the Scrip-
 
 THE SOURCE OF HOLINESS AND KNOWLEDGE. 519 
 
 It followed naturally from the supposition, that 
 Divine enlightenment did not flow forth into 
 humanity through that channel, which has been 
 opened through the Mediation of Christ, but was 
 bestowed immediately by God on man. Let this 
 be admitted to be God's ordinary mode of impart- 
 ing spiritual gifts (the possibility of special and 
 extraordinary communications has already been 
 admitted), and the consequences deduced by 
 Semler and the Quakers must inevitably follow. 
 The notion is akin to that which would assert 
 reason to be a final arbiter respecting things 
 Divine. Those who claim this province for reason, 
 consider that it is the voice of the Great Spirit of 
 the Universe, speaking according to that system of 
 natural religion, which only they allow. And indi- 
 vidual inspiration is in like manner an immediate 
 reaching forth to that ultimate Governor, between 
 whom and man's spirit nothing is supposed to in- 
 terfere. Those who call themselves Christians, it 
 is true, use the name of Christ, when speaking of 
 the Being they refer to. And their affections, we 
 
 tures, or outward history in the Scriptures, is the principal 
 motive, foundation, or principal rule of that historical faith, 
 much less of saving faith, to the producing of which the letter 
 of the Scripture doth very frequently (as to many of its acts, if 
 not all) not concern or co-operate." SciveVs Hist, of Quakers, 
 vol. ii. p. 350. This accords with a maxim which Leslie 
 attributes to them : " That which is spoken by the spirit of 
 truth in any, is of as great authority as the Scriptures and 
 Chapters are, and greater." Snake in the Grass, sec. 7, 
 vol. ii. p. 60.
 
 520 CHRIST AS MEDIATOR 
 
 may hope, are likely to be quickened by the narra- 
 tive of sufferings patiently undergone, and of graces 
 supernaturally predominant. But Christ the Me- 
 diator bestows the blessings which He confers 
 through union with His man's nature ; this union 
 is obtained through His Body Mystical ; it results 
 from that peculiar oneness with Himself, which 
 renders individual dependent on collective blessings, 
 and joins all the members of His Church into one 
 spiritual whole. If these circumstances, characte- 
 ristic of the Son, are left out of sight, the name of 
 Christ becomes a mere title of Sovereign Deity, and 
 the Being whom men reverence ceases to be that 
 Son Incarnate, who has vouchsafed to become the 
 Head and Representative of mankind. So that the 
 direct reference to the Great Spirit of the Universe, 
 which is independent of these considerations, har- 
 monizes with a Sabellian view of Christ's nature, 
 and not with that reality of His Mediation which is 
 taught by the Church. And however large the 
 peculiar communication to individuals of special 
 mercy, yet to make this the ordinary course of 
 Gospel graces, would be to set aside the Mediation 
 of Christ Our Lord. And the depreciation of 
 Holy Scripture is an immediate consequence. For 
 whether we take reason or individual inspiration as 
 the principle of union, what is there in either case 
 which can stand between God and the soul ? Ac- 
 cording to the Church's teaching, a scheme of me- 
 diation has been appointed between God and man.
 
 . THE SOURCE OF HOLINESS AXD KNOWLEDGE. 521 
 
 Christ's manhood bridges over the gulf between 
 them. It communicates truth objectively through 
 the gift of the Scriptures, and at the same time 
 bestows the faculty of comprehending them on 
 those who are united in one Body to Himself. The 
 one of these cannot interfere with the other, be- 
 cause the medium which communicates them is 
 the same. But of what use are such intervening 
 steps to those who by immediate access can draw 
 nigh to God ? If their own private feeling be the 
 test of that inspiration, which drinks at once from 
 the primary fountain of truth, why not when it 
 sets aside Scripture, as much as when it respects it ? 
 The same circumstance, then, which supersedes the 
 engrafted Word, supersedes the imparted Word 
 also. Every act of communication to those who 
 are thus favoured, is as good as Scripture. "When 
 Fox heard a minister at Nottingham tell the people 
 that " they were to try all doctrines, religions, 
 and opinions, by the Scripture, he felt such 
 mighty power and godly zeal working in him, 
 that he was made to cry out : ' O no, it is not 
 the Scripture, but it is the Holy Spirit, by 
 which the holy men of God gave forth the Scrip- 
 tures, whereby opinions, religions, and judgments 
 are to be tried.' ' J34 Thus, from rejecting that 
 living Word which is engrafted in the Body of 
 Christ, he passed by obvious transition to the re- 
 jection of the Word imparted, which is its natural 
 
 34 Sewel's History of Quakers, vol. i. p. 36.
 
 522 CHRIST AS MEDIATOR 
 
 correlative. The same process which overleaped 
 one barrier overleaped the other. 
 
 2. This leads us then, secondly, to the necessary 
 caution by which the doctrine of individual en- 
 lightenment requires to be guarded. True, with- 
 out an individual inspiration of God's Spirit we are 
 unable to understand His words. But this Inspi- 
 ration must rest upon the intervention of Christ 
 Incarnate, instead of being independent of it. It 
 is not immediate, but derivative from the Mediation 
 of Christ. First comes that gift which Our Lord 
 has purchased for collective humanity, whereby He 
 unites all His true members into one body in Him- 
 self. Dependent on this is that communication of 
 Himself to individual souls, whereby the blessings 
 of knowledge, as well as those of grace, are con- 
 ferred upon them. To consider these a gift which 
 comes from God, independently of Christ, is to 
 deny our participation in His office of Mediation. 
 We cannot speak too highly of this enlightening 
 blessing, so long as we maintain that due subordi- 
 nation, which keeps up the recollection of its 
 source. It is ever relevant to Christ as the en- 
 grafted Word dwelling in the Body of His Church, 
 as well as to Christ the imparted Word teaching in 
 His Scriptures. While we reverence the one of 
 these, we shall pay due deference to the other. So 
 long as we respect Christ teaching us by the gene- 
 ral guidance of His Church, we shall be in no dan- 
 ger of the error of those who set " their light
 
