Section 2. Our Lord's Incarnation and the Dignity of His Blessed Mother and of All Saints

 Bishop Bull's controversy had regard to Ante-nicene writers only, and to little more than to the doctrine of the Divine Son's consubstantiality and co-eternity; and, as being controversy, it necessarily narrows and dries up a large and fertile subject. Let us see whether, treated historically, it will not present itself to us in various aspects which may rightly be called developments, as coming into view, one out of another, and following one after another by a natural order of succession.

 2.

 First then, that the language of the Ante-nicene Fathers, on the subject of our Lord's Divinity, may be far more easily accommodated to the Arian hypothesis than can the language of the Post-nicene, is agreed on all hands. Thus St. Justin speaks of the Son as subservient to the Father in the creation of the world, as seen by Abraham, as speaking to Moses from the bush, as appearing to Joshua before the fall of Jericho [n. 11 ], as Minister and Angel, and as numerically distinct from the Father. Clement, again, speaks of the Word [n. 12 ] as the "Instrument of God," "close to the Sole Almighty;" "ministering to the Omnipotent Father's will;" [n. 13 ] "an energy, so to say, or operation of the Father," and "constituted by His will as the cause of all good." [n. 14 ] Again, the Council of Antioch, which condemned Paul of Samosata, says that He "appears to the Patriarchs and converses with them, being testified sometimes to be an Angel, at other times Lord, at others God;" that, while "it is impious to think that the God of all is called an Angel, the son is the Angel of the Father." [n. 15 ] Formal proof, however, is unnecessary; had not the fact been as I have stated it, neither Sandius would have professed to differ from the Post-nicene Fathers, nor would Bull have had to defend the Ante-nicene.

 3.

 One principal change which took place, as time went on, was the following: the Ante-nicene Fathers, as in some of the foregoing extracts, speak of the Angelic visions in the Old Testament as if they were appearances of the Son; but St. Augustine introduced the explicit doctrine, which has been received since his date, that they were simply Angels, through whom the Omnipresent Son manifested Himself. This indeed is the only interpretation which the Ante-nicene statements admitted, as soon as reason began to examine what they did mean. They could not mean that the Eternal God could really be seen by bodily eyes; if anything was seen, that must have been some created glory or other symbol, by which it pleased the Almighty to signify His Presence. What was heard was a sound, as external to His Essence, and as distinct from His Nature, as the thunder or the voice of the trumpet, which pealed along Mount Sinai; what it was had not come under discussion till St. Augustine; both question and answer were alike undeveloped. The earlier Fathers spoke as if there were no medium interposed between the Creator and the creature, and so they seemed to make the Eternal Son the medium; what it really was, they had not determined. St. Augustine ruled, and his ruling has been accepted in later times, that it was not a mere atmospheric phenomenon, or an impression on the senses, but the material form proper to an Angelic presence, or the presence of an Angel in that material garb in which blessed Spirits do ordinarily appear to men. Henceforth the Angel in the bush, the voice which spoke with Abraham, and the man who wrestled with Jacob, were not regarded as the Son of God, but as Angelic ministers, whom He employed, and through whom He signified His presence and His will. Thus the tendency of the controversy with the Arians was to raise our view of our Lord's Mediatorial acts, to impress them on us in their divine rather than their human aspect, and to associate them more intimately with the ineffable glories which surround the Throne of God. The Mediatorship was no longer regarded in itself, in that prominently subordinate place which it had once occupied in the thoughts of Christians, but as an office assumed by One, who though having become man in order to bear it, was still God [n. 16 ]. Works and attributes, which had hitherto been assigned to the Economy or to the Sonship, were now simply assigned to the Manhood. A tendency was also elicited, as the controversy proceeded, to contemplate our Lord more distinctly in His absolute perfections, than in His relation to the First Person of the Blessed Trinity. Thus, whereas the Nicene Creed speaks of the "Father Almighty," and "His Only-begotten Son, our Lord, God from God, Light from Light, Very God from Very God," and of the Holy Ghost, "the Lord and Giver of Life," we are told in the Athanasian of "the Father Eternal, the Son Eternal, and the Holy Ghost Eternal," and that "none is afore or after other, none is greater or less than another."

