part 4,’ and that ‘we see through a glass darkly" Yet St. Paul

is so certain of the truth of that which he teaches, as to exclaim, ‘If we or an angel from heaven preach any other Gospel to you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed 8, St. Paul clearly believed in his own infallibility as a teacher of religious truth; and the Church of Christ has ever since regarded his Epistles as part of an infallible literature. But it is equally clear that St. Paul believed his knowledge of religious truth to be limited. Infallibility does not imply omni- science, any more than limited knowledge implies error. Infal- libility may be conferred on a human teacher with very limited knowledge, by a special endowment preserving him from error. When we say that a teacher is infallible, we do not mean that his knowledge is encyclopedic, but merely that, when he does teach, he is incapable of propounding as truth that which, in point of fact, is not true t.
Now the argument in question assumes that Christ our Lord, when teaching religious truth, was not merely fallible, but actually in serious error. If indeed our Lord had believed Himself to be ignorant of the authorship or true character of the Book of Deuteronomy, we may presume that He would not have fallen below the natural level of ordinary heathen honesty, by speaking with authority upon a subject with which He was consciously unacquainted. It is admitted that He spoke as believing Himself to be teaching truth. But was He, in point of fact, not teaching truth? Was that which He believed to be knowledge nothing better than a servile echo of contemporary ignorance? Was His knowledge really limited on a subject- matter, where He was Himself unsuspicious of the existence of a limitation? Was He then not merely deficient in information,
4 1 Cor. xiii. 9: ἐκ μέρους γὰρ γινώσκομεν.
τ Tbid. ver. 12: βλέπομεν γὰρ ἄρτι δι᾽ ἐσόπτρου ἐν αἰνίγματι.
5. Gal. i. 8, 9.
τ Cf. Bishop H. Browne, Pentateuch and Elohistic Psalms, p.13: ‘ Igno- rance does not of necessity involve error. Of course in our present state of being, and with our propensity to lean on out wisdom, ignorance is ex- tremely likely to lead to error. But ignorance is not error: and there is not one word in the Bible which could lead us to suppose that our blessed Lord was liable to error in any sense of the word or in any department of knowledge. Ido not say that we have any distinct statements to the contrary, but there is nothing like a hint that there was such a liability: whereas His other human infirmities, weakness, weariness, sorrow, fear, suffering, temptation, ignorance, all these are put forward prominently, and many of them frequently,’
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Lord both fallible, and a teacher of actual error. 477
but fallible ; not merely fallible, but actually in error? and has it been reserved for the criticism of the nineteenth century to set Him right? [Ὁ must be acknowledged that our Lord’s state- ment respecting the day of judgment will not avail to sustain a deduction which supposes, not an admitted limitation of knowledge, but an unsuspected self-deception of a character and extent which, in the case of a purely human teacher, would be altogether destructive of any serious claim to teach substantial truth ἃ,
Nor is this all. The denial of our Lord’s infallibility, in the form in which it has come before us of late years, involves an unfavourable judgment, not merely of His intellectual claims, but of the penetration and delicacy of His moral sense. This is the more observable because it is fatal to a distinction which has been projected, between our Lord’s authority as a teacher of spiritual or moral truth, and His authority when dealing with those questions which enter into the province of historical criticism. If in the latter sphere He is said to have been liable and subject to error, in the former, we are sometimes told, His instinct was invariably unerring. But is this the case, if our Lord was really deceived in His estimate of the Book of Deuter- onomy, and if further the account of the origin and composition of that book which is put forward by His censors be accepted as satisfactory? Our Lord quotes Deuteronomy as a work of the highest authority on the subject of man’s relations and duties to God*. Yet we are assured that in point of fact this book was nothing better than a pious forgery of the age of Jeremiah, if indeed it was not a work of that prophet, in which he em- ployed the name and authority of Moses as a restraint upon the increasing polytheism of the later years of king Josiah¥Y, That
ἃ If a human teacher were to decline to speak on a given subject, by saying that he did not know enough about it, this would not be a reason for disbelieving him when he proceeded to speak confidently on a totally distinct subject, thereby at least implying that he did know enough to warrant his speaking. On the contrary, his silence in the one case would be a reason for trusting his statements in the other. The argument which is under consideration in the text would have been really sound, if our Saviour had fixed the date of the day of judgment, and the event had shewn Him to have been mistaken.
* St. Matt. iv. 4, Deut. viii. 3; St. Matt. iv. 7, Deut. vi. 16; St. Matt. iv. 10, Deut. vi. 13, and x. 20.
¥ Colenso on the Pentateuch, vol. ii. p. 427: ‘Supposing (to fix our ideas) that Jeremiah really wrote the book, we must not forget that he, was a ρος and, as such, habitually disposed to regard all the special impulses Vit
478 Could our Lord detect a pious fraud?
hypothesis has been discussed elsewhere and by others on its own critical merits. Here it may suffice to observe, that if it could have been seriously entertained it would involve our Lord in something more than intellectual fallibility. If Deuteronomy is indeed a forgery, Jesus Christ was not merely ignorant of a fact of literary history. His moral perceptions were at fault. They were not sufficiently fine to miss the consistency, the ring of truth, in a document which professed to have come from the great Lawgiver with a Divine authority; while, ac- cording to modern writers, it was only the ‘pious’ fiction of a later age, and its falsehood had only not been admitted by its author, lest its ‘ effect’ should be counteracted 2.
