"Plainly, too, the death of Christ was in perfection what all previous sacrifices had been in their measure and sphere. By removing that which had shut man out from God's presence, viz. a deathlike condition, it rendered his entrance into heaven possible, exactly as the old Mosaic sacrifice removed unfitness for entering into the tabernacle Presence.

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But, on the other hand, it is plain that Christ did not so take our place by suffering and dying, that we should not in our own persons undergo each one the exact penalty originally attached to sin, namely, dissolution.1 Man was to be delivered from this, not by being allowed to evade it, any more than Israel was to escape the Red Sea, or Jonah the ocean; but, like them, by going down into it, and coming up out of it in a new condition purchased for him by the death of Christ, and applied to him by a real communion with that death, and with the ensuing resurrection.

"Thus man, both the race and the individual, bears after all, all that by his nature and position he is capable of bearing, and all that was at the first denounced as his punishment. The original doom—the universal, the inevitable, the involuntary, the penal death-the death of the wrongdoer and of the condemned, as such, falls still on every man. But the death which alone could hinder that death from being eternal-the special, the inimitable, the self-chosen, the curative death, the death of the blameless and the self-devoted— is freely borne by Christ, that man might not perish everlastingly. In this sense and to this extent, by the grace of God He tasted death for every man.'

“And it is especially to be observed in contravention of modern and really shallow conceptions, however profound an aspect they may wear, that it was in the strictest sense by the death of Christ, not by His life, that the redemption of

logical knowledge extends or can extend. On what that stratum itself rests we are profoundly ignorant.

1 Aug. de Peccato, ii. 30-34.

mankind was effected. Directly, strictly, and properly, it was not the holiness of that life, however holy, nor the divinity of that life, however divine, not this, but the fact of that Death --that Death as an instrument, as being the Death of a Man perfectly pure and sinless—this it was that by satisfying the conditions of a pre-existent law,1 brought man back from everlasting destruction."-Freeman's Principles of Divine Service.

CHAPTER IV.

ON THE DOCTRINE OF THE PROCESSION OF THE
HOLY SPIRIT.

THE recent conference at Bonn, in which the long-standing doctrinal difference between the Eastern and Western branches of the Church was exhaustively discussed, has drawn the attention of students to the writings of the last of the Greek Fathers, JOHANNES DAMASCENUS, a monk who flourished in the middle of the eighth century, chiefly known in his own day for his strenuous resistance to the Emperor Leo's crusade against the use of images in churches, but valued highly by later ages because of his singular clearness and accuracy as a dogmatic theologian, as the notes to Bishop Pearson's Exposition of the Creed abundantly testify.

In his dogmatic statements of the doctrine of the Procession, the representatives of the Greek Church at Bonn, and Dr. Döllinger on behalf of the Western Church, seemed to find common ground of agreement on which a doctrinal reunion of the two Churches might be based.

1 St. Athan. de Incarn., p. 63. "By the sacrifice of His own body He put an end to the law which was against us."

It may be interesting, therefore, to give here some extracts from the writings of this Father in illustration of this difficult doctrine, although his date is so much later than that of the other Fathers to whom the English Church usually refers her students as authoritative in matters of doctrine.

His works were published by Michaelis Le Quien, at Venice, in 1712 ; but the text is not so carefully printed as might be wished.

His most famous work is De Fide Orthodoxå. From the first Book of that treatise the following extracts are taken :

The Divine Logos must have a Spirit; for the human logos (the rational soul of man) is not without participation in the Spirit ; only in our case the Spirit is of a substance distinct from ours (whereas the Divine Logos and Spirit are consubstantial).

By the Spirit we do not mean an impersonal breath, but a substantial power, considered in His own proper individual personality, proceeding from the Father, and resting in the Logos, and being an exponent of the Logos, incapable of separation from God in whom He is, and from the Logos whom He ever accompanieth. For never did the Logos fail the Father, nor the Spirit the Logos.

Cap. viii. . . . Ὁμοίως πιστεύSimilarly, we beομεν καὶ εἰς ἕν Πνεῦμα ἅγιον τὸ lieve also in one Holy Spirit, κύριον καὶ ζωοποιόν· τὸ ἐκ τοῦ the Lord and Lifegiver; proΠατρὸς ἐκπορευόμενον, καὶ ἐν τῷ ceeding from the Father, and Υἱῷ ἀναπαυόμενον . παράκλη- resting in the Son . . named

τον, ὡς τὰς τῶν ὅλων παρακλήσεις Paraclete or Advocate, as being δεχόμενον· κατὰ πάντα ὅμοιον τῷ Πατρὶ καὶ Υἱῷ· ἐκ τοῦ Πατρὸς ἐκπορευόμενον, καὶ δὶ Υἱοῦ μεταδιδόμενον, καὶ μεταλαμβανόμενον ὑπὸ πάσης κτίσεως, καὶ δὶ ἑαυτοῦ κτίζον, καὶ οὐσιοῦν τὰ σύμπαντα καὶ ἁγιάζον καὶ συνέχον. ἐνυπόστατον, ἤτοι ἐν ἰδίᾳ ὑποστάσει ὑπάρχον, ἀχώριστον, καὶ ἀνεκφοίτητον Πατρὸς καὶ Υἱοῦ. καὶ πάντα ἔχον ὅσα ἔχει ὁ Πατὴρ καὶ ὁ Υἱός, πλὴν τῆς ἀγεννησίας καὶ τῆς γεννήσεως.

invoked by all; being in all respects similar to the Father and to the Son ; proceeding from the Father, and through the Son imparted and partaken of by all creatures; Himself creating and giving substance to all things, sanctifying and controlling. Personal, that is existing in His own proper subsistency; inseparable and never absent from the Father and the Son. Having all that the Father hath and the Son, except their respective properties of being unbegotten and of being begotten.

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In the case of the Trinity there is one substance, one goodness, one power, one will, one energy, one authority, one and the same, not three like one to the other. For in all respects the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are One, except in their respective properties of being unbegotten, begotten, and proceed. ing.

It is to be observed that we do not speak of the Father as originated of any, but we speak of Him as Father of the Son. We do not speak of the Son as being Cause or Father of any; but we speak of Him as originated of the Father, and being Son of the Father; the Holy Spirit we speak of as originated of the Father, and we name Him Spirit of the Father. But we do not speak of the Spirit as

In the xiith chapter (de divinis nominibus), the authenticity of which has been questioned by some, John of Damascus makes these further statements :

1 Thomas Aquinas, commenting on this passage of Damascene, charges him with the error of the Nestorians, condemned by the Council of Ephesus. But unjustly, for the Nestorians denied that the Spirit proceeded from the Father through the Son, which John of Damascus distinctly affirms.