 4.

 The Apollinarian and Monophysite controversy, which followed in the course of the next century, tended towards a development in the same direction. Since the heresies, which were in question, maintained, at least virtually, that our Lord was not man, it was obvious to insist on the passages of Scripture which describe His created and subservient nature, and this had the immediate effect of interpreting of His manhood texts which had hitherto been understood more commonly of His Divine Sonship. Thus, for instance, "My Father is greater than I," which had been understood even by St. Athanasius of our Lord as God, is applied by later writers more commonly to His humanity; and in this way the doctrine of His subordination to the Eternal Father, which formed so prominent a feature in Ante-nicene theology, comparatively fell into the shade.

 5.

 And coincident with these changes, a most remarkable result is discovered. The Catholic polemic, in view of the Arian and Monophysite errors, being of this character, became the natural introduction to the cultus Sanctorum, for in proportion as texts descriptive of created mediation ceased to belong to our Lord, so was a room opened for created mediators. Nay, as regards the instance of Angelic appearances itself, as St. Augustine explained them, if those appearances were creatures, certainly creatures were worshipped by the Patriarchs, not indeed in themselves [n. 17 ], but as the token of a Presence greater than themselves. When "Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God," he hid his face before a creature; when Jacob said, "I have seen God face to face and my life is preserved," the Son of God was there, but what he saw, what he wrestled with, was an Angel. When "Joshua fell on his face to the earth and did worship before the captain of the Lord's host, and said unto him, What saith my Lord unto his servant?" what was seen and heard was a glorified creature, if St. Augustine is to be followed; and the Son of God was in him.

 And there were plain precedents in the Old Testament for the lawfulness of such adoration. When "the people saw the cloudy pillar stand at the tabernacle-door," "all the people rose up and worshipped, every man in his tent-door." [n. 18 ] When Daniel too saw "a certain man clothed in linen" "there remained no strength in him," for his "comeliness was turned" in him "into corruption." He fell down on his face, and next remained on his knees and hands, and at length "stood trembling," and said "O my Lord, by the vision my sorrows are turned upon me, and I have retained no strength. For how can the servant of this my Lord talk with this my Lord?" [n. 19 ] It might be objected perhaps to this argument, that a worship which was allowable in an elementary system might be unlawful when "grace and truth" had come "through Jesus Christ;" but then it might be retorted surely, that that elementary system had been emphatically opposed to all idolatry, and had been minutely jealous of everything which might approach to favouring it. Nay, the very prominence given in the Pentateuch to the doctrine of a Creator, and the comparative silence concerning the Angelic creation, and the prominence given to the Angelic creation in the later Prophets, taken together, were a token both of that jealousy, and of its cessation, as time went on. Nor can anything be concluded from St. Paul's censure of Angel worship, since the sin which he is denouncing was that of "not holding the Head," and of worshipping creatures instead of the Creator as the source of good. The same explanation avails for passages like those in St. Athanasius and Theodoret, in which the worship of Angels is discountenanced.

 6.

