CHAPTER I CREATION AND THE FALL

(1) In our former book [1] we dealt fully enough with a few of the chief points about the heathenworship of idols, and how those false fears originally arose. We also, by God's grace, brieflyindicated that the Word of the Father is Himself divine, that all things that are owe their being toHis will and power, and that it is through Him that the Father gives order to creation, by Himthat all things are moved, and through Him that they receive their being. Now, Macarius, truelover of Christ, we must take a step further in the faith of our holy religion, and consider also theWord's becoming Man and His divine Appearing in our midst. That mystery the Jews traduce,the Greeks deride, but we adore; and your own love and devotion to the Word also will be thegreater, because in His Manhood He seems so little worth. For it is a fact that the moreunbelievers pour scorn on Him, so much the more does He make His Godhead evident. Thethings which they, as men, rule out as impossible, He plainly shows to be possible; that whichthey deride as unfitting, His goodness makes most fit; and things which these wiseacres laugh atas "human" He by His inherent might declares divine. Thus by what seems His utter poverty andweakness on the cross He overturns the pomp and parade of idols, and quietly and hiddenlywins over the mockers and unbelievers to recognize Him as God.

Now in dealing with these matters it is necessary first to recall what has already been said. Youmust understand why it is that the Word of the Father, so great and so high, has been mademanifest in bodily form. He has not assumed a body as proper to His own nature, far from it, foras the Word He is without body. He has been manifested in a human body for this reason only,out of the love and goodness of His Father, for the salvation of us men. We will begin, then, withthe creation of the world and with God its Maker, for the first fact that you must grasp is this:the renewal of creation has been wrought by the Self-same Word Who made it in thebeginning. There' is thus no inconsistency between creation and salvation for the One Fatherhas employed the same Agent for both works, effecting the salvation of the world through thesame Word Who made it in the beginning.

(2) In regard to the making of the universe and the creation of all things there have been variousopinions, and each person has propounded the theory that suited his own taste. For instance,some say that all things are self-originated and, so to speak, haphazard. The Epicureans areamong these; they deny that there is any Mind behind the universe at all. This view is contrary toall the facts of experience, their own existence included. For if all things had come into being inthis automatic fashion, instead of being the outcome of Mind, though they existed, they would allbe uniform and without distinction. In the universe everything would be sun or moon or whateverit was, and in the human body the whole would be hand or eye or foot. But in point of fact thesun and the moon and the earth are all different things, and even within the human body there aredifferent members, such as foot and hand and head. This distinctness of things argues not aspontaneous generation but a prevenient Cause; and from that Cause we can apprehend God,the Designer and Maker of all.

Others take the view expressed by Plato, that giant among the Greeks. He said that God hadmade all things out of pre-existent and uncreated matter, just as the carpenter makes things onlyout of wood that already exists. But those who hold this view do not realize that to deny thatGod is Himself the Cause of matter is to impute limitation to Him, just as it is undoubtedly alimitation on the part of the carpenter that he can make nothing unless he has the wood. Howcould God be called Maker and Artificer if His ability to make depended on some other cause,namely on matter itself? If He only worked up existing matter and did not Himself bring matterinto being, He would be not the Creator but only a craftsman.

Then, again, there is the theory of the Gnostics, who have invented for themselves an Artificer ofall things other than the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. These simply shut their eyes to theobvious meaning of Scripture. For instance, the Lord, having reminded the Jews of the statementin Genesis,

"He Who created them in the beginning made them male and female . . . ," and having shown that for that reason a man should leave his parents and cleave to his wife, goes on to say with reference to the Creator, "What therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder." [2]

How can they get a creation independent of the Father out of that? And, again, St. John,speaking all inclusively, says,

"All things became by Him and without Him came nothing into being."[3]

How then could the Artificer be someone different, other than the Father of Christ?

(3) Such are the notions which men put forward. But the impiety of their foolish talk is plainlydeclared by the divine teaching of the Christian faith. From it we know that, because there isMind behind the universe, it did not originate itself; because God is infinite, not finite, it was notmade from pre-existent matter, but out of nothing and out of non-existence absolute and utterGod brought it into being through the Word. He says as much in Genesis:

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth;[4]

and again through that most helpful book The Shepherd,

"Believe thou first and foremost that there is One God Who created and arranged all things and brought them out of non-existence into being."[5]

Paul also indicates the same thing when he says,

"By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God, so that the things which we see now did not come into being out of things which had previously appeared."[6]

For God is good--or rather, of all goodness He is Fountainhead, and it is impossible for onewho is good to be mean or grudging about anything. Grudging existence to none therefore, Hemade all things out of nothing through His own Word, our Lord Jesus Christ and of all these Hisearthly creatures He reserved especial mercy for the race of men. Upon them, therefore, uponmen who, as animals, were essentially impermanent, He bestowed a grace which other creatureslacked--namely the impress of His own Image, a share in the reasonable being of the very WordHimself, so that, reflecting Him and themselves becoming reasonable and expressing the Mind ofGod even as He does, though in limited degree they might continue for ever in the blessed andonly true life of the saints in paradise. But since the will of man could turn either way, Godsecured this grace that He had given by making it conditional from the first upon twothings--namely, a law and a place. He set them in His own paradise, and laid upon them a singleprohibition. If they guarded the grace and retained the loveliness of their original innocence, thenthe life of paradise should be theirs, without sorrow, pain or care, and after it the assurance ofimmortality in heaven. But if they went astray and became vile, throwing away their birthright ofbeauty, then they would come under the natural law of death and live no longer in paradise, but,dying outside of it, continue in death and in corruption. This is what Holy Scripture tells us,proclaiming the command of God,

"Of every tree that is in the garden thou shalt surely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil ye shall not eat, but in the day that ye do eat, ye shall surely die."[7]

"Ye shall surely die"--not just die only, but remain in the state of death and of corruption.

(4) You may be wondering why we are discussing the origin of men when we set out to talkabout the Word's becoming Man. The former subject is relevant to the latter for this reason: itwas our sorry case that caused the Word to come down, our transgression that called out Hislove for us, so that He made haste to help us and to appear among us. It is we who were thecause of His taking human form, and for our salvation that in His great love He was both bornand manifested in a human body. For God had made man thus (that is, as an embodied spirit),and had willed that he should remain in incorruption. But men, having turned from thecontemplation of God to evil of their own devising, had come inevitably under the law of death.Instead of remaining in the state in which God had created them, they were in process ofbecoming corrupted entirely, and death had them completely under its dominion. For thetransgression of the commandment was making them turn back again according to their nature;and as they had at the beginning come into being out of non-existence, so were they now on theway to returning, through corruption, to non-existence again. The presence and love of theWord had called them into being; inevitably, therefore when they lost the knowledge of God,they lost existence with it; for it is God alone Who exists, evil is non-being, the negation andantithesis of good. By nature, of course, man is mortal, since he was made from nothing; but hebears also the Likeness of Him Who is, and if he preserves that Likeness through constantcontemplation, then his nature is deprived of its power and he remains incorrupt. So is it affirmedin Wisdom:

"The keeping of His laws is the assurance of incorruption."[8]

And being incorrupt, he would be henceforth as God, as Holy Scripture says,

"I have said, Ye are gods and sons of the Highest all of you: but ye die as men and fall as one of the princes."[9]

(5) This, then, was the plight of men. God had not only made them out of nothing, but had alsograciously bestowed on them His own life by the grace of the Word. Then, turning from eternalthings to things corruptible, by counsel of the devil, they had become the cause of their owncorruption in death; for, as I said before, though they were by nature subject to corruption, thegrace of their union with the Word made them capable of escaping from the natural law,provided that they retained the beauty of innocence with which they were created. That is tosay, the presence of the Word with them shielded them even from natural corruption, as alsoWisdom says:

"God created man for incorruption and as an image of His own eternity; but by envy of the devil death entered into the world."[10]

When this happened, men began to die, and corruption ran riot among them and held sway overthem to an even more than natural degree, because it was the penalty of which God hadforewarned them for transgressing the commandment. Indeed, they had in their sinningsurpassed all limits; for, having invented wickedness in the beginning and so involved themselvesin death and corruption, they had gone on gradually from bad to worse, not stopping at any onekind of evil, but continually, as with insatiable appetite, devising new kinds of sins. Adulteriesand thefts were everywhere, murder and rapine filled the earth, law was disregarded incorruption and injustice, all kinds of iniquities were perpetrated by all, both singly and incommon. Cities were warring with cities, nations were rising against nations, and the whole earthwas rent with factions and battles, while each strove to outdo the other in wickedness. Evencrimes contrary to nature were not unknown, but as the martyr-apostle of Christ says:

"Their women changed the natural use into that which is against nature; and the men also, leaving the natural use of the woman, flamed out in lust towards each other, perpetrating shameless acts with their own sex, and receiving in their own persons the due recompense of their pervertedness."[11]

CHAPTER II THE DIVINE DILEMMA AND ITS SOLUTION IN THE INCARNATION

(6) We saw in the last chapter that, because death and corruption were gaining ever firmer holdon them, the human race was in process of destruction. Man, who was created in God's imageand in his possession of reason reflected the very Word Himself, was disappearing, and thework of God was being undone. The law of death, which followed from the Transgression,prevailed upon us, and from it there was no escape. The thing that was happening was in truthboth monstrous and unfitting. It would, of course, have been unthinkable that God should goback upon His word and that man, having transgressed, should not die; but it was equallymonstrous that beings which once had shared the nature of the Word should perish and turnback again into non-existence through corruption. It was unworthy of the goodness of God thatcreatures made by Him should be brought to nothing through the deceit wrought upon man bythe devil; and it was supremely unfitting that the work of God in mankind should is appear, eitherthrough their own negligence or through the deceit of evil spirits. As, then, the creatures whomHe had created reasonable, like the Word, were in fact perishing, and such noble works wereon the road to ruin, what then was God, being Good, to do? Was He to let corruption anddeath have their way with them? In that case, what was the use of having made them in thebeginning? Surely it would have been better never to have been created at all than, having beencreated, to be neglected and perish; and, besides that, such indifference to the ruin of His ownwork before His very eyes would argue not goodness in God but limitation, and that far morethan if He had never created men at all. It was impossible, therefore, that God should leave manto be carried off by corruption, because it would be unfitting and unworthy of Himself. (7) Yet, true though this is, it is not the whole matter. As we have already noted, it wasunthinkable that God, the Father of Truth, should go back upon His word regarding death inorder to ensure our continued existence. He could not falsify Himself; what, then, was God todo? Was He to demand repentance from men for their transgression? You might say that thatwas worthy of God, and argue further that, as through the Transgression they became subject tocorruption, so through repentance they might return to incorruption again. But repentance wouldnot guard the Divine consistency, for, if death did not hold dominion over men, God would stillremain untrue. Nor does repentance recall men from what is according to their nature; all that itdoes is to make them cease from sinning. Had it been a case of a trespass only, and not of asubsequent corruption, repentance would have been well enough; but when once transgressionhad begun men came under the power of the corruption proper to their nature and were bereftof the grace which belonged to them as creatures in the Image of God. No, repentance couldnot meet the case. What--or rather Who was it that was needed for such grace and such recallas we required? Who, save the Word of God Himself, Who also in the beginning had made allthings out of nothing? His part it was, and His alone, both to bring again the corruptible toincorruption and to maintain for the Father His consistency of character with all. For He alone,being Word of the Father and above all, was in consequence both able to recreate all, andworthy to suffer on behalf of all and to be an ambassador for all with the Father. (8) For this purpose, then, the incorporeal and incorruptible and immaterial Word of Godentered our world. In one sense, indeed, He was not far from it before, for no part of creationhad ever been without Him Who, while ever abiding in union with the Father, yet fills all thingsthat are. But now He entered the world in a new way, stooping to our level in His love andSelf-revealing to us. He saw the reasonable race, the race of men that, like Himself, expressedthe Father's Mind, wasting out of existence, and death reigning over all in corruption. He sawthat corruption held us all the closer, because it was the penalty for the Transgression; He saw,too, how unthinkable it would be for the law to be repealed before it was fulfilled. He saw howunseemly it was that the very things of which He Himself was the Artificer should bedisappearing. He saw how the surpassing wickedness of men was mounting up against them; Hesaw also their universal liability to death. All this He saw and, pitying our race, moved withcompassion for our limitation, unable to endure that death should have the mastery, rather thanthat His creatures should perish and the work of His Father for us men come to nought, He tookto Himself a body, a human body even as our own. Nor did He will merely to becomeembodied or merely to appear; had that been so, He could have revealed His divine majesty insome other and better way. No, He took our body, and not only so, but He took it directly froma spotless, stainless virgin, without the agency of human father--a pure body, untainted byintercourse with man. He, the Mighty One, the Artificer of all, Himself prepared this body in thevirgin as a temple for Himself, and took it for His very own, as the instrument through which Hewas known and in which He dwelt. Thus, taking a body like our own, because all our bodieswere liable to the corruption of death, He surrendered His body to death instead of all, andoffered it to the Father. This He did out of sheer love for us, so that in His death all might die,and the law of death thereby be abolished because, having fulfilled in His body that for which itwas appointed, it was thereafter voided of its power for men. This He did that He might turnagain to incorruption men who had turned back to corruption, and make them alive throughdeath by the appropriation of His body and by the grace of His resurrection. Thus He wouldmake death to disappear from them as utterly as straw from fire. (9) The Word perceived that corruption could not be got rid of otherwise than through death;yet He Himself, as the Word, being immortal and the Father's Son, was such as could not die.For this reason, therefore, He assumed a body capable of death, in order that it, throughbelonging to the Word Who is above all, might become in dying a sufficient exchange for all,and, itself remaining incorruptible through His indwelling, might thereafter put an end tocorruption for all others as well, by the grace of the resurrection. It was by surrendering to deaththe body which He had taken, as an offering and sacrifice free from every stain, that Heforthwith abolished death for His human brethren by the offering of the equivalent. For naturally,since the Word of God was above all, when He offered His own temple and bodily instrumentas a substitute for the life of all, He fulfilled in death all that was required. Naturally also, throughthis union of the immortal Son of God with our human nature, all men were clothed withincorruption in the promise of the resurrection. For the solidarity of mankind is such that, byvirtue of the Word's indwelling in a single human body, the corruption which goes with death haslost its power over all. You know how it is when some great king enters a large city and dwellsin one of its houses; because of his dwelling in that single house, the whole city is honored, andenemies and robbers cease to molest it. Even so is it with the King of all; He has come into ourcountry and dwelt in one body amidst the many, and in consequence the designs of the enemyagainst mankind have been foiled and the corruption of death, which formerly held them in itspower, has simply ceased to be. For the human race would have perished utterly had not theLord and Savior of all the Son of God, come among us to put an end to death. (10) This great work was, indeed, supremely worthy of the goodness of God. A king who hasfounded a city, so far from neglecting it when through the carelessness of the inhabitants it isattacked by robbers, avenges it and saves it from destruction, having regard rather to his ownhonor than to the people's neglect. Much more, then, the Word of the All-good Father was notunmindful of the human race that He had called to be; but rather, by the offering of His ownbody He abolished the death which they had incurred, and corrected their neglect by His ownteaching. Thus by His own power He restored the whole nature of man. The Savior's owninspired disciples assure us of this. We read in one place:

