LI. “The Lord our God is but one God.” In which indivisible unity notwithstanding we adore the Father as being altogether of himself, we glorify that consubstantial Word which is the Son, we bless and magnify that co-essential Spirit eternally proceeding from both which is the Holy Ghost. Seeing therefore the Father is of none, the Son is of the Father and the Spirit is of both, they are by these their several properties really distinguishable each from other. For the substance of God with this property to be of none doth make the Person of the Father; the very selfsame substance in number with this property to be of the Father maketh the Person of the Son; the same substance having added unto it the property of proceeding from the other two maketh the Person of the Holy Ghost. So that in every Person there is implied both the substance of God which is one, and also that property which causeth the same person really and truly to differ from the other two. Every person hath his own subsistence which no other besides hath1, although there be others besides that are of the same substance. As no man but Peter can be the person which Peter is, yet Paul hath the selfsame nature which Peter hath. Again, angels have every of them the nature of pure and invisible spirits, but every angel is not that angel which appeared in a dream to Joseph.
Now when God became man, lest we should err in applying this to the Person of the Father, or of the Spirit, St. Peter’s confession unto Christ was, “Thou art the Son of the living God2,” and St. John’s exposition thereof was plain, that it is the Word3 which was made Flesh. “4The Father and the Holy Ghost (saith Damascen) have no communion with the incarnation of the Word otherwise than only by approbation and assent.”
Notwithstanding, forasmuch as the Word and Deity are one subject, we must beware we exclude not the nature of God from incarnation, and so make the Son of God incarnate not to be very God. For undoubtedly5 even the nature of God itself in the only person of the Son is incarnate, and hath taken to itself flesh. Wherefore incarnation may neither be granted to any person but only one, nor yet denied to that nature which is common unto all three.
Concerning the cause of which incomprehensible mystery, forasmuch as it seemeth a thing unconsonant that the world should honour any other as the Saviour but him whom it honoureth as the Creator of the world, and in the wisdom of God it hath not been thought convenient to admit any way of saving man but by man himself, though nothing should be spoken of the love and mercy of God towards man, which this way are become such a spectacle as neither men nor angels can behold without a kind of heavenly astonishment, we may hereby perceive there is cause sufficient why divine nature should assume human, that so God might be in Christ reconciling to himself the world6. And if some cause be likewise required why rather to this end and purpose the Son than either the Father or the Holy Ghost should be made man, could we which are born the children of wrath be adopted the sons of God through grace, any other than the natural Son of God being Mediator between God and us? It7 became therefore him by whom all things are to be the way of salvation to all, that the institution and restitution of the world might be both wrought by one hand. The world’s salvation was without the incarnation of the Son of God a thing impossible, not simply impossible, but impossible it being presupposed that the will of God was no otherwise to have it saved than by the death of his own Son. Wherefore taking to himself our flesh, and by his incarnation making it his own flesh, he had now of his own although from us what to offer unto God for us.
And as Christ took manhood that by it he might be capable of death whereunto he humbled himself, so because manhood is the proper subject of compassion and feeling pity, which maketh the sceptre of Christ’s regency even in the kingdom of heaven amiable, he which without our nature could not on earth suffer for the sins of the world, doth now also8 by means thereof both make intercession to God for sinners and exercise dominion over all men with a true, a natural, and a sensible touch of mercy.
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Footnotes
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Πρόσωπον ἤγουν ὑπόστασίς ἐστι κατὰ τοὺς ἁγίους πατέρας, τὸ ἰδικὸν παρὰ τὸ κοινόν. Κοινότης γάρ ἐστιν ἡ ϕύσις ἑκάστου πράγματος, ἴδιαι δέ εἰσιν αἱ ὑποστάσεις. Suid. [sub voc. Ὑπόστασις.] Ἡ οὐσία καθ’ ἑαυτὴν οὐχ ὑϕίσταται, ἀλλ’ ἐν ται̑ς ὑποστάσεσι θεωρει̑ται· τὸ δὲ κοινὸν μετὰ του̑ ἰδιάζοντος ἔχει ἡ ὑπόστασις καὶ τὸ καθ’ ἑαυτὴν ὑπάρξαι. Damasc. († 760. Hooker has transposed the two clauses from Damasc.) de Orthod. Fide, lib. iii. cap. 6. [p. 67. ed. Veron. 1531.] ↩
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Matt. xvi. 16. ↩
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John i. 14. Ὅς ἐστιν αὐτου̑ Λόγος οὐ ῥητὸς ἀλλ’ οὐσιώδης. Οὐ γάρ ἐστι λαλια̑ς ἐνάρθρου ϕώνημα, ἀλλ’ ἐνεργείας θεϊκη̑ς οὐσία γεννητή. Ignat. Epist. ad Magnes. [§ 8. from the interpolated epistle.] ↩
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Κατ’ οὐδένα λόγον κεκοινώνηκεν ὁ Πατὴρ καὶ τὸ Πνευ̑μα τὸ ἅγιον τῃ̑ σαρκώσει του̑ Λόγου, εἰ μὴ κατ’ εὐδοκίαν καὶ βούλησιν. Damasc. [de Orthod. Fid. lib. iii. c. 11. fin. p. 75.] ↩
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Aug. Epist. 57. [al. 187. § 20. t. ii. 684.] “In illo Divinitas est Unigeniti facta particeps mortalitatis nostræ, ut et nos participes ejus immortalitatis essemus.” ↩
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2 Cor. v. 19. ↩
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Heb. ii. 10. [See also Coloss. i. 15-18.] ↩
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Heb. iv. 15. ↩