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Chapter IX. As in God there are three Persons and one Nature, so in Christ there are two Natures and one Person

which I have ranked next in honour to that which is unique.

I say that in Christ the Word, the human soul and body, are without confusion of the essences one Person, and I further maintain that the human and divine remain numerically distinct without prejudice to the unity of person. Nor would I deny that this unity is of the same class as that unity whereby soul and body are one man. It was fitting that a mystery devised for man's welfare should have a more intimate relation to man's nature and more closely resemble it. It was fitting, too, that it should harmonize with that highest unity which is in God and is God, so that as three Persons in the Trinity are one Essence, so in the Incarnation, by a most appropriate contrast, the three Essences are one Person. Do you not see how beautifully the unity of Christ is set between the unity of God and the unity of man ? I mean, of course, the unity of the Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. Most beautiful, most appropriate, I say, that the mystery of salvation should so fitly correspond to both, to God our Saviour on the one side, to saved humanity on the other. Thus this unity of the two natures, standing between the other two unities, must be pronounced inferior to the one and superior to the other, being as much above the lower as it is below the higher.

its vital energy, considerable though it is, and notwithstanding its affections, cannot so closely bind the body to itself as the Divinity united to itself that man who was predestined to be the Son of God with power.1 The divine predestination is a long and strong chain for binding close : for it reaches from the Eternal. What is longer than eternity ? What more mighty than Deity ? Hence it is that this unity could not possibly be severed by death, although soul and body were separated from one another. And perhaps John felt this when he professed himself unworthy to undo the latchet of His shoe.2

Footnotes

    1. In a word, so closely and so clearly are the natures united in the Person of the one Christ, who is God and Man, that you can without error in speaking of them use either mode of expression, and with the true Catholic Faith l declare both that God was man and man was God. But you cannot, with out sheer absurdity, similarly assert either that the soul is the body, or the body the soul, although in like manner soul and body is one man. And it is not surprising if the soul, with all
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  2. So Hooker on the Communicatio idiomatum, Ecc. Pol., Bk v. liii. 3,4 ↩

Chapter 47 of 52