 The Arian controversy had led to another development, which confirmed by anticipation the cultus to which St. Augustine's doctrine pointed. In answer to the objection urged against our Lord's supreme Divinity from texts which speak of His exaltation, St. Athanasius is led to insist forcibly on the benefits which have accrued to man through it. He says that, in truth, not Christ, but that human nature which He had assumed, was raised and glorified in Him. The more plausible was the heretical argument against His Divinity from those texts, the more emphatic is St. Athanasius's exaltation of our regenerate nature by way of explaining them. But intimate indeed must be the connexion between Christ and His brethren, and high their glory, if the language which seemed to belong to the Incarnate Word really belonged to them. Thus the pressure of the controversy elicited and developed a truth, which till then was held indeed by Christians, but less perfectly realized and not publicly recognized. The sanctification, or rather the deification of the nature of man, is one main subject of St. Athanasius's theology. Christ, in rising, raises His Saints with Him to the right hand of power. They become instinct with His life, of one body with His flesh, divine sons, immortal kings, gods. He is in them, because He is in human nature; and He communicates to them that nature, deified by becoming His, that them It may deify. He is in them by the Presence of His Spirit, and in them He is seen. They have those titles of honour by participation, which are properly His. Without misgiving we may apply to them the most sacred language of Psalmists and Prophets. "Thou art a Priest for ever" may be said of St. Polycarp or St. Martin as well as of their Lord. "He hath dispersed abroad, he hath given to the poor," was fulfilled in St. Laurence. "I have found David My servant," first said typically of the King of Israel, and belonging really to Christ, is transferred back again by grace to His Vicegerents upon earth. "I have given thee the nations for thine inheritance" is the prerogative of Popes; "Thou hast given him his heart's desire," the record of a martyr; "thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity," the praise of Virgins.

 7.

 "As Christ," says St. Athanasius, "died, and was exalted as man, so, as man, is He said to take what, as God, He ever had, in order that even this so high a grant of grace might reach to us. For the Word did not suffer loss in receiving a body, that He should seek to receive a grace, but rather He deified that which He put on, nay, gave it graciously to the race of man ... For it is the Father's glory, that man, made and then lost, should be found again; and, when done to death, that he should be made alive, and should become God's temple. For whereas the powers in heaven, both Angels and Archangels, were ever worshipping the Lord, as they are now too worshipping Him in the Name of Jesus, this is our grace and high exaltation, that, even when He became man, the Son of God is worshipped, and the heavenly powers are not startled at seeing all of us, who are of one body with Him, introduced into their realms." [n. 20 ] In this passage it is almost said that the glorified Saints will partake in the homage paid by Angels to Christ, the True Object of all worship; and at least a reason is suggested to us by it for the Angel's shrinking in the Apocalypse from the homage of St. John, the Theologian and Prophet of the Church [n. 21 ]. But St. Athanasius proceeds still more explicitly, "In that the Lord, even when come in human body and called Jesus, was worshipped and believed to be God's Son, and that through Him the Father is known, it is plain, as has been said, that, not the Word, considered as the Word, received this so great grace, but we . For, because of our relationship to His Body, we too have become God's temple, and in consequence have been made God's sons, so that even in us the Lord is now worshipped, and beholders report, as the Apostle says, that 'God is in them of a truth.'" [n. 22 ] It appears to be distinctly stated in this passage, that those who are formally recognized as God's adopted sons in Christ, are fit objects of worship on account of Him who is in them; a doctrine which both interprets and accounts for the invocation of Saints, the cultus of relics, and the religious veneration in which even the living have sometimes been held, who, being saintly, were distinguished by miraculous gifts [n. 23 ]. Worship then is the necessary correlative of glory; and in the same sense in which created natures can share in the Creator's incommunicable glory, are they also allowed a share of that worship which is His property alone.

 8.