" For the love of Christ constraineth us, because we thus judge that, if One died on behalf of all, then all died, and He died for all that we should no longer live unto ourselves, but unto Him who died and rose again from the dead, even our Lord Jesus Christ."[1]

And again another says:

"But we behold Him Who hath been made a little lower than the angels, even Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that by the grace of God He should taste of death on behalf of every man."

The same writer goes on to point out why it was necessary for God the Word and none otherto become Man:

"For it became Him, for Whom are all things and through Whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Author of their salvation perfect through suffering.[2]

He means that the rescue of mankind from corruption was the proper part only of Him Whomade them in the beginning. He points out also that the Word assumed a human body, expresslyin order that He might offer it in sacrifice for other like bodies:

"Since then the children are sharers in flesh and blood, He also Himself assumed the same, in order that through death He might bring to nought Him that hath the power of death, that is to say, the Devil, and might rescue those who all their lives were enslaved by the fear of death."[3]

For by the sacrifice of His own body He did two things: He put an end to the law of death whichbarred our way; and He made a new beginning of life for us, by giving us the hope ofresurrection. By man death has gained its power over men; by the Word made Man death hasbeen destroyed and life raised up anew. That is what Paul says, that true servant of Christ:

"For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. Just as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive,"[4]

and so forth. Now, therefore, when we die we no longer do so as men condemned to death, butas those who are even now in process of rising we await the general resurrection of all, "whichin its own times He shall show," CHAPTER III THE DIVINE DILEMMA AND ITS SOLUTION IN THE INCARNATION-- continued

(11) When God the Almighty was making mankind through His own Word, He perceived thatthey, owing to the limitation of their nature, could not of themselves have any knowledge of theirArtificer, the Incorporeal and Uncreated. He took pity on them, therefore, and did not leavethem destitute of the knowledge of Himself, lest their very existence should prove purposeless.For of what use is existence to the creature if it cannot know its Maker? How could men bereasonable beings if they had no knowledge of the Word and Reason of the Father, throughWhom they had received their being? They would be no better than the beasts, had they noknowledge save of earthly things; and why should God have made them at all, if He had notintended them to know Him? But, in fact, the good God has given them a share in His ownImage, that is, in our Lord Jesus Christ, and has made even themselves after the same Imageand Likeness. Why? Simply in order that through this gift of Godlikeness in themselves they maybe able to perceive the Image Absolute, that is the Word Himself, and through Him toapprehend the Father; which knowledge of their Maker is for men the only really happy andblessed life.

But, as we have already seen, men, foolish as they are, thought little of the grace they hadreceived, and turned away from God. They defiled their own soul so completely that they notonly lost their apprehension of God, but invented for themselves other gods of various kinds.They fashioned idols for themselves in place of the truth and reverenced things that are not,rather than God Who is, as St. Paul says, "worshipping the creature rather than the Creator."[1]Moreover, and much worse, they transferred the honor which is due to God to material objectssuch as wood and stone, and also to man; and further even than that they went, as we said inour former book. Indeed, so impious were they that they worshipped evil spirits as gods insatisfaction of their lusts. They sacrificed brute beasts and immolated men, as the just due ofthese deities, thereby bringing themselves more and more under their insane control. Magic artsalso were taught among them, oracles in sundry places led men astray, and the cause ofeverything in human life was traced to the stars as though nothing existed but that which could beseen. In a word, impiety and lawlessness were everywhere, and neither God nor His Word wasknown. Yet He had not hidden Himself from the sight of men nor given the knowledge ofHimself in one way only; but rather He had unfolded it in many forms and by many ways.

(12) God knew the limitation of mankind, you see; and though the grace of being made in HisImage was sufficient to give them knowledge of the Word and through Him of the Father, as asafeguard against their neglect of this grace, He provided the works of creation also as means bywhich the Maker might be known. Nor was this all. Man's neglect of the indwelling grace tendsever to increase; and against this further frailty also God made provision by giving them a law,and by sending prophets, men whom they knew. Thus, if they were tardy in looking up toheaven, they might still gain knowledge of their Maker from those close at hand; for men canlearn directly about higher things from other men. Three ways thus lay open to them, by whichthey might obtain the knowledge of God. They could look up into the immensity of heaven, andby pondering the harmony of creation come to know its Ruler, the Word of the Father, Whoseall-ruling providence makes known the Father to all. Or, if this was beyond them, they couldconverse with holy men, and through them learn to know God, the Artificer of all things, theFather of Christ, and to recognize the worship of idols as the negation of the truth and full of allimpiety. Or else, in the third place, they could cease from lukewarmness and lead a good lifemerely by knowing the law. For the law was not given only for the Jews, nor was it solely fortheir sake that God sent the prophets, though it was to the Jews that they were sent and by theJews that they were persecuted. The law and the prophets were a sacred school of theknowledge of God and the conduct of the spiritual life for the whole world.

So great, indeed, were the goodness and the love of God. Yet men, bowed down by thepleasures of the moment and by the frauds and illusions of the evil spirits, did not lift up theirheads towards the truth. So burdened were they with their wickednesses that they seemedrather to be brute beasts than reasonable men, reflecting the very Likeness of the Word.

(13) What was God to do in face of this dehumanising of mankind, this universal hiding of theknowledge of Himself by the wiles of evil spirits? Was He to keep silence before so great awrong and let men go on being thus deceived and kept in ignorance of Himself? If so, what wasthe use of having made them in His own Image originally? It would surely have been better forthem always to have been brutes, rather than to revert to that condition when once they hadshared the nature of the Word. Again, things being as they were, what was the use of their everhaving had the knowledge of God? Surely it would have been better for God never to havebestowed it, than that men should subsequently be found unworthy to receive it. Similarly, whatpossible profit could it be to God Himself, Who made men, if when made they did not worshipHim, but regarded others as their makers? This would be tantamount to His having made themfor others and not for Himself. Even an earthly king, though he is only a man, does not allowlands that he has colonized to pass into other hands or to desert to other rulers, but sends lettersand friends and even visits them himself to recall them to their allegiance, rather than allow Hiswork to be undone. How much more, then, will God be patient and painstaking with Hiscreatures, that they be not led astray from Him to the service of those that are not, and that allthe more because such error means for them sheer ruin, and because it is not right that thosewho had once shared His Image should be destroyed.

What, then, was God to do? What else could He possibly do, being God, but renew His Imagein mankind, so that through it men might once more come to know Him? And how could this bedone save by the coming of the very Image Himself, our Savior Jesus Christ? Men could nothave done it, for they are only made after the Image; nor could angels have done it, for they arenot the images of God. The Word of God came in His own Person, because it was He alone,the Image of the Father Who could recreate man made after the Image.

In order to effect this re-creation, however, He had first to do away with death and corruption.Therefore He assumed a human body, in order that in it death might once for all be destroyed,and that men might be renewed according to the Image. The Image of the Father only wassufficient for this need. Here is an illustration to prove it.

(14) You know what happens when a portrait that has been painted on a panel becomesobliterated through external stains. ,The artist does not throw away the panel, but the subject ofthe portrait has to come and sit for it again, and then the likeness is re-drawn on the samematerial. Even so was it with the All-holy Son of God. He, the Image of the Father, came anddwelt in our midst, in order that He might renew mankind made after Himself, and seek out Hislost sheep, even as He says in the Gospel:

"I came to seek and to save that which was lost.[2]

This also explains His saying to the Jews: "Except a man be born anew . . ."[3] a He was notreferring to a man's natural birth from his mother, as they thought, but to the re-birth andre-creation of the soul in the Image of God.

Nor was this the only thing which only the Word could do. When the madness of idolatry andirreligion filled the world and the knowledge of God was hidden, whose part was it to teach theworld about the Father? Man's, would you say? But men cannot run everywhere over theworld, nor would their words carry sufficient weight if they did, nor would they be, unaided, amatch for the evil spirits. Moreover, since even the best of men were confused and blinded byevil, how could they convert the souls and minds of others? You cannot put straight in otherswhat is warped in yourself. Perhaps you will say, then, that creation was enough to teach menabout the Father. But if that had been so, such great evils would never have occurred. Creationwas there all the time, but it did not prevent men from wallowing in error. Once more, then, itwas the Word of God, Who sees all that is in man and moves all things in creation, Who alonecould meet the needs of the situation. It was His part and His alone, Whose ordering of theuniverse reveals the Father, to renew the same teaching. But how was He to do it? By the samemeans as before, perhaps you will say, that is, through the works of creation. But this wasproven insufficient. Men had neglected to consider the heavens before, and now they werelooking in the opposite direction. Wherefore, in all naturalness and fitness. desiring to do good tomen, as Man He dwells, taking to Himself a body like the rest; and through His actions done inthat body, as it were on their own level, He teaches those who would not learn by other meansto know Himself, the Word of God, and through Him the Father.

(15) He deals with them as a good teacher with his pupils, coming down to their level and usingsimple means. St. Paul says as much:

"Because in the wisdom of God the world in its wisdom knew not God, God thought fit through the simplicity of the News proclaimed to save those who believe."[4]

Men had turned from the contemplation of God above, and were looking for Him in theopposite direction, down among created things and things of sense. The Savior of us all, theWord of God, in His great love took to Himself a body and moved as Man among men, meetingtheir senses, so to speak, half way. He became Himself an object for the senses, so that thosewho were seeking God in sensible things might apprehend the Father through the works whichHe, the Word of God, did in the body. Human and human minded as men were, therefore, towhichever side they looked in the sensible world they found themselves taught the truth. Werethey awe-stricken by creation? They beheld it confessing Christ as Lord. Did their minds tend toregard men as Gods? The uniqueness of the Savior's works marked Him, alone of men, as Sonof God. Were they drawn to evil spirits? They saw them driven out by the Lord and learned thatthe Word of God alone was God and that the evil spirits were not gods at all. Were theyinclined to hero-worship and the cult of the dead? Then the fact that the Savior had risen fromthe dead showed them how false these other deities were, and that the Word of the Father is theone true Lord, the Lord even of death. For this reason was He both born and manifested asMan, for this He died and rose, in order that, eclipsing by His works all other human deeds, Hemight recall men from all the paths of error to know the Father. As He says Himself,

"I came to seek and to save that which was lost."[5]

(16) When, then, the minds of men had fallen finally to the level of sensible things, the Wordsubmitted to appear in a body, in order that He, as Man, might center their senses on Himself,and convince them through His human acts that He Himself is not man only but also God, theWord and Wisdom of the true God. This is what Paul wants to tell us when he says:

"That ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong to apprehend with all the saints what is the length and breadth and height and depth, and to know the love of God that surpasses knowledge, so that ye may be filled unto all the fullness of God."[6]

The Self-revealing of the Word is in every dimension--above, in creation; below, in theIncarnation; in the depth, in Hades; in the breadth, throughout the world. All things have beenfilled with the knowledge of God.

For this reason He did not offer the sacrifice on behalf of all immediately He came, for if He hadsurrendered His body to death and then raised it again at once He would have ceased to be anobject of our senses. Instead of that, He stayed in His body and let Himself be seen in it, doingacts and giving signs which showed Him to be not only man, but also God the Word. Therewere thus two things which the Savior did for us by becoming Man. He banished death from usand made us anew; and, invisible and imperceptible as in Himself He is, He became visiblethrough His works and revealed Himself as the Word of the Father, the Ruler and King of thewhole creation.