When, in the middle of the ninth century, the pseudo- Isidorian decretals were first brought from beyond the Alps to Rome, they were almost immediately cited by Nicholas I. in
of his mind to religious activity as direct inspirations from the Divine Source of. Truth. To us, with our inductive training and scientific habits of mind, the correct statement of fucts appears of the first necessity; and consciously to misstate them, or to state as fact what we do not know or believe from external testimony to be fact, is a crime against truth. But to a man who believed himself to be in immediate communication with the Source of all Truth, this condition must have been reversed. The inner voice, which he believed to be the voice of the Divine Teacher, would become all-powerful —would silence at once all doubts and questionings, What it ordered him to do, he would do without hesitation, as by direct command of God, and all considerations as to morality or immorality would either not be enter- tained at all, or would only take the form of misgivings as to whether, possibly, in any particular case, the command itself was really Divine. ‘Let us imagine, then, that Jeremiah, or any other contemporary seer, medi- tating upon the condition of his country, and the means of weaning his people from idolatry, became possessed with the idea of writing to them an address, as in the name of Moses, of the kind which we have just been considering, in which the laws ascribed to him, and handed down from an earlier age, which were now in many respects unsuitable, should be adapted to the present cir- cumstances of the times, and re-enforced with solemn prophetical utterances, This thought, we may believe, would take in the prophet’s mind the form of a Divine command. All question of deception or fraus pia would vanish,’ * Colenso on the Pentateuch, vol. ii. p. 429: ‘Perhaps, at first, it was felt to be difficult or undesirable to say or do anything which might act as a check upon the zeal and energy which the king himself exhibited, and in which, as it seems, he was generally supported by the people, in putting down by force the gross idolatries which abounded in his kingdom. That impulsive effort, which followed immediately the reading of the “ Book,” might have been arrested, if he had been told at once the true origin of those awful words which had made so strong an impression on him, They were not less awful, indeed, or less true, because uttered in the name of Moses by such a prophet as Jeremiah. But still it is obvious that their effect was likely to be greatly intensified σπᾶον the idea that they were the last utterances of Moses himself? [ Lucr.
One proved error fatal to Christ’s authority. 479
reply. to an appeal of Hincmar of Rheims, in order to justify and extend the then advancing claims of the Roman Chair®@. We must then either suppose that this Pope was really in- capable of detecting a forgery, which no Roman Catholic writer would now think of defending», or else we must imagine that, in order to advance an immediate ecclesiastical object, he could coudescend to quote a document which he knew to have been recently forged, as if it had been of ancient and undoubted authority. The former supposition is undoubtedly most wel- come to the common sense of Christian charity; but it is of course fatal to any belief in the personal infallibility of Pope Nicholas 1. A like dilemma awaits us in the Gospel history, if the unhappy theories about the Pentateuch to which reference has been made are seriously adopted. Here is no mere question as to whether Christ’s knowledge was or was not limited; the question is, whether He taught that which is not true, and which a finer moral sense than His might have seen to be false ; whether He was a trustworthy teacher of religious no less than of historical truth. The distinction between a critical judgment of historical or philological facts, and a moral judgment of spiritual and moral truths, is inapplicable to a case in which the moral judgment is no less involved than the intellectual. We have really to choose between the infallibility, moral no less than intellectual, of Jesus Christ our Lord on the one hand, and the conjectural speculations of critics, of whatever degree of critical eminence, on the other.
Indeed, as bearing upon this vaunted distinction between spiritual truth, in which our Lord is still, it seems, to be an authority, and historical truth, in which His authority is to be set aside, we have words of His own which prove how truly He made the acceptance of the lower portions of His teaching a preliminary to belief in the higher. ‘If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things®?’ How indeed? If, when He sets the seal of His authority upon the writings of Moses as a whole, and upon the most miraculous incidents which they relate in detail, He is really only the uneducated Jew who ignorantly repeats and reflects the prejudice of a barbarous age; how shall we be sure that when He reveals the Character of God, or the precepts of the new life, or the reality and nature of the endless world,
® Milman, Latin Christianity, vol. ii. p. 379; cf. Mansi. xv. 694. > Cp. Walter, Lehrb, des Kirchenrechts, pp. 206-210. 5 St. Johniii. 12. vu |
480 Christ's Deity tlluminates Hrs Passion.
He is really trustworthy—trustworthy as an Authority to whom we are prepared to cling in life and in death? You say that here your conscience ratifies His teaching. Is then your con- science the ultimate and only teacher? Have you anticipated, and might you dispense with, the teaching of Christ? And what if your conscience, as is surely not impossible, has itself been warped or misled? What if, in surveying even the moral elements of His doctrine, you still assume to exercise a ‘verifying faculty,’ and object to this precept as ascetic, and to that com- mand as exacting, and to yonder most merciful revelation of an endless woe as ‘ Tartarology!’ Brethren, the descent into unhe- lief is only too easy. “There are broad highways in the life of faith, as in the life of morality, which a man cannot leave without losing his way in a trackless wilderness. To deny our Lord’s in- fallibility, on the precarious ground of a single known limitation of knowledge in His human intellect, is not merely an inconse- quence ; it is inconsistent with serious belief in His real Divinity. The common sense of faith assures us that if Christ is really Divine, His infallibility follows as a thing of course. The man who sin- cerely believes that Jesus Christ is God will not doubt that His every word standeth sure, and that whatever has been sanctioned by His supreme authority is independent of, and unassailable by, the fallible judgment of His creatures respecting it 4,
(8) If the doctrine of Christ’s Divinity implies that as a teacher of truth He is infallible, it also illuminates His suffering death upon the Cross with an extraordinary significance.
The degrees of importance which are attributed to the several events and stages of our Lord’s life on earth, will naturally vary with the variations of belief respecting His Person. With the Humanitarian, for instance, the dominant, almost the ex- clusive, interest will be found to centre in Christ’s Ministry, as affording the largest illustrations of His Human Character and of Has moral teaching. The mysteries which surround His en- trance into and His departure from our human world, will have been thrown into the background as belonging to questions of
ἃ Those who hold our Lord to be in error when He teaches us what to think about the Old Testament ought to furnish a criterion of His infalli- bility, if they believe Him to be ever infallible. On what religious subjects is He infallible, if not on all? When did He begin to be, if He was not always, infallible? Dr. Martineau enlarges on the supposed advantages of ‘imperfect knowledge’ in a religious guide: Seat of Authority in Religion, p. 651. But are there any advantages in false teaching on religious, or any other, subjects ἢ
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FTumanitarian estimate of the Passion. 481
a very inferior degree of importance, or possibly, as at best serving to illustrate the legendary creativeness of a subsequent age. Perhaps a certain historical and chronological value will still be allowed to attach to Christ’s Birth. Perhaps, if His Resurrection be admitted to have been a matter of historical occurrence, a high evidential significance will continue to be assigned to it, such as was recognised by Priestley and by all Socinians of the last generation. And to a Humanitarian, the interest of Christ’s Death will be of a yet higher kind. For Christ’s Death enters into His moral Self-manifestation ; it is the heroic climax of His devotion to truth; it is the surest seal which a teacher can set upon his doctrine. Thus a Humani- tarian will admit that the dying Christ saves the world by enriching its stock of moral life, by setting before the eyes of men, for all future time, the example of a transcendent sacri- fice of self. But in the bare fact that Jesus died, Humani- tarianism sees no mystery beyond that which attaches to the death of any ordinary man. The Crucifixion is simply regarded as a practical appendix to the Sermon on the Mount. And thus to the Socinian pilgrim, the mountain of the beatitudes and the shores of the Sea of Galilee will always and naturally appear more worthy of reverence and attention, than the spot on which Mary brought her Son into the world, or than the hill on which Jesus died.