 THE SOUECE OF HOLINESS AND KNOWLEDGE. 523 
 
 within above the Scriptures, by refusing to let 
 their light within be judged by the Scriptures." 32 
 
 To maintain Church authority, then, is to assert 
 the empire of grace as opposed to that of nature ; 
 to make the gift of divine knowledge a conse- 
 quence and portion of the Mediation of Christ, and 
 Christ Incarnate the sole cause of man's enlight- 
 enment. It is a result of the truth that God is 
 wiser than man. Other views would throw men 
 either upon the competency of nature, or upon 
 gifts obtained from God independently of Christ 
 and His Gospel ; but the Church system is equi- 
 valent to the system of Christ's Mediation; know- 
 ledge is bestowed by Him upon His Body Mystical, 
 and the gift of individual enlightenment is subordi- 
 nate to men's general relation to Him. But are 
 there not difficulties, it may be asked, in this sys- 
 tem, and in particular, does it not give the col- 
 lective Church an authority inconsistent with the 
 ultimate supremacy of God's Word? For if the 
 Church be guided by the engrafted Word, is not 
 the imparted Word superseded by its power? Does 
 not the same difficulty recur which was found to 
 attach to individual inspiration that every act of it 
 was a virtual superseding of all previous communi- 
 cations ? Do not those who begin by idolizing 
 Scripture, end commonly by idolizing themselves ? 
 And what guarantee have we, that the Church at 
 35 Leslie, ibid. p. 57.
 
 524 CHRIST AS MEDIATOR 
 
 large shall not fall into the error of which expe- 
 rience has convicted every enthusiast from Mon- 
 tanus to Nay lor? Now, to this it may be replied, 
 in the first place, that the body for which an infused 
 power of guidance is claimed, is the very same 
 whose witness is appealed to on behalf of the Word 
 imparted. For what proof have we of the autho- 
 rity of those books, which pass by the name of 
 Scripture, unless some confidence can be placed in 
 the spiritual discernment of that Body of the 
 Church, by which they were at first acknowledged 
 to be God's Word ? And this acknowledgment 
 having been once made, the Church cannot decide 
 anything, which is inconsistent with its own decision. 
 It cannot supersede that imparted Word, which it 
 has once adopted as the truth of God. This objec- 
 tive body of truth, no set of men, no generation, not 
 the collective Church in all time, has power to dis- 
 pense with. It is fixed once and for ever. And if 
 it be asked further, what proof we have that the col- 
 lective Church will not attempt to get rid of it, the 
 answer, besides our general trust in God's Provi- 
 dence, is, that against this danger Christ Our Lord 
 has promised us protection. For such an act would 
 be an apostacy on the part of the Universal Church, 
 into which He has promised that she shall never 
 fall. His declaration is that the Gates of Hell shall 
 not prevail against her. He assures us of His pre- 
 sence with her to the end of the world. Such an 
 attempt therefore, as would endanger her witness
 
 THE SOURCE OF HOLINESS AND KNOWLEDGE. 525 
 
 to the Word imparted, need never be feared, be- 
 cause such a desertion as would imply the removal 
 of the Word engrafted can never happen. Indeed, 
 what but this has ensured such measure of discre- 
 tion, amidst the innumerable collisions of eighteen 
 hundred years, that the Body, with which dwells 
 the Living Word, should still be the witness and 
 keeper of written Scripture ? That the Church, 
 therefore, will not attempt to dispense with Scrip- 
 ture that the collective Body of Christ will be 
 faithful to its trust this is matter of belief to 
 those to whom Christ's promise is a ground of 
 confidence. 
 
 There have been times, it is true, when the use 
 of such a guide was more apparent than at present. 
 The miserable divisions, which have distracted the 
 Church, interfere with the applicability of the prin- 
 ciple, and weaken its effects. We live like Israel 
 in a land of promise, the blessings whereof we only 
 partially possess. This is doubtless a punishment 
 for our sins, as theirs were scourged by the stub- 
 born lingering of what was inimical to their rest. 
 Yet no little benefit actually accrues to us from 
 that indwelling principle of knowledge, which the 
 presence of Christ communicates to His Church. 
 The assertion of any common faith, the education 
 of the young in any fixed principles, the correction 
 of individual waywardness by the public sentence 
 of that portion of the Church, with which we are 
 in communion from whence come all these bless-
 
 526 CHRIST AS MEDIATOR 
 
 ings but from the principle that through union 
 with the Body of the Church individuals obtain 
 the gift of knowledge ? How else could there be 
 any validity in the imposition of creeds, or how 
 could men pretend to set forth articles, whereby 
 others should be bound in their interpretation of 
 Scripture ? These things imply a claim to be 
 guided by that Divine Spirit, whose teaching is 
 the only source of truth. The claim may, under 
 present circumstances, be incomplete and provi- 
 sional; but there is enough of decisiveness in the 
 judgment of the English Church 36 to warrant the 
 
 36 To enter in detail upon the question of Church authority 
 would be to wander from the immediate subject. All which 
 has been here attempted is to show that the claim to authority 
 advanced by the English Church, in her 20th Article, stands upon 
 a Christian and not a Rationalistic basis ; that it is an appeal, 
 not to the wisdom of men, but to the Word of God. It may be 
 observed further, that since the Church's "authority in con- 
 troversies of faith" depends upon the relation between the Word 
 engrafted, and the Word imparted, its office as a "witness 
 and keeper" does not extend to all subjects, but only to those 
 points, on which it is essential to maintain the " faith once de- 
 livered to the Saints." The existence, therefore, of opposing 
 usages in the Church at different times and in different places, 
 however objectionable some of them may be, or the prevalence 
 of contradictory judgments on points which the Word imparted 
 has not decided, do not prove her devoid of an engrafted power 
 of spiritual judgment. And even if the rule of Church au- 
 thority should be open to a measure of the same uncertainty 
 with the general laws of human obligation (vid. p. 496), it may 
 still be a guide to the faithful on essential questions. Those 
 who observe how much mankind is influenced by the faith 
 which prevails around them how large a portion of national 
 character is owing to the habits and rules of life how impossible 
 it is even to introduce political institutions among a people
 
