21. This Life is the Light of men, the Light emanating nor procceding from the Father, but which lightens the darkness. To comfort us compact of, and inherent in, the whole Divifor that powerlessness to describe His genera- nity of Him Who wherever He is present is tion of which the prophet speaks 5, the Fisher-present eternally; One free from time, unman adds, And the darkness comprehended Him limited in duration, since by Him all things not 6. The language of unaided reason was were made, and, indeed, He could not be baffled and silenced; the Fisherman who lay on confined within a limit created by Himself. the bosom of the Lord was taught to express | Such is the Catholic and Apostolic Faith which the mystery. His language is not the world's the Gospel has taught us and we avow. language, for He deals with things that are not of the world. Let us know what it is, if there be any teaching that you can extract from his words, more than their plain sense conveys; if you can translate into other terms the truth we have elicited, publish them abroad. If there be none-indeed, because there are none-let us accept with reverence this teaching of the fisherman, and recognise in his words the oracles of God. Let us cling in adoration to the true confession of Father and Son, Unbegotten and Only-begotten ineffably, Whose majesty defies all expression and all perception. Let us, like John, lie on the bosom of the Lord Jesus, that we too may understand and proclaim the mystery.

22. This faith, and every part of it, is impressed upon us by the evidence of the Gospels, by the teaching of the Apostles, by the futility of the treacherous attacks which heretics make on every side. The foundation stands firm and unshaken in face of winds and rains and torrents; storms cannot overthrow it, nor dripping waters hollow it, nor floods sweep it away. Its excellence is proved by the failure of countless assaults to impair it. Certain remedies are so compounded as to be of value not merely against some single disease but against all; they are of universal efficacy. So it is with the Catholic faith. It is not a medicine for some special malady, but for every ill; virulence cannot master, nor numbers defeat, nor complexity baffle it. One and unchanging it faces and conquers all its foes. Marvellous it is that one form of words should contain a remedy for every disease, a statement of truth to confront every contrivance of falsehood. Let heresy muster its forces and every sect come forth to battle. Let our answer to their challenge be that there is One Unbegotten God the Father, and One Only-begotten Son of God, perfect Offspring of perfect Parent; that the Son was begotten by no lessening of the Father or subtraction from His Substance, but that He Who possesses all things begat an all-possessing Son; a Son not

23. Let Sabellius, if he dare, confound Father and Son as two names with one meaning, making of them not Unity but One Person. He shall have a prompt answer from the Gospels, not once or twice, but often repeated, This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased®. He shall hear the words, The Father is greater than 19, and I go to the Father 1, and Father,

thank Thee2, and Glorify Me, Father 3, and Thou art the Son of the living God. Let Hebion try to sap the faith, who allows the Son of God no life before the Virgin's womb, and sees in Him the Word only after His life as flesh had begun. We will bid him read again, Father, glorify Me with Thine own Self with that glory which I had with Thee before the world was 5, and In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and All things were made through Him, and He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world knew Him not. Let the preachers whose apostleship is of the newest fashionan apostleship of Antichrist-come forward and pour their mockery and insult upon the Son of God. They must hear, I came out from the Father, and The Son in the Father's bosom, and I and the Father are One2, and I in the Father, and the Father in Me 3. And lastly, if they be wroth, as the Jews were, that Christ should claim God for His own Father, making Himself equal with God, they must take the answer which He gave the Jews, Believe My works, that the Father is in Me and I in the Father. Thus our one immovable foundation, our one blissful rock of faith, is the confession from Peter's mouth, Thou art the Son of the Living Gods. On it we can base an answer to every objection with which perverted ingenuity or embittered treachery may assail the truth.