 There was one other subject on which the Arian controversy had a more intimate, though not an immediate influence. Its tendency to give a new interpretation to the texts which speak of our Lord's subordination, has already been noticed; such as admitted of it were henceforth explained more prominently of His manhood than of His Mediatorship or His Sonship. But there were other texts which did not admit of this interpretation, and which, without ceasing to belong to Him, might seem more directly applicable to a creature than to the Creator. He indeed was really the "Wisdom in whom the Father eternally delighted," yet it would be but natural, if, under the circumstances of Arian misbelief, theologians looked out for other than the Eternal Son to be the immediate object of such descriptions. And thus the controversy opened a question which it did not settle. It discovered a new sphere, if we may so speak, in the realms of light, to which the Church had not yet assigned its inhabitant. Arianism had admitted that our Lord was both the God of the Evangelical Covenant, and the actual Creator of the Universe; but even this was not enough, because it did not confess Him to be the One, Everlasting, Infinite, Supreme Being, but as one who was made by the Supreme. It was not enough in accordance with that heresy to proclaim Him as having an ineffable origin before all worlds; not enough to place Him high above all creatures as the type of all the works of God's Hands; not enough to make Him the King of all Saints, the Intercessor for man with God, the Object of worship, the Image of the Father; not enough, because it was not all, and between all and anything short of all, there was an infinite interval. The highest of creatures is levelled with the lowest in comparison of the One Creator Himself. That is, the Nicene Council recognized the eventful principle, that, while we believe and profess any being to be made of a created nature, such a being is really no God to us, though honoured by us with whatever high titles and with whatever homage. Arius or Asterius did all but confess that Christ was the Almighty; they said much more than St. Bernard or St. Alphonso have since said of the Blessed Mary; yet they left Him a creature and were found wanting. Thus there was "a wonder in heaven:" a throne was seen, far above all other created powers, mediatorial, intercessory; a title archetypal; a crown bright as the morning star; a glory issuing from the Eternal Throne; robes pure as the heavens; and a sceptre over all; and who was the predestined heir of that Majesty? Since it was not high enough for the Highest, who was that Wisdom, and what was her name, "the Mother of fair love, and fear, and holy hope," "exalted like a palm-tree in Engaddi, and a rose-plant in Jericho," "created from the beginning before the world" in God's everlasting counsels, and "in Jerusalem her power"? The vision is found in the Apocalypse, a Woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars. The votaries of Mary do not exceed the true faith, unless the blasphemers of her Son came up to it. The Church of Rome is not idolatrous, unless Arianism is orthodoxy.

 9.

 I am not stating conclusions which were drawn out in the controversy, but of premisses which were laid, broad and deep. It was then shown, it was then determined, that to exalt a creature was no recognition of its divinity. Nor am I speaking of the Semi-Arians, who, holding our Lord's derivation from the Substance of the Father, yet denying His Consubstantiality, really did lie open to the charge of maintaining two Gods, and present no parallel to the defenders of the prerogatives of St. Mary. But I speak of the Arians who taught that the Son's Substance was created; and concerning them it is true that St. Athanasius's condemnation of their theology is a vindication of the Medieval. Yet it is not wonderful, considering how Socinians, Sabellians, Nestorians, and the like, abound in these days, without their even knowing it themselves, if those who never rise higher in their notions of our Lord's Divinity, than to consider Him a man singularly inhabited by a Divine Presence, that is, a Catholic Saint,—if such men should mistake the honour paid by the Church to the human Mother for that very honour which, and which alone, is worthy of her Eternal Son.

 10.

 I have said that there was in the first ages no public and ecclesiastical recognition of the place which St. Mary holds in the Economy of grace; this was reserved for the fifth century, as the definition of our Lord's proper Divinity had been the work of the fourth. There was a controversy contemporary with those already mentioned, I mean the Nestorian, which brought out the complement of the development, to which they had been subservient; and which, if I may so speak, supplied the subject of that august proposition of which Arianism had provided the predicate. In order to do honour to Christ, in order to defend the true doctrine of the Incarnation, in order to secure a right faith in the manhood of the Eternal Son, the Council of Ephesus determined the Blessed Virgin to be the Mother of God. Thus all heresies of that day, though opposite to each other, tended in a most wonderful way to her exaltation; and the School of Antioch, the fountain of primitive rationalism, led the Church to determine first the conceivable greatness of a creature, and then the incommunicable dignity of the Blessed Virgin.

 11.

