CHAPTER IV.

Of the Fourth Title, under which we are obliged to Virtue, namely, the Inestimable Benefit of our Redemption.

LET us come to the inestimable Benefit of our Redemption.

When I would speak of this Mystery, truly I find myself so unworthy, so incapable, so limited, that I know not where to begin or where to end, or what to say, or what to leave unsaid. If the sloth of man did not need these incentives to live well, it would be better to adore the depth of this Mystery in silence than to obscure it by the rudeness of our speech. It is related of a celebrated painter that he made a picture of the death of a king's daughter, and when he had depicted her relations round about her with sad countenances, and her mother far sadder, and had now to draw the father's countenance, he purposely covered it with a shadow, to show that art failed to express so great a grief as this. But if all that we can do is insufficient to explain only the Benefit of Creation, what eloquence will suffice to magnify that of Redemption? By one simple expression of His Will GOD created all the things in the world; yet was His Power inexhausted, and His Arm strong when He had created them. But to redeem it, He toiled for three-and-thirty years, and shed all His Blood, and there remained in Him no Member and no Sense that did not suffer pain. It appears a degradation of such great Mysteries to declare them with a fleshly tongue. What shall I do then? Shall I be silent, or shall I speak? I may not be silent, I cannot speak. How shall I be silent of such great Mercies? How shall I speak of such ineffable Mysteries? To be silent is ingratitude, to speak appears pre

sumption. Wherefore, O my GOD, I now beseech Thy infinite Compassion, that whilst in my ignorance and incapacity, I am detracting from Thy Glory, in my very attempt to magnify and declare it, they who know how to praise Thee may glorify Thee in Heaven that they may set in order what I disorder, and that they may illumine what man tarnishes by his want of knowledge.

When man had been created, and placed by the Hand of GOD in the garden of delight in such great dignity and glory, (Gen. ii. 8, 9, 15-17), when every Gift that he had received from his Creator ought to have bound him more to His service, he appropriated all to himself, and in those things which ought to have been motives for love, he found incentives to treason. (Gen. iii. 1-7.) For this cause he was driven out of Paradise into the banishment of this world, and condemned to the pains of hell, (Gen. iii. 24; Rom. v. 12), that as he had been the devil's companion in sin, he might be so also in punishment. The Prophet said to his servant Gehazi when he had received the gifts of Naaman the leper, “Hast thou taken Naaman's gifts? The leprosy therefore of Naaman shall cleave unto thee, and unto thy seed for ever." (2 Kings v. 27.) This was GOD's sentence against man, that, as he chose the riches of Lucifer, that is, the sin of pride, the leprosy of Lucifer, that is, its punishment should also cleave to him. Behold man then made like unto the devil, the imitator of his fault and the companion of his everlasting punishment.

Man being then so fallen in the Sight of GOD, and so entirely out of His Favour, that LORD, no less great in Mercy than in Majesty, vouchsafed to look not upon the injury done to His sovereign Goodness, but on the wretchedness of our misery, and feeling more pity for our fault than anger at His own dishonour, He determined to restore man by means of His OnlyBegotten SON, and to reconcile him with Himself. But how did He reconcile him? How can mortal tongue declare it? He made such great amity between GOD and man, that He accomplished, not only that GOD should pardon man, and restore him to His Grace, and make Himself One with him by love, but, which transcends all expression, He made him so entirely

One with Him, that in all that He has created, there is nothing more one than these two are now : for they are not only one in love and in grace, but also in Person. Who could ever have thought that this breach would be thus united? Who could have imagined that these two things, between which nature and sin had made so wide a distance, would be united, not in one house, nor in one table, nor in one grace, but in One Person? What more distant than GOD and the sinner? What now more united than GOD and Man? "There is nothing," says S. Bernard, "higher than GOD, and nothing lower than the clay of which man was formed; yet with such Humility has GOD descended to the clay, and with such Dignity has the clay ascended to GOD, that all that GOD has done, we say was done by the Clay, and all that the Clay has endured we say that GOD suffered."

Who would have told the man, when he saw his nakedness, and felt himself at enmity with GOD, and sought amongst the trees of the garden for a place to hide himself, that a time would come when his vile substance should be joined in One Person with Him? So close and so faithful was this junction, that when it had to be broken, at the time of the Passion, it brake rather than dissevered, for it failed not at the juncture, but at the sound part, for death could separate the soul from the body to which it was joined by nature, but it could not separate GOD either from the soul or from the body to which He was joined by the Divine Person, for what He once took for love of us, He never left.

