Section I. The Incarnation

THE Incarnation is as much the world in which we live, as the globe on which we troad, with its earth, air, fire and water, its sun, moon and stars, its animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms. If we look at our souls, their present wants and their eternal expectations, their life, strength, health and maladies, the Incarnation is as indispensable to them, and as indispensable every hour of the day, as the heat and cold, the air and light, are to our natural subsistence. We live and move in the Incarnation. We are what we are, through it. It covers us, underlies us, and is all around us. It is incessantly affecting us in al most numberless ways, both within and without. We cannot get beyond the reach of its blessed influence, even by disbelieving it or dishonouring it. For our heavenly Father has caused the sun of justice, like the natural sun, to shine both on the just and the unjust. Every man owes all that is best, most energetic, and most successful about him to the Incarnation. It is so bouuc? up with the whole of creation, with nature, grace, and glory, with past, present, and future, with God's behaviour to us and our relations with Him, that it is impossible to extricate the Incarnation from Creation, in the present dispensations of God. Nay, so strikingly true is this that theologians have been found who maintain, not only that the Incarnation flows from Creation, which no one denies, but that if there was to be Creation at all, there must necessarily be the Incarnation also.

The Incarnation is a revelation of the Creator to His creatures of a far more intimate kind than Creation itself. It lights up greater depths of the Divine Perfections; and it illuminates the power, wisdom, and goodness of God, His infinite sanctity, and the identity of His justice and mercy, with a clearness to which the light given by Creation, magnificent and various as it is, cannot compare. Neither is it less wonderful in its illustrations of the works and ways of God outside Himself. Any one of its mys teries teaches us more of God and. of His methods than all the world beside. Furthermore it gathers into itself and resumes all the eternal interests of all the souls of men. Hence surely it should be every one's study. There is nothing which any man is so much concerned to know as the Incarnation. Nothing can be to him more directly, or more continually practical: nothing more deeply interesting, if he is interested at all in spiritual things, and is not altogether carnal.

The knowledge of the Incarnation is not a mere matter of scholarship. For it conies by the feasts of the Church and by prayer as well as by reading. True devotion de pends in a great measure upon it. The more a man knows of the mysteries of Jesus the more easy and delightful will the practice of meditation become. His fervour at the various sacred seasons of the Church will increase, and his frequentation of the sacraments become more full of reverence and love. Hence the health, the vigour, and the holiness of the Church are materially benefitted by instructing her children in the theology of the Tncarnation. To make Jesus better known is to make Him better loved, and the love of Jesus is the sanctity of His Church. There are two main sources of knowledge regarding the Incarnation, scholastic and mystical theo logy. Scholastic theology is the mine whence priests and teachers must draw the wisdom which they prepare for the people in just measure and according to their ability to receive it; whereas mystical theology is rather the work of the Holy Ghost in pure and just souls, requiring in ordinary cases a pre-existing foundation of knowledge, gained, either by reading or hearing, from authoritative theology.¹

It would be difficult to conceive even a possible science which should open to the human mind more magnificent, more deep, more various, or more elevating treasures of truth and thought than scholastic theology j and among all its fair provinces is there one more fair than the treatise of the Incarnation? It may be said to contain within itself full twenty regions of glorious wisdom, each of them inexhaustible because full of God, exuberant iii wisdom, which can cleanse the heart and almost beatify the spirit, as well as occupy and inform the most gigantic intellect of the sons of men. The mere convenience of the Incarnation is the subject of a science. While we enquire even into the possibility of the mystery various questions of immense interest arise before us, as to how the possibility could be known, and by what creatures, and in what way. But the possibility of the Incarnation seems, although untruly, to lead us to infer its absolute necessity, and here theology has to light her brightest lamps and lead us along the silent outskirts of the divine decrees. We next explore the nature of rigorous and perfect satisfaction, and see how far above even an infinite grace or adoption, were we to grant its possibility, is the grace of the Hypostatic Union. The freedom of God's of place to quote an anecdote of Du Val, doctor of the Sorbonne. He made a retreat, when young, to see if his attraction to the religious life was really from God, and it was made known to him in prayer that he was to remain in the ecclesiastical state. He then asked i* what kind of work he was to occupy himself, and God vouchsafed t» reply that he was to teach theology; for that he could serve the Church more by that work than by any other, inasmuch as the young ecclesiastics, who learned from him, would propagate his teaching to the multitudes committed to their care. Seethe Sketch of Dr. Du Val in Mfjr. Dupaniuiip's new edition of the life of the JBleesed JUwy of the Incarnation, vol. i. jp. 134.