 THE SOURCE OF HOLINESS AND KNOWLEDGE. 527 
 
 assertion that it is not abandoned. If we compare 
 the position of her children with that of the mem- 
 bers of any dissenting sect, or even with that of 
 the Protestants of Germany, we see the immense 
 difference which results from her claiming to pos- 
 sess a fixed principle of judgment. In the Pro- 
 testant bodies in all parts of the Continent, sub- 
 scription to Articles is always understood to be 
 subordinate to the principle of private interpreta- 
 tion : those who sign, i. e. profess to express their 
 accordance, so far as what they subscribe agrees 
 in their judgment with Scripture. The individual 
 interpretation of each man is the fixed principle; 
 the Body which requires subscription has no ex- 
 ternal authority. There are as many faiths, 
 therefore, as there are subscribers. For these 
 formularies, having been originally dictated only 
 by individuals, can have no authority to bind the 
 consciences of others. The words of one of the 
 Reformers, however learned and holy, cannot be 
 set up as a permanent barrier against the progress 
 of truth. What one man has asserted, another 
 may question. There can be no permanent au- 
 thority except from God. Subscription, therefore, 
 as it is required in the Church of England, im- 
 plies a belief in the guiding care of that Divine 
 
 which is not fitted to receive them will not attach little im- 
 portance to that education which it has pleased God to bestow 
 upon Christendom through His Church, and to those essential 
 principles, which His Presence has preserved through the count- 
 less errors of eighteen centuries.
 
 528 CHRIST AS MEDIATOR 
 
 Spirit, to whose decisions individual consciences 
 are bound to defer. 37 What God has been pleased 
 to teach is received because He has taught it. 
 Without His guidance there can be no permanent 
 creed, and no plenary subscription. The measure 
 therefore of accordance, which exists in the English 
 Church, is a perpetual recognition of that divine 
 power, without which there could be neither holi- 
 ness nor concord. Every Minister who declares 
 his " unfeigned assent and consent" to the Book 
 of Common Prayer, is in fact ratifying the spiritual 
 authority which prescribes it. He is asserting that 
 God is wiser than man, and that through His 
 teaching, as conveyed through the Body of His 
 Church, an assurance is bestowed upon us, which 
 could not be attained through so weak and un- 
 certain an instrument as human reason. He is 
 affirming the principle of Christianity, as opposed 
 to that of Rationalism. 
 
 Thus then does a rule exist among us, which, 
 though it might be more complete, is yet far from 
 
 37 Those Lutheran Divines who maintain the authority of 
 confessions of faith, argues Kant, say to us, " draw your con- 
 clusions from the source itself, the Bible, whence you may 
 derive it pure and uncontaminated ; but take care that you do 
 not discover anything in the Bible, except what we find there." 
 *' My good friends," is his reply, " you had better tell us what 
 you find in the Bible, that we may not search in vain, and 
 be told by you at last, that what we fancied that we had found 
 there is our own misinterpretation." His conclusion, therefore, 
 is that no external standard of dogmatic truth can be main- 
 tained in a Church, which does not claim authority in the inter- 
 pretation of Scripture. Kanfs Streit der Facultaten.
 
 THE SOURCE OF HOLINESS AND KNOWLEDGE. 529 
 
 being illusory. We can discern the track, when 
 looked at as a whole, and see that it really serves 
 as a guide amidst most of our perplexities ; though, 
 like travellers tracing the vestiges of an unfre- 
 quented path, we can scarcely detect each suc- 
 cessive portion as it is occupied by our footsteps. 
 And it belongs to the very nature of moral rules 
 to be subject to this uncertainty. Where the 
 contest is between private caprice and the public 
 sentence of the Christian Body, the decision must 
 be the same as when any single portion of the 
 Church opposes the collective testimony of the 
 Christian community. Thus is a criterion pro- 
 vided, which it is the duty of individuals to accept 
 and apply. And most of all, it is thus that we 
 have the inestimable benefit of those three Creeds, 
 for which the wisdom of God made provision before 
 the East and West were finally disunited. To His 
 Providence we doubtless owe it, that these funda- 
 mental questions were decided, before sin had de- 
 stroyed the blessing of unity. If such blessings 
 are to be extended, it must be through the arrival 
 of that more perfect condition of the Church, of 
 which unity is as plain a characteristic as holiness. 
 For its Great Head, in His dying prayer, included 
 the one of them as distinctly as the other. Both, 
 therefore, should find equal place in the petitions of 
 Christians. When Ephraim shall not envy Judah, 
 and Judah shall not vex Ephraim, may these things 
 be. For knowledge and holiness, coming to us 
 
 M m
 
 530 CHRIST AS MEDIATOR, ETC. 
 
 through Christ Our Lord, are attributes of His 
 Body Mystical by grace, as to His Sacred Person 
 they pertain by nature. Now division in this Body 
 is sin ; and sin being the privation of the one of 
 these is fatal to the other. And their blending and 
 commingling nature is evidenced by their perfect 
 union in Him, in whom alone either dwells com- 
 pletely. For knowledge is not perfect, save in 
 Him whose nature is love. And if in man it is to 
 be completely manifest, it can only be through the 
 acquisition of that state, of which man's first dwell- 
 ing-place was an anticipation, when the Tree of 
 Knowledge stands by the Tree of Life in the midst 
 of the Paradise of God.
 
 531 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 THE Doctrine of Our Lord's Incarnation has been 
 considered, and how it rendered Him the represen- 
 tative of that inferior race, whose nature in won- 
 drous mercy He vouchsafed to partake. 1 Again, 
 His method of union with the individual members 
 of the new family, which He redeemed from the 
 ruins of the Fall, has been shown to depend on 
 that Mediatorial character which belonged to His 
 compound nature ; 2 and the outline of its effects 
 upon humanity at large has been slightly traced. 3 
 The characteristic distinction between Rationalism 
 and Christianity has also been touched upon. 
 The first has been shown to rest the connexion 
 between God and man on that natural relation 
 of mind to mind, which was the law of Creation ; 
 and to estimate Christ, therefore, merely as an 
 individual, in whom the inherent powers of man- 
 1 Cap. 1-6. " Cap. 7-13. 3 Cap. 14.
 