 But the spontaneous or traditional feeling of Christians had in great measure anticipated the formal ecclesiastical decision. Thus the title Theotocos, or Mother of God, was familiar to Christians from primitive times, and had been used, among other writers, by Origen, Eusebius, St. Alexander, St. Athanasius, St. Ambrose, St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. Gregory Nyssen, and St. Nilus. She had been called Ever-Virgin by others, as by St. Epiphanius, St. Jerome, and Didymus. By others, "the Mother of all living," as being the antitype of Eve; for, as St. Epiphanius observes, "in truth," not in shadow, "from Mary was Life itself brought into the world, that Mary might bear things living, and might become Mother of living things." [n. 24 ] St. Augustine says that all have sinned "except the Holy Virgin Mary, concerning whom, for the honour of the Lord, I wish no question to be raised at all, when we are treating of sins." "She was alone and wrought the world's salvation," says St. Ambrose, alluding to her conception of the Redeemer. She is signified by the Pillar of the cloud which guided the Israelites, according to the same Father; and she had "so great grace, as not only to have virginity herself, but to impart it to those to whom she came;"—"the Rod out of the stem of Jesse," says St. Jerome, and "the Eastern gate through which the High Priest alone goes in and out, yet is ever shut;"—the wise woman, says St. Nilus, who "hath clad all believers, from the fleece of the Lamb born of her, with the clothing of incorruption, and delivered them from their spiritual nakedness;"—"the Mother of Life, of beauty, of majesty, the Morning Star," according to Antiochus;—"the mystical new heavens," "the heavens carrying the Divinity," "the fruitful vine by whom we are translated from death unto life," according to St. Ephraim;—"the manna which is delicate, bright, sweet, and virgin, which, as though coming from heaven, has poured down on all the people of the Churches a food pleasanter than honey," according to St. Maximus.

 St. Proclus calls her "the unsullied shell which contains the pearl of price," "the sacred shrine of sinlessness," "the golden altar of holocaust," "the holy oil of anointing," "the costly alabaster box of spikenard," "the ark gilt within and without," "the heifer whose ashes, that is, the Lord's Body taken from her, cleanses those who are defiled by the pollution of sin," "the fair bride of the Canticles," "the stay ( [ st e rigma ] ) of believers," "the Church's diadem," "the expression of orthodoxy." These are oratorical expressions; but we use oratory on great subjects, not on small. Elsewhere he calls her "God's only bridge to man;" and elsewhere he breaks forth, "Run through all creation in your thoughts, and see if there be equal to, or greater than, the Holy Virgin Mother of God."

 12.

 Theodotus too, one of the Fathers of Ephesus, or whoever it is whose Homilies are given to St. Amphilochius:—"As debtors and God's well-affected servants, let us make confession to God the Word and to His Mother, of the gift of words, as far as we are able ... Hail, Mother, clad in light, of the light which sets not; hail all-undefiled mother of holiness; hail most pellucid fountain of the life-giving stream!" After speaking of the Incarnation, he continues, "Such paradoxes doth the Divine Virgin Mother ever bring to us in her holy irradiations, for with her is the Fount of Life, and breasts of the spiritual and guileless milk; from which to suck the sweetness, we have even now earnestly run to her, not as in forgetfulness of what has gone before, but in desire of what is to come."

 To St. Fulgentius is ascribed the following: "Mary became the window of heaven, for God through her poured the True Light upon the world; the heavenly ladder, for through her did God descend upon earth … Come, ye virgins, to a Virgin, come ye who conceive to one who did conceive, ye who bear to one who bore, mothers to a Mother, ye who give suck to one who suckled, young women to the Young." Lastly, "Thou hast found grace," says St. Peter Chrysologus, "how much? he had said above, Full. And full indeed, which with full shower might pour upon and into the whole creation." [n. 25 ]

 Such was the state of sentiment on the subject of the Blessed Virgin, which the Arian, Nestorian, and Monophysite heresies found in the Church; and on which the doctrinal decisions consequent upon them impressed a form and a consistency which has been handed on in the East and West to this day.