Far otherwise must it ever be with a sincere believer in our Saviour’s Godhead. Not that he can be insensible to the com- manding moral interest which the Life and teaching of the Perfect Man ever rouses in the heart of Christians. That Life and that teaching have indeed for him a meaning into which the Humanitarian cannot enter; since the believer knows that it is God Who lives and speaks in Jesus. But contemplating Jesus as the Incarnate God, he is necessarily attracted by those points in our Lord’s earthly Life, at which the contrast is most vividly marked between His Divine and Eternal Nature and His state of humiliation as Man.
This attraction is reflected in the believer’s religious thought, in his devotions, in the instinctive attitude of his interest towards the Life of Jesus. The creed expresses the thought of the whole company of the faithful. After stating that the Only-begotten Son, consubstantial with the Father, for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was made Man, the creed proceeds to speak of His Crucifixion, Sufferings, Burial, Resur- rection, and Ascension. The creed makes no allusion to His vit | li
482 Christ's Person the measure of His Passion.
example, or to the nature and contents of His doctrine. In an analogous sense the Litany gives utterance to the devotion of the collective Church. In the Litany, Jesus, our ‘Good Lord,’ is entreated to deliver us ‘by’ the successive mysteries of His earthly Self-manifestation. Dependent on the mystery of His holy Incarnation are His ‘holy Nativity and Circumcision,’ His ‘Baptism, Fasting, and Temptation,’ His ‘Agony and Bloody Sweat,’ His ‘Cross and Passion,’ His ‘precious Death and Burial,’ His ‘glorious Resurrection and Ascension.’ Here again there is no reference to His sinless example, or to His words of power. Why is this? Is it not because the thought of the Church centres most persistently upon the Person of Jesus? His teaching and His example, although they pre- suppose His Divinity, yet in many ways appeal to us indepen- dently of it. But the significance of His birth into the world, of His varied sufferings 4, of His death, of His rising from the tomb, and of His ascent to heaven, resides chiefly, if not al- together, in the fact that His Person is Divine. That truth illuminates these features of His earthly Self-manifestation, which else might be thrown into the shade by the moral beauty of His example or of His doctrine. The birth and death ofa mere man, and even the resurrection and glorification of a mere man, would only be the accessories of a higher interest centring in the range and influence of his ideas, in the force and con- sistency of his conduct, in the whole bearing of his moral and intellectual action upon the men of his time. But when He Who is born, Who suffers, Who dies, Who rises and ascends, is known to be personally and literally God, it is inevitable that the interest of thought and devotion should take a direction in which the ‘mystery of godliness’ is most directly and urgently felt. Christian devotion necessarily hovers around those critical turning-points in the Self-manifestation of the Infinite and Al- mighty Being, at which His gracious and immeasurable Self- humiliation most powerfully illustrates His boundless love, by the contrast which it yields to the majesty of His Divine and Eternal Person. No one would care for the birthplace or grave of the philosopher, when he could visit the scene of his in- tellectual victories; but the Christian pilgrim, in all ages of the Church, is less riveted by the lake-side and mountains of Galilee, than by those sacred sites, where his God and Saviour
4 Cf. in this connection Heb. x. 29, where an apostate from the Faith is described as 6 τὸν Ὑἱὸν τοῦ Θεοῦ καταπατήσας, and I Cor, ii. 8, τὸν Κύριον τῆς δόξης ἐσταύρωσαν.
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All the Evangelists describe the Passion tn detatl. 48 3
first drew human breath and where He poured forth His Blood upon the Cross of shame.
Let us imagine, if we can, that our Lord’s life had been written, not by the blessed Evangelists, but by some modern Socinian or Humanitarian author. Would_not the relative pro- portions assigned to the several parts of His life have been very different from those which we find in the New Testament? We should have been presented with an analytical exposition of the moral greatness of Christ, in its several bearings upon the indivi- dual and social life of man; and His teaching would have been insisted upon as altogether eclipsing in importance any questions which might be raised as to His ‘origin’ or His ‘place in the world of spirits” As for His Death, it would of course have been introduced as the natural result of His generous conflict with the great evils and corruptions of His day. But this closing episode would have been treated hurriedly and with reserve. The modern writer would have led us to the foot of Calvary. There he would have left us to our imagination, and all that followed would have been summarized in a couple of sentences. The modern writer would have avoided any appear- ance of giving prominence to the ‘physical aspects’ of the tragedy, to the successive insults, cruelties, cries, which indicated s0 many distinct phases of mental or bodily agony in the sufferer. He would have argued that to dwell intently on these things was unnecessarily harrowing to the feelings, and moreover, that it might distract attention from the general moral interest to which the Death of Jesus was, in his judgment, only subsidiary. Clearly he would not have followed in the track of the Evangelists. For the four Evangelists, while the plan and materials of their several narratives present many points of difference, yet concur in assigning an extraordinary importance, not merely to the general narrative of the Passion, but to its minute details. This is more in harmony with the genius of St. Mark and St. Luke than with that of St. Matthew; but considering the scope and drift of the fourth Gospel, it is at first sight most remarkable in St.John. For instead of veiling the humiliations of the Word Incarnate, St. John regards them as so many illustrations of His ‘glory ;’ and, indeed, each of the four evangelical narratives, however condensed may be its earlier portions, expands into the minute particularity of a diary, as it approaches the foot of the Cross.