 532 CONCLUSION. 
 
 hood attained that perfect development of which 
 they were always capable. But Christianity starts 
 with the supposition that in Christ the forfeited 
 privileges of our race were given back, through 
 the supernatural presence of Godhead. Hence 
 arises that law of Mediation, which implies that 
 all the blessings which the higher Being bestows 
 upon the lower, were centred in the Humanity 
 of the Incarnate Son, that so from His manhood 
 they might be communicated to the successive 
 generations of His brethren. Thus to that old 
 Creation, the ends whereof were frustrated by 
 man's Fall, is opposed the regeneration of his 
 race through its new Creation in the second 
 Adam. It remains, in conclusion, to make some 
 brief inquiry, whether due importance is ascribed 
 to this great event ; whether the habits and opi- 
 nions of our age imply a consciousness where 
 and how our common nature was truly ennobled; 
 whether humanity at large has been adequately 
 impressed by that most momentous of all its 
 vicissitudes "the taking of the manhood into 
 God." 
 
 In the earlier age of the Church's History, the 
 manhood of Our Lord was often questioned by 
 those whose object was to reduce religion to an 
 abstract philosophy, and who, therefore, rejected 
 whatever brought it into actual contact with the 
 life of men. The same evil seems in the present 
 day to be attained in a different order: thosewho
 
 CONCLUSION. 533 
 
 are impatient of that large influence which the 
 manhood of Christ must needs exercise upon the 
 life of men, call in the aid of a philosophical re- 
 ligion to justify their practical unbelief. A few 
 instances of this tendency shall be noticed. 
 
 1. The doctrine of a future judgment is rested 
 in Holy Writ upon the Incarnation of the Eternal 
 Son. God " hath appointed a day, in the which 
 He will judge the world in righteousness, by that 
 man whom He hath ordained, whereof He hath 
 given assurance unto all men, in that He hath 
 raised Him from the dead." Now surely this great 
 truth is not sufficiently remembered in the present 
 day. It is not only forgotten in the market-place, 
 but it is not adequately enforced in the pulpit. 
 This may in part arise, because ordinary pastoral 
 instruction in the Church of England is not backed 
 by any systematic agency for the conversion of the 
 careless. The calm and orderly course w r hich is 
 required for the one, is wholly different from the 
 occasional and stimulating measures which are 
 needed for the other. Such a view of judgmcnt- 
 to-come as might bring it practically before the 
 minds of men, would need to be accompanied by 
 other steps, which can hardly be taken, so long 
 as the jealousy of the civil power deprives the 
 Church of those opportunities of common delibe- 
 ration, without which it is impossible for her to 
 adopt such measures as are required by the exi- 
 gency of the times. This may contribute to a
 
 534 CONCLUSION. 
 
 result, which it is more easy to account for than 
 to justify. The tendency is greatly increased by 
 that loose view of human responsibility, which 
 supposes that repentance not only avails for the 
 obtaining of pardon, but that it renders all past 
 actions indifferent. This notion may be grateful 
 to careless men, but it derives no countenance 
 either from revelation or philosophy. The last 
 should remind men that their final character is the 
 result of all the previous impulses by which they 
 have been actuated, and that however hidden 
 from themselves, it is plainly conceivable that the 
 whole mysterious thread of their complicated ex- 
 istence may be traced by an Omniscient Judge 
 through all its tangled multiplicity. And the 
 same infallible Scriptures which declare salvation 
 to the penitent, through the blood of the Incarnate 
 Mediator, declare that God "hath given Him au- 
 thority to execute judgment also, because He is 
 the Son of Man." Except for His gracious inter- 
 vention in the world of created beings, our race 
 had perished in its birth ; it had been incapable of 
 trial and glory. The Incarnation of the Son of God 
 involves examination, and makes acquittal possible. 
 But then it teaches the certainty of the trial. The 
 very office of a judge is to examine into actions; 
 and to assign this function to one who is charac- 
 terized by participation in our material nature, if 
 it shows the leniency with which we may hope 
 that judgment will be exercised, shows also its
 
 CONCLUSION. 535 
 
 reality and literal truth. The forgetfulness then 
 of an actual, certain, individual judgment the 
 attempt to explain it away into a mere act of 
 reflex thought shows a forgetfulness of our place 
 in that delegated Kingdom of the Son of Man, 
 whereby " all power in heaven and earth" has 
 been assigned to Him. The different feeling of 
 the Apostles led to their continual reference to 
 that day* when " we shall all stand before the 
 judgment-seat of Christ." 5 
 
 2. The distribution of the Christian year has 
 the same reference to the renewal of our race 
 through the Incarnation of the Son of God, which 
 the Jewish seasons had to the Creation. As it 
 was the purpose of the old Covenant to vindicate 
 God's creative power, as a preparation for His 
 coming, through whom creation should re-enter 
 upon its forfeited inheritance, so the new Covenant 
 is built upon the new creation of humanity in 
 Christ our Lord. Xow every division of time 
 under the Mosaic law testified to its purpose. The 
 weekly observance of the Sabbath Day was a per- 
 petual testimony to the Creator. The feast of 
 Tabernacles attested the }~early bounty of His Pro- 
 vidence. The Passover and Feast of Weeks showed 
 how He had taken a single family out of the idol- 
 atrous world to obey His law and be the depository 
 of His promises. The whole Christian year is built 
 