acceptation even of Christ's merits, and the connection between the Incarnation and sin, predestination and the first man, close this first department of its theology. The nature and essence of the Incarnation, the Person assuming, the nature assumed, and ita parts, with the causes of the assumption, occupy five more of these bright, but mysterious regions. The grace of Christ, the science of Christ, the power of the Humanity of Christ, the defects (to use the theological term) of His Body and Soul, and the orthodox way of expressing ourselves on all these subjects, are so many separate branches of this divine knowledge. The being or existence of Christ, His will, merit, subjection, prayer, adoption, predestination, priesthood, with the worship due to Him, complete the twenty regions, on each of which volumes have been written, not filled, as they who never read them take for granted, with idle and merely subtle questions, but with profound reasonings and magnificent discoveries and fertile truths, which are a more solid food and a more noble exercise and a more practical study for the enlightened reason, than even the great truths of metaphysics or astronomy. Such is scholastic theology, one fountain of knowledge regarding the Incarnation.

Mystical theology has rather to do with the separate mysteries and various states of our Lord than with the processes of the Incarnation itself. The Holy Spirit discloses to souls of different vocations the secret mean ings and graces of particular mysteries and states; and all these lights at prayer, visions, raptures, extasies, and divine locutions, treasured up in the lives of God's chosen servants, are so many contributions to mystic*!

theology, so far as it is capable of being recorded and studied. But far more is taught to each soul by the operation of the Holy Ghost Himself. This is the living mystical theology, to which none other can compare. For without this there is no truly deep or efficacious knowledge of Jesus. But we must not forget that all mystical theology, which regards our Blessed Lord, must be brought to the test of scholastic theology and abide by its approved decisions, and the living mystical theology even more jealously than the chronicled experiences of the saints, because of its liability to delusion; for the facility and peril of abuse are always in proportion to the real excellence of the thing abused. This is well expressed by M. Olier in his autobiography,* where he says, " I esteem scholastic theology as it de serves, and I acknowledge myself to be greatly indebted to it for the intelligence of our Lord's mysteries, and the support I have received from them. It is true that of itself it cannot fully illuminate them, nor open their real secrets, because these mysteries are hidden by the express order of God, so that no man shall know them to whom He does not reveal them. Theology, drawing its conclu sions by reason from the principles of the faith, does not pretend to discover thereby what a divine light can alono disclose."

Now as the Blessed Sacrament is the compendium of Creation, its interpretation, crown, and culminating point, so is it also of the Incarnation. It is the sum of all its wonders, the abridgement of all its revelations. The lamps of scholastic theology group themselves all around it, while it is itself the most operative power of mystical Vie. i. 18.

theology1; and it is with reference to these two thrologiea that we must now consider it. Jesus is God; bu^ when we pronounce the word Jesus and the word God, w« have different ideas; for the word Jesus implies the Incwnate God, one Person of the Three, with His peculiar Human Life, His grace, and His redemption. Thus as we haw studied the Blessed Sacrament already as a picture o! God, we have now to study It as a picture of Jesus.

In order to clear the way to our subject, it is neceasary to say some little of the different views of th« Incarnation which have been taught in the schools* more especially as one particular view has already beel> assumed as true in many things which have been sato in the previous Books, and will often be so assumed i» what is to follow, although the main argument does not at all depend upon it. The mystery in the Incarnation which places all the other mysteries, and establishes theii harmonies and subordinations, is the predestination of Jesus. But it is not necessary for us to go deeply inU that most difficult question here. Suffice it to say, that there are three views of the Incarnation, any one of which, if adopted, will colour the whole of a man's theology, and enable us to divine the side which he will take in a host of other and apparently disconnected questions. I shall state these three views, and the one here assumed to be true at greater length than the others, but without entering into any controversy or noticing any objections. It is sufficient for devotional opinions that they be based on some view freely permitted in the schools, and which authority has never qualified with any sort of censure.