24. In what remains we have the appointment of the Father's will. The Virgin, the birth, the Body, then the Cross, the death, the visit to the lower world; these things are our salvation. For the sake of

mankind the Son of God was born of the hard thing; the Angel explains to her the Virgin and of the Holy Ghost. In this process mighty working of God, saying, The Holy He ministered to Himself; by His own power Ghost shall come from above into thee, and the -the power of God-which overshadowed power of the Most High shall overshadow thee". her He sowed the beginning of His Body, and The Holy Ghost, descending from above, halentered on the first stage of His life in the lowed the Virgin's womb, and breathing therein flesh. He did it that by His Incarnation He (for The Spirit bloweth where it listeth"), might take to Himself from the Virgin the mingled Himself with the fleshly nature of fleshly nature, and that through this com- man, and annexed by force and might that mingling there might come into being a hal- foreign domain. And, lest through weakness lowed Body of all humanity; that so through of the human structure failure should ensue, that Body which He was pleased to assume the power of the Most High overshadowed all mankind might be hid in Him, and He in the Virgin, strengthening her feebleness in return, through His unseen existence, be re- semblance of a cloud cast round her, that the produced in all. Thus the invisible Image of shadow, which was the might of God, might God scorned not the shame which marks the fortify her bodily frame to receive the probeginnings of human life. He passed through creative power of the Spirit. Such is the glory every stage; through conception, birth, wail- of the conception. ing, cradle and each successive humiliation.

27. And now let us consider the glory which 25. What worthy return can we make for so accompanies the birth, the wailing and the great a condescension? The One Only-cradle. The Angel tells Joseph that the begotten God, ineffably born of God, entered Virgin shall bear a Son, and that that Son the Virgin's womb and grew and took the shall be named Emmanuel, that is, God with frame of poor humanity. He Who upholds us. The Spirit foretells it through the prophet, the universe, within Whom and through Whom the Angel bears witness; He that is born are all things, was brought forth by common is God with us. The light of a new star childbirth; He at Whose voice Archangels shines forth for the Magi; a heavenly sign and Angels tremble, and heaven and earth escorts the Lord of heaven. An Angel brings and all the elements of this world are melted, to the shepherds the news that Christ the was heard in childish wailing. The Invisible Lord is born, the Saviour of the world. A and Incomprehensible, Whom sight and feel- multitude of the heavenly host flock together ing and touch cannot gauge, was wrapped to sing the praise of that childbirth; the rein a cradle. If any man deem all this un-joicing of the Divine company proclaims the worthy of God, the greater must he own his fulfilment of the mighty work. Then glory to debt for the benefit conferred the less such God in heaven, and peace on earth to men of condescension befits the majesty of God. He good will is announced. And now the Magi by Whom man was made had nothing to gain come and worship Him wrapped in swaddling by becoming Man; it was our gain that God clothes; after a life devoted to mystic rites of was incarnate and dwelt among us, making all vain philosophy they bow the knee before flesh His home by taking upon Him the flesh a Babe laid in His cradle. Thus the Magi of One. We were raised because He was stoop to reverence the infirmities of Infancy; lowered; shame to Him was glory to us. He, its cries are saluted by the heavenly joy of being God, made flesh His residence, and we angels; the Spirit Who inspired the prophet, in return are lifted anew from the flesh to God. the heralding Angel, the light of the new star, 26. But lest perchance fastidious minds be all minister around Him. In such wise was exercised by cradle and wailing, birth and it that the Holy Ghost's descent and the overconception, we must render to God the glory which each of these contains, that we may approach His self-abasement with souls duly filled with His claim to reign, and not forget His majesty in His condescension. Let us note, therefore, who were attendant on His conception. An Angel speaks to Zacharias; fertility is given to the barren; the priest comes forth dumb from the place of incense; John bursts forth into speech while yet confined within his mother's womb; an Angel blesses Mary and promises that she, a virgin, shall be the mother of the Son of God. Conscious of her virginity, she is distressed at this

shadowing power of the Most High brought Him to His birth. The inward reality is widely different from the outward appearance; the eye sees one thing, the soul another. A virgin bears; her child is of God. An Infant wails; angels are heard in praise. There are coarse swaddling clothes; God is being worshipped. The glory of His Majesty is not forfeited when He assumes the lowliness of flesh.

28. So was it also during His further life on The whole time which He passed in

earth.

6 St. Luke i. 35.

7 St. John iii. 8.

human form was spent upon the works of God. I have no space for details; it must suffice to say that in all the varied acts of power and healing which He wrought, the fact is conspicuous that He was man by virtue of the flesh He had taken, God by the evidence of the works He did.

whether it be Father or Son, He is Spirit, and He is holy.

