LVI. We have hitherto spoken of the Person and of the presence of Christ. Participation is that mutual inward hold which Christ hath of us and we of him, in such sort that each possesseth other by way of special interest, property, and inherent copulation. For plainer explication whereof we may from that which hath been before sufficiently proved assume to our purpose these two principles, “That every original cause imparteth itself unto those things which come of it;” and “whatsoever taketh being from any other, the same is after a sort in that which giveth it being.”
It followeth hereupon that the Son of God being light of light, must needs be also light1 in light. The Persons of the Godhead, by reason of the unity of their substance, do as necessarily remain one within another, as they are of necessity to be distinguished one from another, because two are the issue of one, and one the offspring of the other two, only of three one not growing out of any other. And sith they all are but one God in number, one indivisible essence or substance, their distinction cannot possibly admit separation. For how should that subsist solitarily by itself which hath no substance but individually the very same whereby others subsist with it; seeing that the multiplication of substances in particular is necessarily required to make those things subsist apart which have the selfsame general nature, and the Persons of that Trinity are not three particular substances to whom one general nature is common, but three that subsist by one substance which itself is particular, yet they all three have it, and their several ways of having it are that which maketh their personal distinction? The Father therefore is in the Son, and the Son in him, they both in the Spirit, and the Spirit in both them. So that the Father’s first offspring, which is the Son, remaineth eternally in the Father; the Father eternally also in the Son, no way severed or divided by reason of the sole and single unity of their substance. The Son in the Father as light in that light out of which it floweth without separation; the Father in the Son as light in that light which it causeth and leaveth not. And because in this respect his eternal being is of the Father, which eternal being is his life, therefore he by the Father liveth.
Again, sith all things do accordingly love their offspring as themselves are more or less contained in it, he which is thus the only-begotten, must needs be in this degree the only-beloved of the Father. He therefore which is in the Father by eternal derivation of being and life from him, must needs be in him through an eternal affection of love.
His Incarnation causeth him also as man to be now in the Father, and the Father to be in him. For in that he is man, he receiveth life from the Father as from the fountain of that ever living Deity, which in the person of the Word hath combined itself with manhood, and doth thereunto impart such life as to no other creature besides him is communicated. In which consideration likewise the love of the Father towards him is more than it can be towards any other2, neither can any attain unto that perfection of love which he beareth towards his heavenly Father3. Wherefore God is not so in any, nor any so in God as Christ, whether we consider him as the personal Word of God, or as the natural Son of man.
All other things that are of God have God in them and he them in himself likewise. Yet because their substance and his wholly differeth, their coherence and communion either with him or amongst themselves is in no sort like unto that before-mentioned.
God hath his influence into the very essence of all things, without which influence of Deity supporting them their utter annihilation could not choose but follow. Of him all things have both received their first being and their continuance to be that which they are. All things are therefore partakers of God, they are his offspring, his influence is in them, and the personal wisdom of God is for that very cause said to excel in nimbleness or agility, to4 pierce into all intellectual, pure, and subtile spirits, to go through all, and to reach unto every thing which is. Otherwise, how should the same wisdom be that which supporteth, beareth up5, and sustaineth all?
Whatsoever God doth work, the hands of all three Persons are jointly and equally in it according to the order of that connexion whereby they each depend upon other. And therefore albeit in that respect the Father be first, the Son next, the Spirit last, and consequently nearest unto every effect which groweth from all three, nevertheless, they all being of one essence, are likewise all of one efficacy. Dare any man unless he be ignorant altogether how inseparable the Persons of the Trinity are, persuade himself that every of them may have their sole and several possessions, or that6 we being not partakers of all, can have fellowship with any one? The Father as Goodness, the Son as Wisdom, the Holy Ghost as Power do all concur in every particular outwardly issuing from that one only glorious Deity which they all are. For that which moveth God to work is goodness, and that which ordereth his work is Wisdom, and that which perfecteth his work is Power. All things which God in their times and seasons hath brought forth were eternally and before all times in God, as a work unbegun is in the artificer which afterward bringeth it unto effect. Therefore whatsoever we do behold now in this present world, it was enwrapped within the bowels of divine Mercy, written in the book of eternal Wisdom, and held in the hands of omnipotent Power, the first foundations of the world being as yet unlaid.