The first view is that taught by Raymund Lully, and •ince his time by various modern optimists. Admitting 36* that the Incarnation is not simply and absolutely necessary to God, which could not be asserted without impiety, it maintains that, given the Creation of the world, the Incarnation could not but follow; in other words, God could not decree creation, without at the same time decree ing the Incarnation, because He was bound to decree the best and most perfect kind of creation, and that involves the union of a created nature with an uncreated Person. Malebranche in his system of nature and grace adopts a similar view, through his anxiety to get rid of what he called occasional wills in God; and he pronounces creation to be in a certain sense one indivisible whole with the Incarnate Word. There are many points of view from which this hypothesis is very tempting; but there are objections to it which, without meriting the extreme language of Fenelon, are nevertheless fatal to its claims. The view must be regarded simply as the expression of the wonder and delight of the mind, when it perceives the astonishing and ravishing harmonies and ties, which there are between the Incarnation and Creation. It is an easy thing in theology to mistake convenience for necessity. Theologians have abandoned St. Anselm, teaching that the Incarnation was necessarily decreed when God decreed the permission of man's fall, and even Richard of St. Victor, who said that the Incarnation was necessary to the reparation of the human race.²

The second view of the Incarnation is that commonly taken by the Thomists. They teach that our Lord not only came principally to save fallen men, in which all agree, but that if it had Dot been for sin He would never have come at all. His coming was altogether re medial, and He could not have come otherwise, so far as God's present decrees are concerned. This view seems to rest upon a vast amount of Scripture evidence, and upon several congenial expressions in the hymns and offices of the Church. It is plain that the order of predestination, and several questions about grace, sin, and our Blessed Lady, receive implicitly a particular resolution by this view of the Incarnation. Vasquez is the greatest modern exponent of this hypothesis.

Buyle's senior and his survivor, was hailed with acclamation by mankind, as if it were an intellectual deliverance. Fe"nelon's refutation of it was written when he was young, and was corrected by Bossuet. It is said however, I do not know on what authority, that Bossuet modified his opposition to it afterwards, but it does not seem that F6nelon experienced any such change. Viva draws nearer to this theory than the generality of great theologians. After having said, Deus neque metapbysice, neque physice, (seu ex exigentia proprise naturae) necessitatur ad optimum ponendum, he says, Datur;n Deo inclinatio, seu moralis necessitas, ad optimum, atque adeo ad Incarnationem ponendam. Necessitas haec est potius metaphorica: cum non imbibat difficultatem in oppositum; sed •olum fundet, judicium prudens de optimo ponendo, et imprudentisiimura ac inopinabile de eo non ponendo. De Incarn. pt. \i. disp. - q. 2, art. 2. Billuart expresses the more common opinion: Deu non semper faoit aut debet facere id, quod est melius, perfecting, e*. coDvenientius ex pnrte operis; alias deberet facere mundum perfectiorera, et perfectiorem in inh'nitum: sed quod suse voluntati, quca est fons et regula totius reotitudinis, raagis congruit in ordine ad fines quos liberrime sibi constituit. De Incarn. Dit*. iii. art. ii. tcct. I For a comparison and contrast of different systems of optimism of Leibnitz and Malebrauche, see Legrand. De Incarnat. Dist. y. cay. 2.

The third view of the Incarnation, and the one assumed throughout this treatise to be true, is the view taken by the Scotists, and by Suarez, and many other theologians both ancient and modern. It teaches, that our Lord came principally to save fallen man, that for this end He came in passible flesh; but that even if Adam had not fallen He would have come, and by Mary, in impassible flesh, that He was predestinated the first-born of creatures before the decree which permitted sin, that the- Incarnation was from the first an intentional part of the immense mercy of creation, and did not merely take occasion from sin, which only caused Him to come in the particular way in which He came, and was not the cause of His coming alto gether. Those who hold this view understand the passages of Scripture, the Fathers, and the Breviary, as speaking of our Lord's coming in passible flesh. It would be a foolish exaggeration to say that this view is without its difficulties. Indeed, at first sight and in itself, it presents more difficulties than the Thomist view; but the consequences of the latter entangle us in many theological inconveniences from which the former sets us free. It may be added that the definition of the Immaculate Conception is an additional prejudice in favour of the Scotist view. For that beautiful mystery was almost an integral part, or at least a ready consequence, of Franciscan theology; whereas the Thomist system has to make room for the Immaculate Conception with more or less of effort; and this it has been made to do by many Dominican theologians, who have been signal champions of that mystery which is our Lady's great prerogative. This observation is not the loss true, even if it were proved that St. Thomaa himself held the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.