Now this concurrent disposition of the four Evangelists is eminently suggestive. It implies that there is a momentous vin | 112
484 Christ's Divinity explains A postolical language
interest attaching, not merely to the Death of Christ as a whole, but to each stage and feature of the great agony in detail. It implies that this interest is not merely moral and human, but of a higher and distinct kind. The moral requirements of the history would have been satisfied, had we been compendiously informed that Christ died at last in attestation of the moral truth which He taught; but this detailed enumeration of the successive stages and shades of suffering, both physical and mental, leads the devout Christian insensibly to look beneath the varying phases of protracted agony, at the unrufiled, august, eternal Person of the insulted Sufferer; and thus Christian thought rests with more and more of anxious intensity upon the possible or probable results of an event so stupendous as the Death of Christ.
Upon such a problem, human reason, left to itself, could shed no light whatever. It could only be sure of this :—that much more must be involved in the Death of Christ than in the death of the best of men. Had Christ been merely human, greater love among men, greater enthusiasm for truth as truth, greater devotion to the sublimest of moral teachings and to the Will of the Universal Father, greater contempt for pleasure when plea- sure is in conflict with duty, and for pain when pain is recom- mended by conscience, would certainly have followed upon His Death. These effects follow in varying degrees upon every sincere and costly act of human self-renouncement; and the moral kingdom of God is a vast treasure-house of saintly and living memories, in which the highest place of honour is for ever assigned to those who exhibit the most perfect sacrifice of self. Nor, most assuredly, is any the least and lowest act of sacrifice destined to perish: it thrills on in its undying force through the ages; it kindles, first in one and then in another unit of the vast company of moral beings, a new devotion to truth, to duty, to man, to God. But when we know that Jesus Christ is God, we are prepared to hear that something much more stupendous than any moral impulse, however strong and enduring, must have resulted from His Death—something (as yet we know not what) reaching far beyond the sphere and laws of history, beyond the world of sense and of time, of natural moral sequence, and of those ascertainable or hidden influences which pass on from man to man and from age to age.
Nowhere is the illuminative force of Christ’s Divinity more felt than here. The tremendous premiss, that He Who died upon the Cross is truly God, when seriously and ie be-
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respecting the efficacy of His Death. 485
lieved, avails to carry the believer forward to any representation of the efficacy of His Death which rests upon an adequate authority.
‘No person,’ says Hooker, ‘was born of the Virgin but the Son of God, no person but the Son of God baptized, the Son of God condemned, the Son of God and no other person crucified ; which one only point of Christian belief, the infinite worth of the Son of God, is the very ground of all things believed concerning life and salvation by that which Christ either did or suffered as man in our behalf” ‘ That,’ says Bishop Andrewes, ‘ which setteth the high price upon this Sacrifice is this, that He which offereth it to God, is Godf” ‘Marvel not,’ says St. Cyril of Jerusalem, ‘if the whole world has been redeemed, for He Who has died for us is no mere man, but the Only-begotten Son of Gods. ‘Christ,’ says St. Cyril of Alexandria, ‘would not have been equivalent [as a sacrifice] for the whole creation, nor would He have sufficed to redeem the world, nor have laid down His life by way of a price for it, and poured forth for us His precious Blood, if He be not really the Son, and God of God, but a creature },’
This, as has been already noticed, is St. Peter’s meaning when he says that we were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, but with the precious Blood of Christ, as of a Lamb without blemish and immaculatei. This underlies St. Paul’s contrast between the blood of bulls and goats and the
9 Eccl. Pol. v. 52. 3.
1 Second Sermon on the Passion, For other references, see Rev. W. Bright’s Sermons of St. Leo, p. 89.
® Catech. 13.2: μὴ θαυμάζῃς εἰ κόσμος ὅλος ἐλυτρώθη, od γὰρ ἦν ἄνθρωπος ψιλὸς, ἀλλ᾽ Ὑἱὸς Θεοῦ μονογενὴς 6 ὑπεραποθνήσκων. St. Proclus, Hom. in Incarn. c. §: ἔδει τοίνυν δυοῖν θάτερον, ἢ πᾶσιν ἐπαχθῆναι τὸν ἐκ τῆς καταδίκης θάνατον, ἐπειδὴ καὶ πάντες ἥμαρτον" ἣ τοιοῦτον δοθῆναι πρὸς ἀντίδοσιν τίμημα,
. ᾧ πᾶν ὑπῆρχε δικαίωμα πρὸς παραίτησιν. ἔΑνθρωπος μὲν οὖν σῶσαι ovK ἠδύνατο,
ὑπέκειτο γὰρ τῷ χρέει τῆς ἁμαρτίας. “Ayyedos ἐξαγοράσασθαι τὴν ἀνθρωπότητα
“οὐκ ἴσχυεν, ἠπόρει γὰρ τοιούτου λύτρου. Λοιπὸν οὖν ὁ ἀναμάρτητος Θεὺς ὑπὲρ
τῶν ἡμαρτηκότων ἀποθανεῖν ὥφειλεν" αὕτη γὰρ ἐλείπετο μόνη τοῦ κακοῦ ἣ λύσις. c. 6: ὦ τῶν μεγάλων πραγμάτων! ἄλλοις ἐπραγματεύσατο τὸ ἀθάνατον, αὐτὸς γὰρ ὑπῆρχεν ἀθάνατος. τοιοῦτος γὰρ ἄλλος κατ᾽ οἰκονομίαν οὔτε γέγονεν, οὔτε ἦν, οὔτε ἔσται ποτὲ, ἢ μόνος ἐκ τῆς παρθένου τεχθεὶς Θεὸς καὶ ἄνθρωπος" οὐκ ἀντιταλαντεύουσαν ᾿μόνον ἔ ἔχων τὴν ἀξίαν τῷ πλήθει τῶν ὑποδίκων, ἀλλὰ καὶ πάσαις ψήφοις ὑπερέχουσαν. 6.9: ἄνθρωπος ψιλὸς σῶσαι οὐκ ἴσχυε, Θεὸς γυμνὸς παθεῖν οὐκ ἠδύνατο. τί οὖν; αὐτὸς ὧν Θεὸς ὁ ᾿Εμμανονὴλ, γέγονεν ἄνθρωπος. (Labbe, iii. 13 sq.)