 4 II. Tim. i. 12, 18 ; II. Thess. i. 10. 5 Rom. xiv. 10.
 
 536 CONCLUSION. 
 
 in like manner upon the Mediation of Christ. Its 
 weekly day of solemn worship is the memorial of 
 the Redeemer's triumphant rest after the more 
 stupendous labours of His new Creation. In like 
 manner its three yearly seasons, Christmas, Easter, 
 and Pentecost, tell of His Birth, Sacrifice, and 
 Spiritual Legislation. If we follow the matter more 
 into detail, we find the anniversary of Our Lord's 
 Birth preceded by that Feast of the Annunciation, 
 which witnesses when He became Incarnate in the 
 flesh. It is followed by His Circumcision, and 
 Announcement to the Gentiles. Then come the 
 Forty Days of Humiliation, which precede His 
 Sufferings and Triumph. The last portion of them 
 is characterized by reference to His daily recorded 
 actions, as the Representative and Redeemer of our 
 race. They conclude with that Feast of Easter, 
 which forms the birthday of the new Creation. 
 Afterwards are there Forty Days of Rejoicing, while 
 we approach the hour when, ascending up into 
 Heaven, He " received gifts for men," which, on the 
 approaching Festival of Pentecost, He bestowed 
 upon them. And the whole series is closed with 
 the recollection of that ultimate mystery of the 
 Blessed Trinity in Unity, to which Our Lord's In- 
 carnation leads up the wondering mind a mystery 
 which is at once the beginning of all being, and the 
 end of all thought. Now, can the prevalent neglect 
 of such a system as this be compatible with any 
 practical belief in that real manhood of Christ Our
 
 CONCLUSION. 537 
 
 Lord, which binds Him at this moment to collective 
 humanity ? Surely there are not wanting affections 
 in man's nature ; and his habits witness to the 
 cherished feelings of the heart. Were men duly 
 sensible of their nearness to Christ, their master 
 did they feel the reality of that man's nature, 
 whereby He binds Himself to all His brethren 
 these public birthdays of our race could not be 
 passed by with an indifference which is not betrayed 
 in the case of national solemnities, or respecting the 
 aeras of our private life. 
 
 It would be of little purpose to point to those 
 national changes, which have been ordained by 
 Parliament, because the Legislature has for some 
 years been selected on a principle of indifference to 
 religion, which it is safer and more honest that it 
 should openly avow. Otherwise those recent 
 changes might be instanced, which require the 
 opening of Courts of Justice at that solemn season 
 of our own deliverance, when the universal feeling 
 of the Christian world had pronounced it unseemly 
 to be passing judgment on our erring brethren. 
 That our Quarter Sessions should be held in the 
 week before Easter, is the renunciation of a public 
 homage to Our Lord's Humanity, which commenced 
 so soon as Christianity became the fame of the 
 empire. But it is more to the purpose to ask why 
 the arrangements of the Christian year are so little 
 regarded by those who profess reverence for the 
 Christian Faith? Can it be felt how trulv hu-
 
 538 CONCLUSION. 
 
 inanity at large has been exalted in Him? Is 
 the place of His man's nature in the work of 
 Mediation and Intercession duly estimated ? Do 
 men perceive that a real belief in their union 
 with Him would give them a personal interest in 
 every incident which tells upon His earthly life ? 
 Whereas, to say nothing of the prevalent neglect 
 of these seasons by well-intentioned persons of 
 the closed doors of our Churches of the ban- 
 quets by which Christians can celebrate the mourn- 
 ing of Christ marrying and giving in marriage 
 besides these instances in which the love of plea- 
 sure preponderates over associations which cannot 
 but be admitted, the neglect of the great act and 
 principle of our new Creation shows itself in that 
 singular error, which degrades the weekly anni- 
 versary of Christ's Resurrection into a mere Jew- 
 ish observance. It is not, of course, disputed that 
 the Lord's Day is founded upon that weekly 
 division of time, which commemorates the original 
 Creation. But to call it the Sabbath, without 
 adding that condition of its being the Christian 
 Sabbath, which raises it from the old to the new 
 Creation, to rest it merely upon the Fourth Com- 
 mandment, is to derogate from its Christian cha- 
 racter, and to destroy its weekly testimony to 
 the renewal of man's nature in its regeneration 
 through Christ. The effect of such a Judaical 
 error is that the spiritual nature of this great feast 
 is obscured, and with it the reality of that momcn-
 
 CONCLUSION. 539 
 
 tons change, whereby the whole family of mankind 
 was reconstructed. 
 
 3. Such circumstances are, of course, intimately 
 connected with that prevalent neglect, with which 
 those all-important ordinances which bind us to the 
 Body of Christ, and that collective union which is 
 bestowed upon us in Him, have come to be treated. 
 How can the Church's rule, that the daily service 
 of intercession should be offered by all her priests, 
 be reconciled with the closed doors of our sanc- 
 tuaries and their silent altars ? Is it practically 
 believed that the perpetual sacrifice of our great 
 High Priest has its operation through the Minis- 
 try of His earthly Servants ? What can be ex- 
 pected also, so long as there continue to be nume- 
 rous parishes in our land, where the opportunity of 
 fellowship with Christ through the Holy Commu- 
 nion is only offered quarterly to the people ? What 
 life can be anticipated in the Christian society 
 what doctrinal perception of the nature of its be- 
 ing while this enforced obedience to the letter of 
 our Canon shows that the quickening principle of 
 the Church's vitality is so little appreciated ? What 
 a departure this from that early precedent, when 
 the Disciples at Troas came together weekly to 
 break bread ! 
 