This last view of the Incarnation runs out into almost every province of theology; and it is therefore desiruble to convey some general idea of the grounds on which it rests. Those who hold it dwell very much on the doc trine that Jesus was decreed before all creatures, and therefore before the permission of sin. Thus, we read in Scripture,³ I came out of the mouth of the Most High, the first-born before all creatures. And St. Paul, speaking of our Lord, says to the Colossians/f" that He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of every creature. For in Him were all things created in heaven, and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones, or domi nations, or principalities, or powers. All things were created by Him and in Him, and He is before all, and by Him all things consist. And He is the Head of the Body, the Church, who is the beginning, the first-born from the dead, that in all things He may hold the primacy; because in Him, it hath well pleased the Father, that all fulness should dwell, and through Him to reconcile all things unto Himself. Much of this language is evidently not applicable to the eternal generation of the Word. So in the eighth chapter of Proverbs where St. Jerome translates from the Hebrew. The Lord possessed me in the beginning of His ways, the Septuagint renders it, The Lord created Me; and the passage ends, I was with Him forming all things, and was delighted every day, playing before Him at all times, playing in the world; and my delights were to be with the children

0f men. St. Athanasius, St. Basil, St. Cyril, St. Gregory Nazianzen, and St. Epiphanius have interpreted this passage of the Incarnation. Tertullian, in his book on the Resurrection of the flesh says, That mud, (he is speaking of the creation of Adam,) which then put on the image of the Christ that was to come in the flesh, was not only the work of God, but His pledge. Rupert commenting on the epistle to the Hebrews says, It is to be religiously said and reverently heard, that God created all things because of Christ who was to be crowned with glory and honour. From these and a host of similar authorities, the Scotists, with Suarez and others, particularly Franciscans and Jesuits, consider that it follows that all men came because of Christ, not Christ because of them, that all creation was for Him, and was not only decreed subsequently to His predestination, but for His sole sake.

Their second proof is drawn from our Lord's being the first-begotten and exemplar of the predestinate. Thus, St. Paul says to the Romans,* Whom He foreknew, He also predestinated to be made conformable to the image of His Sou, that He might be the first-born among many brethren; and again to the Ephesians,f Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and unspotted in His sight in charity, who hath predestinated us unto the adoption of children through Jesus Christ unto Himself.

It is further attempted to establish this view of the Incarnation by arguments drawn from reason, from the * Eccles. viii. 29. t Ibid> *• 3- natural order of things, from the relative value of means and ends, from the grace of tho unfallen Adam which is alleged to have been conferred upon him because of Christ, from the Incarnation having, as St. Thomas teaches, been revealed to Adam, who did not lose his faith when he sinned, else the Church would for the time have been extinguished, and from similar grounds, which it would be beside our purpose, and contrary to the character of this treatise, to discuss. The same may be said of certain consequences which seem to flow from the opposite doctrine, and to damage its acceptability. Thus it is urged that, on the other view, Christ was only an "occasioned good," and occasioned moreover by sin, and that this is an unworthy supposition: or again, that Christ would have to rejoice in Adam's sin, because He owes His existence, grace, and glory as man, to it. When Si Anselm is attacking those who taught that men were predestinated and created simply to fill the vacant thrones of the fallen angels, he says, If men were only created for the replenishing of the ranks thinned by the fall of the angels, it is plain that if the angels had not fallen from blessedness, men would not have risen to blessedness, and therefore they would have perversely to rejoice in the sin of the angels. Much more strongly, say the Scotists, will the same reasoning apply to Christ, if He only came because of the sin of man.

Again it is said, that if Christ was decreed after us, and because of us, and only to redeem us, these three monstrous consequences follow, first that Christ would owe us a debt of gratitude, secondly that we should in certain respects be more excellent than He, and thirdly, that sin was necessary to His existence. Rupert says.

If according to St. Augustin, it is absurd to say, that it Adam had not sinned, the generations of men would not have existed, as if sin were necessary to their existence, what must we think of that Head and King of all elect angels and men, except that to Him least of all was sin necessary, that He should become man and find the de lights of His charity with us?

