use may be, does by the very fact of her appeal to them direct her children to their pages.* We will confine ourselves therefore, for this time, to the study of the Fathers as a moral instrument, i.e., as producing sympathies, tones of minds, and appreciation of doctrines and facts, which we shall hardly obtain without their assistance, or at least shall attain more fully by it. But before we enter upon the consideration of these benefits which are derivable from their use we would call attention to the unquestioned fact, that all our old, our best, our boasted divines formed themselves, as it were, upon Patristic reading. It is impossible to look at their writings even in the most cursory manner without being sensible of this. Not only are they full of quotations, and their margins crowded with references, but their whole tone and character are affected by the primitive theology; and this, be it remembered, was the case in times when books were most expensive, and when the public had no means of rejecting the mass of spurious writings which had crept into the received copies of the Fathers. It is then not simply inconsistent to delight and glory in Hooker, and Andrewes, and Taylor, and their noble compeers, and yet to neglect the elements upon which they educated themselves into the minds which we admire: but such a course is a sign of a falling off and change, of a real dissimilitude between our forefathers and their descendants; it is a proof that a change has come over the spirit of our Church, rendering it either more superficial or less Catholic than it was. Whichever of these alternatives be the true one, it surely deserves our serious attention. It is on all hands admitted, that our Church occupies a most singular position in Christendom, and that out of many disadvantages, internal and external, she has yet born and sustained a noble family of children, resembling each other by a marvellous kindred likeness, and manifested by many a gift and virtue as a band of brethren. She has developed a peculiar theology, a peculiar mind; and this theology and mind produced by her position are manifestly suited to it. They have enabled her to retain that position. They have been her strength throughout and are so still. It may well startle us then as often as we discern a tendency to quit these principles, or which is the same thing a neglect of those elements from which they are very much derived and supported. GOD grant we may always be sensible of such a peril in time. Let us now turn to the examina * In proof of this statement we refer to the Canon of 1571, quoted in our last, p. 8; to Canon xxx. of 1664, to the Homilies throughout; to Art. xvii. which is drawn from S. Augustine; to Arts. xxiv. and xxvii. which appeal to antiquity as a guide; and in the Prayer Book to "Concerning the Service of the Church," and the appeal to S. Augustine on the address "Of ceremonies, &c.," as also to the commencement of the Commination Service. tion of some of the moral benefits which we anticipate from a more general recurrence to patristic studies. 1. They would seem to be eminently calculated to cure a selfishness which manifests itself in various ways. Our insular position, as well as our antagonistic condition ever since the death of Mary, whatever excellencies they have produced, whatever keen sense of certain evils and hearty appreciation of particular principles, cannot fail to have caused also many serious deficiencies. We are now almost unable either to tolerate any mystic divinity for fear of enthusiasm, or else to approve of dogmatic theology for fear of formalism. We are led to regard many things good in themselves with suspicion. We are in an excommunicatory frame of mind, a moral state as fatal to the appreciation of our own, as it is inconsistent with charity. Again, the questions of our own times engross us. We receive neither the comfort nor admonition which we ought to imbibe from finding how holy men have battled from first to last with corruptions and errors, with excesses and short-comings of infinite variety. And once more, the doctrine of the Communion of Saints is not, nor ever can be, the same to men who are unacquainted with the saints of earlier days. We never can feel as we ought to wish to do towards the early Church without some study of its remains. That which S. Chrysostom spoke of S. Paul, when he commenced his series of homilies, we must feel of S. Chrysostom himself, "I rejoice when I hear with delight the spiritual trumpet, and I am aroused and kindled with desire, recognising my beloved voice, and seem to image him as almost present, and to hear him conversing but I grieve and am full of anguish, that all men do not know this man as they ought to know."