31. But the words of the Gospel, For God is Spirit 5, need careful examination as to their sense and their purpose. For every saying has an antecedent cause and an aim which must be ascertained by study of the meaning. 29. Concerning the Holy Spirit I ought not We must bear this in mind lest, on the strength to be silent, and yet I have no need to speak; of the words, God is Spirit, we deny not only still, for the sake of those who are in ignor- the Name, but also the work and the gift of ance, I cannot refrain. There is no need to the Holy Ghost. The Lord was speaking speak, because we are bound to confess Him, with a woman of Samaria, for He had come proceeding, as He does, from Father and Sons. to be the Redeemer for all mankind. After For my own part, I think it wrong to discuss He had discoursed at length of the living the question of His existence. He does exist, water, and of her five husbands, and of him inasmuch as He is given, received, retained. whom she then had who was not her husband, He is joined with Father and Son in our con- the woman answered, Lord, I perceive that fession of the faith, and cannot be excluded Thou art a prophet. Our fathers worshipped from a true confession of Father and Son; in this mountain; and ye say that in Jerusalem take away a part, and the whole faith is is the flace where men ought to worship. The marred. If any man demand what meaning Lord replied, Woman, believe Me, the hour we attach to this conclusion, he, as well as we, cometh_when_neither in this mountain, nor in has read the words of the Apostle, Because ye Jerusalem, shall ye worship the Father. Ye are sons of God, God hath sent the Spirit of worship that which ye know not; we worship His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father, that which we know; for salvation is from the and Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, in Jews. But the hour cometh, and now is, when Whom ye have been sealed, and again, But we the true worshippers shall worship the Father have received not the spirit of this world, but in the Spirit and in truth; for the Father the Spirit which is of God, that we may know seeketh such to worship Him. For God is the things that are given unto us by God, Spirit, and they that worship Him must worand also But ye are not in the flesh but in the ship in the Spirit and in truth, for God is Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God is in you. Spirit. We see that the woman, her mind But if any man hath not the Spirit of Christ, full of inherited tradition, thought that God he is not His 3, and further, But if the Spirit must be worshipped either on a mountain, as of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead at Samaria, or in a temple, as at Jerusalem; dwelleth in you, He that raised up Christ from for Samaria in disobedience to the Law had the dead shall quicken also your mortal bodies chosen a site upon the mountain for worship, for the sake of His Spirit which dweileth in while the Jews regarded the temple founded you. Wherefore since He is, and is given, by Solomon as the home of their religion, and and is possessed, and is of God, let His tradu- the prejudices of both confined the all-embraccers take refuge in silence. When they ask, ing and illimitable God to the crest of a hill Through Whom is He? To what end does or the vault of a building. God is invisible, He exist? Of what nature is He? We answer incomprehensible, immeasurable; the Lord that He it is through Whom all things exist, and from Whom are all things, and that He is the Spirit of God, God's gift to the faithful. If our answer displease them, their displeasure must also fall upon the Apostles and the Prophets, who spoke of Him exactly as we have spoken. And furthermore, Father and Son must incur the same displeasure.

30. The reason, I believe, why certain people continue in ignorance or doubt is that they see this third Name, that of the Holy Spirit, often used to signify the Father or the Son. No objection need be raised to this;

8 Qui Patre et Filio auctoribus confitendus est; A comparison with dum et usum et auctorem eius ignorant in § 4 makes this appear the probable translation. It might, of course, mean confess Him on the evidence of Father and Son. 9 Gal. iv. 6.