Β St. Cyril. Alex. de Sancta Trinitate, dial. 4, tom. v. pp. 508, 509. See too Ad Reginas, i. c. 7; Labbe, iii, 112,
1 1 St. Pet, i, 19, vu |
486 Christ’s Detty explains the power of His Death.
Blood of Christ offering Himself without spot to Godij. This is the substance of St. John’s announcement that the Blood of Jesus Christ the Son of God cleanseth us from all 51} Κ, Apart from this illuminating doctrine of the Godhead of Jesus Christ crucified, how overstrained and exaggerated are the New Testament representations of the effects of His Death! He has redeemed man from a moral and spiritual slavery!; He has made a propitiation for our sins™; He has really recon- ciled God and His creatures®. But how is such a redemption possible, unless the price be infinitely costly? How could such a propitiation be offered, save by One Whose intrinsic worth might tender some worthy offering from a boundless Love to a perfect Justice? How was a real reconciliation between God and His creatures to be effected, unless the Reconciler had some natural capacity for mediating, unless He could represent God to man no less truly than man to God? How could He ‘exchange’ Divine glory for human misery, or raise man in his misery to companionship with God, unless He were Him- self Divine? Alas! brethren, if Jesus Christ be not God, the promises of redemption to which penitent and dying sinners cling with such thankful tenacity, forthwith dissolve into the evanescent forms of Jewish modes of thought, and unsubstantial misleading metaphors. If Jesus be not God, we stand face to face in the New Testament, not with the unsearchable riches, the boundless mercy of a Divine Saviour, able ‘to save to the uttermost those that come unto God by Him,’ but only with the crude and clinging prejudices of His uneducated or semi- educated followers. But if it be certain that ‘in this was mani- fested the love of God towards us, because that God sent His Only-begotten Son into the world, that we might live through
J Heb. ix. 13, 15. See Lect. VI. p. 344, note x.
Κ 1 St. Johni. 7.
1 ᾿Απολύτρωσις presupposes the slavery of humanity, from which Christ our Lord redeems us by the λύτρον of His precious Blood. St. Matt. xx. 28; 1 Cor. i. 30; Eph. i. 7, 14; iv. 30. The idea of purchase out of bondage is vividly expressed by the verb ἐξαγοράζειν, Gal. iii. 13; iv. 5.
™ ἱλασμός presupposes the unexpiated sin of humanity, for which Christ makes a propitiation. 1 St.John 11. 2; iv.10; Heb. ii. 17. Our Lord Himself is the θυσία, the προσφορά (Eph. v. 2; Heb. x. 12); He is the πάσχα (I Cor. v. 7); He is the sacrificial ἀμνός (St. John i. 29, 36; 1 St. Peter i. 19); He is the slain ἀρνίον (Rev. v. 6, 8, 12, 133 vi. I).
2 καταλλαγή presupposes the existence of an enmity between God and man, which is done away by Christ’s ‘exchanging’ His glory for our misery and pain, while He gives us His glory, Rom, v. 10; 2 Cor. v. “τ
LECT.
a es aa LP
Bearing of Christ’s Divinity on the Sacraments. 487
Him °,’ then the disclosures of revelation respecting the efficacy of His Death do not appear to be excessive. Vast as is the con- clusion of a world of sinners redeemed, atoned for, reconciled, the premiss that Jesus Crucified is truly God more than warrants it. And the accompaniments of the Passion are such as might have been anticipated by the faith of the Church. Why those darkened heavens? Why that rent veil in the temple? Why those shattered rocks? Why do those ‘ bodies of the saints which slept’ return from the realms of death to the city of the living? Nature, could she speak, would answer that her Lord is crucified. But her convulsive homage before the Cross of Christ is as nothing when compared to a moral miracle of which the only sensible symp- toms are an entreaty and a promise, uttered alike in human words. ‘Not when Christ raised the dead, not when He rebuked the sea and the winds, not when He expelled the devils,—but when He was crucified, pierced with the nails, insulted, spit upon, reproached, reviled,—had He strength to change the evil disposition of the robber, to draw to Himself that soul, harder though it were than the rocks around, and to honour it with the promise, ‘ To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise P.’ That promise was a revelation of the depth and height of His redemp- tive power; it was a flash of His Godhead, illuminating the true meaning of His humiliations as Man. If then we believe Him to be God, we bow our heads before His Cross, as in the presence of fathomless mystery, while we listen to His apostles as they unfold the results of His Death. If we are perplexed with some difficulties in contemplating these results, we may remember that we are but hovering on the outskirts of a vast economy of mercy reaching far away beyond our furthest sight, and that the seen will one day be explained by the unseen. But at least no magnitude of redemptive mercies can possibly surprise us, when the Redeemer is known to be Divine; we say to ourselves with St. Paul, ‘If God spared not His Own Son, but freely gave Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?’
(y) As our Lord’s Divinity is the truth which illuminates and sustains the world-redeeming virtue of His death, so in like manner it explains and justifies the power of the Christian Sacraments, as actual channels of supernatural grace.
To those who deny that Jesus Christ is God, the Sacraments are naturaliy nothing more than ‘ badges or tokens’ of social co-
° 1 St. John iv. 9. Compare Eph. iv. 32: ὃ Θεὸς ἐν Χριστῷ ἐχαρίσατυ μιν. © Lit, We LT; 1} 4;
P St. Chrysost. De Cruce et Latrone, Hom. i. § 2. tom. ii. 404. vu |
488 Sacraments not only signs, but means, of Grace.
operation’, The one Sacrament is only ‘a sign of profession and mark of difference, whereby Christian men are discerned from others that be not christened'. The other is at best ‘only a sign of the love that Christians ought to have one towards another 8.’ Thus sacraments are viewed as altogether human acts; God gives nothing in them; He has no special relation to them*, They are regarded as purely external ceremonies, which may possibly suggest certain moral ideas by recalling the memory of a Teacher who died many centuries ago¥. They help to save His name from dying out among men. Thus they discharge the functions of a public monument, or of a ribbon or medal imply- ing membership in an association, or of an anniversary festival instituted to celebrate the name of some departed historical worthy. It cannot be said that in point of effective moral power they rise to the level of a good statue or portrait; since a merely outward ceremonial cannot recall character and suggest moral sympathy as effectively as an accurate rendering of the human countenance in stone, or colour, or the lines of an engraving. Rites, with a function so purely historical, are not likely to survive any serious changes in human feelings and associations. Men gradually determine to commemorate the object of their regard in some other way, which may perhaps be more in har- mony with their personal tastes; they do not admit that this particular form of commemoration, although enjoined by the Author of Christianity, binds their consciences with the force of any moral obligation ; they end by deciding that it is just as well to neglect such commemorations altogether.