(17) There is a paradox in this last statement which we must now examine. The Word was nothedged in by His body, nor did His presence in the body prevent His being present elsewhere aswell. When He moved His body He did not cease also to direct the universe by His Mind andmight. No. The marvelous truth is, that being the Word, so far from being Himself contained byanything, He actually contained all things Himself. In creation He is present everywhere, yet isdistinct in being from it; ordering, directing, giving life to all, containing all, yet is He Himself theUncontained, existing solely in His Father. As with the whole, so also is it with the part. Existingin a human body, to which He Himself gives life, He is still Source of life to all the universe,present in every part of it, yet outside the whole; and He is revealed both through the works ofHis body and through His activity in the world. It is, indeed, the function of soul to behold thingsthat are outside the body, but it cannot energize or move them. A man cannot transport thingsfrom one place to another, for instance, merely by thinking about them; nor can you or I movethe sun and the stars just by sitting at home and looking at them. With the Word of God in Hishuman nature, however, it was otherwise. His body was for Him not a limitation, but aninstrument, so that He was both in it and in all things, and outside all things, resting in the Fatheralone. At one and the same time--this is the wonder--as Man He was living a human life, and asWord He was sustaining the life of the universe, and as Son He was in constant union with theFather. Not even His birth from a virgin, therefore, changed Him in any way, nor was He defiledby being in the body. Rather, He sanctified the body by being in it. For His being in everythingdoes not mean that He shares the nature of everything, only that He gives all things their beingand sustains them in it. Just as the sun is not defiled by the contact of its rays with earthlyobjects, but rather enlightens and purifies them, so He Who made the sun is not defiled by beingmade known in a body, but rather the body is cleansed and quickened by His indwelling,

"Who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth."[7]

(18) You must understand, therefore, that when writers on this sacred theme speak of Him aseating and drinking and being born, they mean that the body, as a body, was born and sustainedwith the food proper to its nature; while God the Word, Who was united with it, was at thesame time ordering the universe and revealing Himself through His bodily acts as not man onlybut God. Those acts are rightly said to be His acts, because the body which did them did indeedbelong to Him and none other; moreover, it was right that they should be thus attributed to Himas Man, in order to show that His body was a real one and not merely an appearance. Fromsuch ordinary acts as being born and taking food, He was recognized as being actually presentin the body; but by the extraordinary acts which He did through the body He proved Himself tobe the Son of God. That is the meaning of His words to the unbelieving Jews:

"If I do not the works of My Father, believe Me not; but if I do, even if ye believe not Me, believe My works, that ye may know that the Father is in Me and I in the Father."(8)

Invisible in Himself, He is known from the works of creation; so also, when His Godhead isveiled in human nature, His bodily acts still declare Him to be not man only, but the Power andWord of God. To speak authoritatively to evil spirits, for instance, and to drive them out, is nothuman but divine; and who could see-Him curing all the diseases to which mankind is prone, andstill deem Him mere man and not also God? He cleansed lepers, He made the lame to walk, Heopened the ears of the deaf and the eyes of the blind, there was no sickness or weaknessthat-He did not drive away. Even the most casual observer can see that these were acts of God.The healing of the man born blind, for instance, who but the Father and Artificer of man, theController of his whole being, could thus have restored the faculty denied at birth? He Who didthus must surely be Himself the Lord of birth. This is proved also at the outset of His becomingMan. He formed His own body from the virgin; and that is no small proof of His Godhead, sinceHe Who made that was the Maker of all else. And would not anyone infer from the fact of thatbody being begotten of a virgin only, without human father, that He Who appeared in it was alsothe Maker and Lord of all beside?

Again, consider the miracle at Cana. Would not anyone who saw the substance of watertransmuted into wine understand that He Who did it was the Lord and Maker of the water thatHe changed? It was for the same reason that He walked on the sea as on dry land--to prove tothe onlookers that He had mastery over all. And the feeding of the multitude, when He madelittle into much, so that from five loaves five thousand mouths were filled--did not that prove Himnone other than the very Lord Whose Mind is over all?

CHAPTER IV THE DEATH OF CHRIST

(19) All these things the Savior thought fit to do, so that, recognizing His bodily acts as works ofGod, men who were blind to His presence in creation might regain knowledge of the Father.For, as I said before, who that saw His authority over evil spirits and their response to it coulddoubt that He was, indeed, the Son, the Wisdom and the Power of God? Even the very creationbroke silence at His behest and, marvelous to relate, confessed with one voice before the cross,that monument of victory, that He Who suffered thereon in the body was not man only, but Sonof God and Savior of all. The sun veiled his face, the earth quaked, the mountains were rentasunder, all men were stricken with awe. These things showed that Christ on the cross wasGod, and that all creation was His slave and was bearing witness by its fear to the presence ofits Master.

Thus, then, God the Word revealed Himself to men through His works. We must next considerthe end of His earthly life and the nature of His bodily death. This is, indeed, the very center ofour faith, and everywhere you hear men speak of it; by it, too, no less than by His other acts,Christ is revealed as God and Son of God.

(20) We have dealt as far as circumstances and our own understanding permit with the reasonfor His bodily manifestation. We have seen that to change the corruptible to incorruption wasproper to none other than the Savior Himself, Who in the beginning made all things out ofnothing; that only the Image of the Father could re-create the likeness of the Image in men, thatnone save our Lord Jesus Christ could give to mortals immortality, and that only the Word Whoorders all things and is alone the Father's true and sole-begotten Son could teach men aboutHim and abolish the worship of idols But beyond all this, there was a debt owing which mustneeds be paid; for, as I said before, all men were due to die. Here, then, is the second reasonwhy the Word dwelt among us, namely that having proved His Godhead by His works, Hemight offer the sacrifice on behalf of all, surrendering His own temple to death in place of all, tosettle man's account with death and free him from the primal transgression. In the same act alsoHe showed Himself mightier than death, displaying His own body incorruptible as the first-fruitsof the resurrection.

You must not be surprised if we repeat ourselves in dealing with this subject. We are speakingof the good pleasure of God and of the things which He in His loving wisdom thought fit to do,and it is better to put the same thing in several ways than to run the risk of leaving something out.The body of the Word, then, being a real human body, in spite of its having been uniquelyformed from a virgin, was of itself mortal and, like other bodies, liable to death. But theindwelling of the Word loosed it from this natural liability, so that corruption could not touch it.Thus it happened that two opposite marvels took place at once: the death of all wasconsummated in the Lord's body; yet, because the Word was in it, death and corruption were inthe same act utterly abolished. Death there had to be, and death for all, so that the due of allmight be paid. Wherefore, the Word, as I said, being Himself incapable of death, assumed amortal body, that He might offer it as His own in place of all, and suffering for the sake of allthrough His union with it,

" might bring to nought Him that had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might deliver them who all their lifetime were enslaved by the fear of death."[1]

(21) Have no fears then. Now that the common Savior of all has died on our behalf, we whobelieve in Christ no longer die, as men died aforetime, in fulfillment of the threat of the law. Thatcondemnation has come to an end; and now that, by the grace of the resurrection, corruptionhas been banished and done away, we are loosed from our mortal bodies in God's good timefor each, so that we may obtain thereby a better resurrection. Like seeds cast into the earth, wedo not perish in our dissolution, but like them shall rise again, death having been brought tonought by the grace of the Savior. That is why blessed Paul, through whom we all have surety ofthe resurrection, says:

"This corruptible must put on incorruption and this mortal must put on immortality; but when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, 'Death is swallowed up in victory. O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy victory?"[2]

"Well then," some people may say, "if the essential thing was that He should surrender His bodyto death in place of all, why did He not do so as Man privately, without going to the length ofpublic crucifixion? Surely it would have been more suitable for Him to have laid aside His bodywith honor than to endure so shameful a death." But look at this argument closely, and see howmerely human it is, whereas what the Savior did was truly divine and worthy of His Godhead forseveral reasons. The first is this. The death of men under ordinary circumstances is the result oftheir natural weakness. They are essentially impermanent, so after a time they fall ill and whenworn out they die. But the Lord is not like that. He is not weak, He is the Power of God andWord of God and Very Life Itself. If He had died quietly in His bed like other men it wouldhave looked as if He did so in accordance with His nature, and as though He was indeed nomore than other men. But because He was Himself Word and Life and Power His body wasmade strong, and because the death had to be accomplished, He took the occasion ofperfecting His sacrifice not from Himself, but from others. How could He fall sick, Who hadhealed others? Or how could that body weaken and fail by means of which others are madestrong? Here, again, you may say, "Why did He not prevent death, as He did sickness?"Because it was precisely in order to be able to die that He had taken a body, and to prevent thedeath would have been to impede the resurrection. And as to the unsuitability of sickness for Hisbody, as arguing weakness, you may say, "Did He then not hunger?" Yes, He hungered,because that was the property of His body, but He did not die of hunger because He Whosebody hungered was the Lord. Similarly, though He died to ransom all, He did not seecorruption. His body rose in perfect soundness, for it was the body of none other than the LifeHimself.

(22) Someone else might say, perhaps, that it would have been better for the Lord to haveavoided the designs of the Jews against Him, and so to have guarded His body from deathaltogether. But see how unfitting this also would have been for Him. Just as it would not havebeen fitting for Him to give His body to death by His own hand, being Word and being Life, soalso it was not consonant with Himself that He should avoid the death inflicted by others. Rather,He pursued it to the uttermost, and in pursuance of His nature neither laid aside His body of Hisown accord nor escaped the plotting Jews. And this action showed no limitation or weakness inthe Word; for He both waited for death in order to make an end of it, and hastened toaccomplish it as an offering on behalf of all. Moreover, as it was the death of all mankind that theSavior came to accomplish, not His own, He did not lay aside His body by an individual act ofdying, for to Him, as Life, this simply did not belong; but He accepted death at the hands ofmen, thereby completely to destroy it in His own body.

There are some further considerations which enable one to understand why the Lord's body hadsuch an end. The supreme object of His coming was to bring about the resurrection of the body.This was to be the monument to His victory over death, the assurance to all that He had Himselfconquered corruption and that their own bodies also would eventually be incorrupt; and it was intoken of that and as a pledge of the future resurrection that He kept His body incorrupt. Butthere again, if His body had fallen sick and the Word had left it in that condition, how unfitting itwould have been! Should He Who healed the bodies of others neglect to keep His own inhealth? How would His miracles of healing be believed, if this were so? Surely people wouldeither laugh at Him as unable to dispel disease or else consider Him lacking in proper humanfeeling because He could do so, but did not.

(23) Then, again, suppose without any illness He had just concealed His body somewhere, andthen suddenly reappeared and said that He had risen from the dead. He would have beenregarded merely as a teller of tales, and because there was no witness of His death, nobodywould believe His resurrection. Death had to precede resurrection, for there could be noresurrection without it. A secret and unwitnessed death would have left the resurrection withoutany proof or evidence to support it. Again, why should He die a secret death, when Heproclaimed the fact of His rising openly? Why should He drive out evil spirits and heal the manblind from birth and change water into wine, all publicly, in order to convince men that He wasthe Word, and not also declare publicly that incorruptibility of His mortal body, so that He mightHimself be believed to be the Life? And how could His disciples have had boldness in speakingof the resurrection unless they could state it as a fact that He had first died? Or how could theirhearers be expected to believe their assertion, unless they themselves also had witnessed Hisdeath? For if the Pharisees at the time refused to believe and forced others to deny also, thoughthe things had happened before their very eyes, how many excuses for unbelief would they havecontrived, if it had taken place secretly? Or how could the end of death and the victory over ithave been declared, had not the Lord thus challenged it before the sight of all, and by theincorruption of His body proved that henceforward it was annulled and void?

(24) There are some other possible objections that must be answered. Some might urge that,even granting the necessity of a public death for subsequent belief in the resurrection, it wouldsurely have been better for Him to have arranged an honorable death for Himself, and so tohave avoided the ignominy of the cross. But even this would have given ground for suspicion thatHis power over death was limited to the particular kind of death which He chose for Himself;and that again would furnish excuse for disbelieving the resurrection. Death came to His body,therefore, not from Himself but from enemy action, in order that the Savior might utterly abolishdeath in whatever form they offered it to Him. A generous wrestler, virile and strong, does nothimself choose his antagonists, lest it should be thought that of some of them he is afraid. Rather,he lets the spectators choose them, and that all the more if these are hostile, so that he mayoverthrow whomsoever they match against him and thus vindicate his superior strength. Even sowas it with Christ. He, the Life of all, our Lord and Savior, did not arrange the manner of hisown death lest He should seem to be afraid of some other kind. No. He accepted and boreupon the cross a death inflicted by others, and those others His special enemies, a death whichto them was supremely terrible and by no means to be faced; and He did this in order that, bydestroying even this death, He might Himself be believed to be the Life, and the power of deathbe recognized as finally annulled. A marvelous and mighty paradox has thus occurred, for thedeath which they thought to inflict on Him as dishonor and disgrace has become the gloriousmonument to death's defeat. Therefore it is also, that He neither endured the death of John, whowas beheaded, nor was He sawn asunder, like Isaiah: even in death He preserved His bodywhole and undivided, so that there should be no excuse hereafter for those who would dividethe Church.