So that all things which God hath made are in that respect the offspring of God7, they are in him as effects in their highest cause, he likewise actually is in them, the assistance and influence of his Deity is their life8.
Let hereunto saving efficacy be added, and it bringeth forth a special offspring amongst men, containing them to whom God hath himself given the gracious and amiable name of sons9. We are by nature the sons of Adam. When God created Adam he created us, and as many as are descended from Adam have in themselves the root out of which they spring. The sons of God we neither are all nor any one of us otherwise than only by grace and favour. The sons of God have God’s own natural Son as a second Adam10 from heaven, whose race and progeny they are by spiritual and heavenly birth. God therefore loving eternally his Son, he must needs eternally in him have loved and preferred before all others them which are spiritually sithence descended and sprung out of him11. These were in God as in their Saviour, and not as in their Creator only. It was the purpose of his saving Goodness, his saving Wisdom, and his saving Power which inclined itself towards them.
They which thus were in God eternally by their intended admission to life, have by vocation or adoption God actually now in them, as the artificer is in the work which his hand doth presently frame. Life as all other gifts and benefits groweth originally from the Father, and cometh not to us but by the Son12, nor by the Son to any of us in particular but through the Spirit13. For this cause the Apostle wisheth to the church of Corinth, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost14.” Which three St. Peter comprehendeth in one, “The participation of divine Nature15.” We are therefore in God through Christ eternally according to that intent and purpose whereby we were chosen to be made his in this present world before the world itself was made, we are in God through the knowledge which is had of us, and the love which is borne towards us from everlasting. But in God we actually are no longer than only from the time of our actual adoption into the body of his true Church, into the fellowship of his children. For his Church he knoweth and loveth, so that they which are in the Church are thereby known to be in him. Our being in Christ by eternal foreknowledge saveth us not without our actual and real adoption into the fellowship of his saints in this present world. For in him we actually are by our actual incorporation into that society which hath him for their Head16, and doth make together with him one Body, (he and they in that respect having one name17,) for which cause, by virtue of this mystical conjunction, we are of him and in him even as though our very flesh and bones should be made continuate with his18. We are in Christ because he19 knoweth and loveth us even as parts of himself. No man actually is in him but they in whom he actually is. For he which hath not the Son of God hath not life20.” “I am the vine and you are the branches: he which abideth in me and I in him the same bringeth forth much fruit;” but the branch severed from the vine withereth21. We are therefore adopted sons of God to eternal life by participation of the only-begotten Son of God, whose life is the well-spring and cause of ours22.
It is too cold an interpretation, whereby some men expound our being in Christ to import nothing else, but only that the selfsame nature which maketh us to be men, is in him, and maketh him man as we are. For what man in the world is there which hath not so far forth communion with Jesus Christ? It is not this that can sustain the weight of such sentences as speak of the mystery of our coherence23 with Jesus Christ. The Church is in Christ as Eve was in Adam. Yea by grace we are every of us in Christ and in his Church, as by nature we are in those our first parents. God made Eve of the rib of Adam. And his Church he frameth out of the very flesh, the very wounded and bleeding side of the Son of man. His body crucified and his blood shed for the life of the world, are the true elements of that heavenly being, which maketh us such as himself is of whom we come24. For which cause the words of Adam may be fitly the words of Christ concerning his Church, “flesh of my flesh, and bone of my bones,” a true native extract out of mine own body. So that in him even according to his manhood we according to our heavenly being are as branches in that root out of which they grow.
To all things he is life, and to men light25, as the Son of God; to the Church both life and light eternal26 by being made the Son of Man for us, and by being in us a Saviour, whether we respect him as God, or as man. Adam is in us as an original cause of our nature, and of that corruption of nature which causeth death, Christ as the cause original of restoration to life27; the person of Adam is not in us, but his nature, and the corruption of his nature derived into all men by propagation; Christ having Adam’s nature as we have, but incorrupt, deriveth not nature but incorruption and that immediately from his own person into all that belong unto him. As therefore we are really partakers of the body of sin and death received from Adam, so except we be truly partakers of Christ, and as really possessed of his Spirit, all we speak of eternal life is but a dream.