 Now, how can such a defalcation be justi- 
 fied ? The offering of Our Kedeemer's sacri- 
 fice is not impaired by time. The reality of His 
 Intercession is not suspended. But a chilling
 
 540 CONCLUSION. 
 
 apathy has withdrawn attention from that prin- 
 ciple of life in Him, which should quicken all His 
 members. This may be traced partly to those 
 interferences of the temporal power, which have 
 obscured men's perception of the nature and origin 
 of spiritual jurisdiction. The Church's power has 
 been grasped at and used by the State for worldly 
 purposes, till the very name of Church authority 
 stinks in men's nostrils. To this we must attri- 
 bute the strange jealousy expressed in the late 
 trivial disputes on rubrical matters, because a few 
 Clergymen professed themselves bound in con- 
 science to act according to their promises. But 
 surely every thing indicates that the time is 
 coming, when that living spirit which animates 
 the Body of Christ can not any longer be dis- 
 pensed with. The strange aspect of falling mo- 
 narchies, the increasing commotions of daily life, 
 show how perishable are the forms of natural 
 society. They testify then to the importance of 
 those binding principles, by which, out of the 
 mouldering ruins of the Roman Empire, was ori- 
 ginally reared the fabric of European civilization. 
 When every thing established is crumbling away, 
 the elements of order cannot re-adjust themselves, 
 save by reference to the internal laws of their 
 being. Yet where shall there be found a principle 
 which may rest not on force but on love, and yet 
 be strong enough to bridle the violence of indivi- 
 dual appetite ? It must be so comprehensive that
 
 CONCLUSION. 541 
 
 it may teach the great the extent of their respon- 
 sibilities, and yet reveal to the humble the real 
 dignity of their state. It must preach humility 
 in the palace and self-respect in the lowly hovels 
 of the poor. In the first it must enforce such 
 lessons of self-denial as may mitigate the glare 
 of earthly splendour, while it compensates the 
 afflicted for the necessary privations of their lot. 
 It must demonstrate to philosophy the existence 
 of a law above its reach, yet be a guide to the 
 unlettered along the busy paths of practical life. 
 All this must come from some simple, single, 
 irresistible influence, such as may give peace 
 amidst the collisions, and oneness amidst the dis- 
 tractions of the public mind. Yet where in 
 nature may we look for such a remedy ? We 
 can find it only in that power whereby nature 
 is elevated above itself. "I if I be lifted up 
 from the earth will draw all men unto Me." 
 None save man's Creator can guide him amidst 
 the uncertainties of his present state. " They 
 will not be learned nor understand : all the foun- 
 dations of the earth are out of course." To Him 
 then, the Pattern and representative of our being, 
 the Xew Man, the second Adam of redeemed mor- 
 tality, we bring those wants and difficulties, which 
 we have inherited from the first. Amidst earth's 
 distractions we seek peace : we ask guidance 
 amidst the perplexities of earthly reason. So 
 long as we are one with Thee we are at rest.
 
 542 CONCLUSION. 
 
 Though neither sun nor stars have for many days 
 appeared, and no small tempest lies upon us, yet 
 we have assurance that Thy presence is in our 
 bark. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 JOHN AND CHARLES MOZJ,EY. PRINTERS, DERBY.
 
 By the same ~4ulhor. 
 
 I. 
 
 RELATIONS OF CHURCH AND STATE ; 
 
 A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY OF THE EAST RIDING. 
 
 A. D. 1848. 
 
 II. 
 THE CHRISTIAN KINGDOM THE WITNESS TO 
 
 CHRIST ; 
 
 A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY. 
 A. D. 1847. 
 
 III. 
 CHARGES TO THE CLERGY, &c. 
 
 A. D. 1841, 1842, 1843, 1844, 1845, 1840. 
 
 IV. 
 A SERMON 
 
 ON THE CONSECRATION OF 
 THE LORD BISHOP OF OXFORD. 
 
 V. 
 CHURCH COURTS AND CHURCH DISCIPLINE. 
 
 VI. 
 
 , THE FIVE EMPIRES ; 
 
 AN OUTLINE OF ANCIENT HISTORY. 
 
 VII. 
 RUTILIUS AND LUCIUS; 
 
 OR, 
 
 STORIES OF THE THIRD AGE.
 
 ALBEMAE.LE STREET, 
 
 October, 1848. 
 
 MR. MURRAY'S 
 LIST OF FORTHCOMING WORKS. 
 
 THE WORKS OF ALEXANDER POPE, 
 
 "WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES. 
 
 EDITED BY THE EIGHT HON. JOHN WILSON CBOKEB. 
 
 Svo. 
 
 NINEVEH AND ITS REMAINS, 
 
 RESEARCHES AND DISCOVERIES IN ANCIENT ASSYRIA. 
 
 WITH A NARRATIVE OF A RESIDENCE IN THAT COUNTRY; AND EXCUR- 
 SIONS TO THE VALLIES OF THE NESTORIAN CHRISTIANS, &c. 
 
 BY AUSTEN HENEY LAYAED, D.C.L. 
 
 XVith Maps, Plans, Lithographs, and Numerous Woodcuts. 2 Tola. Svo. 
 " Mr. Layard has been prosecuting discoveries with singular success. His 
 memoir on Kuzistan evinces great power of observation, enlarged activity, and an 
 acquaintance with the language, manners, and life of the wild tribes, very unusual 
 in a European. Mr. Layard seems qualified in every respect for the service. 
 About six miles from Mosul, lower down the Tigris, is a place which bears the 
 traditionary name of Nimroud. It occupies a large amount of artificial mounds. 
 On the largest of these, Mr. Layard made his first attack. On digging down into 
 the rubbish, chambers of white marble, covered with arrow-headed inscriptions, a 
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 traordinary specimens of Assyrian art were discovered." Quarterly Rcvicw,1847 
 
 " Je dois m'abstenir de toute discussion sur la determination pre'cise du norn 
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 Rois d'Assyrie quo avaient edge les superbes monumens dont il a relev^ les plans 
 et les dcssins. A lui scul apparticnt cette tache, car lui seul possedc les materiaux 
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 les geographies unissent en ce moment leurs vceux aux miens pour que la publica- 
 tion des observations et des portefeuilles de M. Layard nc se fasse pas attendre 
 long temps." Extract from a Report read before the Academic des Inscriptions 
 et Belles Lettres.
 
 MR. MURRAY'S LIST OF 
 
 THE MONUMENTS OF NINEYEH, 
 
 ILLUSTRATED IN 100 PLATES FROM DRAWINGS MADE ON THE SPOT. 
 
 BY AUSTEN HENRY LATAED, P.C'.L 
 
 This work consists of a Selection from the Drawings made hy Mr. LA YARD, 
 of Sculptures, Bas-reliefs, and other objects discovered during excavations carried 
 on by him among the ruins of Nineveh and other ancient Cities of Assyria. Plans 
 of the Buildings, and Views of the principal Mounds inclosing them, together with 
 Drawings of Ornaments and various small objects of considerable interest, in ivory, 
 bronze, and other materials. 
 
