Chapter X. The Parable of the three measures of meal

We remember the three measures in the Gospel, which were mixed and leavened to make one loaf. If any one were to apply the parable to the mystery of the Incarnation I should think he was not far wrong in so doing. How well the woman leavened them ! And so, in the parallel, without dividing the body and soul, the Word was distinct from the body and sod, yet so that in the separation the inseparable union was maintained. For the partial separation is no objection against the unity which remained between all three. Whether two of the three were conjoined or dissevered, the personal unity none the less continued in all three. The one Christ and one Person, the Word, soul and body, remained just the same even after the death of the man Christ Jesus. In my opinion this mingling and leavening took place in the Virgin's womb ; she was the woman who mixed and leavened the three measures. For I should not, perhaps, err greatly in saying that the leaven was Mary's faith. She was clearly blessed in believing, since the things which were told her by the Lord were accomplished in her. But they would not have been accomplished if anything had hindered the whole from being leavened, and continually leavened, according to the word of the Lord, so as to preserve for us, as well in His death as in His life, the one perfect Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus in union with His own Godhead.

In this admirable mystery, corresponding to the number of the measures, we may observe, most beautifully distinguished, the three steps of the new, the old, and the eternal. By the ' new ' I mean the soul, which is believed to be created out of nothing when it is infused into the body ; by the ' old ', the jlcsh, which we know to have been transmitted even from Adam, the first of human kind ; by the ' eternal ', I mean the Word, whom, as a certain truth, we assert to be co-eternal with the Father, and to be begotten of Him. And in the fore going, if you carefully notice, there is a triple exhibition of Divine power, inasmuch as then.- was something made out of nothing, the new out of the old, the eternally blessed out of that which was sentenced to death. How docs this 1 St. Luke i. 45.

concern our salvation ? Much every way. Firstly, because, reduced to nothing through sin, we are through the mystery as it were created anew, that we may be a sort of first fruits of His creatures. Secondly, because, translated from our old slavery into the liberty of the children of God, we walk in newness of the spirit. Lastly, because we have been called from the power of darkness to the kingdom of the eternal glory, wherein He has already made us to sit with Him in Christ. May they be no friends of ours who endeavour to estrange from us the flesh of Christ, impiously asserting that it was newly created in the Virgin, not taken from the Virgin. Well did the Spirit of Prophecy long before meet this opinion, or rather blasphemy of wicked men, when He said, 'A shoot shall spring from the root of Jesse, and a flower out of his root.' He might have said that the flower should come from the shoot, but He preferred to say ' from the root ', that He might show the flower and the shoot to have the same origin. So we see that the flesh was taken thence whence the Virgin sprang; it was not newly created in the Virgin, but came from the root.