That which quickeneth us is the Spirit of the second Adam28, and his flesh that wherewith he quickeneth. That which in him made our nature uncorrupt, was the union of his Deity with our nature. And in that respect the sentence of death and condemnation which only taketh hold upon sinful flesh, could no way possibly extend unto him. This caused his voluntary death for others to prevail with God, and to have the force of an expiatory sacrifice. The blood of Christ, as the Apostle witnesseth, doth therefore take away sin, because “through the eternal Spirit he offered himself unto God without spot29.” That which sanctified our nature in Christ, that which made it a sacrifice available to take away sin, is the same which quickeneth it, raised it out of the grave after death, and exalted it unto glory. Seeing therefore that Christ is in us as a quickening Spirit, the first degree of communion with Christ must needs consist in the participation of his Spirit, which Cyprian in that respect well termeth germanissimam societatem30, the highest and truest society that can be between man and him which is both God and man in one.
These things St. Cyril duly considering31, reproveth their speeches which taught that only the deity of Christ is the vine whereupon we by faith do depend as branches, and that neither his flesh nor our bodies are comprised in this resemblance. For doth any man doubt but that even from the flesh of Christ our very bodies do receive that life which shall make them glorious at the later day, and for which they are already accounted parts of his blessed body? Our corruptible bodies could never live the life they shall live, were it not that here they are joined with his body which is incorruptible, and that his is in ours as a cause of immortality, a cause by removing through the death and merit of his own flesh that which hindered the life of ours. Christ is therefore both as God and as man that true vine whereof we both spiritually and corporally are branches. The mixture of his bodily substance with ours is a thing which the ancient Fathers disclaim32. Yet the mixture of his flesh with ours they speak of, to signify what our very bodies through mystical conjunction33 receive from that vital efficacy which we know to be in his: and from bodily mixtures they borrow divers similitudes rather to declare the truth, than the manner of coherence between his sacred and the sanctified bodies of saints34.
Thus much no Christian man will deny, that when Christ sanctified his own flesh, giving as God and taking as man the Holy Ghost, he did not this for himself only but for our sakes, that the grace of sanctification and life which was first received in him might pass from him to his whole race, as malediction came from Adam unto all mankind. Howbeit, because the work of his Spirit to those effects is in us prevented by sin and death possessing us before, it is of necessity that as well our present sanctification unto newness of life, as the future restoration of our bodies should presuppose a participation of the grace, efficacy, merit or virtue of his body and blood, without which foundation first laid there is no place for those other operations of the Spirit of Christ to ensue. So that Christ imparteth plainly himself by degrees.
It pleaseth him in mercy to account himself incomplete and maimed without us35. But most assured we are that we all receive of his fulness36, because he is in us as a moving and working cause; from which many blessed effects are really found to ensue, and that in sundry both kinds and degrees, all tending to eternal happiness. It must be confessed that of Christ, working as a Creator, and a Governor of the world by providence, all are partakers; not all partakers of that grace whereby he inhabiteth whom he saveth.
Again, as he dwelleth not by grace in all, so neither doth he equally work in all them in whom he dwelleth. “Whence is it (saith St. Augustine37) that some be holier than others are, but because God doth dwell in some more plentifully than in others?”
And because the divine substance of Christ is equally in all, his human substance equally distant from all, it appeareth that the participation of Christ wherein there are many degrees and differences, must needs consist in such effects as being derived from both natures of Christ really into us, are made our own, and we by having them in us are truly said to have him from whom they come, Christ also more or less to inhabit and impart himself as the graces are fewer or moe, greater or smaller, which really flow into us from Christ.
Christ is whole with the whole Church, and whole with every part of the Church, as touching his Person, which can no way divide itself, or be possessed by degrees and portions. But the participation of Christ importeth, besides the presence of Christ’s Person, and besides the mystical copulation thereof with the parts and members of his whole Church, a true actual influence of grace whereby the life which we live according to godliness is his38, and from him we receive those perfections wherein our eternal happiness consisteth.
