Chapter 18

§ 1.

It having been clearly shewn, that the Word which was in the beginning with God, by Whom all things were made, Who also was ever present with mankind;—that He in the last times according to the time foreordained by the Father, was united to His own creation and made a Man capable of suffering: we have shut out all the gainsaying of those who say, “Why, if He was then born, He was not Christ until then.”¹ For we have shewn that the Son of God hath not then His beginning, Who is for ever with the Father: but when He was incarnate and made man, He summed up in Himself the long explanations of men, in one brief work achieving salvation for us; that what we had lost in Adam, i.e., our being in the image and likeness of God, that we might recover in Christ Jesus².

§ 2.

Thus,³ because it was not possible for that man who had once been conquered, and thrust out by disobedience, to be new moulded and obtain the prize of victory, and again it was impossible for him to obtain salvation, who had fallen under sin: The Son accomplished both, being the Word of God, coming down from the Father, and made flesh and descending even unto death and fulfilling the Economy of our salvation⁴: wherein when he would exhort us to believe without doubt, he saith again,⁵ Say not in thine heart, Who hath gone up into Heaven? that is to bring down Christ, or, Who hath gone down into the deep? that is to free Christ from the dead.⁶ Then he concludes, That if thou confess in thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in thine heart that God raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. And he hath assigned a reason for these doings of the Word of God,⁷ saying, For to this end Christ both lived and died and rose again, that He might be Lord of quick and dead. And again writing to the Corinthians he saith,⁸ But we preach Christ Jesus crucified:⁹ and he concludes, The Cup of Blessing which we bless, is it not the Communion of the Blood of Christ?

§ 3.

And who is He that hath imparted to us of His nourishment? Whether is he that Christ whom they feign to be above, stretched out upon Horus, i.e., The End, who also framed their Mother: or rather Emmanuel Who is of the Virgin,¹⁰ Who did eat butter and honey, concerning Whom the Prophet saith,¹¹ And there is a man and who shall know Him? This same was announced by Paul:¹² For I delivered unto you, saith he, among the first, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; and that He was buried and rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.¹³

It is clear then, that Paul knows no other Christ but this One, Who both suffered and was buried and rose again, and was born: Whom also he calls Man. For having said,¹⁴ Now if Christ be preached, that He rose from the dead, he subjoins, rendering the reason of His Incarnation,¹⁵ For since by man is death, by man is also resurrection from the dead. And every where regarding the Passion of our Lord, and His Manhood, and His Death, he uses the Name of Christ: as in the following;¹⁶ Destroy not him with thy meat, for whom Christ died:¹⁷ And again, But now in Christ ye which were sometime afar off were made nigh by the Blood of Christ; and again,¹⁸ Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the Law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.¹⁹ And again, And by thy knowledge shall the weak brother perish for whom Christ died: implying that there came not down on Jesus a Christ incapable of suffering, but that He Himself, being Jesus Christ, suffered for us: Who lay down and rose up again; Who descended and ascended, The Son of God, made Son of man:²⁰ as the very Name too signifies. For in the Name of Christ is understood, He who did anoint, and He who was anointed, and the Unction itself wherewith He was anointed. And as the Father did anoint, so the Son was anointed, with the Spirit, which is the anointing: as speaketh the Word by Esaias;²¹ The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me: signifying both the anointing Father and the anointed Son, and the anointing which is the Spirit.

§ 4.

And the Lord too Himself makes known Who it was that²² suffered. For when He had asked His Disciples, Whom do men say that I,²³ the Son of Man, am? when Peter answered,²⁴ Thou art Christ the Son of the Living God, and when he received from Him this praise, That Flesh and Blood revealed it not unto him,²⁵ but the Father Who is in Heaven; he made it plain, that this Son of Man is Christ the Son of the Living God.²⁶ For from that time He began, we read, to tell His disciples, that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the Chief Priests,²⁷ and be rejected and crucified, and the third day rise again. The same Christ Who was acknowledged by Peter, Who called him blessed, because the Father revealed unto him the Son of the Living God, said, that He must Himself suffer many things, and be crucified: and then He rebuked Peter, for thinking Him Christ after the opinion of men and for turning away from His Passion:²⁸ and He said to His disciples, If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose it for My sake, shall save it. For these words Christ spake openly, He Who is Himself the Saviour of such as for confessing Him should be delivered unto death, and lose their lives.

§ 5.