This is the peace and this the remedy that came to us by the Hands of our SAVIOUR and Mediator. And although we are more indebted to Him for this remedy than mortal tongue can express, we owe no less for the manner of our restoration than for the remedy itself. Much do I owe Thee, O my GOD, because Thou hast delivered me from Hell, and hast reconciled me with Thyself, but far more do I owe Thee for the way in which Thou hast delivered me than for the deliverance itself. All Thy works are marvellous in all things, and when it seems to a man that he has no spirit left to look upon one, this wonder is effaced, when he lifts up his eyes, and be

holds another.

It is no dishonour, LORD, to Thy Greatness, that they efface one another, it is a manifestation of Thy Glory.

For what means didst Thou take, O LORD, for my restoration? There were innumerable means whereby Thou mightest have given me entire healing, without labour or cost to Thyself, but so great and marvellous was Thy Munificence, that to show me more evidently the greatness of Thy Love and Goodness, Thou wert pleased to restore me with such great sufferings, that the very thought of them was enough to make Thee sweat Blood, (S. Luke xxii. 44), and Thy endurance of them rent the rocks with sorrow. (S. Matt. xxvii. 51.) Let the heavens praise Thee, O LORD, and let the Angels ever declare Thy Wonders. What need hadst Thou of our good, or what harm came to Thee by our evil? "If thou sinnest," saith Elihu, "what doest thou against Him? or if thy transgressions be multiplied, what doest thou unto Him? If thou be righteous, what givest thou Him? or what receiveth He of thine hand?" (Job xxxv. 6, 7.) This GOD then, so Rich, so free from all evil, He Whose Riches, Whose Power, Whose Wisdom can neither increase, nor be greater than they are, He Who neither before the Creation of the world, nor after it was created, is greater or less than He was; Who is not in Himself more Honourable if all Angels and men are saved and praise Him, nor less Glorious if all are lost and blaspheme Him; this Great LORD, not out of necessity, but charity, when we were His enemies and traitors, thought fit to bow the heavens of His Greatness, to come down to this place of banishment, to clothe Himself with our mortality, to take upon Him our debts, and to suffer for them the greatest torments that ever were or will be suffered. (See Eph. ii.; Col. ii.; Rom. v.)

For me, LORD, Thou wert born in a stable, for me Thou wert laid in a manger, (S. Luke ii. 7), for me circumcised on the eighth day, (S. Luke ii. 21), for me banished into Egypt, (S. Matt. ii. 14), and for me persecuted and maltreated with every kind of injury. For me Thou didst fast, and watch, and journey, and toil, and weep, and know by experience all the miseries that my sin deserved, whereas Thou wert not the culprit, but the offended person. (S. Matt. xxvi. and xxvii.) For me Thou

wert seized, forsaken, sold, denied, brought before various tribunals and judges, and before all accused, buffeted, defamed, spit upon, mocked, scourged, blasphemed, slain, and buried. Thou didst deliver me at last by dying upon a cross, and ending Thy life in the presence of Thy most Holy Mother, in such great poverty that Thou hadst not a single drop of water at the hour of Thy death, and so deserted by all, that Thy very FATHER had forsaken Thee. (S. John xix.; Ps. xxii. and lxix. ; S. Matt. xxvii.) What can be more amazing than to see a GOD so great and glorious end His life thus on a tree in the character of a malefactor!

When a man of the lowest class comes to this by his own fault, if perchance thou hast known him before, and thou drawest nigh to see his face, thou canst hardly cease from wondering, considering the degradation to which he has fallen, that he should come to such an end as this. But if it be a startling thing to see a man of low class in such a place, what is it to see the LORD of all creation there? What is it to see GOD in a place which is a degradation to a malefactor? And if the higher and better known the sufferer is, his fall terrifies us the more, say, O ye blessed Angels, who so well know the Greatness of this LORD, what did ye feel when ye saw Him there? The two Cherubims, whom GOD commanded to be put at the two ends of the ark of the testimony, look one to another, with their faces toward the mercy-seat, (Exod. xxv. 20), as if astonished, to show how amazed those lofty spirits are, when they consider this most moving act, when they see GOD made a propitiation for the world on that holy tree. Nature remains astonished, all creatures in suspense, all the principalities and powers of heaven wondering at the inestimable Goodness which they see in GOD. Who but must sink under the wave of such great marvels! Who but must drown in the ocean of such compassion! Who but will be transported out of himself, as Moses was on the mount, when GOD showed him the type of this Mystery! Who but must cover his eyes (1 Kings xix. 13) like the prophet Elijah when he sees GOD pass by, not with steps of majesty, but of humility: not rending the mountains and

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