ARTICLE III. 66 WHO WAS CONCEIVED BY THE HOLY GHOST, BORN OF 66 "WHO WAS THE VIRGIN MARY." HO WAS CONCEIVED BY THE HOLY GHOST." "The Word was made flesh and dwelt in us," that is, in our nature. The true everlasting God, Whose eternal generation has been already affirmed, became incarnate by the conception of the Holy Ghost; He was made truly man, assuming the same nature which is in all other men, assuming it in its first original element before it was come to have any personal human subsistence.* He took flesh of the virgin mother; but the flesh and the conjunction of the flesh with God began both at one and the same instant; therefore His Divine essence abides unaffected; the two natures of perfect God and perfect man subsist in one person; with neither confusiont or absorption of the one into the other, such as the Monophysite or Eutychian heretics supposed; nor with duality of Persons, which was the heresy of the Nestorians. He took our nature in body and in soul; not in merely bodily appearance, as the Doceta‡ taught ; nor having * ἡ ληφθεῖσα φύσις οὐ προυπῆρχε τῆς λήψεως. Theodoret, Dial., "ATρETTOs (quoted by Hooker, E. P., v. 52, 3). See Note A. at the end of this Article. † Δόκηται, from δοκεῖν, to seem. the Divine Aóyos, or Word instead of a soul; which the Apollinarians asserted. "Forasmuch as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same: . . . He took on Him the seed of Abraham; in all things it behoved Him to be made like unto His brethren.” * The two natures of Christ have been and are, from the moment of their first combination, inseparable; the union of one with the other causes neither gain nor loss of essential properties to either. We ascribe to Him working of wonders and suffering of pains; characters of glory and humiliation; the one belonging to the nature which He assumed, the other to that which was from the beginning. His bodily nature admitted nourishment and growth; He came eating and drinking, He suffered hunger and thirst: of His soul we understand the saying that He "increased in wisdom”+ as well as stature; and His conflict of feeling is apparent in the words, "Not My will but Thine," ‡ and in His confession, "My soul is exceeding sorrowful;"§ lastly, His very dying words, "Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit," || imply that death, as in the case of men generally, was nothing less than the separation of soul and body: a truth further confirmed by St. Peter when, on the subject of the Resurrection, he first quotes the prophecy, "Thou wilt *Heb. ii. 14-17. The R.V. renders v. 16 more accurately, 'He taketh hold of (i.e. to raise and rescue, έπiλaμßávεтαi) the seed of Abraham." Yet the meaning is scarcely affected. There is the underlying thought that He takes the nature of those whom He rescues. † St. Luke ii. 52. § St. Matt. xxvi. 38. St. Luke xxiii. 46. not leave my soul in Hades, neither wilt Thou give Thy Holy One to see corruption," and then (with an inversion of terms which indicates their equivalence) applies it to Christ "that neither was He left in Hades, nor did His flesh see corruption." * Thus we acknowledge the mystery of the Incarnation, joining a diversity of natures in one Divine Person: the manner of it can be no otherwise explained than in the words of Holy Scripture addressed to the Virgin Mary, "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee;"† and in the assurance to Joseph, "Fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost." This last verse serves to define our notions of the -conception. We do not attribute to the Spirit any communication of His essence, or say that the Divine Child took substance from Him; but that He was made of the substance of His mother, who by the operation of the Spirit received power to conceive. And Holy Scripture uses the word "conceive" (but with a difference) both of the Holy Ghost and of the mother; e.g. in the prophecy, "Behold, a Virgin shall conceive;"§ and in the annunciation by the angel, "Behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb and bring forth a son." || "BORN OF THE Virgin Mary." Of her, who was so "highly favoured," "the mother of our Lord," ¶ the *Acts ii. 27 and 31 (R.V.). St. Matt. i. 20. † St. Luke i. 35. § Isa. vii. 14. St. Luke i. 31. St. Luke i. 42. An historic interest attaches to this expression. In the fifth century the compound OEOTÓKOS (Lat. simple record is, that she was the cousin of Elisabeth the mother of John the Baptist, that she was at Nazareth, "espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David, and the Virgin's name was Mary." It was a common name, the same as Miriam; the Greek form of it in the Evangelists is Mariam, although for the other Maries it is spelt Maria. More important is the title joined with the name, "the Virgin." It declares the fulfilment of the original promise consequent upon the fall of man, "I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. The enmity here spoken of is identical with the mystic "war in heaven" between Michael and the dragon, involving the continual conflict between grace and corruption in human hearts. The two "seeds" reappear, and are distinguished in the Parable of the Tares. § "The field is the world: the good seed are the children of the kingdom, but the tares are the children of the wicked one." Lastly, the part borne by the woman is insisted on in a marked way by St. Paul: "When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth Deipara) was a familiar appellation of the Virgin Mary. In 429 A.D. Nestorius protested against it, and it became the central point of controversy, until authoritatively adopted in the Council of Ephesus. At a later date it developed into "Mother of God," Leo the Great openly using the title and giving currency to it. But Ephraim, Patriarch of Antioch in 527 A.D., quotes these words of Elisabeth as the prime authority for it (μητέρα Θεοῦ πρῶτον μὲν ἡ Ἐλισάβετ ἀνεῖπεν), plainly making μήτηρ τοῦ Κυρίου synonymous with μήτηρ Θεοῦ. *St. Luke i. 27. † Gen. iii, 15. + Rev. xii. 7. § St. Matt. xiii, 24-30. His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem ";* and again, in a later Epistle, with an argument founded on the details in Genesis, "She shall be saved through the child-bearing." The sense intended is, that woman, who had been the instrument of Satan in bringing ruin on man, became the instrument of God for effecting the recovery of man. So it is stated by Irenæus, "Almighty God had compassion on mankind, and threw back the enmity on the enemy, and abolished the enmity which existed between man and Himself. Our Lord absorbed this enmity into Himself by being made man of the seed of the woman, and so bruised the serpent's head." In the Virgin Mother of the Holy Child the promise to the woman is accomplished. Further, it is a fulfilment of prophecy. The sign given by Jeremiah to reprove the backsliding hesitancy, and to encourage the hopes of Israel, viz. "The Lord hath created a new thing in the earth, A woman shall compass a man," § was interpreted by the ancient Jews and by the Christian Fathers of the Messiah and His birth from a Virgin. But the sign given by Isaiah is the most clear and complete : "Behold, the Virgin shall conceive and bear a son, * Gal. iv. 4. † 1 Tim. ii. 15. iv. 40, quoted in Wordsworth's note. § Jer. xxxi. 22. Many versions and expositions have been attempted of those words. For 66 compass " have been substituted "protect," 99 66 court," ," "keep close to." Keil suggests the figurative and fanciful notion of the Lord bringing Himself "down to the level of His Church, that she may embrace Him." But the words are intelligible when, and only when, applied to the nativity of the Virgin-born. |