On the Scotist view therefore the following would be the order of the divine decrees, the order of intention^ for there can of course be no order of time with God. First God understood Himself as the Sovereign Good. Secondly, He understood all creatures. Thirdly, He predestinated creatures to grace and glory. Fourthly He foresaw men falling in Adam. Fifthly, He preor dained the Passion of Christ as the remedy for this fall⁴ Thus Christ in the flesh, and all the elect also, were fore seen and destined to grace and glory before the foresight either of sin or of the Passion.*

Both the Thomist and Scotist views of the Incarnation are free opinions in the schools; and I have only dwelt more at length on the last because it is the one I have all along assumed to be true, and because I think Suarez does not succeed in making a harmony of the two: and as I have mainly followed St. Thomas in the other ques tions f which have been touched upon in this book, it seemed necessary to confess to this somewhat notable exception: more especially as the Blessed Sacrament may be called St. Thomas' own subject, so completely has the

•j" With one little exception, respecting the sustaining of the acci dents in the Blessed Sacrament, especially the accident of commen- •arable quantity.

Church embodied his mind on this matter as the best ex pression of her own, iu her definitions and formularies.

It appears as if a very little modification would make both these views true together; inasmuch as they both lay so much stress on the doctrine that our Lord came, as He has come, expressly and principally to redeem mankind from sin, and that consequently a remedial character pervades all His mysteries, both such as have to do with His being our example, and such as have to do with His being our atonement, while the same character is stamped also upon His enactments as our legislator. The Thomist view moreover will by no means allow us to say that redemption from sin was the sole object which God intended in this great mystery. This appears, even while the divines of that school are com menting on the very strong passages of the Fathers upon which they ground their own hypothesis. For they admit that the manifestation of the divine omnipotence, wisdom, and goodness was one end of the Incarnation, and the Headship of the whole Church of angels and men another. Indeed, otherwise the doctrine that our Lord as man is Head of the angels would be fatal to the Thomist hypothesis. The Church is dear to God, says St. Chrysostorn; for because of the Church the heavens were stretched out, the sea spread abroad, the air extended over us, and the earth laid in its foundations. For the sake of the Church the sea was divided, the rock sloven, and the manna sent from heaven. For the sake vf the Church were the prophets, for the sake of the Church the apostles, yea for the sake of the Church was the Only-Begotten Son of God made man.⁵

Notwithstanding, however, that there is no insurmountable repugnance between the two theories, it must be acknowledged that the attempt Suarez made to reconcile them is generally considered unsuccessful, and also that the opposite solution of so many other questions implicitly contained in each hypothesis makes it appear as if there was a real, deep-lying difference between them. But in truth the range of our vision in such matters is very limited, and reasons are often so evenly balanced, that not unfrequently a peculiar devotional bent is left to decide a question on which the understanding alone would be undecided; and thus different men arrive at different conclusions, not because their bent is devotional only, but because it is peculiar also. Where our holy mother the Church leaves us free, and the cogency of reasonings is inadequate to force upon us a conviction of the mind, what better rule can each man follow than to embrace, with all diffidence and without obstinacy, that opinion which, for any unexplained reasons, enables his particular soul the better to love and worship Jesus and the Most Holy Trinity?

Footnotes

1. A very fair and candid Protestant writer, comparing the morals of the eastern and western empires, to the advantage of the former, attributes the superiority of the Greeks in great measure to the universal study of theology. "Philosophical and metaphysical specu lations had, in the absence of the more active pursuits of political life, been the chief occupation of the higher orders; and when the Christian religion became universal, it gradually directed the whole attention of the educated to theological questions. These studies certainly exercised a favourable influence on the general morality of mankind, and the tone of society was characterized by a purity of manners, and a degree of charitable feeling, which have probably never been surpassed." — Finltty't Greece under the Romans, page 175. As several expressions have been used in the course of this work, implying that in these days, if physical science is expected to form part of a liberal education, then also the science of theology should enter into it as well, at least uu to a certain point, it may not be out ↩

2. The enthusiasm with which the optimism of Malebranche and Leibnitz was hailed by the world is one of the most poetical inci dents in literary history. But in order to understand it, we must have appreciated the weariness and perplexity caused by the Jansenist, Calvinist, and Socinian theories, and the defiance which Bayle gave to Christian theology, and the number of his slaughtered foes which lay round about him. The system of Malebrancho, at onca ↩

3. Eccles. xxiv, f Ibid. L 1*. ↩

4. Scotus. 3, dist. 39, quaes. unic. no. 6. ↩

5. 8. Chrys. Serm. i. de PentecoBte.
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