(if I may be pardoned a homely simile) is like the handkerchief written over with sympathetic ink, which must be held to the fire for the characters to come out to view; or as the faculties nascent in the human mind, which require to be elicited by influence from without, and fixed by mental analysis; or rather, let me say, it is like the dry bones in the valley of the Prophet's vision, which await the breath of that Spirit who inhabits and illuminates the Church, to quicken the dull clay with power from on high, and make it a living soul.

NOTE TO INTRODUCTION.

THE ATONEMENT AND THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION.

It is a very common, but very ignorant, objection to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, that it places the Blessed Virgin beyond the need of redemption; and I have even known of sermons being preached against it on the text, "My spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour." Those who so argue can never have read the decree of Dec. 8, 1854, which expressly affirms, "that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instant of her conception, by a singular privilege and grace of God, in virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ the Saviour of the human race, was preserved exempt from all stain of original sin."1 Nor is it more to the purpose to object, as is also frequently done, that her conception was not, like that of our Divine Lord, miraculous. An Oxford writer, of deserved theological reputation, seems almost to think it a sufficient disproof of the doctrine to quote some words from a sermon of St. Leo's, to the effect that Christ alone was born innocent, because His birth alone was not through the ordinary laws of generation. But that is not the point. Without entering here on the vexed question of the manner of its transmission, it is obvious that original sin affects directly the soul, not the body. And the soul is created immediately by God, though its creation is dependent on certain physical antecedents. The body of the Blessed Virgin (as in all probability our Lord's also) was subject to the conditions of infirmity introduced by the Fall 3 But we hold that her soul was, by a singular grace vouchsafed for the merits of her Son, perfectly sanctified at the moment of its creation, as ours are in the sacrament of baptism. It is, further, a pious and universal belief (though not matter of faith)

4

1 Bishop Ullathorne's Immaculate Conception, p. 198. Richardson 1855. 2 Bright's Sermons of St. Leo with Notes. Note 1. Masters.

3 See Note to ch. I. Her death therefore is no argument against her sinlessness, as is urged by the clever but very one-sided author of Quelques Mots sur les Communions Occidentales, p. 84. Leipzig, 1855. Cf. Encore Quelques Mots, p. 29. Leipzig, 1858.

4 Cf. Ullathorne, ut supr. pp. 58-60. Ffoulkes' Christendom's Divisions, vol. I. p. 105.

dating at latest from the time of St. Augustine, that she was preserved through life by a special grace from all defilement of actual sin. To call such a belief derogatory to the grace of God, or the merits of our Redeemer, is unmeaning. Rather it commends itself to the instinctive feelings of a religious mind. And accordingly we find the great English poet of the last generation exclaiming :

"Mother, whose virgin bosom was uncrost

By slightest shade of thought to sin allied,
Woman above all women glorified,

Our tainted nature's solitary boast." 1

It is of course true, as Mr. Bright observes, that St. Leo "knew nothing of the Immaculate Conception," as it is true, in the same sense, that a host of early Greek fathers knew nothing of the doctrine of original sin. But it is a confusion of thought to suppose that he intended to contradict an opinion not brought into debate in his day. There were later writers, as St. Bernard, who did oppose it, partly from misapprehension of its precise meaning, partly on grounds proved, after being sifted through some eight centuries, to be inadequate. Arguments of this kind are two-edged swords. Those at least who defend the present form of the Nicene Creed (and there are very few Anglican divines who decline to do so) may be expected to remember for how many centuries the definition Filioque was unknown, and what high authorities have rejected it.

I have had occasion more than once in the course of this volume to point out, that the Scotist view of the Incarnation, which naturally allies itself with the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, is most accordant with the general spirit of patristic teaching, though not expressly maintained by any early writer. The whole doctrinal question is elaborately discussed in Passaglia's De Immaculato Deiparæ semper Virginis Conceptu Commentarius, 3 vols. folio; and is exhibited in a more concise and popular form, but with great lucidity of statement, in the Bishop of Birmingham's book already referred to.

1 Wordsworth's Ecclesiastical Sonnets. A distinguished Anglican divine very justly observes, that "to imagine that even for one moment the Blessed Virgin, by a wilful sin, was hateful to her Son, or that by a deliberate evil wish she took the part of Satan against her Son, and conspired to dethrone him (both which notions are bound up in the idea of sin), is a thought revolting to the pious instinct." Bp. Forbes' Explanation of the Articles, vol. I. p. 224.

THE ATONEMENT.

CHAPTER I.

PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS ON THE SUBJECT,
AND THE METHOD OF TREATING IT.

THAT Jesus died, the Just for the unjust, to redeem mankind from the bondage of corruption, and restore the broken communion between earth and heaven, is, and ever has been, a fundamental verity of the Christian faith. From that uplifted cross, for eighteen centuries, He has been drawing all men by the 'cords of Adam' to Himself. Round the altars where that one true Sacrifice, offered once in blood on Calvary, is presented perpetually in a bloodless mystery, from the rising to the setting of the sun, has been gathered through those eighteen centuries of her chequered history the faith, the penitence, the devotion of the Church He purchased by that greatest pledge of love.

Yet, even as then among the spectators of the crucifixion there were some who worshipped and some who doubted, and its stillness was broken by the questionings, or the jests, or the mockeries of those for whose

And

sake it was endured, so it has been till now. doubts have multiplied tenfold since the first controversies of the Reformation period involved the whole subject in the confusions of a theological warfare, where men darken counsel with many words, and strive rather for a party triumph than for simple truth. Forgetting or greatly underrating, for the most part, the significance of the Incarnation as the centre-point of all Christian belief, the first leaders of the movement in the sixteenth century dragged forward into disproportionate prominence, and often in connection with an erroneous theory of 'imputation,' one side and one only of that Divine mystery, namely, the doctrine of the Atonement. And hence there has grown up in many quarters a way of looking at the doctrine, and speaking of it, full of difficulties to the devout believer, and offering abundant opportunities for the cavils of the sceptic. In our own country this has been partly due to the theological influence of Paradise Lost, which had become for a large number of Englishmen a kind of supplementary Bible. The Arian opinions of Milton on our Lord's Person, have strengthened the hold obtained over the national mind by what is in fact an Arianizing conception of His work.' It has been so represented as to cloud

See Preface to Benson's Sermons on Redemption, from which I quote the following apposite passage:-"The act of redemption is not the mere act of the love of the redeeming Person, but the manifestation of the love of the Triune God. God the Son came upon earth to satisfy His own justice, as much as to satisfy His Father's, and for the accomplishment of His Father's love to man, as much as for His own. If this truth is often lost sight of, it is because the consubstantial Godhead of the Father and the Redeemer is ignored."