* 2. There are certain doctrines and feelings in which we are especially deficient, and the Fathers as remarkably full. We select but two; the doctrine of the Incarnation and the Fruition of GOD. I. If any of our readers have been at any time students of Beveridge, they can scarcely have failed to find in his sermons not merely a deeper and clearer insight into the union of the divine and human natures of our Blessed LORD, but a perception of benefits, privileges, and glories resulting from that union, alike poorly held and stated, if held and stated at all, in our popular divinity. And this excellence is clearly derivable from the same studies which dictated the Synodicum and the Codex. It can scarcely be the subject of question, that the popular notion of the benefits of the Nativity is confined to its moral of humility, and the birth of the Sacrifice. It is little more with most men than a sermon, and a necessary precursor of Good Friday. Any insight into the principles which made the Nestorian and Eutychian heresies so fearfully important, any notion of CHRIST'S infancy as a sanctification of childhood; of His youth as a consecration of youth; of the Nativity, as the birth of the New Creation, is rare to the degree of being practically wanting. Yet these, and other equally important views are those upon which the early Christians loved to dwell, and from which their piety was fed and strengthened. For thus speaks S. Irenæus, as quoted by Mr. Garden, “He came to save all through Himself; all, I say, who through Him are born anew unto GOD, infants and young children, and boys and youths, and elders. Therefore, He passed through every age, and was made an infant for infants, sanctifying infants; a little child for little children, sanctifying little children, sanctifying their age, and, at the same time, being made an example to them of piety, righteousness, and subjection; a youth for youths, being made an example to such, and sanctifying them to the LORD." And S. Augustine shews, that the Incarnation foreshewed the justification and sanctification of men, making it a sign. "That men may understand that they are justified from sin by the same grace by which it was effected that the Man CHRIST could have no sin."* And explaining how this freedom of original sin came to pass, he writes further on : 'By no preceding merits man, in the very commencement of His nature in which He began to be, was joined to GOD the Word into such a unity of person, that He who was the Son of Man was also Son of GOD; and He Who was the SON of GOD, was Son of Man and thus in the very susception of human nature, the very grace became natural in some way to that man, which could not admit of sin ;"+ and to endear human nature to us; (according to the author of Manuale: "who can hate man whose nature and likeness he beholds in the humanity of GoD? In truth, he who hates him hates GOD;") or to enable us to enjoy the vision of GOD else unendurable. "We believe in JESUS CHRIST come in the flesh and made man, since no otherwise could we receive Him. For since we could not look upon Him, nor enjoy Him, as He was, He became what we are, that so we might be counted worthy to have fruition of Him."§ And to the same effect SS. Augustine and Leo. The former we cannot forbear quoting. "But because the mind itself in which reason and intelligence naturally reside is powerless through certain dark and ancient vices, not only to cleave by fruition to the unchangeable light, but even to endure it by deserving until renewed and healed from day * Enchirid. c. xxxvi. § S. Cyril Hierosol. Lipsiæ, 1838. Ed. Petit. 1520. Enchirid. c. xl. Cat. xii. p. 109. Lutetiæ, 1631. to day it becomes capable of so great felicity, it had first to be imbued and purified by faith. And that it might advance by this more confidently towards the truth, GOD the truth itself, the Son of GOD assuming humanity, but not destroying Deity, fixed and founded the same faith, so that there should be a road to man towards the GoD of man by GOD-man. For He is the Mediator between GoD and man, the Man CHRIST JESUS. CHRIST in that He is a Mediator is man, and the way of approach to GOD. For in that He is man He is a Mediator; in that He is man, He is the way. For if there is a way between him who journeys and that to which he travels, there is a hope of arrival. But if the means of approach are wanting or unknown, what profit is there in knowing the whither we should go? The only safe way against all errors is, that GOD and man should be the same; GOD the end, and man the ""* way." And again, that our sonship is derived from the human Sonship of CHRIST. "For the only Son of GOD by nature became by pity for our sakes the Son of Man, that we, by nature sons of man, might be made through Him by grace the sons of God."