If the Socinian and Zwinglian estimate of the Sacraments had been that of the Church of Christ, the Sacraments would long ago have been abandoned as useless “ceremonies. But the Church has always seen in them not mere outward signs addressed to the taste or to the imagination, nor even signs (as Calvinism asserts) which are tokens of grace received inde-
4 Art. XXV. condemns this Zwinglian account of Sacraments generally.
τ Art. XX VII. condemns this Zwinglian account of Baptism.
5. Art. XXVIII. condemns this Zwinglian account of the Holy Com- munion.
t Cat. Rac. Qu. 202: ‘Quomodo confirmare potest nos in fide id, guod nos ipsi facimus, quodque, licet a Domino institutum, opus tamen nostrum est, nihil prorsus miri in se continens ?’
= Tbid. Qu. 334: ‘Christi institutum ut fideles ipsius panem frangant et comedant, et ὃ calice bibant, mortis ipsius annuntiande causa.’ Ibid. 337: ‘Nonne alia causa, ob quam ccenam instituit Dominus, superest? Nulla prorsus, Etsi homines multas excogitarint,’
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Christ's Godhead and the grace of Sacraments. 489
pendently of them x, but signs which, through the power of the promise and words of Christ, effect what they signify. They are ‘effectual signs of grace and God’s good-will towards us, by the which He doth work invisibly in usy.” Thus in baptism the Christian child is made ‘a member of Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor of the Kingdom of Heaven.’ And ‘the Body and Blood of Christ are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in the Lord’s Supper 4.’
This lofty estimate of the effective power of the Christian Sacraments is intimately connected with belief in the Divinity of the Incarnate Christ. The importance attached to the words in which Christ institutes and explains the Sacraments, varies concomitantly with belief in the Divinity of the Speaker. If the Speaker be held to be only man, then, in order to avoid imputing to him the language of inflated and thoughtless folly, it becomes necessary to empty the words of their natural and literal force by violent exegetical processes which, if applied generally, would equally destroy the witness of the New Testa- ment to the Atonement or to the Divinity of Christ. But if Christ be in very truth believed to be the Eternal Son of God, then the words in which He provides for the communication of His life-giving Humanity in His Church to the end of time may well be allowed to stand in all the force and simplicity of their natural meaning. Baptism will then be the laver of a real regeneration >; the Eucharist will be a real ‘communion of the
x See Cartwright, quoted by Hooker, Eccl. Pol. v. 60. 3, note.
Υ Art. XXV. Cf. P. Lombard, lib. iv. d. 1. 2: ‘Sacramentum est in- visibilis. gratiz visibilis forma... . Ita signum est gratie Dei, et invisibilis gratie forma, ut ipsius imaginem gerat et causa existat.’ Church Cate- chism: ‘An outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace given unto us, ordained by Christ Himself, as a means whereby we receive the same, and a pledge to assure us thereof.’ See Martensen, Christ. Dogm. p. 418, Clark’s Transl. : ‘The essential difference’ [between Prayer and Sacraments] ‘consists in this: the sacred tokens of the New Covenant contain also an actual communication of the Being and Life of the risen Christ, Who is the Redeemer and Perfecter, not only of man’s spiritual, but of man’s corporeal nature. In Prayer there is only a unio mystica, a real, yet only spiritual, psychological union: but in the Sacraments the deepest mystery rests in the truth that in them Christ communicates Himself, not only spiritually, but in His glorified corporeity.’
* Church Catechism.
« Ibid. Mr. Fisher observes that ‘ out of twenty-five questions of which the Catechism now consists, no less than seventeen relate exclusively to the nature and efficacy of the Sacraments,’ Liturgical Purity, p. 293, Ist ed.
> Tit. ili, 5: διὰ λουτροῦ παλιγγενεσίας. Common Prayer-book, Office of | a Baptism; ‘This child, who being born in original sin and in the vii
490 Faith in Christ’s Divinity forbids
Body and Blood’ of the Incarnate Jesus®. If, with our eye upon Christ’s actual Godhead, we carefully weigh the moment- ous sentences in which He ordained4, and the still more explicit terms in which He explained 5, His institutions; if we ponder well His earnestly enforced doctrine, that they who would have part in the Eternal Life must be branches of that Living Vine? whose trunk is Himself; if we listen to His
wrath of God, is now by the laver of regeneration in Baptism received into the number of the children of God.’ For the connection between Baptismal grace and our Lord’s Divinity, see St. Cyril Alex. de Recta Fide, ¢. 37: Τί δρᾷς, ὦ οὗτος, κατακομίζων ἡμῶν eis γῆν τὴν ἐλπίδα; βεβαπτίσμεθα γὰρ οὐκ εἰς ἄνθρωπον ἁπλῶς, ἀλλ᾽ εἰς Θεὸν ἐνηνθρωπηκότα, καὶ ἀνιέντα ποινῆς καὶ τῶν ἀρχαίων αἰτιαμάτων τοὺς τὴν εἰς αὐτὸν πίστιν ἐκδεδεγμένους . . . - ἀπολύων γὰρ ἁμαρτίας τὸν αὐτῷ προσκείμενον, τῷ ἰδίῳ λοιπὸν καταχρίει πνεύματι" ὅπερ ἐνίησι μὲν αὐτὸς, ds ἐκ Θεοῦ Πατρὸς Λόγος, καὶ ἐξ ἰδίας ἡμῖν ἀναπηγάζει φύσεως. He quotes Rom. viii. 9, Io.