(25) So much for the objections of those outside the Church. But if any honest Christian wantsto know why He suffered death on the cross and not in some other way, we answer thus: in noother way was it expedient for us, indeed the Lord offered for our sakes the one death that wassupremely good. He had come to bear the curse that lay on us; and how could He "become acurse"[3] otherwise than by accepting the accursed death? And that death is the cross, for it iswritten "Cursed is every one that hangeth on tree."[4] Again, the death of the Lord is theransom of all, and by it "the middle wall of partition"[5] is broken down and the call of theGentiles comes about. How could He have called us if He had not been crucified, for it is onlyon the cross that a man dies with arms outstretched? Here, again, we see the fitness of His deathand of those outstretched arms: it was that He might draw His ancient people with the one andthe Gentiles with the other, and join both together in Himself. Even so, He foretold the manner ofHis redeeming death,

"I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Myself."[6]

Again, the air is the sphere of the devil, the enemy of our race who, having fallen from heaven,endeavors with the other evil spirits who shared in his disobedience both to keep souls from thetruth and to hinder the progress of those who are trying to follow it. The apostle refers to thiswhen he says,

"According to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience."[7]

But the Lord came to overthrow the devil and to purify the air and to make "a way" for us up toheaven, as the apostle says, "through the veil, that is to say, His flesh."[8] This had to bedone through death, and by what other kind of death could it be done, save by a death in the air,that is, on the cross? Here, again, you see how right and natural it was that the Lord shouldsuffer thus; for being thus "lifted up," He cleansed the air from all the evil influences of the enemy."I beheld Satan as lightning falling,"[9] He says; and thus He re-opened the road toheaven, saying again,

"Lift up your gates, O ye princes, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors."[10]

For it was not the Word Himself Who needed an opening of the gates, He being Lord of all, norwas any of His works closed to their Maker. No, it was we who needed it, we whom HeHimself upbore in His own body--that body which He first offered to death on behalf of all, andthen made through it a path to heaven. CHAPTER V THE RESURRECTION

(26) Fitting indeed, then, and wholly consonant was the death on the cross for us; and we cansee how reasonable it was, and why it is that the salvation of the world could be accomplished inno other way. Even on the cross He did not hide Himself from sight; rather, He made all creationwitness to the presence of its Maker. Then, having once let it be seen that it was truly dead, Hedid not allow that temple of His body to linger long, but forthwith on the third day raised it up,impassable and incorruptible, the pledge and token of His victory.

It was, of course, within His power thus to have raised His body and displayed it as alivedirectly after death. But the all-wise Savior did not do this, lest some should deny that it hadreally or completely died. Besides this, had the interval between His death and resurrection beenbut two days, the glory of His incorruption might not have appeared. He waited one whole dayto show that His body was really dead, and then on the third day showed it incorruptible to all.The interval was no longer, lest people should have forgotten about it and grown doubtfulwhether it were in truth the same body. No, while the affair was still ringing in their ears and theireyes were still straining and their minds in turmoil, and while those who had put Him to deathwere still on the spot and themselves witnessing to the fact of it, the Son of God after three daysshowed His once dead body immortal and incorruptible; and it was evident to all that it wasfrom no natural weakness that the body which the Word indwelt had died, but in order that in itby the Savior's power death might be done away.

(27) A very strong proof of this destruction of death and its conquest by the cross is supplied bya present fact, namely this. All the disciples of Christ despise death; they take the offensiveagainst it and, instead of fearing it, by the sign of the cross and by faith in Christ trample on it ason something dead. Before the divine sojourn of the Savior, even the holiest of men were afraidof death, and mourned the dead as those who perish. But now that the Savior has raised Hisbody, death is no longer terrible, but all those who believe in Christ tread it underfoot as nothing,and prefer to die rather than to deny their faith in Christ, knowing full well that when they diethey do not perish, but live indeed, and become incorruptible through the resurrection. But thatdevil who of old wickedly exulted in death, now that the pains of death are loosed, he alone it iswho remains truly dead. There is proof of this too; for men who, before they believe in Christ,think death horrible and are afraid of it, once they are converted despise it so completely thatthey go eagerly to meet it, and themselves become witnesses of the Savior's resurrection from it.Even children hasten thus to die, and not men only, but women train themselves by bodilydiscipline to meet it. So weak has death become that even women, who used to be taken in byit, mock at it now as a dead thing robbed of all its strength. Death has become like a tyrant whohas been completely conquered by the legitimate monarch; bound hand and foot the passers-bysneer at him, hitting him and abusing him, no longer afraid of his cruelty and rage, because of theking who has conquered him. So has death been conquered and branded for what it is by theSavior on the cross. It is bound hand and foot, all who are in Christ trample it as they pass andas witnesses to Him deride it, scoffing and saying, "O Death, where is thy victory? O Grave,where is thy sting ?"[1]

(28) Is this a slender proof of the impotence of death, do you think? Or is it a slight indication ofthe Savior's victory over it, when boys and young girls who are in Christ look beyond thispresent life and train themselves to die? Every one is by nature afraid of death and of bodilydissolution; the marvel of marvels is that he who is enfolded in the faith of the cross despises thisnatural fear and for the sake of the cross is no longer cowardly in face of it. The natural propertyof fire is to burn. Suppose, then, that there was a substance such as the Indian asbestos is saidto be, which had no fear of being burnt, but rather displayed the impotence of the fire by provingitself unburnable. If anyone doubted the truth of this, all he need do would be to wrap himself upin the substance in question and then touch the fire. Or, again, to revert to our former figure, ifanyone wanted to see the tyrant bound and helpless, who used to be such a terror to others, hecould do so simply by going into the country of the tyrant's conqueror. Even so, if anyone stilldoubts the conquest of death, after so many proofs and so many martyrdoms in Christ and suchdaily scorn of death by His truest servants, he certainly does well to marvel at so great a thing,but he must not be obstinate in unbelief and disregard of plain facts. No, he must be like the manwho wants to prove the property of the asbestos, and like him who enters the conqueror'sdominions to see the tyrant bound. He must embrace the faith of Christ, this disbeliever in theconquest of death, and come to His teaching. Then he will see how impotent death is and howcompletely conquered. Indeed, there have been many former unbelievers and deriders who,after they became believers, so scorned death as even themselves to become martyrs forChrist's sake.

(29) If, then, it is by the sign of the cross and by faith in Christ that death is trampled underfoot,it is clear that it is Christ Himself and none other Who is the Archvictor over death and hasrobbed it of its power. Death used to be strong and terrible, but now, since the sojourn of theSavior and the death and resurrection of His body, it is despised; and obviously it is by the veryChrist Who mounted on the cross that it has been destroyed and vanquished finally. When thesun rises after the night and the whole world is lit up by it, nobody doubts that it is the sun whichhas thus shed its light everywhere and driven away the dark. Equally clear is it, since this utterscorning and trampling down of death has ensued upon the Savior's manifestation in the bodyand His death on the cross, that it is He Himself Who brought death to nought and daily raisesmonuments to His victory in His own disciples. How can you think otherwise, when you seemen naturally weak hastening to death, unafraid at the prospect of corruption, fearless of thedescent into Hades, even indeed with eager soul provoking it, not shrinking from tortures, butpreferring thus to rush on death for Christ's sake, rather than to remain in this present life? If yousee with your own eyes men and women and children, even, thus welcoming death for the sakeof Christ's religion, how can you be so utterly silly and incredulous and maimed in your mind asnot to realize that Christ, to Whom these all bear witness, Himself gives the victory to each,making death completely powerless for those who hold His faith and bear the sign of the cross?No one in his senses doubts that a snake is dead when he sees it trampled underfoot, especiallywhen he knows how savage it used to be; nor, if he sees boys making fun of a lion, does hedoubt that the brute is either dead or completely bereft of strength. These things can be seenwith our own eyes, and it is the same with the conquest of death. Doubt no longer, then, whenyou see death mocked and scorned by those who believe in Christ, that by Christ death wasdestroyed, and the corruption that goes with it resolved and brought to end.

(30) What we have said is, indeed, no small proof of the destruction of death and of the fact thatthe cross of the Lord is the monument to His victory. But the resurrection of the body toimmortality, which results henceforward from the work of Christ, the common Savior and trueLife of all, is more effectively proved by facts than by words to those whose mental vision issound. For, if, as we have shown, death was destroyed and everybody tramples on it becauseof Christ, how much more did He Himself first trample and destroy it in His own body! Deathhaving been slain by Him, then, what other issue could there be than the resurrection of His bodyand its open demonstration as the monument of His victory? How could the destruction of deathhave been manifested at all, had not the Lord's body been raised? But if anyone finds even thisinsufficient, let him find proof of what has been said in present facts. Dead men cannot takeeffective action; their power of influence on others lasts only till the grave. Deeds and actionsthat energize others belong only to the living. Well, then, look at the facts in this case. The Savioris working mightily among men, every day He is invisibly persuading numbers of people all overthe world, both within and beyond the Greek-speaking world, to accept His faith and beobedient to His teaching. Can anyone, in face of this, still doubt that He has risen and lives, orrather that He is Himself the Life? Does a dead man prick the consciences of men, so that theythrow all the traditions of their fathers to the winds and bow down before the teaching of Christ?If He is no longer active in the world, as He must needs be if He is dead, how is it that Hemakes the living to cease from their activities, the adulterer from his adultery, the murderer frommurdering, the unjust from avarice, while the profane and godless man becomes religious? If Hedid not rise, but is still dead, how is it that He routs and persecutes and overthrows the falsegods, whom unbelievers think to be alive, and the evil spirits whom they worship? For whereChrist is named, idolatry is destroyed and the fraud of evil spirits is exposed; indeed, no suchspirit can endure that Name, but takes to flight on sound of it. This is the work of One Wholives, not of one dead; and, more than that, it is the work of God. It would be absurd to say thatthe evil spirits whom He drives out and the idols which He destroys are alive, but that He Whodrives out and destroys, and Whom they themselves acknowledge to be Son of God, is dead.

(31) In a word, then, those who disbelieve in the resurrection have no support in facts, if theirgods and evil spirits do not drive away the supposedly dead Christ. Rather, it is He Whoconvicts them of being dead. We are agreed that a dead person can do nothing: yet the Saviorworks mightily every day, drawing men to religion, persuading them to virtue, teaching themabout immortality, quickening their thirst for heavenly things, revealing the knowledge of theFather, inspiring strength in face of death, manifesting Himself to each, and displacing theirreligion of idols; while the gods and evil spirits of the unbelievers can do none of these things,but rather become dead at Christ's presence, all their ostentation barren and void. By the sign ofthe cross, on the contrary, all magic is stayed, all sorcery confounded, all the idols areabandoned and deserted, and all senseless pleasure ceases, as the eye of faith looks up fromearth to heaven. Whom, then, are we to call dead? Shall we call Christ dead, Who effects allthis? But the dead have not the faculty to effect anything. Or shall we call death dead, whicheffects nothing whatever, but lies as lifeless and ineffective as are the evil spirits and the idols?The Son of God, "living and effective,"[2] is active every day and effects the salvation of all;but death is daily proved to be stripped of all its strength, and it is the idols and the evil spiritswho are dead, not He. No room for doubt remains, therefore, concerning the resurrection of Hisbody.

Indeed, it would seem that he who disbelieves this bodily rising of the Lord is ignorant of thepower of the Word and Wisdom of God. If He took a body to Himself at all, and made it Hisown in pursuance of His purpose, as we have shown that He did, what was the Lord to do withit, and what was ultimately to become of that body upon which the Word had descended?Mortal and offered to death on behalf of all as it was, it could not but die; indeed, it was for thatvery purpose that the Savior had prepared it for Himself. But on the other hand it could notremain dead, because it had become the very temple of Life. It therefore died, as mortal, butlived again because of the Life within it; and its resurrection is made known through its works.

(32) It is, indeed, in accordance with the nature of the invisible God that He should be thusknown through His works; and those who doubt the Lord's resurrection because they do notnow behold Him with their eyes, might as well deny the very laws of nature. They have groundfor disbelief when works are lacking; but when the works cry out and prove the fact so clearly,why do they deliberately deny the risen life so manifestly shown? Even if their mental facultiesare defective, surely their eyes can give them irrefragable proof of the power and Godhead ofChrist. A blind man cannot see the sun, but he knows that it is above the earth from the warmthwhich it affords; similarly, let those who are still in the blindness of unbelief recognize theGodhead of Christ and the resurrection which He has brought about through His manifestedpower in others. Obviously He would not be expelling evil spirits and despoiling idols, if Hewere dead, for the evil spirits would not obey one who was dead. If, on the other hand, the verynaming of Him drives them forth, He clearly is not dead; and the more so that the spirits, whoperceive things unseen by men, would know if He were so and would refuse to obey Him. But,as a matter of fact, what profane persons doubt, the evil spirits know--namely that He is God;and for that reason they flee from Him and fall at His feet, crying out even as they cried when Hewas in the body, "We know Thee Who Thou art, the Holy One of God," and, "Ah, whathave I in common with Thee, Thou Son of God? I implore Thee, torment me not."[3]

Both from the confession of the evil spirits and from the daily witness of His works, it is manifest,then, and let none presume to doubt it, that the Savior has raised His own body, and that He isvery Son of God, having His being from God as from a Father, Whose Word and Wisdom andWhose Power He is. He it is Who in these latter days assumed a body for the salvation of us all,and taught the world concerning the Father. He it is Who has destroyed death and freely gracedus all with incorruption through the promise of the resurrection, having raised His own body asits first- fruits, and displayed it by the sign of the cross as the monument to His victory overdeath and its corruption. CHAPTER VI REFUTATION OF THE JEWS

(33) We have dealt thus far with the Incarnation of our Savior, and have found clear proof of theresurrection of His Body and His victory over death. Let us now go further and investigate theunbelief and the ridicule with which Jews and Gentiles respectively regard these same facts. Itseems that in both cases the points at issue are the same, namely the unfittingness or incongruity(as it seems to them) alike of the cross and of the Word's becoming man at all. But we have nohesitation in taking up the argument against these objectors, for the proofs on our side areextremely clear.