Eph. iv. 30. 21 Cor. ii. 12. 3 Rom. viii. 9. 4 Ib. II.

said that the time had come when God should be worshipped neither on mountain nor in temple. For Spirit cannot be cabined or confined; it is omnipresent in space and time, and under all conditions present in its fulness. Therefore, He said, they are the true worshippers who shall worship in the Spirit and in truth. And these who are to worship God the Spirit in the Spirit shall have the One for the means, the Other for the object, of their reverence; for Each of the Two stands in a different relation to the worshipper. The words, God is Spirit, do not alter the fact that the Holy Spirit has a Name of His own, and The woman who that He is the Gift to us.

confined God to hill or temple was told that by the Spirit of God, these are the children of God contains all things and is self-contained: God. For ye received not the Spirit of bondage that He, the Invisible and Incomprehensible, must be worshipped by invisible and incomprehensible means. The imparted gift and the object of reverence were clearly shewn when Christ taught that God, being Spirit, must be worshipped in the Spirit, and revealed what freedom and knowledge, what boundless scope for adoration, lay in this worship of God, the Spirit, in the Spirit.

BOOK III.

I. THE words of the Lord, I in the Father, and nor void; not as a piece of Himself cut or the Father in Me1, confuse many minds, and torn off or stretched out, for God is passionless not unnaturally, for the powers of human and bodiless, and only a passible and emreason cannot provide them with any intel-bodied being could so be treated, and, as the ligible meaning. It seems impossible that one Apostle says, in Christ dwelleth all the fulness object should be both within and without another, of the Godhead bodily2. Incomprehensibly, or that (since it is laid down that the Beings ineffably, before time or worlds, He begat of whom we are treating, though They do not the Only-begotten from His own unbegotten dwell apart, retain their separate existence and substance, bestowing through love and power condition) these Beings can reciprocally con- His whole Divinity upon that Birth. Thus tain One Another, so that One should per- He is the Only-begotten, perfect, eternal Son manently envelope, and also be permanently en- of the unbegotten, perfect, eternal Father. veloped by, the Other, whom yet He envelopes. But those properties which He has in conThis is a problem which the wit of man will sequence of the Body which He took, are the never solve, nor will human research ever fruit of His goodwill toward our salvation. find an analogy for this condition of Divine For He, being invisible and bodiless and existence. But what man cannot understand, incomprehensible, as the Son of God, took God can be. I do not mean to say that the fact that this is an assertion made by God renders it at once intelligible to us. We must think for ourselves, and come to know the meaning of the words, I in the Father, and the Father in Me: but this will depend upon our success in grasping the truth that reasoning 4. He, therefore, being the perfect Father's based upon Divine verities can establish its perfect Son. the Only-begotten Offspring of conclusions, even though they seem to contra- the unbegotten God, who has received all dict the laws of the universe. from Him Who possesses all, being God from

upon Him such a measure of matter and of lowliness as was needed to bring Him within the range of our understanding, and perception, and contemplation. It was a condescension to our feebleness rather than a surrender of His own proper attributes.

2. In order to solve as easily as possible God, Spirit from Spirit, Light from Light, this most difficult problem, we must first says boldly, The Father in Me, and I in the master the knowledge which the Divine Father 3. For as the Father is Spirit, so is Scriptures give of Father and of Son, that the Son Spirit; as the Father is God, so is the so we may speak with more precision, as Son God; as the Father is Light, so is the dealing with familiar and accustomed matters. Son Light. Thus those properties which are The eternity of the Father, as we concluded in the Father are the source of those whereafter full discussion in the last Book, tran- with the Son is endowed; that is, He is scends space, and time, and appearance, and wholly Son of Him Who is wholly Father; all the forms of human thought. He is with- not imported from without, for before the Son out and within all things, He contains all and nothing was; not made from nothing, for the can be contained by none, is incapable of Son is from God; not a son partially, for the change by increase or diminution, invisible, fulness of the Godhead is in the Son; not incomprehensible, full, perfect, eternal, not a Son in some respects, but in all; a Son acderiving anything that He has from another, but, if ought be derived from Him, still complete and self-sufficing.

3. He therefore, the Unbegotten, before time was begat a Son from Himself; not from any pre-existent matter, for all things are through the Son; not from nothing, for the Son is from the Father's self; not by way of childbirth, for in God there is neither change

St. John xiv. 11.

cording to the will of Him who had the power, after a manner which He only knows. What is in the Father is in the Son also; what is in the Unbegotten is in the Only-begotten also. The One is from the Other, and they Two are a Unity; not Two made One, yet One in the Other, for that which is in Both is the same. The Father is in the Son, for the Son is from Him; the Son is in the Father, because the