© 1 Cor. x. 16: κοινωνία τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ Χριστοῦ. . . κοινωνία τοῦ σώ- ματος τοῦ Χριστοῦ. St. Just. Mart. Apol.i.66: Οὐ γὰρ ὡς κοινὸν ἄρτον οὐδὲ κοινὸν πόμα ταῦτα λαμβάνομεν" ἀλλ᾽ ὃν τρόπον διὰ Λόγου Θεοῦ σαρκοποιηθεὶς Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς ὁ Σωτὴρ ἡμῶν καὶ σάρκα καὶ αἷμα ὑπὲρ σωτηρίας ἡμῶν ἔσχεν, οὕτως καὶ τὴν δι᾽ εὐχῆς λόγου τοῦ παρ᾽ αὐτοῦ εὐχαριστηθεῖσαν τροφὴν, ἐξ ἧς αἷμα καὶ σάρκες κατὰ μεταβολὴν τρέφονται ἡμῶν, ἐκείνου τοῦ σαρκοποιηθέντος Ἰησοῦ καὶ σάρκα καὶ αἷμα ἐδιδάχθημεν εἶναι. Cf. Dorner, Person Christi, Erster Theil, p. 435, note 47: ‘Justin denkt sich den ganzen Christus in Verbindung mit dem Abendmahl. Auch so kann er sich diese unter dem Bilde der Incarnation denken, indem Christus die Elemente zum sichbaren Organ seiner Wirksamkeit und Selbstmittheilung macht, und das durch seine Erhéhung verlorne Moment der Sichtbarkeit seiner objectiven Er- scheinung sich in jedem Abendmahl durch Assumtion der sichtbaren Elemente wieder herstellt.’ For the connection between the Holy Eu- charist and our Lord’s Divinity, see St. Cyril Alex. Epist. Synod. ad Nestorium, 6. 7: Τὴν ἀναίμακτον ἐν ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις τελοῦμεν θυσίαν, πρόσι- μέν τε οὕτω ταῖς μυστικαῖς εὐλογίαις καὶ ἁγιαζόμεθα, μέτοχοι γενόμενοι τῆς TE ἁγίας σαρκὺς, καὶ τοῦ τιμίου αἵματος τοῦ πάντων ἡμῶν Σωτῆρος Χριστοῦ" καὶ οὐχ ὡς σάρκα κοινὴν δεχόμενοι (μὴ γένοιτο) οὔτε μὴν ὡς ἀνδρὸς ἡγιασμένου καὶ συναφθέντος τῷ Λόγῳ κατὰ τὴν ἑνότητα τῆς ἀξίας, ἤγουν ὡς θείαν ἐνοί- Know ἐσχηκότος, ἄλλ᾽ ὡς ζωοποιὸν ἀληθῶς καὶ ἰδίαν αὐτοῦ τοῦ Λόγου. Ζωὴ γὰρ ὧν κατὰ φύσιν ὡς Θεὸς, ἐπειδὴ γέγονεν ἕν πρὸς τὴν ἑαυτοῦ σάρκα, ζωοποιὸν ἀπέφηνεν αὐτήν. This epistle, given in Routh, Scr. Οραβο, ii. 17, ed. 3, was written Nov. 430, and read with tacit approval, as it seems, at the General Council of Ephesus in 431. (See Bright’s Hist. Ch. pp. 326, 333.) A similar passage is in St. Cyril’s Explanatio xii. Capitum (tom. vi. p. 156), to the effect that the Body and Blood in the Holy Eucharist are οὐχ ἑνὸς τῶν καθ᾽ ἡμᾶς καὶ ἀνθρώπου κοινοῦ, but ἴδιον σῶμα καὶ αἷμα τοῦ τὰ πάντα ζωο- γονοῦντος Λόγον" κοινὴ γὰρ σὰρξ ζωοποιεῖν οὐ δύναται, καὶ τούτου μάρτυς αὐτὸς ὁ Σωτὴρ, λέγων, “Ἢ σὰρξ οὐκ ὠφελεῖ οὐδὲν, τὸ πνεῦμά ἐστι τὸ ζωοποιοῦν.᾽ So in his Comm. in Joan. lib. iv. (tom. iv. p. 361) he says that as Christ’s Flesh, by union with the Word, Who is essentially Life, ζωοποιὸς γέγονε, therefore, ὅταν αὐτῆς ἀπογευσόμεθα, τότε THY ζωὴν ἔχομεν ἐν ἑαυτοῖς.
4 St. Matt. xxviii. 19; xxvi. 26.
9 St. John 111, 5; vi. 53 sqq. f St. John xv, I sqq.
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depreciation of the Christian Sacraments. 491
Apostle proclaiming that we are members of His Body, from His Flesh and from His Bones&; then in a sphere, so inacces- sible to the measurements of natural reason, so absolutely controlled by the great axioms of faith, it will not seem incre- dible that ‘as many as have been baptized into Christ’ should really ‘have put on Christ 4, or that ‘the Body of Jesus Christ which was given for us’ should now, when received sacramen- tally, ‘ preserve our bodies and souls unto everlasting life i’ ~ In view of our Lord’s Divinity, we cannot treat as so much profitless and vapid metaphor the weighty sentences which Apostles have traced around the Font and the Altar, any more than we can deal thus lightly with the precious hopes and promises that are graven by the Divine Spirit upon the Cross. The Divinity of Christ warrants the realities of sacramental grace as truly as it warrants the cleansing virtue of the Atoning Blood. If it forbids our seeing in the Great Sacrifice for sin, nothing higher than a moral exemplar, it also forbids our degrading the august institutions of the Divine Redeemer to the level of the dead ceremonies of the ancient law. And con- versely, belief in the reality of sacramental grace protects belief in a Christ Who is really Divine. Sacraments, if fully believed in, furnish outworks in the religious thought and in the daily habits of the Christian, which necessarily and jealously guard the prerogatives and honour of his adorable Lord.
That depreciation of the Sacraments has often been followed by depreciation of our Lord’s Eternal Person is a simple matter of historyJ. True, there have been and are earnest believers in our Lord’s Divinity who deny the realities of sacramental grace. But experience appears to shew that their position may be only a transitional one. History illustrates the tendency to Huma- nitarian declension even in cases where sacramental belief, al- though imperfect, has been far nearer to the truth than is the bare naturalism of Zwinglik, Many English Presbyterian congre-
& Eph. v. 30. See Lect. VI, p. 352, note w. b Gal. iii. 27.
1 Communion Service.
J Mill, University Sermons, p. 190; Gladstone on Church Principles, p. 185.