First, then, we will consider the Jews. Their unbelief has its refutation in the Scriptures whicheven themselves read; for from cover to cover the inspired Book clearly teaches these thingsboth in its entirety and in its actual words. Prophets foretold the marvel of the Virgin and of theBirth from her, saying,

"Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name 'Emmanuel,' which means 'God is with us.'"[1]

And Moses, that truly great one in whose word the Jews trust so implicitly, he also recognizedthe importance and truth of the matter. He puts it thus:

"There shall arise a star from Jacob and a man from Israel, and he shall break in pieces the rulers of Moab.[2]

And, again,

"How lovely are thy dwellings, O Jacob, thy tents, O Israel! Like woodland valleys they give shade, and like parks by rivers, like tents which the Lord has pitched, like cedar-trees by streams. There shall come forth a Man from among his seed, and he shall rule over many peoples."[3]

And, again, Isaiah says,

"Before the Babe shall be old enough to call father or mother, he shall take the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria from under the eyes of the king of Assyria."[4]

These words, then, foretell that a Man shall appear. And Scripture proclaims further that He thatis to come is Lord of all. These are the words,

"Behold, the Lord sitteth on an airy cloud and shall come into Egypt, and the man-made images of Egypt shall be shaken."[5]

And it is from Egypt also that the Father calls him back, saying,

"Out of Egypt have I called My Son."[6]

(34) Moreover, the Scriptures are not silent even about His death. On the contrary, they refer toit with the utmost clearness. They have not feared to speak also of the cause of it. He endures it,they say, not for His own sake, but for the sake of bringing immortality and salvation to all, andthey record also the plotting of the Jews against Him and all the indignities which He suffered attheir hands. Certainly nobody who reads the Scriptures can plead ignorance of the facts as anexcuse for error! There is this passage, for instance:

"A man that is afflicted and knows how to bear weakness, for His face is turned away. He was dishonored and not considered, He bears our sins and suffers for our sakes. And we for our part thought Him distressed and afflicted and ill-used; but it was for our sins that He was wounded and for our lawlessness that He was made weak. Chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His bruising we are healed."[7]

O marvel at the love of the Word for men, for it is on our account that He is dishonored, so that we may be brought to honor. "For all we," it goes on, "have strayed like sheep, man has strayed from his path, and the Lord has given Him up for our sins; and He Himself did not open His mouth at the ill-treatment. Like a sheep He was led to slaughter, and as a lamb is dumb before its shearer, so He opened not His mouth; in His humiliation His judgment was taken away."[8]

And then Scripture anticipates the surmises of any who might think from His suffering thus thatHe was just an ordinary man, and shows what power worked in His behalf.

"Who shall declare of what lineage He comes?" it says, "for His life is exalted from the earth. By the lawlessnesses of the people was He brought to death, and I will give the wicked in return for His burial and the rich in return for His death. For He did no lawlessness, neither was deceit found in His mouth. And the Lord wills to heal Him of His affliction."[9]

(35) You have heard the prophecy of His death, and now, perhaps, you want to know whatindications there are about the cross. Even this is not passed over in silence: on the contrary, thesacred writers proclaim it with the utmost plainness. Moses foretells it first, and that right loudly,when he says,

"You shall see your Life hanging before your eyes, and shall not believe."[10]

After him the prophets also give their witness, saying,

"But I as an innocent lamb brought to be offered was yet ignorant of it. They plotted evil against Me, saying, 'Come, let us cast wood into His bread, and wipe Him out from the land of the living."[11]

And, again,

"They pierced My hands and My feet, they counted all My bones, they divided My garments for themselves and cast lots for My clothing."[12]

Now a death lifted up and that takes place on wood can be none other than the death of thecross; moreover, it is only in that death that the hands and feet are pierced. Besides this, sincethe Savior dwelt among men, all nations everywhere have begun to know God; and this tooHoly Writ expressly mentions. "There shall be the Root of Jesse," it says, "and he whorises up to rule the nations, on Him nations shall set their hope."[13]

These are just a few things in proof of what has taken place; but indeed all Scripture teems withdisproof of Jewish unbelief. For example, which of the righteous men and holy prophets andpatriarchs of whom the Divine Scriptures tell ever had his bodily birth from a virgin only? Wasnot Abel born of Adam, Enoch of Jared, Noah of Lamech, Abraham of Terah, Isaac ofAbraham, and Jacob of Isaac? Was not Judah begotten by Jacob and Moses and Aaron byAmeram? Was not Samuel the son of Elkanah, David of Jesse, Solomon of David, Hezekiah ofAhaz, Josiah of Amon, Isaiah of Amos, Jeremiah of Hilkiah and Ezekiel of Buzi? Had not eachof these a father as author of his being? So who is He that is born of a virgin only, that sign ofwhich the prophet makes so much? Again, which of all those people had his birth announced tothe world by a star in the heavens? When Moses was born his parents hid him. David wasunknown even in his own neighborhood, so that mighty Samuel himself was ignorant of hisexistence and asked whether Jesse had yet another son. Abraham again became known to hisneighbors as a great man only after his birth. But with Christ it was otherwise. The witness to Hisbirth was not man, but a star shining in the heavens whence He was coming down.

(36) Then, again, what king that ever was reigned and took trophies from his enemies before hehad strength to call father or mother? Was not David thirty years old when he came to thethrone and Solomon a grown young man? Did not Joash enter on his reign at the age of seven,and Josiah, some time after him, at about the same age, both of them fully able by that time tocall father or mother? Who is there, then, that was reigning and despoiling his enemies almostbefore he was born? Let the Jews, who have investigated the matter, tell us if there was eversuch a king in Israel or Judah--a king upon whom all the nations set their hopes and had peace,instead of being at enmity with him on every side! As long as Jerusalem stood there wasconstant war between them, and they all fought against Israel. The Assyrians oppressed Israel,the Egyptians persecuted them, the Babylonians fell upon them, and, strange to relate, even theSyrians their neighbors were at war with them. And did not David fight with Moab and smite theSyrians, and Hezekiah quail at the boasting of Sennacherib? Did not Amalek make war onMoses and the Amorites oppose him, and did not the inhabitantsof Jericho array themselvesagainst Joshua the son of Nun? Did not the nations always regard Israel with implacablehostility? Then it is worth inquiring who it is, on whom the nations are to set their hopes.Obviously there must be someone, for the prophet could not have told a lie. But did any of theholy prophets or of the early patriarchs die on the cross for the salvation of all? Was any of themwounded and killed for the healing of all? Did the idols of Egypt fall down before any righteousman or king that came there? Abraham came there certainly, but idolatry prevailed just thesame; and Moses was born there, but the mistaken worship was unchanged.

(37) Again, does Scripture tell of anyone who was pierced in hands and feet or hung upon a treeat all, and by means of a cross perfected his sacrifice for the salvation of all? It was notAbraham, for he died in his bed, as did also Isaac and Jacob. Moses and Aaron died in themountain, and David ended his days in his house, without anybody having plotted against him.Certainly he had been sought by Saul, but he was preserved unharmed. Again Isaiah was sawnasunder, but he was not hung on a tree. Jeremiah was shamefully used, but he did not die undercondemnation. Ezekiel suffered, but he did so, not on behalf of the people, but only to signify tothemwhat was going to happen. Moreover, all these even when they suffered were but men, likeother men; but He Whom the Scriptures declare to suffer on behalf of all is called not merelyman but Life of all, although in point of fact He did share our human nature. "You shall seeyour Life hanging before your eyes," they say, and "Who shall declare of what lineageHe comes?" With all the saints we can trace their descent from the beginning, and see exactlyhow each came to be; but the Divine Word maintains that we cannot declare the lineage of HimWho is the Life. Who is it, then, of Whom Holy Writ thus speaks? Who is there so great thateven the prophets foretell of Him such mighty things? There is indeed no one in the Scriptures atall, save the common Savior of all, the Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ. He it is thatproceeded from a virgin, and appeared as man on earth, He it is Whose earthly lineage cannotbe declared, because He alone derives His body from no human father, but from a virgin alone.We can trace the paternal descent of David and Moses and of all the patriarchs. But with theSavior we cannot do so, for it was He Himself Who caused the star to announce His bodilybirth, and it was fitting that the Word, when He came down from heaven, should have His sign inheaven too, and fitting that the King of creation on His coming forth should be visibly recognizedby all the world. He was actually born in Judea, yet men from Persia came to worship Him. Heit is Who won victory from His demon foes and trophies from the idolaters even before Hisbodily appearing--namely, all the heathen who from every region have abjured the tradition oftheir fathers and the false worship of idols and are now placing their hope in Christ andtransferring their allegiance to Him. The thing is happening before our very eyes, here in Egypt;and thereby another prophecy is fulfilled, for at no other time have the Egyptians ceased fromtheir false worship save when the Lord of all, riding as on a cloud, came down here in the bodyand brought the error of idols to nothing and won over everybody to Himself and throughHimself to the Father. He it is Who was crucified with the sun and moon as witnesses; and byHis death salvation has come to all men, and all creation has been redeemed. He is the Life ofall, and He it is Who like a sheep gave up His own body to death, His life for ours and oursalvation.

(38)Yet the Jews disbelieve this. This argument does not satisfy them. Well, then, let them bepersuaded by other things in their own oracles. Ofwhom, for instance, do the prophets say

"I was made manifest to those who did not seek Me, I was found by those who had not asked for Me? I said, 'See, here am I,' to the nation that had not called upon My Name. I stretched out My hands to a disobedient and gainsaying people."[14]

Who is this person that was made manifest, one might ask the Jews? If the prophet is speakingof himself, then they must tell us how he was first hidden, in order to be manifested afterwards.And, again, what kind of man is this prophet, who was not only revealed after being hidden, butalso stretched out his hands upon the cross? Those things happened to none of those righteousmen: they happened only to the Word of God Who, being by nature without body, on ouraccount appeared in a body and suffered for us all. And if even this is not enough for them, thereis other overwhelming evidence by which they may be silenced. The Scripture says,

"Be strong, hands that hang down and feeble knees, take courage, you of little faith, be strong and do not fear. See, our God will recompense judgment, He Himself will come and save us. Then the eyes of blind men shall be opened and the ears of deaf men shall hear, and stammerers shall speak distinctly."[15]

What can they say to this, or how can they look it in the face at all? For the prophecy does notonly declare that God will dwell here, it also makes known the signs and the time of His coming.When God comes, it says, the blind will see, the lame will walk, the deaf will hear and thestammerers will speak distinctly. Can the Jews tell us when such signs occurred in Israel, orwhen anything of the kind took place at all in Jewry? The leper Naaman was cleansed, it is true,but no deaf man heard nor did any lame man walk. Elijah raised a dead person and so didElisha; but no one blind from birth received his sight. To raise a dead person is a great thingindeed, but it is not such as the Savior did. And surely, since the Scriptures have not kept silenceabout the leper and the dead son of the widow, if a lame man had walked and a blind man hadreceived his sight, they would have mentioned these as well. Their silence on these points provesthat the events never took place. When therefore did these things happen, unless when theWord of God Himself came in the body? Was it not when He came that lame men walked andstammerers spoke clearly and men blind from birth were given sight? And the Jews who saw itthemselves quizified to the fact that such things had never before occurred. "Since the worldbegan," they said,

"it has never been heard of that anyone should open the eyes of a man born blind. If this Man were not from God, He could do nothing."[16]

(39) But surely they cannot fight against plain facts. So it may be that, without denying what iswritten, they will maintain that they are still waiting for these things to happen, and that the Wordof God is yet to come, for that is a theme on which they are always harping most brazenly, inspite of all the evidence against them. But they shall be refuted on this supreme point moreclearly than on any, and that not by ourselves but by the most wise Daniel, for he signifies theactual date of the Savior's coming as well as His Divine sojourn in our midst. "Seventy weeks,"he says,

"are cut short upon thy people and upon the holy city, to make a complete end of sin and for sins to be sealed up and iniquities blotted out, and to make reconciliation for iniquity and to seal vision and prophet, and to anoint a Holy One of holies. And thou shalt know and understand from the going forth of the Word to answer,[17] and to build Jerusalem, until Christ the Prince."[18]

In regard to the other prophecies, they may possibly be able to find excuses for deferring theirreference to a future time, but what can they say to this one? How can they face it at all? Notonly does it expressly mention the Anointed One, that is the Christ, it even declares that HeWho is to be anointed is not man only, but the Holy One of holies! And it says that Jerusalem isto stand till His coming, and that after it prophet and vision shall cease in Israel! David wasanointed of old, and Solomon, and Hezekiah; but then Jerusalem and the place stood, andprophets were prophesying, Gad and Asaph and Nathan, and later Isaiah and Hosea and Amosand others. Moreover, those men who were anointed were called holy certainly, but none ofthem was called the Holy of holies. Nor is it any use for the Jews to take refuge in the Captivity,and say that Jerusalem did not exist then, for what about the prophets? It is a fact that at theoutset of the Exile Daniel and Jeremiah were there, and Ezekiel and Haggai and Zechariah alsoprophesied.

