fulfilled it.* If, then, that crowning iniquity could be pardoned and it is a pious tradition in the Church that all who had a hand in crucifying Jesus are now before His throne in heaven-none need despair of forgiveness. In the redemption of His murderers we read the promise of our own.

With sacrifice the tale of our misery had begun, and with sacrifice it was to end. In the dim twilight of human history, when sin was first breaking in on that fair creation, which the All-Merciful had blest because it was very good, there is revealed the form of a mother, struck with anguish, weeping over the fierce iniquity of her first-born and the beautiful corpse of her Martyrboy, martyred, it would seem, in that very act of sacrifice which is the creature's rightful homage to his Maker and his God. Thousands of years rolled by, and another Mother, pierced with the sword of sorrows, stood beneath the noonday starlight on the mount of death, where the blood that speaks better things than the blood of Abel flowed, and the cry rose up from the darkened cross, whose echo dies not day nor night before the throne in heaven, and the altars of the earthly Church: 'Father forgive, they know not what they do.' Henceforth the law of suffering, to which the Incarnate Son had voluntarily submitted, was turned from a curse into a beatitude; self-sacrifice became the royal road of redemption, the baptism of blood was for remission of sin. The kingdom of Satan, like the kingdom of God, is within us, and he is then most near the sons of God when they come to present themselves before the Lord. Therefore He came, in whom alone the

* διὰ χειρῶν ἀνόμων προσπήξαντες ἀνείλετε. Acts ii. 23.

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prince of this world could have no part nor lot, to break the chains of that bondage of corruption, and bid the slave go free.

In this sense, the speculations of the Fathers on the relation of the Incarnation to the Evil One have left an abiding heritage to the Church. But, on the other hand, the theory of a ransom, if literally understood, is beset with difficulties, both intellectual and moral, of the gravest kind. First, it is not coherent; for how can the notion of Satan being deceived, which forms an integral portion of it, be reconciled with the notion of a bargain struck and a price paid to satisfy a claim of justice? If he was tricked into forfeiting his just rights by grasping at rights where he had none, how is compensation made to him? Then, again, how can the blood, or soul, or death of the Redeemer be an equivalent to him at all for the empire which he lost, when it gave him no real power over Him who died only to rise again from the dead, whose soul was not left in Hades, and whose flesh knew no corruption? And if the theory labours under these logical difficulties, the moral and religious objections are still more serious. What is meant by God deceiving the Devil, and by the parallel so elaborately drawn by many writers between the deceit which ruined man and the deceit which redeemed him? When, for instance, Gregory Nyssen says, that the one wrought his deceit for the corruption of our nature, but the Just and Good and Wise used the counsel of deceit for the salvation of that which was corrupted,*

* He proceeds, οὐ μόνον τὸν ἀπολωλότα διὰ τούτων εὐεργετῶν, ἀλλὰ καὶ αὐτὸν τὸν ἀπωλείαν καθ ̓ ἡμῶν ἐνεργήσαντα, which seems to imply his agreement in Origen's belief of the restoration of the fallen angels.

is not this like saying, that the end justified the means, that deception was the chosen instrument of the God of truth? To this a modern writer, viewing the whole question from the independent standpoint of impartial unbelief, adds a further observation, that the Incarnation being thus introduced for an illusory purpose is in danger of being itself regarded as a phenomenal illusion, and the Docetic heresy brought back by a sidewind into the Church.* That, however, seems an over-refinement of criticism. Those who insist most strongly on this object of the human nature of the Redeemer, insist also on the necessity of His actual death, which required a real, not merely a phenomenal, body; not to repeat here an observation made before, in a different connection, that the Fathers recognize many other objects of the Incarnation which certainly involve its reality. It is more to the purpose to remark, what indeed did not escape the notice of many advocates of the theory, that there is something shocking to natural reverence in the blood of the Holy One becoming the prize of Satan. More than that, the whole theory carried with it the original sin of its Gnostic parentage. The essentially dualistic notion of two independent powers, set over against one another, of a kingdom of light and a kingdom darkness, with jurisdictions mutually limited by conflicting claims, lies inevitably at the root of any system which treats evil as other than a temporary and accidental interruption of the divine order, or ascribes to the Evil Spirit rights of whatever kind, and though acquired by the voluntary and disgraceful submission

Baur Von der Versöhnung, pp. 82, 83.

of

of his captives, as against the supremacy of Him who is infinite in holiness as in power and love. An unjust victory could confer no claims, nor wrong because it was successful become the ground of an immoral right.

This radical flaw of the whole system had not been unfelt from the first, while its inadequacy as an explanation of the great mystery of redemption had prevented it from ever being held alone. We have seen that Origen combined with it the idea of a sacrifice offered to God, though without attempting to harmonize the two, which indeed was scarcely possible. Nor was this idea ever lost sight of by succeeding writers. It is suggested, in antagonism to the dominant theory, as early as the fourth century, by Gregory Nazianzen. To the question, To whom was Christ's blood paid as a ransom? he replies; "If to the Evil One, shame upon the insult, that the robber should not only receive a ransom from God, but receive God Himself, a payment so much exceeding in value his own tyranny, on account of which it was just that we also should be spared. But if it was paid to the Father, first how? For it was not by Him we were held captive. And next, for what reason should the blood of His only-begotten Son please the Father, who would not receive Isaac when being offered up by his father, but changed the victim and gave a ram instead of the human sacrifice? Or is it clear that the Father receives it, without having asked or needed it, but on account of the dispensation (oikovoμíav) and its being fit that men should be sanctified by that which is mortal in God, that He might deliver us Himself, having conquered the tyrant by violence, and bring us back to Himself through the mediation of His Son, who disposed this too to the

honour of the Father, to whom He seems to concede all things?" This was to assert, that a sacrifice was presented to the Father, but to reject particular theories about it as doubtful or superfluous. And, accordingly, the writer says elsewhere, that it is a point on which we are free to speculate, for though not without advantage to hit the mark, it is not dangerous to miss it. Four centuries later, John of Damascus, who repeats almost the very words of Gregory as to the price being paid to the tyrant, though in an earlier chapter of the same book he had acknowledged a certain claim of justice on Satan's side, decides, against Gregory, that the 'ransom' was paid to the Father because we had sinned against Him. It is remarkable that Gregory, while discarding the idea of a payment to Satan, yet retains one of the strangest features of that theory, saying, that he who had deceived us with the hope of Godhead was himself deceived by the veil of flesh.

This idea of a sacrifice offered to the Father (or rather to the whole Trinity)§ is stated or implied by the great body of patristic writers, though not made the basis of any particular scheme of satisfaction, and usually held in connection with that of a ransom paid to Satan. St. Athanasius speaks of Christ offering a sacrifice for all; St. Augustine traces out the essential obligation of sacrifice, even antecedently to the conviction of sin, as the outward expression of the supreme homage (Aarpeía) due to God; Eusebius refers to the sacrifice of Abel, which he says was accepted in

De Fid. Orth. iii. 27. Cf. supr. p. 42.

§ Fulgent. Contr. Arian. ii. 4. Cf. Ans. Cur Deus Homo, ii. 18.