But if He was not Himself to suffer, but to soar away from Jesus, why did He withal exhort His Disciples to take up the Cross and follow Him? which Cross, by their account, He was not Himself taking up, but was forsaking the Economy of the Passion²⁹? For in proof that He speaks not this of acknowledging some Cross on high (as certain persons dare to expound it) but of the Passion which He was Himself to suffer, and which His disciples in their own persons were hereafter to suffer,³⁰ He concluded, For whosoever will save his life, shall lose it; but whosoever will lose, shall find it. And of the future sufferings of His disciples for His sake, He said to the Jews,³¹ Behold, I send unto you Prophets, and wise men, and teachers, and some of them shall ye kill and crucify.³² And to the disciples He said, Ye shall stand before Governors and Kings for My sake,³³ and some of you they shall scourge and kill, and persecute from city to city. He knew therefore both those, who should suffer persecution, and those who had to be scourged and slain because of Him. And plainly His speech was not of any other³⁴ cross, but of the Passion which He was first Himself to suffer, then afterwards His disciples, when He added this exhortation to them:³⁵ Fear not them which kill the body, but the soul they cannot kill; but rather fear Him which hath power to cast both soul and body into Hell: and to uphold whatsoever confessions may be made unto Him. For indeed He promised to confess before His Father those who should confess His Name before men, and to deny those who should deny Him, and be ashamed of those who should be ashamed to confess Him.

Now for all this,³⁶ some have gone so far in audacity, as to scorn the very Martyrs, and revile those who are slain for confessing the Lord, and who bear all that the Lord foretold, and so far endeavour to attain to the footsteps of the Lord’s Passion, being made Martyrs of One Who was capable of suffering. But these we leave to the Martyrs themselves. For when their blood shall be required, and they shall obtain glory, then shall all those who have done dishonour to their martyrdom be put to confusion by Christ. And by that also which the Lord said on the Cross,³⁷ Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do, the long-suffering, and patience, and mercy, and goodness of Christ is declared: in that He should both suffer Himself,³⁸ and Himself plead for those who had used Him ill. For that which the Word of God spake unto us,³⁹ Love your enemies, and pray for them that hate you, the same He did Himself practise upon the Cross, loving mankind so well, as even to pray for those who were putting Him to death.

But should any one judge of these as though they were two persons, He will prove much the better of the two, and more patient, and truly good, Who in the midst even of wounds and blows and the rest of their ill usage, is full of kind actions, nor remembers the wrong done to Him—better, I say, than he who soared away without enduring any injury or reproach.

§ 6.

And this same objection holds against those also, who say that He suffered only in appearance. For if He did not really suffer, no thanks to Him, there having been no suffering; and when we shall begin really to suffer, it will seem as though He were beguiling us, exhorting us to receive blows,⁴⁰ and to turn the other cheek, if He did not first in reality suffer this Himself. And as He misled them, so as Himself to appear to them that which He was not, so He also misleads us, exhorting us to endure to the end the things which He Himself endured not. And so we shall even be above our Master, by suffering and enduring things which our Master neither suffered nor endured.

But even as our Lord is alone our Master indeed, so is He indeed the Son of God, good and patient, the Word of God the Father, made Son of Man. For He wrestled and overcame:⁴¹ being as He was a Man contending for His fathers, and by obedience paying the debt of disobedience:⁴² yea, He hath bound the strong man, and unbinds the weak and hath given salvation to His creature, by destroying sin. For He is the most gracious and merciful Lord and the lover of mankind.

§ 7.

And thus,⁴³ as we said before, He hath bound and united man to God. For if man had not overcome man’s antagonist, the Enemy would not have been fairly conquered. And on the other hand, were not God the giver of our Salvation, we should not have firm hold of it. And except man were united unto God, he could not have partaken of incorruption. Thus it became the Mediator between God and man, by His connexion with either side, to gather both into friendship and concord; and while He presented man unto God, to make God known unto men. For how could we be partakers of His adoption of sons,⁴⁴ had we not received from Him by the Son, the Communion which is with Him;—had not His Word made Flesh, come into Communion with us? through which cause also He passed through every age, restoring all to the Communion which is with God.

Wherefore such as say that He was manifested only in appearance, and not born in the flesh, nor really made man, are yet under the old condemnation, giving their aid to the side of sin, Death, by their account, being yet unconquered:⁴⁵ which reigned from Adam to Moses, even over such as sinned not after the likeness of Adam’s transgression.⁴⁶ Then came the Law, which was given by Moses, and testified of sin, that it is a sinner: whereby it destroyed indeed sin’s kingdom, convicting it of being a thief and not a king, and proved it a murderer; but upon man it laid a burthen, who had sin in himself; in that it declared him guilty of death.

Thus the Law being spiritual, displayed sin only, but did not destroy it. And whereas not the Spirit, but Man, was subject to sin: it was meet that the person who undertook to slay sin, and to redeem Man, when guilty of death, should become that very thing which the other party was, i.e., Man: that as Man had been by sin dragged into slavery, and was holden of death, so sin might be slain by man, and man go out free from death.

Thus as through the disobedience of that one man,⁴⁷ who in the first instance was moulded out of unwrought earth, the many were made sinners, and lost their lives: so also it was meet that by the obedience of one Man Who in the first instance was born of a Virgin, many should be justified and obtain salvation.

Thus then the Word of God was made man; as Moses also saith,⁴⁸ Our God, true are His works. But if, not being made flesh, He shewed Himself as flesh: His work was not true. However what He appeared, that indeed He was,⁴⁹ God summing up anew in Himself the old formation of man, that He might first slay sin, then abolish death, and give life to man: and therefore His works are true.