relation to it to that of a musician to his lyre (285 c) who is not himself affected by the blows which strike the strings (288b). The metaphor of the sun again appears: the nature of the Word is no more involved in the passions of the body which He assumed, than the sun's rays are defiled by the objects which they touch (288 c).

Such a line of thought is typical not of Eusebius only but of many of the more philosophical fathers. Current philosophy was, perhaps, overmuch occupied with the impassibility of God. At any rate to guard the conception of the divine impassibility, philosophical Christians -and Eusebius among them-go dangerously far in minimizing the meaning of the Incarnation. It is overmuch assimilated to the immanence of the divine reason in the universe. The above metaphor of the sun (not used by Eusebius alone 1) is surely very inadequate to express the relation of the Word to His own manhood. In fact Eusebius is here speaking much more the language of current philosophy than of the New Testament writers. His first thought is of the impassibility of the Word and His cosmic function. In the New Testament writers, on the other hand-for St. Paul and St. John and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews-the Son of God made man, the Word made flesh, is the primary thought. He being what He was, really did humble

1 See reffs. in Newman, Tracts Theol. and Eccl. p. 314. Cf. a fragment of a letter ad Caesarium attributed to St. Chrysostom (Opera, ed. Migne, tom. xiii. p. 497) where the divine Son is said to suffer in the passion no more than the sun suffers when a tree is cut down which it is completely penetrating with its rays. St. John Damasc. de Fid. Orth. iii. 26 repeats the metaphor and argument, which is also found in Alcuin, de Fid. s. Trin. iii. 16.

Himself to conditions of human suffering and trial and death, for us men and for our salvation. So preoccupied are they with the thought that they do not for the time seem to ask the question-what is the relation of this humiliation to those cosmic functions of the Word, which, antecedently and subsequently to the humiliation, they have full in view? I should contend then that in this passage Eusebius is making primary metaphysical considerations which should be kept strictly secondary, and allowing a philosophical deduction to obscure the full meaning of the Gospel revelation.

ATHANASIUS, de Incarnatione, 17. 4, 5 οὐ δὴ τοιοῦτος ἦν ὁ τοῦ θεοῦ λόγος ἐν τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ· οὐ γὰρ συνεδέδετο τῷ σώματι, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον αὐτὸς ἐκράτει τοῦτο, ὥστε καὶ ἐν τούτῳ ἦν καὶ ἐν τοῖς πᾶσιν ἐτύγχανε καὶ ἔξω τῶν ὄντων ἦν καὶ ἐν μόνῳ τῷ πατρὶ ἀνεπαύετο· καὶ τὸ θαυμαστὸν τοῦτο ἦν, ὅτι καὶ ὡς ἄνθρωπος ἐπολιτεύετο καὶ ὡς λόγος τὰ πάντα ἐζωογόνει καὶ ὡς υἱὸς τῷ πατρὶ συνῆν.

Here Athanasius, almost repeating the words of Eusebius in the passage just referred to, simply asserts that the Incarnation did not limit the Word in Himself. He was still in the universe and in the bosom of the Father. With this position, as a necessary philosophical conclusion, there is—it seems to me-no fault to be found so long as the Gospel revelation of the meaning of the Incarnation is kept in the foreground. But Athanasius like Eusebius goes on

ὅθεν οὐδὲ τῆς παρθένου τικτούσης ἔπασχεν αὐτός, οὐδὲ ἐν σώματι ὢν ἐμολύνετο· ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον καὶ τὸ σῶμα ἡγίαζεν. οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐν τοῖς πᾶσιν ὢν τῶν πάντων μεταλαμβάνει, ἀλλὰ πάντα μᾶλλον ὑπ ̓ αὐτοῦ ζωογονεῖται καὶ τρέφεται.

Then follows the metaphor of the sun, employed exactly as by Eusebius. Here again then I cannot but think that the philosophical interest overpowers the evangelical truth: as again in c.41, where, in order to make Christian truth easy for 'the Greeks,' the Incarnation is assimilated to the nißaois of the Word upon nature. On the other hand Athanasius later in his life strongly insisted on the Word having really identified Himself with the humanity which He assumed: see Ep. ad Epictetum, as referred to on p. 124.