ΚΕ Zwingli de Vera et Fals& Relig. Op. iii. p. 263. n. A: ‘Est ergo sive eucharistia sive synaxis, sive cena dominica nihil aliud quam commemoratio, qua ii, qui se Christi morte et sanguine firmiter credunt patri reconciliatos esse, hanc vitalem mortem annunciant, hoc est laudant, gratulantur et predicant. Jam ergo sequitur, quod qui ad hunc usum aut festivitatem conveniunt mortem domini commemoraturi, hoc est annunciaturi, sese unius eas esse membra, sese unum panem esse ipso facto testentur...e. vill
492 Sacraments preserve faith in Christ's Divinity.
gations, founded by men who fell away from the Church in the seventeenth century, were, during the eighteenth, absorbed into Arianism or Socinianism!, The pulpit and the chair of Calvin are filled by teachers who have, alas! much more in common with the Racovian Catechism than with the positive elements of the theology of the Institutes™. The restless mind of man cannot but at last press a principle to the real limit of its application, even although centuries should intervene between the premiss and the conclusion. If we imagine that the Sacraments are only
Qui ergo cum Christianis commeat, quum mortem domini annuntiant, qui simul symbolicum panem aut carnem edit, is nimirum postea secundum Christi prescriptum vivere debet, nam experimentum dedit aliis, quod Christo fidat.’ Here God does and gives nothing; the ceremony described is not a ‘means of grace’ but only and simply an act of man, a human ceremonial action, expressive of certain ideas and convictions, shared by those who take part in it. It is substantially the same account as that which is given in the formal documents of early Socinianism. (Cat. Rac, qu. 334, 335, 337-) It would be an extreme injustice to Calvin to identify his belief on the subject with these unspiritual errors. Calvin even says: ‘Quicquid ad exprimendam veram substantialemque corporis ac sanguinis Domini communicationem, que sub sacris coene symbolis fidelibus exhi- betur, libenter recipio; atque ita ut non imaginatione duntaxat aut mentis intelligentiad percipere, sed ut re ipsa frui in alimentum vite eterne in- telligantur’” Instit. iv. 17, 19. The force of this language was, however, practically destroyed by Calvin’s doctrine of Divine decrees, which made sacramental grace wholly dependent upon the sense of election, that is to say, upon the subjective state, upon the feelings, of the believer, instead of upon the promise and word of Christ. Thus it happened that humble minds among Calvinists would naturally, in virtue of their very self- distrust, tend to adopt a Zwinglian estimate of the Eucharist: and, his- torically speaking, Calvinism has in this matter shewn a consistent dis- position to degenerate in a Zwinglian direction, Belief in the reality of Sacramental grace is only secured, when men believe that such grace depends not on themselves but on the promise and words of their Saviour, in other words, that it is objective. And the objectivity of Sacramental grace implies of necessity an Omnipotent Saviour, Whose grace it is. St. Augustine’s famous saying, ‘Accedit verbum ad elementum, et fit Sacramentum,’ is hopelessly unintelligible, unless He who institutes the Sacrament and warrants its abiding efficacy be indeed Divine.
1 See Bogue and Bennett’s History of Dissenters, iii. 240, 319; iv. 319, 383; and the Law Magazine, vol. xv. (May, 1836,) p. 348. In our own country, other Calvinistic communions have in general been happily pre- served from such a fall, But the case of English Presbyterianism finds parallels in Geneva, in Holland, in France, and in America, Such loss of truth by others can never give Churchmen any ‘controversial’ satis- faction; the more truth is held by Dissenters, the better both for them, and for the honour of Christ. But the subject may suggest warnings to ourselves,
τὸ Laing’s Notes of a Traveller, pp. 324-5, quoted in Chr. Rem. July, 1863, Ρ. 247.
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Citapa
Priesthood and Royalty of the Divine Christ. 493
picturesque memorials of an absent Christ, we are already in a fair way to believe that the Christ Who is thus commemorated as absent by a barren ceremony is Himself only and purely human. Certainly if Christ were not Divine, the efficacy of Sacraments as channels of graces that flow from His Manhood would be the wildest of fancies. Certainly if Sacraments are not thus channels of His grace, it is difficult to shew that they have any rightful place in a dispensation, from which the dead forms and profitless shadows of the synagogue have been banished, and where all that is authorized is instinct with the power of a heavenly life. The fact that such institutions as the Sacraments are lawful in such a religion as the Gospel, of itself implies their real efficacy: their efficacy points to the Godhead of their Founder. Instead of only reviving the thought of a distant past, they quicken all the powers of the Christian by union with a present and living Saviour; they assure us that
᾿ς Jesus of Nazareth is to us at this moment what He was to
His first disciples eighteen centuries ago; they make us know and feel that He is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, unchanging in His human tenderness, because Himself the unchanging God. It is the doctrine of Christ’s Divinity to which they point, and which in turn irradiates the perpetuity and the reality of their power.
(8) It is unnecessary for us to dwell more at length upon the light which our Lord’s Divinity sheds upon His Priestly office. We know that as His promise and presence make poor human words and simple elements the channels of His mercy, by taking them up into His kingdom and giving them a power which of themselves they have not, so it is His Divinity which makes His Intercession in Heaven so omnipotent a force. He inter- cedes above, by His very presence; He does not bend as a suppliant before the Sanctity of God; He is a Priest upon His Throne®, Nor may we linger over the bearings of His Divinity upon His Kingly office. The fact that He rules with a bound- less power, may assure us that, whether willingly or by con- straint, yet assuredly in the end, all moral beings shall be put under Him®. But you do not question the legitimacy of this obvious inference. And time forbids us to linger upon the
® Zech. vi. 13. Christ’s perpetual presentation of Himself before the Father is that which constitutes His Intercession. It lasts until the Judg- ment, as the enduring antitype to the High Priest’s presentation of the victim’s blood in the Holy of Holies, Heb. viii. 3; ix. 24.
° 1 Cor. xv, 25; Heb, ii. 8, vin |
494 Objection toChrist’s Divinity on moral grounds.
topic, suggestive and interesting as it is. We pass then to consider an objection which will have been taking shape in many minds during the course of the preceding discussion.