 Some of the Sculptures, of which Drawings will he published, have been secured 
 for the British Nation, and will, it is hoped, be placed ere long in the National 
 collection ; hut the greater number were too much injured to bear removal, and 
 have fallen to pieces since their discovery. These Drawings are, consequently, 
 the sole records of the Monuments of a people that has perished from the face of 
 the globe, and all traces of which have been hitherto supposed to be lost. 
 One Volume, Folio. 
 
 LAYENGRO, AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 
 
 BY GEORGE BORROW, author of THE BIBLE IN SPAIN, &e. 
 3 vols. Post 8vo. 
 
 THE LETTERS AND JOURNALS OF THE LATE 
 SIR HUDSON LOWE, 
 
 INCLUDING, FOR THE FIRST TIME, THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 NAPOLEON AT ST. HELENA. 
 
 EDITED BY THE LATE SIR. N. HARRIS NICOLAS. 
 With Portrait, Map, &c. 3 Vole. 8vo. 
 
 DALMATIA AND MONTENEGRO. 
 
 WITH A JOURNEY TO MOSTAR IN HERZEGOVINA AND REMARKS ON THE 
 
 SLAVONIC NATIONS; THE HISTORY OF DALMATIA AND RAGUSA; 
 
 THE USCOCS, &c. 
 
 BY SIR J. GARDNER WILKINSON, F.R.S. 
 With Numerous Illustrations, Plates, Map, and Woodcuts. 2 Vols. 8vo.
 
 FORTHCOMING WORKS. 
 
 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 SIR THOMAS FOWELL BUXTON, BAET. 
 
 WITH SELECTIONS FROM HIS CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 BY CHARLES BUXTON, 1 
 A Keic Edition revised. Portrait. 8vo. 16*. 
 
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 one of the most difficult of literary tasks. The Editor has been contented to rely 
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 anecdotes furnished by a few elder friends : but both classes of material well 
 deserved in this case the advantage of a neat setting, and have received it." 
 Quarterly Rcriac. 
 
 THE CITIES AND CEMETERIES OF ETRURIA; 
 
 BEING THE NARRATIVE OF SEVERAL TOURS MADE BETWEEN THE YEARS 
 
 1842 AND 1847, FOR THE PURPOSE OF INVESTIGATING THE EXTANT 
 
 ANTIQUITIES OF ETRURIA, &C. AND INTENDED TO SERVE AS 
 
 A GUIDE TO THE LOCAL REMAINS. 
 
 BY GEORGE DENNIS, ESQ. 
 With Map, Flans, and numerous Woodcuts. 2 Vols. Svo. 
 
 A HISTORY OF POTTERY AND PORCELAIN,' 
 
 WITH A DESCRIPTION OF THE MANUFACTURE, FROM THE EARLIEST PERIOD, 
 IN VARIOUS COUNTRIES. 
 
 BY JOSEPH MARBYAT, ESQ. 
 Illustrated with Plates and numerous Woodcuts. Svo. 
 
 THE WORKS OF 
 
 HORACE CLASSICALLY ILLUSTRATED. 
 
 WITH AN ORIGINAL LIFE. 
 
 BY REV. H. H. MILMAN. 
 
 With more than 300 Vignettes from the Antique, Drawn by G. Scharf, Jun. ; Illuminated 
 Titles, Borders, &c. 
 
 Crown Svo.
 
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 HISTORY OF GREECE, 
 
 BY GEORGE GROTE, ESQ. 
 Vols. V. and VI. With Maps and Plans. 2 Yols. Svo. 
 
 CONTAINING 
 
 1. PERSIAN WAR AND INVASION OF 
 
 GREECE BY XERXES. 
 
 2. PERIOD BETWEEN THE PERSIAN 
 
 3. PELOPONNESIAN WAR DOWN TO 
 THE EXPEDITION OF THE ATHEN- 
 IANS AGAINST SYRACUSE. 
 
 AND THE PELOPONNESIAN WARS. 
 
 ** A New Edition of the First TwoVols. is in preparation. 
 
 MEMOIRS OF THE HOUSE OF BRANDENBURGH 
 AND HISTORY OF PRUSSIA. 
 
 TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN OF LEOPOLD HANKE. 
 
 EY SIR ALEXANDER AXD LADY DLTF GORDON. 
 3 Vols. Svo. 
 
 " Professor Rankc has devoted some eight or ten years to the examination of 
 materials especially relating to the period embraced by this history ; lie was, more- 
 over, one of the Commission appointed to superintend the preparation of the new 
 edition of the Great Frederick's works now in course of publication at Berlin, and 
 lias thus been enabled to gain a fresh insight into several portions of that monarch's 
 life, and to throw a new light upon several of his actions." Translator's Preface. 
 
 HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 BY LORD MAHOX. 
 eele:'.cd from his CONTRIBUTIONS to the QUARTERLY RTVIEW. 
 
 CONTEXTS I 
 
 JOAN OF ARC. 
 
 MARY QUBBN OF SCOTS. 
 
 MARQUIS OF MONTROSE. 
 
 MR. PITT AND TOE DI-KE OF RUTLAND. 
 FRENCH REVOLUTION. 
 LATIN INSCRIPTIONS. 
 
 FREDERICK THE GREAT. 
 
 Post Svo. 
 
 To Form a Volume of the Home and Colonial Library. 
 
 DICTIONARY OF GREEK AND ROMAN 
 ANTIQUITIES. 
 
 EDITED BY WILLIAM SMITH, LL.D. 
 
 Second Edition. \Vfth numerous additions. Royal Svo. 42s. Ready. 
 In this SECOND EDITION many of the most important articles have been 
 re-written, nearly two hundred pages of new matter have been added, and in general 
 the alterations and additions are so extensive as to make the work almost a new one. 
 
 A .Vcic Clatsical Dictionary by Dr. IT. fmith, in One Volume, is in Preparation.
 