PROCLUS of Cyzicus, Orat. i. 9 (P. G. lxv. p. 690 c) ὁ αὐτὸς ὢν ἐν τοῖς κόλποις τοῦ πατρὸς καὶ ἐν γαστρὶ παρθένου ὁ αὐτὸς ἐν ἀγκάλαις μητρὸς καὶ ἐπὶ πτερύγων ανέμων· ὁ αὐτὸς ἄνω ὑπὸ ἀγγέλων προσεκυνεῖτο καὶ κάτω τελώναις συνανεκλίνετο· τὰ σεραφὶμ οὐ προσέβλεπε καὶ Πιλάτος ἠρώτα . . . ὧδε πλάνος ἐσυκοφαντεῖτο καὶ ἐκεῖ ἅγιος ἐδοξολογεῖτο.

'He, the same, was in His Father's bosom and in the womb of the Virgin; in His mother's arms and on the wings of the winds; He was being worshipped by the angels in heaven and He was supping with publicans on earth; whom the Seraphim dare not gaze at, Pilate was questioning. . . Here He was being maligned as a cheat, while there He was being glorified as the Holy One.'

1

This is a passage from a memorable and splendid sermon 1 preached in reply to Nestorius' follower Anastasius in the Cathedral of St. Sophia at Constantinople. Proclus is emphasizing that the incarnate person is no other than the eternal Son, and he puts into strong rhetorical juxtaposition the humiliating sufferings of the manhood and the glories of the Godhead, as belonging

1 See Bright's Early Church History, p. 313. Cf. Hilary, de Trin, x. 54.

simultaneously to the same person. I would only contend that there is nothing in the New Testament to justify this sort of language, and that it gives an unnatural meaning-if meaning at all-to such a fact as our Lord's cry of desolation upon the cross, if within the sphere where that cry was uttered, He was personally living in the exercise of the beatific vision, if that vision was (so to speak) side by side with the experience upon the cross. When, as in this case, the abstract movement of human thought is necessarily baffled by the conditions of the subject, it is specially necessary to keep close to the facts, in this case the revealed facts, and to let the language follow closely upon them.

I would conclude then, on this preliminary matter that it is necessary, if we would be true to the New Testament in thinking or writing of the incarnate Christ, to put into the foreground and to emphasize the human state as it is described in the Gospels. The truth of the New Testament is impaired or destroyed if the divine state is put into immediate juxtaposition with this. Only as there is real reason to believe that the apostolic writers did contemplate the continuance of the cosmic functions of the Word, and as the thought of the Church has found it impossible to conceive the opposite, it is right to explain that the real Kévwois within the sphere of the Incarnation must be held compatible with the exercise of divine functions in another sphere. On the question whether this is conceivable by us, more will need to be said later on.

§ 2.

Early tradition and speculation on the special subject of the human consciousness of Christ.

The 'churches' were started on their career with a 'tradition' of faith which it was their office to guard. This tradition was conceived to embody the teaching of the apostolic founders on the matters which constituted 'the faith once for all committed to the saints.' This idea of tradition, to which the New Testament bears frequent testimony, has been mentioned before1. All that we now have to inquire is whether in the earliest churches this tradition was conceived to contain any information on the subject of our Lord's human consciousness, or whether the subsequent development of Christian thought upon the subject was due simply to the influence of certain texts' in the apostolic writings and to conclusions drawn from the general idea of the Incarnation.

The divinity of Christ-that He was the Son of God made man-is assumed by the subapostolic representatives of the churches of Rome and Antioch, Clement and Ignatius. It is assumed, not as matter of controversy, 1 See above, p. 41.

2

Clement, ad Cor. 2 và muốn para autou, i. e. ToU 0600 (=Christ); Ignatius, Eph. I ἐν αἵματι θεοῦ, Rom. 6 τοῦ πάθους τοῦ θεοῦ. See further Lightfoot's notes on Clem. ad Cor. 2. I ought to add that since Lightfoot decided for Deoû not XpiσToû as the true reading in this place, the ancient Latin version published by D. Germanus Morin in Anecdota Maredsolana has increased the evidence on the other side. If Xporoû is to be used, however, there still