† And not only this, but that the Incarnation is in a sense our deification, according to the θείας κοινωνοὶ φύσεως of the Apostle, which is so little realised. "His humiliation is our ennobling, His disgrace is our honor; because He is GOD in the flesh subsisting, hoc nos vicissim in DEUM ex carne renovati," where we feel, that to translate 'unto God' were to fall far below the intended meaning. And again, the same writer, regarding the Incarnation as the restoration of humanity, speaks thus but a few lines earlier:-"Corporis sibi initia consevit, et exordia carnis instituit ut homo factus ex virgine naturam in se carnis acciperet, perque hujus admixtionis societatem sanctificatum in eo universi generis humani corpus existeret, ut quemadmodum omnes in se per id quod corporeum se esse voluit conderentur, ita rursum in omnes ipse per id quod ejus est invisibile referretur." II. The other subject which we selected is one upon which the Fathers are calculated to assist us, as the contemplation of GOD. They are indeed, in spite of all later philosophy, able to throw much light upon this subject, but their peculiar vocation seems rather to instil feeling into us, to remove the darkness and coldness of heart which prevent our contemplating the Perfect One with increasing and yearning earnestness, which preclude us from finding our rest and purification here in meditating upon Him and in seeking His presence as our all hereafter. The fruition of GOD, here in its degree and hereafter in its fulness, pervades the thoughts of the early Christians, and is almost absent from ours. *S. Aug. de Civ. xl. 2. Friburg. 1494. Ut idem ipse sit DEUS et homo, quo itur DEUS, qua itur homo. S. Hilary Pict. Basil. 1550, p. 27. + S. Aug. de Civ. xxi. 15. Many reasonable causes may be assigned for this truth. On the one hand the external world was not to the Primitive Christians what it is to us. Society, disorganised and utterly corrupt, offered no temptation to contemplate GOD in His creature, man. Miracles were still fresh to memory, if not in fact, and these recall the mind from a subjective to an objective contemplation of GOD. They either direct the thoughts to the moral lesson of all nature, or they do not. If they do not, then they are the voice of GOD speaking apart from things sensible, over-ruling them, superseding them, calling away from them. If they do remind men of the spiritual lesson contained in external nature and of the constitution of man, even then they do not lead the mind to rest upon the law or creature as instances of Divine wisdom, but straightway to compare the lower with the higher, to interpret the parable and to fulfil the type. The fear of Pantheism also would doubtless act strongly; and moreover, the prevalent ignorance of natural history which rendered the works of GoD more prodigies than lessons; but chiefly the whole position of these writers, which, lying as it did amidst heathenism and persecutions, whilst the one Church was in all her blessed sympathies and energies felt to be the living Body of CHRIST, threw them upon the personal GOD as their hope and stay, their rest, their glory, their delight, their help in this world, their all in the next. But we, placed in the very reverse circumstances, we who live when miracles are long passed; when natural philosophy spreads out her countless stores of reflected glories of divinity; when laws and constitutions locate us more in this world; when comforts and the agency of man in everything alike draw off the heart from its leaning on the personal GOD; we whose heresies have been occupied with subjective truths, and whose whole controversial position Romewards and schismwards, has the same character, all relating to God's acts in us, or ours towards Him, and not to God as He is,— placed as we are amidst all these temptations to a less direct contemplation of GOD, it is scarcely to be wondered at that we have yielded to the temptation, and are suffering from it heavily. The justification of man, the sanctification of man, the acts of worship, the condition of Churches, education, self-discipline, are the chief subjects before us from the moment we begin to think upon such subjects at all. Very strange at times or lifeless all those words fall upon our ears, which approach the Holy of Holies and attempt the Essence of GOD: and who has not felt this when he has had the words of the "Te Deum " upon his lips, "Holy, Holy, Holy LORD GOD of Sabaoth," or the mystic yet dogmatic confession, "GOD of GOD, Light of Light, Very GoD of Very God"? Very strange or very dead these words fall upon the ears of ourselves and our brethren, because they are alien to our general |