(40) So the Jews are indulging in fiction, and transferring present time to future. When didprophet and vision cease from Israel? Was it not when Christ came, the Holy One of holies? Itis, in fact, a sign and notable proof of the coming of the Word that Jerusalem no longer stands,neither is prophet raised up nor vision revealed among them. And it is natural that it should beso, for when He that was signified had come, what need was there any longer of any to signifyHim? And when the Truth had come, what further need was there of the shadow? On Hisaccount only they prophesied continually, until such time as Essential Righteousness has come,Who was made the Ransom for the sins of all. For the same reason Jerusalem stood until thesame time, in order that there men might premeditate the types before the Truth was known. So,of course, once the Holy One of holies had come, both vision and prophecy were sealed. Andthe kingdom of Jerusalem ceased at the same time, because kings were to be anointed amongthem only until the Holy of holies had been anointed. Moses also prophesies that the kingdom ofthe Jews shall stand until His time, saying,

"A ruler shall not fail from Judah nor a prince from his loins, until the things laid up for him shall come and the Expectation of the nations Himself."[19]

And that is why the Savior Himself was always proclaiming

"The law and the prophets prophesied until John."[20]

So if there is still king or prophet or vision among the Jews, they do well to deny that Christ iscome; but if there is neither king nor vision, and since that time all prophecy has been sealed andcity and temple taken, how can they be so irreligious, how can they so flaunt the facts, as todeny Christ Who has brought it all about? Again, they see the heathen forsaking idols and settingtheir hopes through Christ on the God of Israel; why do they yet deny Christ Who after the fleshwas born of the root of Jesse and reigns henceforward? Of course, if the heathen wereworshipping some other god, and not confessing the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob andMoses, then they would do well to argue that God had not come. But if the heathen arehonoring the same God Who gave the law to Moses and the promises to Abraham--the GodWhose word too the Jews dishonored, why do they not recognize or rather why do theydeliberately refuse to see that the Lord of Whom the Scriptures prophesied has shone forth tothe world and appeared to it in a bodily form? Scripture declares it repeatedly. "The Lord Godhas appeared to us,"[21] and again, "He sent forth His Word and healed them."[22] Andagain, "It was no ambassador, no angel who saved us, but the Lord Himself."[23] TheJews are afflicted like some demented person who sees the earth lit up by the sun, but denies thesun that lights it up! What more is there for their Expected One to do when he comes? To callthe heathen? But they are called already. To put an end to prophet and king and vision? But thistoo has already happened. To expose the Goddenyingness of idols? It is already exposed andcondemned. Or to destroy death? It is already destroyed. What then has not come to pass thatthe Christ must do? What is there left out or unfulfilled that the Jews should disbelieve solight-heartedly? The plain fact is, as I say, that there is no longer any king or prophet norJerusalem nor sacrifice nor vision among them; yet the whole earth is filled with the knowledgeof God, and the Gentiles, forsaking atheism, are now taking refuge with the God of Abrahamthrough the Word, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Surely, then, it must be plain even to the most shameless that the Christ has come, and that Hehas enlightened all men everywhere, and given them the true and divine teaching about HisFather.

Thus the Jews may be refuted by these and other arguments from the Divine teaching. CHAPTER VII REFUTATION OF THE GENTILES

(41) We come now to the unbelief of the Gentiles; and this is indeed a matter for completeastonishment, for they laugh at that which is no fit subject for mockery, yet fail to see the shameand ridiculousness of their own idols. But the arguments on our side do not lack weight, so wewill confute them too on reasonable grounds, chiefly from what we ourselves also see.

First of all, what is there in our belief that is unfitting or ridiculous? Is it only that we say that theWord has been manifested in a body? Well, if they themselves really love the truth, they willagree with us that this involved no unfittingness at all. If they deny that there is a Word of God atall, that will be extraordinary, for then they will be ridiculing what they do not know. Butsuppose they confess that there is a Word of God, that He is the Governor of all things, that inElim the Father wrought the creation, that by His providence the whole receives light and life andbeing, and that He is King over all, so that He is known by means of the works of Hisprovidence, and through Him the Father. Suppose they confess all this, what then? Are they notunknowingly turning the ridicule against themselves? The Greek philosophers say that theuniverse is a great body, and they say truly, for we perceive the universe and its parts with oursenses. But if the Word of God is in the universe, which is a body, and has entered into it in itsevery part, what is there surprising or unfitting in our saying that He has entered also into humannature? If it were unfitting for Him to have embodied Himself at all, then it would be unfitting forHim to have entered into the universe, and to be giving light and movement by His providence toall things in it, because the universe, as we have seen, is itself a body. But if it is right and fittingfor Him to enter into the universe and to reveal Himself through it, then, because humanity is partof the universe along with the rest, it is no less fitting for Him to appear in a human body, and toenlighten and to work through that. And surely if it were wrong for a part of the universe to havebeen used to reveal His Divinity to men, it would be much more wrong that He should be sorevealed by the whole!

(42) Take a parallel case. A man's personality actuates and quickens his whole body. If anyonesaid it was unsuitable for the man's power to be in the toe, he would be thought silly, because,while granting that a man penetrates and actuates the whole of his body, he denied his presencein the part. Similarly, no one who admits the presence of the Word of God in the universe as awhole should think it unsuitable for a single human body to be by Him actuated and enlightened.

But is it, perhaps, because humanity is a thing created and brought into being out ofnon-existence that they regard as unfitting the manifestation of the Savior in our nature? If so, it ishigh time that they spurned Him from creation too; for it, too, has been brought out of non-beinginto being by the Word. But if, on the other hand, although creation is a thing that has beenmade, it is not unsuitable for the Word to be present in it, then neither is it unsuitable for Him tobe in man. Man is a part of the creation, as I said before; and the reasoning which applies to oneapplies to the other. All things derive from the Word their light and movement and life, as theGentile authors themselves say, "In Him we live and move and have our being."[1] Verywell then. That being so, it is by no means unbecoming that the Word should dwell in man. So if,as we say, the Word has used that in which He is as the means of His self-manifestation, what isthere ridiculous in that? He could not have used it had He not been present in it; but we havealready admitted that He is present both in the whole and in the parts. What, then, is thereincredible in His manifesting Himself through that in which He is? By His own power He enterscompletely into each and all, and orders them throughout ungrudgingly; and, had He so willed,He could have revealed Himself and His Father by means of sun or moon or sky or earth or fireor water. Had He done so, no one could rightly have accused Him of acting unbecomingly, forHe sustains in one whole all things at once, being present and invisibly revealed not only in thewhole, but also in each particular part. This being so, and since, moreover, He has willed toreveal Himself through men, who are part of the whole, there can be nothing ridiculous in Hisusing a human body to manifest the truth and knowledge of the Father. Does not the mind ofman pervade his entire being, and yet find expression through one part only, namely the tongue?Does anybody say on that account that Mind has degraded itself? Of course not. Very well,then, no more is it degrading for the Word, Who pervades all things, to have appeared in ahuman body. For, as I said before, if it were unfitting for Him thus to indwell the part, it wouldbe equally so for Him to exist within the whole.

(43) Some may then ask, why did He not manifest Himself by means of other and nobler partsof creation, and use some nobler instrument, such as sun or moon or stars or fire or air, insteadof mere man? The answer is this. The Lord did not come to make a display. He came to healand to teach suffering men. For one who wanted to make a display the thing would have beenjust to appear and dazzle the beholders. But for Him Who came to heal and to teach the waywas not merely to dwell here, but to put Himself at the disposal of those who needed Him, andto be manifested according as they could bear it, not vitiating the value of the Divine appearingby exceeding their capacity to receive it.

Moreover, nothing in creation had erred from the path of God's purpose for it, save only man.Sun, moon, heaven, stars, water, air, none of these had swerved from their order, but, knowingthe Word as their Maker and their King, remained as they were made. Men alone havingrejected what is good, have invented nothings instead of the truth, and have ascribed the honordue to God and the knowledge concerning Him to demons and men in the form of stones.Obviously the Divine goodness could not overlook so grave a matter as this. But men could notrecognize Him as ordering and ruling creation as a whole. So what does He do? He takes toHimself for instrument a part of the whole, namely a human body, and enters into that. Thus Heensured that men should recognize Him in the part who could not do so in the whole, and thatthose who could not lift their eyes to His unseen power might recognize and behold Him in thelikeness of themselves. For, being men, they would naturally learn to know His Father morequickly and directly by means of a body that corresponded to their own and by the Divineworks done through it; for by comparing His works with their own they would judge His to benot human but Divine. And if, as they say, it were unsuitable for the Word to reveal Himselfthrough bodily acts, it would be equally so for Him to do so through the works of the universe.His being in creation does not mean that He shares its nature; on the contrary, all created thingspartake of His power. Similarly, though He used the body as His instrument, He shared nothingof its defect,[2] but rather sanctified it by His indwelling. Does not even Plato, of whom theGreeks think so much, say that the Author of the Universe, seeing it storm-tossed and in dangerof sinking into the state of dissolution, takes his seat at the helm of the Life-force of the universe,and comes to the rescue and putseverything right? What, then, is there incredible in our sayingthat, mankind having gone astray, the Word descended upon it and was manifest as man, so thatby His intrinsic goodness and His steersmanship He might save it from the storm?

(44) It may be, however, that, though shamed into agreeing that this objection is void, theGreeks will want to raise another. They will say that, if God wanted to instruct and savemankind, He might have done so, not by His Word's assumption of a body, but, even as He atfirst created them, by the mere signification of His will. The reasonable reply to that is that thecircumstances in the two cases are quite different. In the beginning, nothing as yet existed at all;all that was needed, therefore, in order to bring all things into being, was that His will to do soshould be signified. But once man was in existence, and things that were, not things that werenot, demanded to be healed, it followed as a matter of course that the Healer and Savior shouldalign Himself with those things that existed already, in order to heal the existing evil. For thatreason, therefore, He was made man, and used the body as His human instrument. If this werenot the fitting way, and He willed to use an instrument at all, how otherwise was the Word tocome? And whence could He take His instrument, save from among those already in existenceand needing His Godhead through One like themselves? It was not things non-existent thatneeded salvation, for which a bare creative word might have sufficed, but man--man already inexistence and already in process of corruption and ruin. It was natural and right, therefore, forthe Word to use a human instrument and by that means unfold Himself to all.

You must know, moreover, that the corruption which had set in was not external to the body buquizablished within it. The need, therefore, was that life should cleave to it in corruption's place,so that, just as death was brought into being in the body, life also might be engendered in it. Ifdeath had been exterior to the body, life might fittingly have been the same. But if death waswithin the body, woven into its very substance and dominating it as though completely one withit, the need was for Life to be woven into it instead, so that the body by thus enduing itself withlife might cast corruption off. Suppose the Word had come outside the body instead of in it, Hewould, of course, have defeated death, because death is powerless against the Life. But thecorruption inherent in the body would have remained in it none the less. Naturally, therefore, theSavior assumed a body for Himself, in order that the body, being interwoven as it were with life,should no longer remain a mortal thing, in thrall to death, but as endued with immortality andrisen from death, should thenceforth remain immortal. For once having put off corruption, itcould not rise, unless it put on life instead; and besides this, death of its very nature could notappear otherwise than in a body. Therefore He put on a body, so that in the body He might finddeath and blot it out. And, indeed, how could the Lord have been proved to be the Life at all,had He not endued with life that which was subject to death? Take an illustration. Stubble is asubstance naturally destructible by fire; and it still remains stubble, fearing the menace of firewhich has the natural property of consuming it, even if fire is kept away from it, so that it is notactually burnt. But suppose that, instead of merely keeping the fire from it somebody soaks thestubble with a quantity of asbestos, the substance which is said to be the antidote to fire. Thenthe stubble no longer fears the fire, because it has put on that which fire cannot touch, andtherefore it is safe. It is just the same with regard to the body and death. Had death been keptfrom it by a mere command, it would still have remained mortal and corruptible, according to itsnature. To prevent this, it put on the incorporeal Word of God, and therefore fears neither deathnor corruption any more, for it is clad with Life as with a garment and in it corruption is cleandone away.