Thus we participate Christ partly by imputation, as when those things which he did and suffered for us are imputed unto us for righteousness39; partly by habitual and real infusion, as when grace is inwardly bestowed while we are on earth, and afterwards more fully both our souls and bodies made like unto his in glory. The first thing of his so infused into our hearts in this life is the Spirit of Christ40, whereupon because the rest of what kind soever do all both necessarily depend and infallibly also ensue, therefore the Apostles term it sometime the seed of God41, sometime the pledge of our heavenly inheritance42, sometime the handsel or earnest of that which is to come43. From hence it is that they which belong to the mystical body of our Saviour Christ, and be in number as the stars of heaven, divided successively by reason of their mortal condition into many generations, are notwithstanding coupled every one to Christ their Head44, and all unto every particular person amongst themselves45, inasmuch as the same Spirit, which anointed the blessed soul of our Saviour Christ, doth so formalize, unite and actuate his whole race, as if both he and they were so many limbs compacted into one body, by being quickened all with one and the same soul.
That wherein we are partakers of Jesus Christ by imputation, agreeth equally unto all that have it. For it consisteth in such acts and deeds of his as could not have longer continuance than while they were in doing, nor at that very time belong unto any other but to him from whom they came, and therefore how men either then or before or sithence should be made partakers of them, there can be no way imagined but only by imputation. Again, a deed must either not be imputed to any, but rest altogether in him whose it is, or if at all it be imputed, they which have it by imputation must have it such as it is whole. So that degrees being neither in the personal presence of Christ, nor in the participation of those effects which are ours by imputation only, it resteth that we wholly apply them to the participation of Christ’s infused grace, although even in this kind also the first beginning of life, the seed of God, the first-fruits of Christ’s Spirit be without latitude. For we have hereby only the being of the Sons of God, in which number how far soever one may seem to excel another, yet touching this that all are sons, they are all equals, some haply better sons than the rest are, but none any more a son than another.
Thus therefore we see how the Father is in the Son, and the Son in the Father; how they both are in all things, and all things in them; what communion Christ hath with his Church, how his Church and every member thereof is in him by original derivation, and he personally in them by way of mystical association wrought through the gift of the Holy Ghost, which they that are his receive from him, and together with the same what benefit soever the vital force of his body and blood may yield, yea by steps and degrees they receive the complete measure of all such divine grace, as doth sanctify and save throughout, till the day of their final exaltation to a state of fellowship in glory, with him whose partakers they are now in those things that tend to glory. As for any mixture of the substance of his flesh with ours, the participation which we have of Christ includeth no such kind of gross surmise.
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Footnotes
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“In the bosom of the Father,” John i. 18. “Ecce dico alium esse Patrem et alium Filium; non divisione alium sed distinctione.” Tertull. contra Prax. [c. 9.] “Nec in numerum pluralem defluit incorporea generatio, nec in divisionem cadit ubi qui nascitur nequaquam a generante separatur.” Ruffin. in Symbol. [c. 6. p. 19. ad calc. Cypr. Fell.] ↩
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Luke iii. 22; John iii. 34, 35; v. 20; x. 17. ↩
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John xiv. 31; xv. 10. ↩
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Wisd. vii. 23. ↩
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Heb. i. 3. ↩
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John xiv. 23. ↩
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Acts xvii. 28, 29. ↩
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John i. 4, 10; Isai. xl. 26. ↩
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1 John iii. 1. ↩
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1 Cor. xv. 47. ↩
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Ephes. i. 3, 4. ↩