 FORTHCOMING WORKS. 
 
 HAND-BOOK FOR TRAVELLERS IN ENGLAND 
 AND WALES, 
 
 The object of this work is to give an account of the most remarkable Places 
 and most frequented Roads in England enumerating especially the objects cal- 
 culated to interest strangers and passing travelkrs, the historical associations, &c. 
 
 It is the business of a historian of a town or county to describe minutely the 
 buildings the face of the country to enumerate their annals in order ; while the 
 writer of a Guide is limited to the mere curiosities of the spot describing only 
 the things which ought to be seen, or which are to be seen to most advantage ; 
 not everything that may be seen, thus : 
 
 BUILDINGS. 
 
 MANUFACTURES. 
 
 MUSEUMS AND COLLECTION'S OF ART, 
 
 NATURE, ANTIQUITY, PUBLIC AND 
 
 PRIVATE. 
 PUBLIC WORKS. 
 PORTS AND IlAHiwuns. 
 DOCKYARDS. 
 INNS, ) _ 
 
 CONVEYANCES. [Expenses. 
 EXCURSIONS, WALKS. 
 POINTS OF VIEW. 
 
 RAILROADS AND THEIR COLLATERAL 
 
 COMMUNICATIONS. 
 THE MOST IMPORTANT RAILROAD-WORKS, 
 
 VIADUCTS, TUNNELS, BRIDGES. 
 ROADS. 
 
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 CHURCHKS, CASTLES, AND RUINS. 
 SEATS, PICTURES, AND STATUES. 
 PARKS, GARDENS, AND TREES. 
 POINTS OF VIK\V, WATERFALLS, CAVERNS. 
 BATTLE FIELDS. 
 PLANS OF EXCURSIONS SKELETON 
 
 TOURS. 
 
 And the best lines of Route for seeing these objects to greatest advantage, with 
 
 least expenditure of time and money. 
 
 Post Svo. Nearly Beady. 
 
 HAND-BOOK OF LONDON: 
 
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 BY PETER CUNNINGHAM, ESQ. 
 
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 2 VoK Post 8VO. 
 
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 STREETS REMARKABLE FOR SOME 
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 LIVES OF THE LOBD CHANCELLOBS OF ENGLAND, 
 
 FROM THE EARLIEST PERIOD TO THE DEATH OF GEORGE IV. 
 
 BY LORD CAMPBELL. 
 
 FIRST SERIES. A New Edition. 3 Vols. 8vo. 42s. 
 
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 LIVES OF THE LINDSAYS, 
 
 BEING A MEMOIR OF THE HOUSES OF CRAWFURD AND BALCARRES. 
 
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 AN ESSAY ON ENGLISH POETEY. 
 
 WITH NOTICES OF THE BRITISH POETS. 
 
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 Forming a Volume of the Home and Colonial Library. 
 
 DOCTEINE OF THE INCAENATION OF OUE LOED 
 JESUS CHEIST, 
 
 IN ITS RELATION TO MANKIND AND TO THE CHURCH. 
 
 BY ROBERT ISAAC WILBERFORCE, ARCHDEACON OF THE EAST RIDING,
 
 FORTHCOMING WORKS. 
 
 ROMAUNT YEESION OF THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN, 
 
 ORIGINALLY IN USE AMONG THE OLD WALDENSES. 
 FROM THE MSS. EXISTING AT DUBLIN, PARIS, GRENOBLE, ZURICH, AND LYONS. 
 
 EDITED, WITH NOTES, BY REV. W. S. GILLY, D.D. 
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 present age will no longer allow to be passed over unnoticed." Preface. 
 
 HISTORIES OF ROME AND GREECE, 
 
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 With Woodcuts. 12mo. 
 
 A BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF ALL LIVING 
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 EH Authority of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, 
 
 MANUAL OF SCIENTIFIC ENQUIRY, 
 
 PREPARED FOR THE OFFICERS OF HER MAJESTY'S NAVY ON FOREIGN SERVICE. 
 
 EDITED BY SIR JOHN F. W. HERSCHEL, BART. 
 
 CONTENTS : 
 
 ASTRONOMY By G. B. Amy, Esq., 
 
 Astron. Royal. 
 
 MAGNETISM LiEur.-CoL. SABINE, R.A. 
 HYDROGRAPHY CAPT. BEECHEY, H.N. 
 TIDES DR. AVHEWELL. 
 GEOGRAPHY J. R. HAMILTON, Esq., 
 
 Pres. Geog. Poc. 
 GEOLOGY C. DARWIN, Esq. 
 EARTHQUAKES R. MALLET, Esq. 
 MINERALOGY SIB H. T. DE LA BECHE. 
 
 METEOROLOGY SIR J. F. W. HKESCHEL, 
 
 Bart. 
 
 ATMOSPHERIC WAVES W. R. BIRT, Esq. 
 ZOOLOGY R. OWEN, Esq. 
 BOTANY SIR W. HOOKER. 
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 MEDICINE and MEDICAL STATISTICS SIR 
 
 W. BURNETT. 
 
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 THE ANCIENT PRACTICE OF PAINTING IN OIL 
 AND ON GLASS. 
 
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 Collected from Public Libraries in Italy, France, and Belgium ; with Introductions, and 
 
 Notes. 
 
 BY MRS. MERRIFIELD. 
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 October, 1843. 
 
 MR, MURRAY'S 
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 DELIVERED AT THE TRIENNIAL VISITATION, IN JUNE, JULY, AND 
 AUGUST, 1848. 
 
 Second Edition. 8vo. 2*. Gd. 
 
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 Archdeacon Wilberforce's Charge, 
 
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 8vo. 1*.
 
 10 MR. MURRAY'S LIST OF 
 
 Physical Geography. 
 
 BY MARY SOMERVILLE, Author of the "Physical Sciences." 
 
 Portrait. 2 Vols. Fcap. 8vo. 12*. 
 
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 Bvr SIB CHARLES FELLOWS. 
 
 With Plates, Imp. 8vo. 5*.
 
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