(45) The Word of God thus acted consistently in assuming a body and using a human instrumentto vitalize the body. He was consistent in working through man to reveal Himself everywhere, aswell as through the other parts of His creation, so that nothing was left void of His Divinity andknowledge. For I take up now the point I made before, namely that the Savior did this in orderthat He might fill all things everywhere with the knowledge of Himself, just as they are alreadyfilled with His presence, even as the Divine Scripture says,

"The whole universe was filled with the knowledge of the Lord."[3]

If a man looks up to heaven he sees there His ordering; but if he cannot look so high as heaven,but only so far as men, through His works he sees His power, incomparable with human might,and learns from them that He alone among men is God the Word. Or, if a man has gone astrayamong demons and is in fear of them, he may see this Man drive them out and judge therefromthat He is indeed their Master. Again, if a man has been immersed in the element of water andthinks that it is God--as indeed the Egyptians do worship water--he may see its very naturechanged by Him and learn that the Lord is Creator of all. And if a man has gone down even toHades, and stands awestruck before the heroes who have descended thither, regarding them asgods, still he may see the fact of Christ's resurrection and His victory over death, and reasonfrom it that, of all these, He alone is very Lord and God.

For the Lord touched all parts of creation, and freed and undeceived them all from every deceit.As St. Paul says,

"Having put off from Himself the principalities and the powers, He triumphed on the cross,"[4]

so that no one could possibly be any longer deceived, but everywhere might find the very Wordof God. For thus man, enclosed on every side by the works of creation and everywhere--inheaven, in Hades, in men and on the earth, beholding the unfolded Godhead of the Word, is nolonger deceived concerning God, but worships Christ alone, and through Him rightly knows theFather.

On these grounds, then, of reason and of principle, we will fairly silence the Gentiles in their turn.But if they think these arguments insufficient to confute them, we will go on in the next chapter toprove our point from facts. CHAPTER VIII REFUTATION OF THE GENTILES--continued

(46) When did people begin to abandon the worship of idols, unless it were since the veryWord of God came among men? When have oracles ceased and become void of meaning,among the Greeks and everywhere, except since the Savior has revealed Himself on earth?When did those whom the poets call gods and heroes begin to be adjudged as mere mortals,except when the Lord took the spoils of death and preserved incorruptible the body He hadtaken, raising it from among the dead ? Or when did the deceitfulness and madness of demonsfall under contempt, save when the Word, the Power of God, the Master of all these as well,condescended on account of the weakness of mankind and appeared on earth? When did thepractice and theory of magic begin to be spurned under foot, if not at the manifestation of theDivine Word to men? In a word, when did the wisdom of the Greeks become foolish, savewhen the true Wisdom of God revealed Himself on earth? In old times the whole world andevery place in it was led astray by the worship of idols, and men thought the idols were the onlygods that were. But now all over the world men are forsaking the fear of idols and taking refugewith Christ; and by worshipping Him as God they come through Him to know the Father also,Whom formerly they did not know. The amazing thing, moreover, is this. The objects of worshipformerly were varied and countless; each place had its own idol and the so-called god of oneplace could not pass over to another in order to persuade the people there to worship him, butwas barely reverenced even by his own. Indeed no! Nobody worshipped his neighbor's god,but every man had his own idol and thought that it was lord of all. But now Christ alone isworshipped, as One and the Same among all peoples everywhere; and what the feebleness ofidols could not do, namely, convince even those dwelling close at hand, He has effected. He haspersuaded not only those close at hand, but literally the entire world to worship one and thesame Lord and through Him the Father.

(47) Again, in former times every place was full of the fraud of the oracles, and the utterances ofthose at Delphi and Dordona and in Boeotia and Lycia and Libya and Egypt and those of theKabiri and the Pythoness were considered marvelous by the minds of men. But now, sinceChrist has been proclaimed everywhere, their madness too has ceased, and there is no one leftamong them to give oracles at all. Then, too, demons used to deceive men's minds by taking uptheir abode in springs or rivers or trees or stones and imposing upon simple people by theirfrauds. But now, since the Divine appearing of the Word, all this fantasy has ceased, for by thesign of the cross, if a man will but use it, he drives out their deceits. Again, people used to regardas gods those who are mentioned in the poets-- Zeus and Kronos and Apollo and the heroes,and in worshipping them they went astray. But now that the Savior has appeared among men,those others have been exposed as mortal men, and Christ alone is recognized as true God,Word of God, God Himself. And what is one to say about the magic that they think somarvelous? Before the sojourn of the Word, it was strong and active among Egyptians andChaldeans and Indians and filled all who saw it with terror and astonishment. But by the comingof the Truth and the manifestation of the Word it too has been confuted and entirely destroyed.As to Greek wisdom, however, and the philosophers' noisy talk, I really think no one requiresargument from us; for the amazing fact is patent to all that, for all that they had written so much,the Greeks failed to convince even a few from their own neighborhood in regard to immortalityand the virtuous ordering of life. Christ alone, using common speech and through the agency ofmen not clever with their tongues, has convinced whole assemblies of people all the world overto despise death, and to take heed to the things that do not die, to look past the things of timeand gaze on things eternal, to think nothing of earthly glory and to aspire only to immortality.

(48) These things which we have said are no mere words:

they are atquized by actual experience. Anyone who likes may see the proof of glory in the virgins of Christ, and in the young men who practice chastity as part of their religion, and in the assurance of immortality in so great and glad a company[1]

of martyrs. Anyone, too, may put what we have said to the proof of experience in another way.In the very presence of the fraud of demons and the imposture of the oracles and the wonders ofmagic, let him use the sign of the cross which they all mock at, and but speak the Name ofChrist, and he shall see how through Him demons are routed, oracles cease, and all magic andwitchcraft is confounded.

Who, then, is this Christ and how great is He, Who by His Name and presence overshadowsand confounds all things on every side, Who alone is strong against all and has filled the wholeworld with His teaching? Let the Greeks tell us, who mock at Him without stint or shame. If Heis a man, how is it that one man has proved stronger than all those whom they themselves regardas gods, and by His own power has shown them to be nothing? If they call Him a magician, howis it that by a magician all magic is destroyed, instead of being rendered strong? Had Heconquered certain magicians or proved Himself superior to one of them only, they mightreasonably think that He excelled the rest only by His greater skill. But the fact is that His crosshas vanquished all magic entirely and has conquered the very name of it. Obviously, therefore,the Savior is no magician, for the very demons whom the magicians invoke flee from Him asfrom their Master. Who is He, then? Let the Greeks tell us, whose only serious pursuit ismockery! Perhaps they will say that He, too, is a demon, and that is why He prevailed. But evenso the laugh is still on our side. for we can confute them by the same proofs as before. Howcould He be a demon, Who drives demons out? If it were only certain ones that He drove out,then they might reasonably think that He prevailed against them through the power of their Chief,as the Jews, wishing to insult Him, actually said. But since the fact is, here again, that at the merenaming of His Name all madness of the demons is rooted out and put to flight, obviously theGreeks are wrong here, too, and our Lord and Savior Christ is not, as they maintain, somedemonic power.

If, then, the Savior is neither a mere man nor a magician, nor one of the demons, but has by HisGodhead confounded and overshadowed the opinions of the poets and the delusion of thedemons and the wisdom of the Greeks, it must be manifest and will be owned by all that He is intruth Son of God, Existent Word and Wisdom and Power of the Father. This is the reason whyHis works are no mere human works, but, both intrinsically and by comparison with those ofmen, are recognized as being superhuman and truly the works of God.

(49) What man that ever was, for instance, formed a body for himself from a virgin only? Orwhat man ever healed so many diseases as the common Lord of all? Who restored that whichwas lacking in man's nature or made one blind from birth to see? Aesculapius was deified by theGreeks because he practiced the art of healing and discovered herbs as remedies for bodilydiseases, not, of course, forming them himself out of the earth, but finding them out by the studyof nature. But what is that in comparison with what the Savior did when, instead of just healing awound, He both fashioned essential being and restored to health the thing that He had formed?Hercules, too, is worshipped as a god by the Greeks because he fought against other men anddestroyed wild animals by craft. But what is that to what the Word did, in driving away frommen diseases and demons and even death itself? Dionysus is worshipped among them, becausehe taught men drunkenness; yet they ridicule the true Savior and Lord of all, Who taught mentemperance.

That, however, is enough on this point. What will they say to the other marvels of His Godhead?At what man's death was the sun darkened and the earth shaken? Why, even to this day menare dying, and they did so also before that time. When did any such marvels happen in theircase? Now shall we pass over the deeds done in His earthly body and mention those after Hisresurrection? Has any man's teaching, in any place or at any time, ever prevailed everywhere asone and the same, from one end of the earth to the other, so that his worship has fairly flownthrough every land? Again, if, as they say, Christ is man only and not God the Word, why donot the gods of the Greeks prevent His entering their domains? Or why, on the other hand, doesthe Word Himself dwelling in our midst make an end of their worship by His teaching and puttheir fraud to shame?

(50) Many before Him have been kings and tyrants of the earth, history tells also of many amongthe Chaldeans and Egyptians and Indians who were wise men and magicians. But which ofthose, I do not say after his death, but while yet in this life, was ever able so far to prevail as tofill the whole world with his teaching and retrieve so great a multitude from the craven fear ofidols, as our Savior has won over from idols to Himself? The Greek philosophers have compiledmany works with persuasiveness and much skill in words; but what fruit have they to show forthis such as has the cross of Christ? Their wise thoughts were persuasive enough until they died;yet even in their life-time their seeming influence was counterbalanced by their rivalry with oneanother, for they were a jealous company and declaimed against each other. But the Word ofGod, by strangest paradox, teaching in meaner language, has put the choicest sophists in theshade, and by confounding their teachings and drawing all men to Himself He has filled His ownassemblies. Moreover, and this is the marvelous thing by going down as Man to death He hasconfounded ail the sounding utterances of the wise men about the idols. For whose death everdrove out demons, or whose death did ever demons fear, save that of Christ? For where theSavior is named, there every demon is driven out. Again, who has ever so rid men of theirnatural passions that fornicators become chaste and murderers no longer wield the sword andthose who formerly were craven cowards boldly play the man? In a word, what persuaded thebarbarians and heathen folk in every place to drop their madness and give heed to peace, savethe faith of Christ and the sign of the cross? What other things have given men such certain faithin immortality as have the cross of Christ and the resurrection of His body? The Greeks told allsorts of false tales, but they could never pretend that their idols rose again from death: indeed itnever entered their heads that a body could exist again after death at all. And one would beparticularly ready to listen to them on this point, because by these opinions they have exposedthe weakness of their own idolatry, at the same time yielding to Christ the possibility of bodilyresurrection, so that by that means He might be recognized by all as Son of God.

(51) Again, who among men, either after his death or while yet living, taught about virginity anddid not account this virtue impossible for human beings? But Christ our Savior and King of allhas so prevailed with His teaching on this subject that even children not yet of lawful agepromise that virginity which transcends the law. And who among men has ever been able topenetrate even to Scythians and Ethiopians, or Parthians or Armenians or those who are said tolive beyond Hyrcania, or even the Egyptians and Chaldeans, people who give heed to magic andare more than naturally enslaved by the fear of demons and savage in their habits, and to preachat all about virtue and self-control and against the worshipping of idols, as has the Lord of all,the Power of God, our Lord Jesus Christ? Yet He not only preached through His own disciples,but also wrought so persuasively on men's understanding that, laying aside their savage habitsand forsaking the worship of their ancestral gods, they learnt to know Him and through Him toworship the Father. While they were yet idolaters, the Greeks and Barbarians were always atwar with each other, and were even cruel to their own kith and kin. Nobody could travel byland or sea at all unless he was armed with swords, because of their irreconcilable quarrels witheach other. Indeed, the whole course of their life was carried on with the weapons, and thesword with them replaced the staff and was the mainstay of all aid. All this time, as I said before,they were serving idols and offering sacrifices to demons, and for all the superstitious awe thataccompanied this idol worship, nothing could wean them from that warlike spirit. But, strange torelate, since they came over to the school of Christ, as men moved with real compunction theyhave laid aside their murderous cruelty and are war-minded no more. On the contrary, all ispeace among them and nothing remains save desire for friendship.

(52) Who, then, is He Who has done these things and has united in peace those who hated eachother, save the beloved Son of the Father, the common Savior of all, Jesus Christ, Who by Hisown love underwent all things for our salvation? Even from the beginning, moreover, this peacethat He was to administer was foretold, for Scripture says,

"They shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into sickles, and nation shall not take sword against nation, neither shall they learn any more to wage war."[2]

Nor is this by any means incredible.

The barbarians of the present day are naturally savage in their habits, and as long as theysacrifice to their idols they rage furiously against each other and cannot bear to be a single hourwithout weapons. But when they hear the teaching of Christ, forthwith they turn from fighting tofarming, and instead of arming themselves with swords extend their hands in prayer. In a word,instead of fighting each other, they take up arms against thedevil and the demons, and overcomethem by their selfcommand and integrity of soul. These facts are proof of the Godhead of theSavior, for He has taught men what they could never learn among the idols. It is also no smallexposure of the weakness and nothingness of demons and idols, for it was because they knewtheir own weakness that the demons were always setting men to fight each other, fearing lest, ifthey ceased from mutual strife, they would turn to attack the demons themselves. For in truth thedisciples of Christ, instead of fighting each other, stand arrayed against demons by their habitsand virtuous actions, and chase them away and mock at their captain the devil. Even in youththey are chaste, they endure in times of quizing and persevere in toils. When they are insulted,they are patient, when robbed they make light of it, and, marvelous to relate, they make lighteven of death itself, and become martyrs of Christ.