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1 John v. 11. ↩
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Rom. viii. 10. ↩
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2 Cor. xiii. 13. ↩
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2 Pet. i. 4. ↩
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Col. ii. 10. ↩
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1 Cor. xii. 12. ↩
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Ephes. v. 30. ↩
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John xv. 9. ↩
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1 John v. 12. ↩
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John xv. 5, 6. ↩
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John xiv. 19; Ephes. v. 23. ↩
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John xiv. 20; xv. 4. ↩
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1 Cor. xv. 48. ↩
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John i. [4-9.] ↩
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John vi. 57. ↩
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Heb. v. 9. ↩
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1 Cor. xv. 22, 45. ↩
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Heb. ix. 14. ↩
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Cypr. de Cœna Dom. c. 6. [p. 40. ad calc. ed. Fell. The tract is not St. Cyprian’s, but Arnold’s of Chartres, abbot of Bonneval, the friend of St. Bernard, (Cave, Hist. Lit. i. 680,) and forms part of his work “De Cardinalibus Christi Operibus.” The whole passage is, “Panis iste quem Dominus discipulis porrigebat, non effigie sed natura mutatus, omnipotentia Verbi factus est caro; et sicut in persona Christi humanitas videbatur, et latebat divinitas; ita sacramento visibili ineffabiliter divina se infudit essentia, ut esset religioni circa sacramenta devotio, et ad veritatem cujus corpus et sanguis sacramenta sunt sincerior pateret accessus, usque ad participationem Spiritus; non quod usque ad consubstantialitatem Christi, sed usque ad societatem germanissimam ejus hæc unitas pervenisset.”] ↩
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Cyril. in Joan. lib. x. cap. 13. [t. iv. 862.] ↩
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“Nostra quippe et ipsius conjunctio nec miscet personas nec unit substantias, sed affectus consociat et confœderat voluntates.” Cypr. de Cœn. Dom. [c. 6. p. 40.] ↩
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“Quomodo dicunt carnem in corruptionem devenire et non percipere vitam, quæ a corpore Domini et sanguine alitur?” Iren. lib. iv. advers. Hæres. c. 34. [p. 327.] ↩
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“Unde considerandum est non solum σχέσει seu conformitate affectionum, Christum in nobis esse, verum etiam participatione naturali [id est, reali et vera]: quemadmodum si quis igne liquefactam ceram alii ceræ similiter liquefactæ ita miscuerit ut unum quid ex utrisque factum videatur; sic communicatione Corporis et Sanguinis Christi ipse in nobis est et nos in ipso.” Cyril. in Joan. lib. x. cap. 13. [t. iv. 863. B. ἐν γὰρ δὴ τούτῳ μάλιστα κατιδει̑ν ἄξιον, ὡς οὐ κατὰ σχέσιν τινὰ μόνην, τὴν ἐν διαθέσει νοουμένην, ἐν ἡμι̑ν ἔσεσθαί ϕησιν ὁ Χριστὸς, ἀλλὰ καὶ κατὰ μέθεξιν, ἤτοι ϕυσικήν. Ὥσπερ γὰρ εἴ τις κηρὸν ἑτέρῳ συναναπλέξας κηρῳ̑, καὶ πυρὶ συγκατατήξας, ἕν τι τὸ ἐξ ἀμϕοι̑ν ἐργάζεται· οὕτω διὰ τη̑ς μεταλήψεως του̑ σώματος του̑ Χριστου̑, καὶ του̑ τιμίου αἵματος, αὐτὸς μὲν ἐν ἡμι̑ν, ἡμει̑ς δὲ αὐ̑ πάλιν ἐν αὐτῳ̑ συνενούμεθα.] ↩
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Ephes. i. 23. “Ecclesia complementum ejus qui implet omnia in omnibus.” Τὸ πλήρωμα του̑ πάντα ἐν πα̑σι πληρουμένου. ↩
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[St. John i. 16.] ↩
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Aug. Epist. 57. [al. 187. c. 5. § 17. t. ii. 683. C. “Unde in omnibus sanctis sunt alii aliis sanctiores, nisi abundantius habendo habitatorem Deum?”] ↩
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Gal. ii. 20. ↩
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Isai. liii. 5; Ephes. i. 7. ↩
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Rom. viii. 9; Gal. iv. 6. ↩
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1 John iii. 9. ↩
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Ephes. i. 14. ↩
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Rom. viii. 23. ↩
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1 Cor. xii. 27; Ephes. iv. 15. ↩
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Rom. xii. 5; Ephes. iv. 25. ↩