(53) And here is another proof of the Godhead of the Savior, which is indeed utterly amazing.What mere man or magician or tyrant or king was ever able by himself to do so much? Didanyone ever fight against the whole system of idol-worship and the whole host of demons and allmagic and all the wisdom of the Greeks, at a time when all of these were strong and flourishingand taking everybody in, as did our Lord, the very Word of God? Yet He is even now invisiblyexposing every man's error, and single-handed is carrying off all men from them all, so that thosewho used to worship idols now tread them under foot, reputed magicians burn their books andthe wise prefer to all studies the interpretation of the gospels. They are deserting those whomformerly they worshipped, they worship and confess as Christ and God Him Whom they usedto ridicule as crucified. Their so-called gods are routed by the sign of the cross, and the crucifiedSavior is proclaimed in all the world as God and Son of God. Moreover, the gods worshippedamong the Greeks are now falling into disrepute among them on account of the disgraceful thingsthey did, for those who receive the teaching of Christ are more chaste in life than they. If these,and the like of them, are human works, let anyone who will show us similar ones done by men informer time, and so convince us. But if they are shown to be, and are the works not of men butof God, why are the unbelievers so irreligious as not to recognize the Master Who did them?They are afflicted as a man would be who failed to recognize God the Artificer through theworks of creation. For surely if they had recognized His Godhead through His power over theuniverse, they would recognize also that the bodily works of Christ are not human, but are thoseof the Savior of all, the Word of God. And had they recognized this, as Paul says, "They wouldnot have crucified the Lord of glory."[3]

(54) As, then, he who desires to see God Who by nature is invisible and not to be beheld, mayyet perceive and know Him through His works, so too let him who does not see Christ with hisunderstanding at least consider Him in His bodily works and quiz whether they be of man orGod. If they be of man, then let him scoff; but if they be of God, let him not mock at thingswhich are no fit subject for scorn, but rather let him recognize the fact and marvel that thingsdivine have been revealed to us by such humble means, that through death deathlessness hasbeen made known to us, and through the Incarnation of the Word the Mind whence all thingsproceed has been declared, and its Agent and Ordainer, the Word of God Himself. He, indeed,assumed humanity that we might become God. He manifested Himself by means of a body inorder that we might perceive the Mind of the unseen Father. He endured shame from men thatwe might inherit immortality. He Himself was unhurt by this, for He is impassable andincorruptible; but by His own impassability He kept and healed the suffering men on whoseaccount He thus endured. In short, such and so many are the Savior's achievements that followfrom His Incarnation, that to try to number them is like gazing at the open sea and trying to countthe waves. One cannot see all the waves with one's eyes, for when one tries to do so those thatare following on baffle one's senses. Even so, when one wants to take in all the achievements ofChrist in the body, one cannot do so, even by reckoning them up, for the things that transcendone's thought are always more than those one thinks that one has grasped.

As we cannot speak adequately about even a part of His work, therefore, it will be better for usnot to speak about it as a whole. So we will mention but one thing more, and then leave thewhole for you to marvel at. For, indeed, everything about it is marvelous, and wherever a manturns his gaze he sees the Godhead of the Word and is smitten with awe.

(55) The substance of what we have said so far may be summarized as follows. Since the Saviorcame to dwell among us, not only does idolatry no longer increase, but it is getting less andgradually ceasing to be. Similarly, not only does the wisdom of the Greeks no longer make anyprogress, but that which used to be is disappearing. And demons, so far from continuing toimpose on people by their deceits and oracle-givings and sorceries, are routed by the sign of thecross if they so much as try. On the other hand, while idolatry and everything else that opposesthe faith of Christ is daily dwindling and weakening and falling, see, the Savior's teaching isincreasing everywhere! Worship, then, the Savior "Who is above all" and mighty, even God theWord, and condemn those who are being defeated and made to disappear by Him. When thesun has come, darkness prevails no longer; any of it that may be left anywhere is driven away.So also, now that the Divine epiphany of the Word of God has taken place, the darkness ofidols prevails no more, and all parts of the world in every direction are enlightened by Histeaching. Similarly, if a king be reigning somewhere, but stays in his own house and does not lethimself be seen, it often happens that some insubordinate fellows, taking advantage of hisretirement, will have themselves proclaimed in his stead; and each of them, being invested withthe semblance of kingship, misleads the simple who, because they cannot enter the palace andsee the real king, are led astray by just hearing a king named. When the real king emerges,however, and appears to view, things stand differently. The insubordinate impostors areshownup by his presence, and men, seeing the real king, forsake those who previously misled them. Inthe same way the demons used formerly to impose on men, investing themselves with the honordue to God. But since the Word of God has been manifested in a body, and has made known tous His own Father, the fraud of the demons is stopped and made to disappear; and men, turningtheir eyes to the true God, Word of the Father, forsake the idols and come to know the trueGod.

Now this is proof that Christ is God, the Word and Power of God. For whereas human thingscease and the fact of Christ remains, it is clear to all that the things which cease are temporary,but that He Who remains is God and very Son of God, the sole-begotten Word. CHAPTER IX CONCLUSION

(56) Here, then, Macarius, is our offering to you who love Christ, a brief statement of the faith ofChrist and of the manifestation of His Godhead to us. This will give you a beginning, and youmust go on to prove its truth by the study of the Scriptures. They were written and inspired byGod; and we, who have learned from inspired teachers who read the Scriptures and becamemartyrs for the Godhead of Christ, make further contribution to your eagerness to learn. Fromthe Scriptures you will learn also of His second manifestation to us, glorious and divine indeed,when He shall come not in lowliness but in His proper glory, no longer in humiliation but inmajesty, no longer to suffer but to bestow on us all the fruit of His cross-- the resurrection andincorruptibility. No longer will He then be judged, but rather will Himself be Judge, judging eachand all according to their deeds done in the body, whether good or ill. Then for the good is laidup the heavenly kingdom, but for those that practice evil outer darkness and the eternal fire. Soalso the Lord Himself says,

"I say unto you, hereafter ye shall see the Son of Man seated on the right hand of power, coming on the clouds of heaven in the glory of the Father."[1]

For that Day we have one of His own sayings to prepare us,

"Get ready and watch, for ye know not the hour in which He cometh"[2]

And blessed Paul says,

"We must all stand before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive according as he practiced in the body, whether good or ill."[3]

(57) But for the searching and right understanding of the Scriptures there is need of a good lifeand a pure soul, and for Christian virtue to guide the mind to grasp, so far as human nature can,the truth concerning God the Word. One cannot possibly understand the teaching of the saintsunless one has a pure mind and is trying to imitate their life. Anyone who wants to look atsunlight naturally wipes his eye clear first, in order to make, at any rate, some approximation tothe purity of that on which he looks; and a person wishing to see a city or country goes to theplace in order to do so. Similarly, anyone who wishes to understand the mind of the sacredwriters must first cleanse his own life, and approach the saints by copying their deeds. Thusunited to them in the fellowship of life, he will both understand the things revealed to them byGod and, thenceforth escaping the peril that threatens sinners in the judgment, will receive thatwhich is laid up for the saints in the kingdom of heaven. Of that reward it is written:

"Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither hath entered into the heart of man the things that God has prepared"[4]

for them that live a godly life and love the God and Father in Christ Jesus our Lord, throughWhom and with Whom be to the Father Himself, with the Son Himself, in the Holy Spirit, honorand might and glory to ages of ages. Amen.

End Notes

Chapter I

1. i.e. the Contra Gentes.

2. Matt. xix. 4-6

3. John i. 3

4. Gen. i. 1

5. The Shepherd of Hermas, Book II. I

6. Heb. xi. 3

7. Gen. ii. 16 f.

8. Wisdom vi. 18

9. Psalm lxxxii. 6 f.

10. Wisdom ii. 23 f.

11. Rom. i. 26 f.Chapter II1. 2 Cor. v. 14 f.

2. Heb. ii. 9 ff.

3. Heb. ii. 14 f.

4. 1 Cor. xv. 21 f.

5. 1 Tim. vi. 15Chapter III1. Rom. i. 25

2. Luke xix. 10

3. John iii. 3

4. Luke xix. 10

6. Eph. iii. 17 ff.

7. John x. 37-38Chapter IV1. 1 Cor. xv. 53 ff.

3. Gal. iii. 13

4. Gal. iii. 13

5. Eph. ii. 14

6. John xii. 32

7. Eph. ii. 2

8. Heb. x. 20

9. Luke x. 18

10. Psalm xxiv. 7Chapter V1. I Cor. xv. 55

2. Heb.iv. 12

3. Cf. Luke iv. 34 and Mark v. 7Chapter VI1. Isaiah vii. 14

2. Numbers xxiv. 17

3. Numbers xxiv. 5-7

4. Isaiah viii. 4

5. Isaiah xix. 1

6. Hosea xi. 1

7. Isaiah liii. 3-5

8. Isaiah liii. 6-8

9. Isaiah liii. 8-10

10. Deut. xxviii. 66

11. Jer. xi. 19

12. Psalm xxii. 16-18

13. Isaiah xi. 10

14. Isaiah lxv. 1, 2

15. Isaiah xxxv. 3-6

16. John ix. 32, 33

17. "Answer" is LXX misreading for Hebrew "restore."

18. Daniel ix. 24, 25

19. Gen. xlix. 10

20. Matt. xi. 13

21. Psalm cxviii. 27

22. Psalm cvii. 20

23. Isaiah lxiii. 9Chapter VII1. See Acts xvii. 28

2. Literally, "He shared nothing of the things of the body."

3. Isaiah xi. 9

4. Col. ii. 15Chapter VIII1. Literally, "so great a chorus . . .". "choros" being properly a band of dancers and singers.

2. Isaiah ii. 4

3. Cor. ii. 8Chapter IX1. Matt. xxvi. 64

2. Matt. xxiv. 42

3. 2 Cor. v. 10

4. 1 Cor. ii. 9

Made available to the net by:Paul HalsallHalsall@murray.fordham.edu

Made into HTML by:Tim Hawesthawes@rcinet.comScripture Index

Of Athanasius' On the Incarnation

[Contents] [End Notes] Old quizament

Genesis

Gen. i.1 ch1 n4 Gen. ii. 16 f. ch1 n7 Gen. xlix. 10 ch6 n19

Numbers

Numbers xxiv. 17 ch6 n2 Numbers xxiv. 5-7 ch6 n3

Deuteronomy

Deut. xxviii. 66 ch6 n10

Psalms

Psalm xxii. 16-18 ch6 n12 Psalm xxiv. 7. ch4 n10 Psalm lxxxii. 6 f. ch1 n9 Psalm cxviii. 27 ch6 n21 Psalm cvii. 20 ch6 n22

Isaiah

Isaiah ii. 4 ch8 n2 Isaiah vii. 14 ch6 n1 Isaiah viii. 4 ch6 n4 Isaiah xi. 9 ch7 n3 Isaiah xi. 10 ch6 n13 Isaiah xix. 1 ch6 n5 Isaiah xxxv. 3-6 ch6 n15 Isaiah liii. 3-5 ch6 n7 Isaiah liii. 6-8 ch6 n8 Isaiah liii. 8-10 ch6 n9 Isaiah lxiii. 9 ch6 n23 Isaiah lxv. 1, 2 ch6 n14

Jeremiah

Jer. xi. 19 ch6 n11

Daniel

Daniel ix. 24, ch8 n18

Hosea

Hosea xi. 1 ch6 n6

New quizament

Matthew

Matt. xi. 13 ch6 n20 Matt. xix. 4-6 ch1 n2 Matt. xxiv. 42 ch9 n2 Matt. xxvi. 64 ch9 n1

Mark

Mark v. 7 ch5 n3

Luke

Luke iv. 34 ch5 n3 Luke x. 18 ch4 n9 Luke xix. 10 ch3 n2; ch3 n5

John

John i. 3 ch1 n3 John iii. 3 ch3 n3 John ix. 32, 33 ch6 n16 John x. 37-38 ch3 n8 John xii. 32 ch4 n6

Romans

Rom. i. 25 ch3 n1 Rom. i. 26 f. ch1 n11

1 Corinthians

1 Cor. i. 21 ch3 n4 1 Cor. ii. 8 ch8 n3 1 Cor. ii. 9. ch9 n4 1 Cor. xv. 21 f. ch2 n4 1 Cor. xv. 53 ff. ch4 n2 1 Cor. xv. 55 ch5 n1

2 Corinthians

2 Cor. v. 10 ch9 n3 2 Cor. v. 14 f. ch2 n1

Galatians

Gal. iii. 13 ch4 n3 Gal. iii. 13 ch4 n4

Ephesians

Eph. ii. 2 ch4 n7 Eph. ii. 14 ch4 n5 Eph. iii. 17 ff. ch3 n6

Colosians

Col. ii. 15 ch7 n4

1 Timothy

1 Tim. vi. 15 ch2 n5

Hebrews

Heb. ii. 9 ff. ch2 n2 Heb. ii. 14 f. ch2 n3; ch4 n1 Heb. iv. 12 ch5 n2 Heb. x. 20 ch4 n8 Heb. xi. 3 ch1 n6

1 Peter

1 Peter ii. 22 ch3 n7